Diplomat Loses Top Secret Clearance for Link to WikiLeaks

October 20, 2011

Tags: 1984, Bradley Manning, Brazil, Hammer, Wired
Posted in: Democracy, Embassy/State, Iraq

Wired.com has the story about State taking away my security clearance as a tit-for-tat for my book documenting their silly failures in Iraq.

The reporter really captured the 1984 meets Brazil world this is all taking place in:

In December 2010 the White House issued a directive warning federal employees not to access the government documents WikiLeaks published online.

“Classified information, whether or not already posted on public websites or disclosed to the media, remains classified, and must be treated as such by federal employees and contractors, until it is declassified by an appropriate U.S. Government authority,” the directive said.

Ironically, Van Buren had worked across the hallway from Manning for about six months in Iraq in 2009 and 2010 at Forward Operating Base Hammer, he told Wired in a phone interview Wednesday.

That’s where Manning allegedly downloaded the cables to a CD-Rom while pretending to lip-sync to Lady Gaga music that was supposedly on the disc. Now Van Buren is being punished for linking to something that Manning allegedly downloaded from the Army’s classified network and leaked to WikiLeaks.

“I literally had my office across the hall from where he worked,” Van Buren said. “I don’t think I actually ever met the guy. The last time I had access to U.S. government secrets was on the Army system that Bradley Manning used.”

Van Buren said State Department security staff who informed him of his suspension this week didn’t even know who Manning was when he mentioned the name. The security guys, Van Buren said, thought he was trying to brag about his Department connections.

“Don’t try to impress me with the people you know,” he says one of the staffers told him. “You could work for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; the rules are the same.”

Read the whole story at Wired.com.

Copyright © 2020. All rights reserved. The views expressed here are solely those of the author(s) in their private capacity.