re: Wikileaks is a threat to American National Security

I'll say it again: CIA and NSA (and other IA's) have a major problem. The organizations are too big and have too many people with access to TS/SCI information. From the Atlantic:

quote:

---

As of last October, nearly five million people held government security clearances. Of that, 1.4 million held top-secret clearances. More than a third of those with top-secret clearances are contractors, which would appear to include Mr. Snowden.

---

As for the problem of contractors, former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden said this:

quote:

---

"There isn't a phone or computer at [NSA headquarters] that the government owns."

---

That's shocking to me. We have basically handed over our national security to private contractors like Booz. On top of that, we have a lot of IT people who have keys to the kingdom (Snowden) when they should NOT have such access. Snowden literally walked around looking at all the info on various NSA computers because he was an IT worker. That's crazy. Snowden doesn't even have a college degree and had no business looking at SCI material that he wasn't read in on.

In the old days the spooks were career men -- they got hired out of college and stayed on with good salaries and benefits. They became part of the culture, a fraternity of sorts. Today we have Booz-Allen-Hamilton hiring random guys with no loyalty and then letting them see TS/SCI data. These employees know their jobs could end at any time and, as a result, they have no loyalty. They understand they are just cogs in a massive corporate wheel.

Top that off with the culture of the millennials (fight the man) and you have a recipe for a lot more leaks. It's going to happen more and more and there's nothing the government can do to stop it unless they take a serious look at internal reorganization. The sprawling IC has become too big and has too many people with clearances.

Also, sticking a few of these guys in prison for life (or executing them) might help as well.