FIGHTING BACK – AT 10:33 A.M. ET:  The CIA took a tremendous hit this week, with the release of classified sources and methods by Wikileaks.   You'd think there'd be a greater sense of outrage and urgency.  We have a strange indifference.

And yet, Washington is fighting back.  I want to see the betrayers caught and prosecuted.  From Fox:   

Less than 24 hours after WikiLeaks published what it described as the “entire hacking capacity of the CIA,” a federal criminal probe by a specialized FBI unit has begun, Fox News confirmed.

But while tracking down moles is nothing new for the FBI or the CIA, experts are suggesting that this search could prove to be particularly difficult.

The 2010 leak perpetrated by Army Pvt. Chelsea Manning, then known as Bradley Manning, inspired President Obama to create a group dedicated solely to tracking down & catching government leakers. Manning was caught after revealing the extent of her actions to an American hacker, who later testified against her. A short time later, Obama would announce the creation of the National Insider Threat Task Force.

The NITTF was formed "to prevent, deter and detect compromises of classified information by malicious insiders," according to its website. Despite the group’s singular focus on this issue, the NITTF was pointing out in a foreboding Tweet earlier this week that "all of the firewalls in the world won’t stop an insider who is already on the inside of these firewalls."

The formation of the group also did little to stop NSA leaker Edward Snowden from giving WikiLeaks a trove of documents on government surveillance back in 2013. In Snowden's case, he actually unmasked himself as the leaker, and has been on the run ever since.

COMMENT:  The pursuit must be intense, and scare the daylights out of anyone who would do this again.  If caught and found guilty, the betrayers should be given life sentences.  Or two life sentences.

March 9, 2017