November 30, 2010 11:37AM 

# Wikileaks Sheds Light on Government Ineptitude 

By [Malou Innocent](https://www.cato.org/people/malou-innocent) 

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For [years](https://www.cato.org/event.php?eventid=6215) I have told anybody who would listen how U.S. efforts to stabilize Afghanistan contribute to Pakistan’s [slow-motion collapse](http://www.foreignservicejournal-digital.com/foreignservicejournal/201009#pg38). Well it appears that my take on the situation was not so over-the-top. Amid some 250,000 confidential diplomatic cables released by online whistleblower Wikileaks, former U.S. ambassador to Pakistan Anne W. Patterson [warned](http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/nov/28/us-embassy-cables-wikileaks) in cable traffic that U.S. policy in South Asia “risks destabilizing the Pakistani state, alienating both the civilian government and the military leadership, and provoking a broader governance crisis without finally achieving the goal.”

On one level, this cable underscores what a disaster American foreign policy has become. But on another level, the *leak* of this and other cables strikes me as completely odd and slightly scary. How did [Pfc. Bradley Manning](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11874276), who stands accused of stealing the classified files from [Siprnet](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/siprnet-america-stores-secret-cables) and handing them to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, obtain access to these files in the first place? How does a young, low-level Army intelligence analyst gain access to a computer with hundreds of thousands of classified documents from all over the world?

After 9/11, the government made an effort to link up separate archives of government information. [In theory](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/siprnet-america-stores-secret-cables), anyone in the State Department or the U.S. military can access these archives if he has: (1) a computer connected to Siprnet, and (2) a “secret” security clearance. As Manning [told](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/nov/28/how-us-embassy-cables-leaked) a fellow hacker: “I would come in with music on a CD-RW labeled with something like ‘Lady Gaga’ … erase the music … then write a compressed split file. No one suspected a thing… \[I\] listened and lip-synched to Lady Gaga’s ‘Telephone’ while exfiltrating possibly the largest data spillage in American history.” Manning said he “had unprecedented access to classified networks 14 hours a day 7 days a week for 8+ months.”

I’m all for less government secrecy, particularly when U.S. officials are doing bizarre things like [tabulating the biometric data](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/219058) of various UN officials, the heads of other international institutions, and [African heads of state](http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-embassy-cables-documents/202678). That these supposedly “confidential” communications were so easily leaked highlights the appalling ineptitude of our [unwieldy national security bureaucracy](https://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9139). Indeed, the phenomenon of Wikileaks says as much about government policy as it does about government incompetence.

##### Related Tags 

[Defense and Foreign Policy](https://www.cato.org/defense-foreign-policy) 

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