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http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2012/0...in-laden-raid/
Tough to come up with a short title for this one. Anywho, Matt Bissonnette, one of the Navy Seals who was on the Osama bin Laden raid, wrote about about being a Seal, the mission, and life afterwards. The problem? He never submitted it to the DoD for approval and censuring. Standard procedure for that kind of thing is to submit the book to the DoD and they look over it to make sure there isn't any classified information in it. He wrote the book and got it published under a pseudonym (Which the press naturally gave away his real name) without having it checked.
He has an attorney ready in case the government arrests him for spilling secrets which seems likely based off what the radio was saying tonight. I plan on getting the book and reading it but the radio made it seem like he let out a lot of information that the government clearly didn't want getting out.
What do you guys think? Should he be able to write and say whatever he wants without punishment since he's retired and no longer part of the military?
I personally don't. The mission was classified as high as possible. Information on how stuff was done might seem like super obvious stuff to him but sometimes these militant groups we are fighting just don't think about it. The terrorists are out looking and listening for anything that'll help them. When you are working out there and you are working on secret or top secret stuff, odds are at some point you will learn something that is just plain awesome. But you just can't talk about it no matter how much you want. He did something awesome and decided it was okay to talk about what happened when it just plain wasn't. You are bound by secrecy until you die or it because declassified. The secrecy doesn't end when you leave your job. I can't just start telling everyone what I learned in Afghanistan just because I no longer work there. That's not how it works.
Tough to come up with a short title for this one. Anywho, Matt Bissonnette, one of the Navy Seals who was on the Osama bin Laden raid, wrote about about being a Seal, the mission, and life afterwards. The problem? He never submitted it to the DoD for approval and censuring. Standard procedure for that kind of thing is to submit the book to the DoD and they look over it to make sure there isn't any classified information in it. He wrote the book and got it published under a pseudonym (Which the press naturally gave away his real name) without having it checked.
He has an attorney ready in case the government arrests him for spilling secrets which seems likely based off what the radio was saying tonight. I plan on getting the book and reading it but the radio made it seem like he let out a lot of information that the government clearly didn't want getting out.
What do you guys think? Should he be able to write and say whatever he wants without punishment since he's retired and no longer part of the military?
I personally don't. The mission was classified as high as possible. Information on how stuff was done might seem like super obvious stuff to him but sometimes these militant groups we are fighting just don't think about it. The terrorists are out looking and listening for anything that'll help them. When you are working out there and you are working on secret or top secret stuff, odds are at some point you will learn something that is just plain awesome. But you just can't talk about it no matter how much you want. He did something awesome and decided it was okay to talk about what happened when it just plain wasn't. You are bound by secrecy until you die or it because declassified. The secrecy doesn't end when you leave your job. I can't just start telling everyone what I learned in Afghanistan just because I no longer work there. That's not how it works.
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