http://www.jewishworldreview.com/cols/jonah102910.php3
Oct. 29, 2010 / 21 Mar-Cheshvan, 5771
All Quiet on the Black-Ops Front
By Jonah Goldberg
I'd like to ask a simple question: Why isn't Julian Assange dead?
In case you didn't know, Assange is the Australian computer programmer
behind WikiLeaks, a massive -- and massively successful -- effort to
disclose secret or classified information. In a series of recent dumps, he
unveiled thousands upon thousands of classified documents from the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq. Military and other government officials insist that
WikiLeaks is doing serious damage to American national security and is going
to get people killed, including brave Iraqis and Afghans who've risked their
lives and the lives of their families to help us.
Even Assange agrees. He told the New Yorker earlier this year that he fully
understands innocent people might die as a result of the "collateral damage"
of his work, and that WikiLeaks may have "blood on our hands." WikiLeaks is
easily among the most significant and well-publicized breaches of American
national security since the Rosenbergs gave the Soviets the bomb.
So again, I ask: Why wasn't Assange garroted in his hotel room years ago?
It's a serious question.
In almost every corner of the popular culture, there are people who assume
incredible competence on the part of our intelligence agencies. We take it
as a given that spooks can, in the immortal words of Elvis, take care of
business in a flash. In the Jason Bourne movies, say the wrong word into
your cell phone, and assassins will find you at the train station in
minutes. In AMC's "Rubicon," if you pay too close attention to crossword
puzzles, your train will be "accidentally" derailed. In "Three Days of the
Condor," if you ask your bosses the wrong question, a postman with a
ice-bullet-shooting machine gun will pay you a visit.
Of course, that's just Hollywood. But if you read left-wing accounts of the
intelligence community, two versions dominate. The CIA (and similar outfits)
are either evil and incompetent, or evil and super-competent. Sometimes the
folks at The Nation will mock the CIA for trying to blow up Castro with an
exploding cigar. Other times some Oliver Stone type will insist that the
military, or the CIA, or the NSA, or rogue elements from those quarters,
managed to assassinate JFK and pin it on a Marxist dupe named Lee Harvey
Oswald.
Under either scenario, you'd think Assange, super-whistle-blower of the
international left, would be a greasy stain on the Autobahn already.
Meanwhile, conservatives have something like a mirror-image view of the
black-ops crowd. We tend to think they're either well-intentioned bunglers
or noble ninjas in London fog trench coats. Again, either way, Assange's
shrimp-on-the-barbie should have had Strontium-90 in it years before anyone
heard his name.
Oh, and it's not just nation-states that are threatened by WikiLeaks. These
guys spend much of their time going after big corporations that, we're often
told -- at least by Hollywood and the people who e-mail me in ALL CAPS --
routinely rub out gadflies and whistle-blowers who try to let the world know
the electric car was perfected in 1920, or that milk companies are making
millions by poisoning their customers (that was the actual plot of "I Love
Trouble," by the way).
Now, I know there are many solid answers to my question. For starters, the
world isn't nearly so dramatic as novelists, bloggers, self-important
journalists and nostalgic former spies often claim it is. The main reason
the U.S. government didn't bring down the World Trade Center on 9/11 is that
no one has the ability to pull off a conspiracy like that. And the people
who come closest -- i.e., those very same spies -- are too decent and
patriotic even to imagine trying.
Indeed, most of the documents from WikiLeaks debunk the vast majority of
conspiracy theories that fueled so much idiocy on the left for the last
decade. No sinister plots involving Halliburton or Israel have been exposed
-- because they only existed in the fevered fantasies of some coffee-shop
dissidents.
Second, Assange is essentially hiding behind his celebrity and the fact that
it wouldn't do any good to kill him, given the nature of the Web. Even if
the CIA wanted to take him out, they couldn't without massive controversy.
That's because assassinating a hipster Australian Web guru as opposed to a
Muslim terrorist is the kind of controversy no official dares invite.
That's fine. And it's the law. Ultimately, I don't expect the U.S.
government to kill Assange, but I do expect them to try to stop him. Alas,
as of now, the plan seems to be to do nothing at all.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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