IT’S INTERESTING that the New York Times–the apparent arbiter of what is truly secret and what ought to be published–is suddenly so concerned about the possible release of classified material captured in Iraq–material they claim has helped Iran with its own nuclear weapons development program. The perpetrators of this dastardly deed? The vast right-wing conspiracy of course.
Per the Times story, conservatives in the House and Senate, along with the president, pressured the director of national intelligence to release the unclassified documents captured by U.S. forces during Operation Iraqi Freedom in an attempt to–paraphrasing the Times and assorted skeptics–find WMD needles in a massive paper haystack. As the intelligence community was overwhelmed with the scale of the effort required to make full use of this data, those in the public with the requisite skills and interest would be turned loose like an army of analysts.
