Epstein Secrets

contractors, even in front-line jobs, affect the course of war? Consider that two recent national-security incidents involved federal contractors: Edward Snowden, who distributed U.S. government secrets around the world, and Aaron Alexis, who killed 12 people at the Washington Navy Yard last month. • Whic

y incidents involved federal contractors: Edward Snowden, who distributed U.S. government secrets around

st Channel at Foreignpolicy.com. Anicic 4. The Washington Post Can the military learn from its mistakes? Thomas E. Ricks After the Vietnam War, the U.S. Army soberly examined where it had fallen short. That critical appraisal laid the groundwork for the military's extraordinary rebuilding in the 1970s an

led comprehensively, and each level of oversight, each level of re- sponsibility that should have addressed this, abdicated their re- sponsibility. —EDWARD SNOWDEN, Moscow, 2013 Wi SNOWDEN in Hong Kong was attempting to reel in the journalists, Lindsay Mills returned to Honolulu from her “island-hopping” trip t

as attempting to reel in the journalists, Lindsay Mills returned to Honolulu from her “island-hopping” trip to find their house partially flooded and Snowden nowhere to be found. In a brief note Snowden left her, he said he was away on a business trip and indicated that, at least tem- porarily, their eight

ent employees who, as a matter of personal conscience, shared classified informa- tion they obtained from the FBI, the CIA, the State Department, and the U.S. Army with journalists. They were all convicted: Sha- mai Leibowitz in 2010, Chelsea Manning in 2013, John Kiriakou in 2013, Donald Sachtleben in 2013, Ste

entation of more sophisticated secu- rity procedures, such as the polygraph examination and extensive background checks. In 1995, eleven years before Snowden joined it, the CIA’s inspector general completed a study of the KGB’s use of false defectors to mislead the U.S. government from the end of the Cold

sses of a nation’s potential adversaries. The most impor- tant of these in peacetime is communication intercepts. It was just such state secrets that Edward Snowden took from the NSA in the spring of 2013. Before that breach, America’s paramount advantage in this subterranean competition was its undisputed domina

ly, a cipher, in which numbers are sub- stituted for letters. Making and breaking codes and ciphers became a crucial enterprise for nations. By 1914, the U.S. Army and Navy @ had set up units, staffed by mathematicians, linguists, and crossword @ puzzle solvers, to intercept and decode enemy messages. After the