CIA launches WTF- ‘Wikileaks Task Force’

The Central Intelligence Agency is not surprisingly keeping an eye on Wikileaks, creating a “Wikileaks Task Force.” (Known within the agency simply as “WTF.”)

The WTF’s job is to comb through the hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables released by Wikileaks and assess how the now-publicly available information could cause larger problems. Among US government agencies, the CIA was relatively unscathed by Cablegate, and very little information even namechecking the notoriously tight-lipped CIA was present in the cables. (One notable CIA-related cable was a request for UN diplomats to gather intel.)

Interestingly, it seems from the Washington Post‘s piece that a reticence to commit sensitive information to digital media may have saved the CIA’s ass when it comes to Wikileaks. Per the article, the agency reviewed moving data to shareable digital formats, but opted against such measures due to inherent security risks:

As recently as two years ago, the agency rejected a request to make more of its intelligence reports available on the SIPRNET, the classified network used by the Pentagon to pass information around the world.

“We simply said we weren’t going to do it,” another former CIA official said. “The consensus was there were simply too many people potentially who had access.”

In light of the Wikileaks drama, a former high-ranking CIA official speaking on the condition of anonymity said of the decision:

“It’s just a huge vulnerability… Nobody could carry out enough paper to do what WikiLeaks has done.”