The Mainstream Media isn’t talking much about General James Cartwright, USMC (ret) because the focus is on the OJ Simpson style run of Edward Snowden, currently holed up in Sheremetyevo International Airport near Moscow. However, the man who was once known as “Obama’s Favorite General” is in hot water. I don’t expect General Cartwright to bolt for Russia and plea for political asylum though.

General Cartwright, former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (about as high up as you can go) is under investigation for espionage in connection with leaking classified information pertaining to the Stuxnet virus that temporarily disabled Iranian nuclear centrifuges (see Operation Olympic Games).
I don’t know whether or not General Cartwright did anything wrong or not. The fact that he was known as “Obama’s favorite” would cast grave doubts on his judgement on its face alone. But everyone is looking at Snowden, not at Cartwright.
Was General Cartwright a whistle blower?

The answer to this question does not depend on our own political opinions, but on the nature of the U.S. government. The answer completely changes if we focus on the case of Bradley Manning, the young leftist Wikileaks soldier, or if we consider that of General Cartwright, military adviser to President Obama, indicted Thursday, 27 June 2013, for spying.

Is there a difference between espionage in favor of a foreign power and disloyalty to the US Government and to breaking fealty to your oath of office? Eight Americans have been charged with espionage during the Obama Administration. You might want to check those cases.
If we were to hold everyone in the Obama Administration guilty to a breech of fealty to the American People and to the requirement that they uphold the Constitution of the United States and defend it against all enemies foreign and domestic, they’d all be behind bars or hanging from a scaffold.
Thus, many espionage cases are political cases. Is that true with Obama’s General? I suspect that is the case–but I don’t know for sure.

(Fox News) Oregon Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden asked (Director of National Intelligence) Clapper at a March 12 congressional hearing whether the NSA “collects any type of data at all on millions of hundreds of millions of Americas?” 

Wyden asked because (James) Clapper suggested publicly months earlier that stories about the NSA keeping “dossiers” on millions of Americans were “completely false.” 

Clapper told Wyden: “No sir, it does not.” 

When asked for clarification, he said “not wittingly.” 

Director of National
Intelligence, James Clapper

After the latest stories appeared to reveal otherwise, Clapper said he gave the “least untruthful answer possible.”

Will DNI Clapper be clapped in irons and hauled off to prison for perjury before Congress? No, and I don’t see that would serve the national interest any more than Congress does, but it serves to illustrate a point.

Historical Case Study (context)

During World War II, the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada managed to keep under wraps something as big as the Manhattan Project, that created the first nuclear bomb, while it employed 130,000 people for 4 years and it was widely penetrated by foreign intelligence services.
Why?

Because Washington did not prepare the weapon for this war, but for the next, against the Soviet Union. As shown by Russian historians, the abdication of Japan was postponed until after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed as a warning to the USSR. If Americans had known that their country possessed such a weapon, their leaders would have had to use it to finish with Germany and not to threaten the Soviet ally at the expense of the Japanese. In reality, the Cold War began before the end of World War II. 
In terms of secrecy, it should be noted that Stalin and Hitler were informed of the Manhattan Project from its inception. They indeed had inside agents. Meanwhile Truman was informed in his capacity as vice president, but only at the last moment, after the death of President Roosevelt.

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5 COMMENTS

  1. I have serious questions about the sources for your last part, the historical case study. While I am not familiar with the "Russian historians" you cite, I have done my own extensive research into the history of the Manhattan Project (whose insignia is not the one you display). In the technical history of the project, neither of the two types of atomic bombs (not nuclear bombs) were close to being ready, much less deliverable before VE day. Thus there is no way they could have been used to finish Germany.
    While using the bombs on Japan may have had deterrent value against the USSR, events in Tokyo do not align with the Russian version that capitulation (not abdication) was postponed. That story sounds like it serves Moscow's purposes more than an accurate rendering of history.

  3. Velcro – that may indeed be the case. Yes, they were atomic, not thermonuclear. I don't know whether it's a completely accurate rendering of history. However, there was an underlying point that I tried do make — and maybe I didn't make it, or I made it badly.

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