Goodell discusses classified military info with P. King; King publishes it

[Hardboiled]

Personally, I am in favor of Goodell performing more dangerous, battlefront missions.

He could bring King and Tomase with him. They should be able to completely hide the troops location behind those two.

QFT. End of Thread.


_______________________________________________________________

End the Hysteria

 

[Fixit]

Personally, I am in favor of Goodell performing more dangerous, battlefront missions.

He could bring King and Tomase with him. They should be able to completely hide the troops location behind those two.

Nice. With Tomase's fact-finding abilities, he'll have the enemy convinced that there are eleventy jillion American troops riding Dinobots.

 

[PatsFanSince74]

Too crazy to be real.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/writers/peter_king/07/15/mailbag/index.html

Especially after the recent border attack, publishing the force strength at an American outpost in Afghanistan is incredibly irresponsible.

Goodell must go.

While we have an unfortunate amount of evidence that our government is not always as careful as it might be with classified information, it is usually extremely careful when it comes to the safety of our men and women in uniform. The media are generally very carefully instructed on what can and cannot be published by anyone who has access to any military facility. There are people whose job it is basically to do just that. Therefore, I found the name of this thread and the claim made in your comment worrisome.

So, I read the King article and found nothing that could vaguely be construed as putting our soldiers at risk. It doesn't seem to reveal anything that an enemy wouldn't already know or could easily determine to say that there are about a dozen lookouts at strategic places around the camp. Another key piece of information would be the location of the facility, but King only says that it is 700 meters from the Pakistan border. He also says it is "close to" the outpost that was attacked with tragic results recently. Since the border is nearly 1,500 miles long and since there are many US camps in that area, the information doesn't seem to facilitate ready location of the outpost. The only other reference to its location is that its members engaged in a firefight eight klicks away a day earlier, which also seems unlikely to pin down a location. So, even if the Taliban regularly check in on Peter King's ramblings, it seems that this thread's title and hypothesis are alarmist.

Let's leave Military Intelligence to those who are charged with that responsibility. And, there are plenty of other and legit reasons to dislike Mr. Goodell.

 

[PonyExpress]

Rereading this thread, I have to say my reaction to Pujo was unnecessary and uncalled for, and I apologize.

As for the people who are saying there is "nothing" OPSEC related in King's article, I disagree strongly. Publishing for wide readership the exact number of personnel on the two seperate hills of an identifiable base in a combat zone where 9 Americans were killed earlier in the week is grossly irresponsible.

If some high-level Public Relations Officer in the Army gave King's article his blessing, he did a disservice to the grunts manning their posts. If anyone out there thinks the military has a handle on these kind of leaks, they are wrong.

It was completely unnecessary to discuss exact numbers, and self-serving of Goodell to give those details on the record. Now that he has started to think of himself as General Patton, hiring his "Officer of Strategic Security" for NFL HQ, discussing military force protection in excessive detaill with another self-styled military expert, P. King, probably fed right into Goodell's bloated heirloom of an ego.

It merely continues Goodell's "empty suit gone wild" phase.

I strongly doubt the leadership at that base would have approved, and I'm honestly surprised various veterans/posters do not see a problem.

 

[Fixit]

I strongly doubt the leadership at that base would have approved, and I'm honestly surprised various veterans/posters do not see a problem.

I do! I do!

Then again, base security was only my job.

 

[FirstAndGoal]

Considerable overreaction. There is no OPSEC vioaltion here.

I've also had security clearances in both military and civilian occupations and I can tell you with complete certainty that there's no violation here. Some of your imaginations are running wild from too many Rambo movies.


P.S. In case you're wondering, I was 11B so the ones you think would be at risk from this would have been me.

 

[FirstAndGoal]

Rereading this thread, I have to say my reaction to Pujo was unnecessary and uncalled for, and I apologize.

As for the people who are saying there is "nothing" OPSEC related in King's article, I disagree strongly. Publishing for wide readership the exact number of personnel on the two seperate hills of an identifiable base in a combat zone where 9 Americans were killed earlier in the week is grossly irresponsible.

If some high-level Public Relations Officer in the Army gave King's article his blessing, he did a disservice to the grunts manning their posts. If anyone out there thinks the military has a handle on these kind of leaks, they are wrong.

It was completely unnecessary to discuss exact numbers, and self-serving of Goodell to give those details on the record. Now that he has started to think of himself as General Patton, hiring his "Officer of Strategic Security" for NFL HQ, discussing military force protection in excessive detaill with another self-styled military expert, P. King, probably fed right into Goodell's bloated heirloom of an ego.

It merely continues Goodell's "empty suit gone wild" phase.

I strongly doubt the leadership at that base would have approved, and I'm honestly surprised various veterans/posters do not see a problem.

Which specific operations did you serve in and where (asking because I'm wondering what the OPSEC was for them)? I'd like to hear specifically what was violated and why?

 

[Fixit]

Considerable overreaction. There is no OPSEC vioaltion here.

I've also had security clearances in both military and civilian occupations and I can tell you with complete certainty that there's no violation here. Some of your imaginations are running wild from too many Rambo movies.


P.S. In case you're wondering, I was 11B so the ones you think would be at risk from this would have been me.

I don't think there's a violation, either, and I never said there was. What I did say is that it's irresponsible and unnecessary.

Allow me to illustrate my point: If I were to say in passing conversation, "There's no way we'd know if someone tried to get over the fence at this particular stretch" I haven't technically passed any classified info, but I've made an irresponsible statement that could possibly lead to some sort of breach. Passing troop strength numbers in is in exactly the same boat: not classified, but why risk it?

 

[Va_Pats_Fan]

Passing troop strength numbers in is in exactly the same boat: not classified, but why risk it?

There was no passing of that info. What leads you to believe that there will be that same amount, or any amount, of troops on that hill tomorrow, or any day in the future? Perhaps Goodell was being used. They sent 14 ppl up there, and now they are sitting there with 75, just waiting for the undersized attack?

 

[FirstAndGoal]

The only thing I found was this:

Goodell said at FOB Tillman, 10 troops stood lookout on one hill near the base and 14 on another hill close by. These sentries were charged with securing the border and stayed atop the hills for days at a time. The base commander told Goodell that about eight kilometers away on the previous day, 70 soldiers from the base engaged insurgents in a firefight with no American casualties. On Sunday, men and women from the nearby base weren't so lucky.

70 soldiers out of how many or is this some special patrol that sends everyone out beyond the wire?
which hill? which day? which time? How many times?

There's nothing useful if this is what you're talking about.

If you're talking about the location, it's well known and I can put you in touch with someone who served there.

 

[Fixit]

There was no passing of that info. What leads you to believe that there will be that same amount, or any amount, of troops on that hill tomorrow, or any day in the future? Perhaps Goodell was being used. They sent 14 ppl up there, and now they are sitting there with 75, just waiting for the undersized attack?

Yeah, or there's six. Or one. I'm sure the NFL Commissioner was being used to trick the enemy, because one thing you definitely want to do on foreign soil is entice the enemy to attack you so you can say, "OMG! You totally fell for it!"

Again, any info can come back to bite you in the ass. Some can't be hidden, but none of it should be advertised needlessly.

 

[Fixit]

I've been going about this all wrong. Let me put it in different terms: do you think there's a reason that the Patriots organization, from top to bottom, would rather have a root canal than give out the teensiest, most innocuous sounding info to the press?

 

[Manzana]

I worked in a public relations office in the military for five years.. when VIP tours came through, the information told to those VIP was always controlled by responsible parties. This sounds like a screw up on the military public relations team to actually tell the guests about it. No numbers should have been given if that information was critical. A simple, "We make sure sentries patrol those areas 24 hours a day" would have been sufficient.

But even when I was in the Persian Gulf, the media members were always sniffing around for more information and this was one of those issues we always ran into, what information should we release to them and what shouldn't we. Usually we would tell the reporter, etc, what information was good and gave them a good reason why we didn't want to give them other information. Most reporters respect the fact that if you give them some information, it can be found anywhere on the internet and used by forces that are anti-American, etc.

Intel is king in these situations and over the years, there has always been a fence between military and the press.. With Vietnam through to Iraq. It is a matter of all sides being responsible and aware of the information that is being disseminated.

 

[FirstAndGoal]

(for Fix it)
Yeah, that's it. It's all bad. Top secret missions to save captured POWs and exploding arrow tips for everyone.

 

[Fixit]

(for Fix it)
Yeah, that's it. It's all bad. Top secret missions to save captured POWs and exploding arrow tips for everyone.

Hey, that's constructive.

I was trained in base security, and a part of that was what we could tell the press, what we should refer to the PR office, and what was off-limits.

If I was active, and someone passed on troop strength numbers to me, I could most likely use it against them. Most soldiers could. That's the point.

 

[spacecrime]

I'm honestly surprised various veterans/posters do not see a problem.

That's because vets (two tours Vietnam 25 Inf, '68 and '69) realize that the information in the article is not sensitive.

 

[Fixit]

Hey, has anyone heard that Brett Favre is coming back???

 

[PonyExpress]

Which specific operations did you serve in and where (asking because I'm wondering what the OPSEC was for them)? I'd like to hear specifically what was violated and why?

Publishing the personnel numbers at a lightly manned combat outpost in a war zone when a similar base was nearly overrun earlier in the week is folly. I don't see why you require the details of my service to validate that obvious point.

 

[spacecrime]

Hey, that's constructive.

I was trained in base security, and a part of that was what we could tell the press, what we should refer to the PR office, and what was off-limits.

If I was active, and someone passed on troop strength numbers to me, I could most likely use it against them. Most soldiers could. That's the point.

Sorry, this is nonsense.

Yesterday you read an article and learned that last week there were 30 (or whatever) men on a certain hill (or whatever). At the time you thought there was 45. So today you are going to use this against them.

Same as the BS post about military not using dis-information for fear that someone will attack them. Disinformation is used all the time.

 

[PonyExpress]

That's because vets (two tours Vietnam 25 Inf, '68 and '69) realize that the information in the article is not sensitive.

Wow, SC, you are one of my heroes, a veteran of Tropic Lightning and the defense of Saigon. You never know who's posting on a message baord, and it turns out to be an American hero. In Vietnam you wouldn't have minded that a small combat outpost's force numbers were published for no good reason in the press? That surprises me.