Make sure your OPSEC is clean with this look back at The Daily Show's coverage of security leaks and classified document scandals. Jon Stewart sneaks a peek at the biggest, best leak ever from Wikileaks, then checks his inbox and finds out that Hillary Clinton once had a private email server. Jon checks in with Aasif Mandvi to unpack another Wikileaks intelligence dump via Julian Assange. Trevor Noah listens in as Trump whispers in Russia's ear, then links up with the White House plumber (Michael Kosta) to discuss the toilets clogged with state secrets. Trevor reports on the FBI raid on Trump's residence hunting for classified documents, then turns to Desi Lydic to Foxsplain why it isn't an issue. Finally, Leslie Jones reports on Biden joining the club of classified document hoarders. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Chapter 1: What is the biggest military leak in U.S. history?
Secrets are out about the war in Afghanistan. Not just a leak, but a flood of secret documents. 92,000 documents.
It's the biggest leak in U.S. military history. Really? 92,000 pages? I would hope that would be the biggest leak. seeing as that beats the Pentagon Papers by, I don't know, 85,000 pages. Perhaps this might be an appropriate time to let leakers of military documents know it's not a competition. So, uh, some, uh, some top secret , hm?
We just came from an off-camera session with Colonel Dave LaPan, a Pentagon spokesman. He says it looks to be secret in nature, not top secret. Oh, it's just secret!
I was worried. I thought it was top secret. It's just secret. That is a much lower security classification than top secret. It actually goes, army classification wise, secret, then top secret, and then, of course, I believe, pop secret. That is where all of our military information is encoded in fluffy and delicious butter-coated kernels. Oh. So pernicious.
Chapter 2: Who was Brad Ass 87 and what did he do?
An intelligence breach of this magnitude must have been coordinated by a conspiracy of high-level masterminds with ninja-like powers of concealment.
Last May, a California computer hacker was contacted online by someone calling himself Bradass87. He said he was an army intelligence analyst deployed to Baghdad who had access to classified networks that showed incredible things, awful things, that belong in the public domain. Okay, I'm going to stop you right there.
Brad Ass 87, really? The incredible super mole spy went by the name Brad Ass 87 and told the computer hacker that he was in Army Intelligence. Let me take a whack at trying to solve this. Maybe I've been watching Bones too much, but computer, search through the files looking for an Army specialist named Brad who's 87 years old. No, wait! Born in 1987.
and go. On May 26th, Army Specialist Brad Manning, born in 1987, was arrested outside of Baghdad and is now in a military prison. How did they find him?
How did they do it? Well, in Sherlock Holmes. By the way, Brad, you also might want to delete your armiespecialist.bradmanning.com backslash leak guy at itwasme.bradmanning.com. Does Brad Ass 87 have any idea what he's done to the American military? Not to mention what he's done to the life of Dove soap heir Bradford Assington the 87th. Hasn't he suffered enough?
For Christ's sake, the 87th generation of Assingtons. All the money in the world can't change that last name. That's why he's a douchebag. Is that, I'm just curious, is that a stock photo? I'm hoping. Probably a guy somewhere going, I thought that was a modeling job. Look, maybe Manning didn't need a secret name. Maybe his data collection skills were that stealth.
He allegedly also described how he downloaded the classified information. I would come in with music on a CD labeled with something like Lady Gaga and erase the music, recording intelligence onto the CD instead, allegedly writing that he lip-synced to Lady Gaga while exfiltrating possibly the largest data spillage in American history.
I believe the obvious question here is, how does a soldier sit around lip-syncing to Lady Gaga all day and not run afoul of Don't Ask, Don't Tell? That has got to be a substitute for telling, no? So Wikileaks.org has posted 92,000 classified documents about the Afghan war online. Well, let's take a look. What is the, is it, oh. Okay. Wow.
Apparently our worst strategy in Afghanistan is being encoded in Justin Bieber's Twitter account. Any news organizations out there taking the time to maybe wade through these documents and boil it down a bit for us?
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Chapter 3: Did Hillary Clinton's email practices break federal rules?
But if that's, you know, how everybody feels, why not just say that Secretary Clinton did turn over all her emails?
She provided a huge, you know, a large amount, those 55,000.
Just say it's everything.
Well, how can I? I mean, Brad, I'm not in her email.
If you were in her email, you'd be starring in the most boring Tron sequel of all time. Tron 2, the inbox.
Oh, no, there's spam. Something unexpected happened after Jeremy Scott confessed to killing Michelle Schofield in Bone Valley Season 1. I just knew him as a kid. Long, silent voices from his past came forward.
And he was just staring at me.
And they had secrets of their own to share.
I'm Gilbert King. I'm the son of Jeremy Lynn Scott.
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Chapter 4: Who is Julian Assange and what role does he play in WikiLeaks?
Yemen's President Saleh telling General David Petraeus about strikes in Yemen will continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours.
German Chancellor Merkel avoids risk and is rarely creative. Afghan President Karzai is driven by paranoia.
Dmitry Medvedev plays Robin to Mr. Putin's Batman.
Ahmadinejad is Hitler. Italy's foreign minister is calling this leak a diplomatic 9-11. Well, then he's a f***ing idiot.
I mean, not for nothing, but if this is the diplomatic 9-11, sack up. I'll give you its diplomatic mischief night, maybe. But most of the in there is non-policy chit-chat and things we already knew. And quite frankly, Ahmadinejad is Hitler? I think he might take that as a compliment. A peace offering towards a detente. I mean, transparency is a good thing.
Government wrongdoing should be ferreted out. Although, just because something's secret doesn't necessarily mean it's nefarious. How's Secretary of State Hillary Clinton dealing with the blowback?
Madam Secretary, are you embarrassed by these leaks personally, professionally?
Is she embarrassed? Were you alive in the 90s? Do you have any idea who you're dealing with? You know she's married to this guy, right? I think she's built up a bit of an embarrassment tolerance. It'd be like splitting a Mike's Hard Lemonade with Keith Richards and going, should I call you a cab? Are you too up to drive? Not that there weren't some embarrassing details.
On the effort to close Guantanamo, the State Department plays what the New York Times calls, let's make a deal. Slovenia, for example, is told that if it wants to get a meeting with President Obama, it needs to take a prisoner.
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Chapter 5: What impact did the WikiLeaks document dump have on global diplomacy?
I think you're underestimating how cynical Americans are about our government already. We've engineered coups in Chile, Iran, Guatemala, etc. We sold arms to Iran and then used the money to fund Central American revolutionaries. We sell weapons to our enemy's enemy, who somehow always then becomes our enemy and forces us to defend ourselves from our own weapons. That happens a lot.
In fact, you know what we call that? The number eight. It takes a lot. To unimpress us, you really should read up about the we already know about us. So unless in these WikiLeaks we're going to find out that the aliens from Area 51 killed Kennedy, stop with the drama. For more on the story, we go to our senior intelligence correspondent, Asif Manvi. Asif. Thank you.
Asif.
What is, what is all this WikiLeaks? Well, John, it's the 21st century. What I've coined the information age. A glorious, thank you, a glorious utopian data scape in which everyone has a right to know everything about everyone. It's why I get to see your penis at the airport.
You're not, you don't get to, I'm not gonna let you see my penis.
Why? What are you hiding?
I'm hiding my penis.
Oh. Oh, really? Yes. Is there something about your penis that you don't want us to know about? Are you in favor or are you not in favor of transparency?
But, Asif, that's not transparency. Transparency is being open to the public on important issues and processes so that the public can make informed decisions.
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