[The Hill] "Loose lips sink ships" is as true today as when the phrase was popularized as a slogan by the U.S. Office of War Information during WWII. We are now witnessing a stark reminder of the impact of intelligence leaks on America’s efforts to restore its role as a world leader in combating international terrorism.
As Great Britain faces the aftermath of the most significant Islamic terrorist attack since 2005, global security is being put at greater risk due to the unauthorized release of investigative information on the U.S. side of the Atlantic. This leak is, of course, deplorable.
The war on international terrorism rests in large measure on trust between and among intelligence and security partners on a global level. Few American partners are more trustworthy than our British colleagues. The cornerstone and bedrock of that trust rests on the ability to protect sensitive sources of information and the means by which it was collected. In the case of law-enforcement dependencies, the leaking of sensitive information can ultimately result in the unintended but no less significant undermining of a prosecution.
Facing a British threat to curtail sensitive information sharing with American counterparts, a tentative truce has been reached to restore intelligence sharing with the U.S. It’s a tenuous agreement. How devastating to be having this discussion in May 2017 with one of our closest counterterrorism partners - nearly 16 years after 9/11. As we have seen before, there always exists the possibility of finding international ties between a terrorist event and the terrorist(s) - in this case, a 23-year-old named Salman Abedi and an improvised bomb placed just outside the Manchester Arena.
Leaking sensitive information about a particular case doesn’t just undermine the ability to find potential additional terrorism ties outside the country where the event took place. It also fundamentally erodes the trust between partners. The international community that continues to face the scourge of international terrorism can ill-afford any decrement in information sharing.
The British, however, must protect their information at all costs and have for understandable reasons sent a shot across the American bow concerning the impact of leaked information on their investigation in Manchester. |