Issa's incompetence can now be added to his resume ~ right after thief, corrupt, disgrace, and embarrassment to any thinking person ~ he and any others involved in this should be immediately stripped of any committee assignments ~ at a minimum, they should be censured ~ and if any lives are lost because of them, they should be prosecuted ~ ~ Sooz

Issa and GOP expose secrets and endanger lives of U.S. allies in Libya document dump
By David Ferguson
Saturday, October 20, 2012 15:30 EDT

Republicans aiming to expose an alleged “cover-up” by the Obama administration regarding the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya may have instead exposed the identities of Libyans working with the U.S. in that country and placed their lives in danger.

According to Foreign Policy magazine’s “The Cable” blog, Rep. Darrell Issa (R-CA) “posted 166 pages of sensitive but unclassified State Department communications related to Libya on the committee’s website afternoon as part of his effort to investigate security failures and expose contradictions in the administration’s statements regarding the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi.”

However, “Issa didn’t bother to redact the names of Libyan civilians and local leaders mentioned in the cables, and just as with the WikiLeaks dump of State Department cables last year, the administration says that Issa has done damage to U.S. efforts to work with those Libyans and exposed them to physical danger from the very groups that had an interest in attacking the U.S. consulate.”

An unnamed administration official told Foreign policy that several individuals’ safety has been placed in jeopardy thanks to the revelations, including a Libyan woman who heads an anti-violence campaign. The woman traveled to the U.S. to seek resources and financial backing for her organization.

“She isn’t publicly associated with the U.S. in any other way but she’s now named in this cable. It’s a danger to her life,” said the official.

Other Libyans named in the cables include a port manager who is trying to reopen the port of Benghazi to provide much needed trade to the region. Now because he is publicly associated with the U.S., his life is in danger. Another is a local militia leader who was a source of intelligence regarding the inner workings of the new Libyan government.

Administration officials have accused Issa and his delegation of rushing to get publicity for their investigation in the days before the final presidential debate, which is slated to focus on foreign policy. They told “The Cable” that Issa acted before knowing the facts, and in the process has compromised national security.

“He’s trying to gather all the facts, but he’s blurting out all the evidence before the State Department and FBI investigation is done,” the official said.

Meanwhile, a Washington Post article states that CIA documents unearthed in the investigation are bearing out Ambassador Susan Rice’s version of events, which was the version presented to the public by Obama and his administration.

“The Romney campaign may have misfired with its suggestion that statements by President Obama and U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice about the Benghazi attack last month weren’t supported by intelligence, according to documents provided by a senior U.S. intelligence official,” wrote Post scribe David Ignatius. The article goes on to piece together available information from the CIA and measure them against statements by the administration.

Now, not only have U.S. allies in the field been compromised, Ignatius wrote, “The intelligence community obviously feels burned by having its tentative assessments become a political football in this campaign and, in truth, one obvious lesson is that the United States could use much better real-time intelligence from places such as Libya,” real time intelligence that the U.S. is significantly less like to have access to.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/10/20/issa-and-gop-expose-secrets-and-endanger-lives-of-us-allies-in-libya-document-dump/

Issa is a dangerous one-trick pony ~ either he's too stupid to recognize possible/probable consequences or he just doesn't care ~ either/or should enrage and scare us ~ ~ Sooz

Issa creates new threats with Libya document dump
By Steve Benen - Mon Oct 22, 2012 8:00 AM EDT

On the Sunday shows, David Axelrod referred to House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) as "disgraceful," adding that the far-right congressman is "recklessly putting their lives at risk." Around the same time, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) described Issa's recent steps as "unconscionable."

What were they referring to? Josh Rogin has the story.


According to Rogin's report, Issa did not, however, bother to redact the names of Libyan civilians and local leaders mentioned in the cables, and these U.S. allies in Libya may now find their lives in danger. An administration official told Rogin, "This does damage to the individuals because they are named, danger to security cooperation because these are militias and groups that we work with and that is now well known, and danger to the investigation, because these people could help us down the road."

Innocent civilians who thought they were doing the right thing by helping the United States may soon be targeted, all because Issa rushed to publish a report before doing his due diligence. And why did he rush? We can only speculate about his motivations, but it's worth appreciating the context: the Republican committee chairman quickly published the materials on Friday, just as Mitt Romney was preparing for tonight's debate on foreign policy.

It raises the chilling prospect that the chairman of the House Oversight Committee placed a greater importance on opposition research for Romney than the lives of U.S. allies.

What's more, let's not overlook the pattern of Issa recklessness when it comes to the disclosure of sensitive national security information.

Indeed, we talked just two weeks ago about Issa holding an open hearing about the attack in Benghazi, during which he accidentally disclosed CIA activities in Libya.

In July, while trying to score points in the "Fast & Furious" controversy, Issa accidentally disclosed information from a sealed wiretap warrant application. The same month, Issa's committee accidentally disclosed sensitive security information from the Department of Homeland Security.

There are multiple angles to this. The first, obviously, is coming to terms with Issa's brutal and possibly dangerous incompetence. I certainly don't expect House Republican leaders to give the Oversight Committee gavel to a Democrat, but GOP officials have to realize that if Issa cannot deal responsibly with sensitive information, then no matter what happens in the 2012 elections, it's time to give this chairmanship to someone better suited for the task.

The second is understanding Issa's motivations. It's one thing to simply be clumsy; it's something else altogether if Issa is presenting sensitive information to the public because he's (a) a little too desperate to undermine President Obama; (b) trying to use his position to help the Romney campaign; or (c) both.

And third is appreciating the consequences of Issa's missteps. For generations, there has been tension between the executive and legislative branches over transparency and the sharing of information. In recent decades, administrations of both parties have been reluctant to work with oversight committees at least in part because they don't trust lawmakers to be responsible with sensitive information.

With his ineptitude, Issa is effectively announcing to this administration and administrations in the near future: Don't share sensitive information with Congress because we can't be trusted. Issa is, in other words, helping guarantee less openness and less transparency by being so awful at his job.

http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/10/22/14613820-issa-creates-new-threats-with-libya-document-dump?lite

The U.S. has a long and sordid history of turning on it's allies when petty politics can be better served by throwing them under the bus. It isn't party specific either. Just ask the Pakistani doctor who is now doing thirty years in Pakistan because the U.S. mouthed off about his participation in helping to get bin Laden.

Of course, the question that comes to mind in this Issa case is why, if these people were so sensitive, the documents weren't classified in the first place. I get the feeling there's a bit of politics being played by the Dems over this as well. From the sounds of the stories these people haven't exactly been flying under the radar in Libya.