G-File
26th August 2010
Jonah Goldberg has a newsletter called the G-File which used to be posted on the National Review site but now requires subscription:
I’m not necessarily advocating that we take him out. First of all, even if it were a good idea, it’s too late now. But think about it. If you go by nearly every Hollywood treatment of the CIA or the NSA, Assange is precisely the sort of guy who should have been garroted in his French hotel room years ago. He’s setting up a website — a series of websites, really — that will allow whistleblowers, traitors, cranks, and misguided morons to publish the government’s most closely kept secrets. Some of these disclosures are guaranteed to damage American national security and put U.S. interests and lives at risk. What are super-cool CIA assassins for if not stopping this sort of thing in its tracks? Whether you think the CIA is an honorable and unfairly maligned outfit that does democracy’s dirty work, or if you think it’s a hotbed of lawless evil setting back human progress at every turn, you would still expect the spooks to off this guy quietly before anyone had heard his name.
Indeed.