Stupid is as Stupid Does

This is a follow-up to my post: Stupidity is killing the Republican Party.

When you write a letter to your Congressman and ask for his opinion do you expect it to be turned over to Homeland Security? Especially when your Congressman is a self-proclaimed conservative Republican. That’s what happened to me when I wrote to Rep. Geoff Davis after I read that a woman in Bristol, Virginia said Secret Service agents aimed automatic weapons at her and others standing on the side of the road when Obama’s motorcade drove by. Did the Secret Service think that those people who were holding signs protesting Obama’s health care were threatening anyone? See:  Tea Party: Bristol Style!  Friday, July 31, 2009, 9:17 PM http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2009/07/   

That isn’t the point of this commentary, the way the letter was handled is.

Seems that Rep. Davis has a staff that handles his mail and on this staff he has someone named Dan Adelstein who identifies himself as Rep. Geoff Davis’ National Security Assistant but according to Congressional staff payroll records, from 04/01/09 to 6/30/09 his title was Military Legislative Assistant.

I am amazed to hear that our Congressman actually has his own adviser on National Security and this guy draws a 56K annual paycheck for doing this job. So Mr. Adelstein gets my email asking Geoff Davis if he thinks our new administration has started acting like some third-world dictatorship and after seeing my name he must have thought the warning bells went off. He sends my email over to the Deputy Director of the Secret Service which is part of the Dept. of Homeland Security. I’m guessing that Mr. Adelstein became alarmed that someone with an Arab name would write an email criticizing the government. Of course what he didn’t know and probably never bothered to check was that this email was written by a life-long Republican who has contributed to three of Geoff Davis' campaigns who just happened to be a Catholic.

Now it begins to get interesting. Mr. Adelstein writes a reply to my email on a blank piece of paper and sends me the FAX reply he received from the Deputy Assistant Director of the United States Secret Service on letterhead stationery. Being an experienced National Security Assistant, Mr. Adelstein fails to block off the clearly legible FAX phone number printed at the top of the Secret Service letter. A quick check in Google for this FAX number uncovers a subversive source of Classified government information. Back in the old days before Al Gore invented the Internet anyone who wanted to make public Classified government documents like Daniel Ellsberg did in 1971, would give them to the New York Times. Now, according to Google, we have Wikileaks, http://www.wikileaks.org/  an offshoot of Wikipedia.

According to Wikipedia, “Wikileaks is a website that publishes anonymous submissions and leaks of sensitive governmental, corporate, or religious documents, while attempting to preserve the anonymity and untraceability of its contributors. Within one year of its December 2006 launch, its database had grown to more than 1.2 million documents.”

Search on Wikileaks brings up several interesting stories:
http://www.wired.com/politics/onlinerights/news/2008/07/wikileaks
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/02/wikileaks-force/

This later link mentions that: “Earlier this month (Feb. 2009), Wikileaks scored another leaking coup, publishing hundreds of thousands of pages of copyright-free but rarely seen Congressional Research Service reports. Congress members and their staff rely on those reports to craft laws and policy, but the reports are rarely made public.”

Among these papers was the Google-revealed source for the FAX number Daniel Adelstein inadvertently sent me. A search of the FAX number 202-406-5740 gets just one hit: A 43 page list of names, email addresses phone and FAX numbers for Congressional Liaison Offices of Selected Federal Agencies located at
http://stuff.mit.edu:8001/afs/sipb/contrib/wikileaks-crs/wikileaks-crs-reports/98-446.pdf
which is clearly marked: Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress.

Note that in this web address it shows that this Wikileaks file is hosted on a server at M.I.T. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

According to WHOIS http://www.domaintools.com/, a check on stuff.mit.edu reveals:
Registrant:
   Massachusetts Institute of Technology
   Cambridge, MA 02139
   UNITED STATES

Administrative Contact:
   Jeffrey I. Schiller
   Massachusetts Institute of Technology
   MIT Room W92-190, 77 Massachusetts Avenue
   Cambridge, MA 02139-4307
   UNITED STATES
   (617) 253-0161

AND:

According to WHOIS http://www.domaintools.com/, a check on wikileaks.org reveals:
Domain ID:D130035267-LROR
Domain Name:WIKILEAKS.ORG
Created On:04-Oct-2006 05:54:19 UTC
Last Updated On:04-Oct-2008 18:37:51 UTC
Expiration Date:04-Oct-2018 05:54:19 UTC
Sponsoring Registrar:Dynadot, LLC (R1266-LROR)
Status:CLIENT TRANSFER PROHIBITED
Registrant ID:CP-13000
Registrant Name:John Shipton c/o Dynadot Privacy
Registrant Street1:PO Box 701
Registrant Street2:
Registrant Street3:
Registrant City:San Mateo
Registrant State/Province:CA
Registrant Postal Code:94401
Registrant Country:US
Registrant Phone:+1.6505851961
Registrant Phone Ext.:
Registrant FAX:
Registrant FAX Ext.:
Registrant Email: privacy@dynadot.com

Congressional salary records indicate Daniel J. Adelstein first worked for South Dakota Rep. William Janklow from 3-14-03 to 1-03-04 then worked for Minnesota Rep. John Klein’s from 2-02-04 to 4-01-04 and then became part of Rep. Geoff Davis’ staff on 1-03-05 as a Military Legislative Assistant where he currently earns about $56,000 per year.

I hope Rep. Davis is happy with the professional performance of Mr. Adelstein. Maybe someone can show him how to use a marking pen to block out critical information before he releases it to the general public.

You may ask why am I publicizing this information. Well, if you think that those who enjoy passing around Classified information don't know where to find it on the Internet you are wrong. So that leaves everyone else, you and me, who don't have a clue what's going on around them. One would reasonably think that members of our government, especially those who represent us, would be aware of places like Wikileaks and would make an effort to stop them from doing what they do.  If you find this information disturbing, write your Congressman, and hope his office doesn't report you to Homeland Security.