[Peace-discuss] USG thought control

[C. G. Estabrook]

Air Force Abandons WikiLeaks Threats Against Servicemembers’ Families
Backs Off Threat to Try Average Americans as Spies for Reading Docs
by Jason Ditz, February 08, 2011

The US Air Force has backed off of its puzzling threat to prosecute members of 
servicemembers’ families for “espionage” if they read WikiLeaks today, insisting 
that the “guidance” they released was actually not sanctions by headquarters and 
was not in keeping with official policy.

The guidance was dated Friday but only became public knowledge yesterday, and 
insisted that anyone who read the documents faced prosecution under the 
Espionage Act, warning members of the Air Force to make sure their families in 
particular didn’t attempt to read the cables.

Later, a spokeswoman for the Air Force sought to justify the guidance, insisting 
it was meant to “give guidance to military and civilian servicemembers and 
employees to control their young’uns,” because apparently having young people 
reading about foreign policy was a big problem.

But the threat, like so many before them, was illusory and immediately abandoned 
when people began to question it. The Obama Administration has still not 
reversed its ban on millions of federal employees reading the documents, and the 
Air Force has still banned websites which contain information related to the 
cables from their computers.