WikiLeaks strikes, Americans yawn

It was the most forlorn outcry in the most forlorn presidential campaign, yet it reverberates through my recollection like some portentous sound effect, signaling epic or epitaph. Bob Dole plaintively intoned three words as his chances against incumbent Bill Clinton went the way of the Alka-Seltzer tablet under Niagara Falls. Remember "Where's the outrage?" That question couldn't be more fitting and proper today.

An Army private gives tons of top secrets to WikiLeaks, an act certain to cost American and allied lives to an unknowable and unguessable extent, and military expert Ralph Peters speculates that, instead of the electric chair, the perp will get a few years at Leavenworth followed by a lucrative book deal (and Ralph says he can't wait for the movie)! Worse yet, Americans seem to think it's just another news story, more important than Lindsay Lohan's problems, maybe, but nothing to get our national tail over the dashboard about. How would you answer Bob Dole?

How dare Americans not swarm together in furious unity against the WikiLeaks gang. Instead, we're in a stupor. They scatter our most crucial secrets like Mardi Gras beads; we yawn. This "attack" calls for a thunderclap; we don't even give it a butterfly's belch. At last report, America, the winner over Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, was begging WikiLeaks to quit and please don't do it anymore. Gen. Patton would say, "That'll fix 'em!"

Do we deserve survival?

There have always been small people capable of betraying superpowers' big secrets, but until now such an act has been bolted down in the realm of the unthinkable. A teenage girl in a cab needn't worry about being overpowered by a burly cab driver; it just isn't done; even in evil New York City, that's one evil I've never heard of happening.

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And now this WikiLeaker hauls off and reveals more American secrets than probably all enemy spies in our history put together.

When I was a private in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, I could have cashed in big-time with top secrets on my desk that even most generals weren't allowed to know (I was a translator). Maybe I couldn't have just walked into the Soviet Embassy on 16th Street, because we all knew the National Geographic Society had properly and patriotically allowed the FBI to mount a constant camera in one of their windows across the street, photographing everybody who went in and out of that building. But I could have easily cut a deal with some friend at a neutral embassy willing to contact the Soviets with descriptions of what I had, and invite a red rep to meet me at a bar on upper Wisconsin Avenue.

I guess my point is: It's now been 57 years since I had the top-secret merchandise with which to betray my country, and right now is the very first time the thought ever occurred. The most idiotic waste of time was the 10 seconds it took me to swear that I wouldn't do that.

Henrik Ibsen said, "Never wear your best clothes when you're fighting for freedom." That Norwegian poet, playwright and patriot would have approved big-league catcher Moe Berg's secret mission for the OSS in 1944. Nazi Germany's top scientist, Werner Heisenberg, was giving a lecture in neutral Switzerland. Baseball hero, celebrated intellectual and American spy Moe Berg, disguised as a student, attended the lecture with a loaded pistol and instructions to assassinate Heisenberg on the spot if, in his judgment, Heisenberg indicated Germany were significantly close to the nuclear bomb. Berg didn't take a swing on that one.

When PLO terrorists slaughtered the Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics in 1972, a unit of the Mossad, Israel's CIA, was formed to "account" for every single member of the terror team; mission eventually accomplished. Israel continues to be resoundingly criticized for many reasons. But you know something? In spite of a popular Spielberg movie about that act of vengeance, I've never heard Israel damned for that. And, although terrorists continue to confect new ways to kill Jews, there's never been another similar terrorist team-kidnapping and massacre of any other group of Israelis; lessons, perhaps?

I say, let's fight back, as morally and legally as we possibly can, while remaining effective. Then let's venture forth to make every WikiBastard who harms us wish he'd chosen a different line of work, or a different form of after-work excitement.

Obviously, I'd like to have Julian Assange, LeakMaster-General, voluntarily return to America and face trial.

But if he were to mysteriously disappear from a Swedish massage parlor and pop up, in handcuffs, being hustled by gruff-looking escorts through JFK Airport with no thought of customs or passport control, you'd still find me at my office the next day.

I will not be among those picketing Attorney General Holder's office demanding punishment for those who illegally interrupted Assange's massage.