“…like the FBI, and the CIA, and the BBC.” So goes the Beatles’ shortest song, from the 1970 Let It Be album (now available for legal download on iTunes). Beat musicians had been saying “Can you dig it?” or “Ya dig?” for decades [the American version of “nar’mean?”], to ask “Do you understand what I just said?” but by the time the Beatles used it, the phrase had morphed from the Metalingual [message clarification] speech function to the Phatic. It had come to mean “Listen” [as in “do you want to know a secret?”]
Well, do ya? [Want to know a secret, that is.] In the 60s, Daniel Ellsberg was convinced that we all wanted to know the contents of secret briefing papers on strategies for vanquishing North Vietnam [thereafter known as The Pentagon Papers]. So he dug up some classified information and gave it to the press, for all us quidnuncs to read.
La plus ca change, la plus ca meme chose. Nar’mean? Julian Assange? WikiLeaks? Ya dig?
Guess who thinks Mr. Assange is a swell guy for sharing with the whole [cyber-linked] world the classified information he was able to dig up? Why, Mr. Ellsberg, of course.
Whether you do, too, depends on your reference group. Are you more “The truth will set you free”; or more “Loose lips sink ships”? Far be it from me, to try to get you to switch groups. None of us can predict the effect of the WikiLeaks disclosures on global security. I’m more curious about the precursors. [As in, what got up Assange’s nose, that he decided to crack the code of encrypted websites and report his findings?] Mind you, that’s the basic mission statement of those who work for the FBI, and the CIA, and the BBC.
Our [often fear-based] Need to Know What’s Happening is the key to our individual and collective survival. Curiosity saved the cat, the dog, and us. We all “want to know a secret,” but we don’t all “promise not to tell.”