Top-Secret World Loses Blogger(CIA Contractor Is Fired When Internal Post Crosses the Line)

Washington Post ^ | Friday, July 21, 2006 | Dana Priest

[VRWCtaz]

Christine Axsmith, a software contractor for the CIA, considered her blog a success within the select circle of people who could actually access it.

Only people with top-secret security clearances could read her musings, which were posted on Intelink, the intelligence community's classified intranet. Writing as Covert Communications, CC for short, she opined in her online journal on such national security conundrums as stagflation, the war of ideas in the Middle East and -- in her most popular post -- bad food in the CIA cafeteria.

Christine Axsmith, with her husband, Justin Benedict, says she was fired by BAE Systems after she took a stand on the Geneva Conventions.

But the hundreds of blog readers who responded to her irreverent entries with titles such as "Morale Equals Food" won't be joining her ever again.

On July 13, after she posted her views on torture and the Geneva Conventions, her blog was taken down and her security badge was revoked. On Monday, Axsmith was terminated by her employer, BAE Systems, which was helping the CIA test software.

[VRWCtaz]

Things seem to be tightening up it the CIA.

[Mo1]

Dana ping

[prion]

'Bout damn time.

[Ben Mugged]

Running a blog on your employers computer resources and your employers time seems risky at best. On a classified system it seems downright suicidal (from an employment standpoint).

[VRWCtaz]

From the story:"Christine Axsmith, with her husband, Justin Benedict..."

Do we really need another husband/wife team making news at the CIA?

[msnimje]

seized her badge and put her in a frigid conference room. "I'm shaking. I'm cold, staring at the wall," she recalled. "And worse, people are using the room as a shortcut, so I have no dignity in this crisis."

She was tortured. Lawsuit at eleven.

[johnny7]

Must all be Clinton-op's.

[ASA Vet]

It's a Washington "Bleep" story.

NaCl

[VRWCtaz]

Further down in the story they actually explain the legitimate work related uses for blogs... problem is, that's not how she was using hers.

[gaspar]

There is a coven of intel sorority sisters (both in the agencies and in the media) whose aims are sinister.

[ncountylee]

If she was a teacher accused of sexual misconduct of some type, she would be found guilty after her picture was seen.

[VRWCtaz]

Always good advice.

[gopwinsin04]

Taking out the Clinton trash!

[VRWCtaz]

I didn't pay any attention to the picture on my first read. Did you really have to point it out?

[MinorityRepublican]

CIA needs to do more of this. No room for leftists in the clandestine organization

[gaspar]

She should know something about torture if her husband is the Justin Benedict of the "Psychology of Emasculation" and BDSM notoriety.

[VRWCtaz]

"No room for leftists in the clandestine organization"

No room for anyone with an agenda other than gathering information to use in the defense of our nation.

[ASA Vet]

64.79891 milligrams of it.

[whd23]

A snippet of her posting as quoted in the article:

"CC had the sad occasion to read interrogation transcripts in an assignment that should not be made public. And, let's just say, European lives were not saved."

First rule of working with sensitive material: KEEP YOUR PIE HOLE SHUT!

Repeat after me "CC": "Need to know. Need to know."

I say fire her for writing about herself in the third person.

[VRWCtaz]

Or .002285714 oz... but this could end up giving me a migraine.