Wikileaks provides a very important service to whiste-blowers to anonymously leak confidential or classified information to the public interest. However, this system also allows it to be abused by those wanting to spread Disinformation to discredit the legitimate information contained on Wikileaks.

I was looking at a US Manual on Procedure for Secure Facilities and Installations and it struck me that it wasn't (or couldn't) be real. The reasons why? It was typed in BOLD FACE 16pt -20pt FONT that varied on the same page, used run-on sentences and disjointed topics that were reminiscent of a Dr. Bronner's Soap bottle, and over-abused atrocious circa 1990 era Clip-Art (despite the document being dated in the past two years), and obviously was formatted by someone who has never used a Word Processor before in their life (variable margins off the page or into the footer/header, etc). Even the "Official" logos looked like bad copy & paste jobs from an old 1997 website that had a background color different than the color it was pasted on.

And, I'm sure this isn't an isolated occurrence either.

I understand the reasons why using a source such as Wikileaks to spread Disinfo and false propaganda would be useful to particular groups, but I'm wondering how widespread is it?

Better question...how does one separate the wheat from the chaff? For some (like the example noted above) it is painfully obvious, but others could be so subtle that it would be difficult to spot a carefully crafted fake.

By what rules and measures do ATS members routinely gauge Real vs. Disinfo?

I'm necro'ing an old thread of mine from a year and a half ago now that people on ATS have actually heard of Wikileaks, as this is now a germane topic in light of current events. I'm hoping now there are members of ATS who have a strong opinion, or insight.

While there is little doubt that Wikileaks has been valuable as a Clearing House for leaked documents, recent events have some wondering if Assange is actually working for the other side. However, he has also shown himself to be a major thorn in the side to the DoD. However, it does raise a certain amount of doubt as to the value of Wikileaks.

However, as I stated in the OP, there are instances where leaked documents were questionable at best, as they appear written by someone with a questionable grasp of reality and an even more questionable grasp of military documents (not to mention a questionable grasp of grammar). When one does not review, limit, edit, restrict, or censor documents leaked, a Clearing House becomes as equally a tool for disinformation as it does for Truth.

That is also ignoring the fact that all Military Documents routinely contain both markers and disinformation already. Whether the documents are hard-copy, digital, or electromagnetic, they contain markers as a form of authentication and as a way to determine the source if leaked to unauthorized personnel (which is why Army Intelligence Analyst PFC Bradley Manning was caught so quickly after WikiLeaks went public with some of the 260,000 Classified documents he leaked to WikiLeaks). Military Intelligence goes one step further with spurious entries to mislead unauthorized personnel who may obtain access to the documents, to determine disruptions in the information chain, to validate the reliability of downstream informants, and discover unauthorized plants. Some Military documents are entirely spurious but composed of authentic material, to cloud the process, to entrap, to delude, to fake a vulnerability...basically smoke and mirrors that fellow Intel "magicians" can see through but obfuscate the Truth and intent from those that aren't part of that Intel community.

As such, there is an old saying to never trust an Intelligence source as they are all unreliable.

Should TrustNo1 be used when regarding WikiLeaks, or should it just be treated as all other intelligence sources and be taken with a healthy grain of salt?

So the question is: WikiLeaks useful source if one knows how to separate the proverbial wheat from the proverbial chaff, being able to discern info from disinfo, or are they entirely a pawn of the DoD, unwitting or not?

Originally posted by fraterormus
Better question...how does one separate the wheat from the chaff?

Thats the question of life in general, not only in regards to one Info-Source. If you find it out please contact me.

Nice discovery, anyway