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Marc Ambinder

Marc Ambinder - Marc Ambinder is the White House correspondent for National Journal and a contributing editor at The Atlantic. More

Marc Ambinder is the White House correspondent for National Journal. He previously served as the politics editor, and is now a contributing editor, for The Atlantic, where he curated the influential Politics channel on TheAtlantic.com and contributed to the magazine. He was also a chief political consultant to CBS News. Earlier, at NJ's Hotline, Ambinder was the founding editor of "Hotline On Call," a pathbreaking political news blog. He also worked as a producer and reporter for the ABC News Political Unit and was one of the founders of ABC's "The Note." Born in New York City, raised in Central Florida, Ambinder is a 2001 graduate of Harvard and lives in Washington, D.C.

Wikile ...Yawn ... CIA SECRET Paper Is a Snoozer

By Marc Ambinder
Aug 25 2010, 2:45 PM ET Comment

Wikileaks has posted a SECRET/NOFORN document from the Central Intelligence Agency's Red Cell analytic division explaining what might happen if it becomes widely known that America has produced its fair share of terrorists and exports them (not intentionally) to places like Somalia and Yemen. It's kind of... boring, to be sure, and it's not clear why it would need to be classified in the first place.

"These sorts of analytic products--clearly identified as coming from the Agency's 'Red Cell'--are designed simply to provoke thought and present different points of view.  That's the kind of thing our government ought to be doing," said George Little, a CIA spokesman. 

"This is not exactly a blockbuster paper," a U.S. official says. Translation: this is one of those analytic products that only a few people will read and others will throw into a drawer somewhere. It's probably not something that ought to be classified to begin with.



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Marc Ambinder
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