munroburton wrote:Brigade XO wrote:Which ever way you slice this. SLN ONI is going to go into a frenzy of investigation when the reports from 2nd Manticore make it obvious that THEY KNEW WE WERE COMING AND WERE WAITING FOR US. Find that leak!!!!!!
Easier said than done. Because they basically told Beowulf what they were planning when they requested permission to send Tsang in. That was astonishingly foolish, especially as they went ahead after being explicitly told to back off.
Even if not for that, literally thousands of people knew it was happening. The League has no sense nor enforcement of operational security, having never been in a war where military secrets mattered. They probably circulated the finalised Raging Justice op plan as a memo whose clearance list reads like it came out of Blackadder. "Fleet Admiral Rajani, Fleet Admiral Rajani's wife, Fleet Admiral Rajani's wife's friends, their families, their families' servants, their families' servants' tennis partners..." duplicated for everyone ranked Admiral or higher.
Even more to the point, the Mantie Ambassador (Carmichael?) had already let the treecat out of the bag with various messages to the Mandarins that the SEM knew about Filareta and asking them to call it off (which the Mandarins ignored, choosing to believe Rampajet's fanasty that the Manties had lost too much at OB to make a credible defense--and feeling that calling it off would expose them to the rest of the SL as weak and indecisive.
So while they may not know WHO leaked the secret, the Mandarins knew it was leaked well before Filareta got to Manticore.