Hillary Clinton Punctures The WikiLeaks Myth

Short version: no Pentagon Papers here / no mass deception, move on. Michael, when you ask for American readers, do you mean “real” Americans ala Palin / Rusty or the rest of us DFH’s? Actually, I’m more interested in opinions from overseas readers / reporters. As if we didn’t look bad enough, what’s the perception over there, if any? Or are Premier League results generating more buzz than Wikileaks? Michael, can you email / tweet some overseas colleagues like Catherine Mayer, etc. to blog in with more thoughts? Thanks.

I think you’re asking the wrong question, Michael. Transparency is valuable to out wrongdoing, sure, but that’s not the only value of transparency. I’ll take the Secretary of State at her word here and just agree that the cables show honorable, well-meaning and effective diplomats at work. Why should I, as a citizen, not be allowed to see that? Shouldn’t I be equally as interested in what’s going right as I am in what might be going wrong? Transparency allows me to make informed choices.

Consider this valuable information from the latest leaks: that other leaders in the Middle East have tried to pressure the U.S. to take military action against Iran in order to stop or upend its nuclear program. On one hand, that’s something I suspected was true all along but it’s good to actually know it. It means that when I hear people say things like, “Israel is pushing us into a war with Iran,” that I know that they’re either wrong or telling part of the story. That’s a good thing to know, isn’t it?

Your standard is basically, “If there’s no wrongdoing, the secrecy should stand.” I think that’s too narrow a standard. it would be like telling a public company that it doesn’t have to disclose its profits and losses so long as its accounting is ethical. Not good enough. I have to know the accounting is ethical and also see the numbers. Same with government. Even if everyone is doing just great I still need to know what they’re doing, otherwise how can I judge them, hold them accountable or even make an informed vote?

I think you hit it on the head – they care much more ‘cross the pond about Manchester United and Chelsea than this stuff. Assange can keep hiding like Salman Rushdie did…although for Assange it’s probably out of shame.

I am not arguing against transparency. But I do believe there is a proper role for secrecy in all sorts of public areas, including international diplomacy. (I explain this is a post I put up last night. In any complex negotiation, parties have a right to private counsel.) That said, I am a reporter. And as such, I think there are clearly valuable, newsworthy disclosures that have come from this release of documents. I just find the high-moralizing of the wikileaks pr machine to be false. The proper journalistic response to leaked documents is to weigh the value of the information against the harm that would be done if it was disclosed. Different reporters will come to different conclusions in good faith. What WikiLeaks has done, however, is to simply take an enormous mass of documents, declare it the next Pentagon Papers and put it out publicly, when the value of the information is far more dubious. It is false advertising to say it reveals the U.S. government to be working against its own citizens or ethical bounds, if this is not true. (In fact, to cry wolf does us a disservice. There is nothing in these documents, apparently, that approaches the outrages disclosed by the Church Commission in the 1970s, or even the viciousness of the harsh interrogation program under President Bush.) Whether the release causes unnecessary harm is another question, which has not been answered yet, though the signs are so far pretty good. See below.
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http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/11/28/104404/officials-may-be-overstating-the.html

Thanks Michael. All good points. I won’t be defending Wiki’s PR. But then, it seems like all sides are overstating the case here. Wiki is overselling the drama of tis revelations and the government is overselling the dangers of the revelations.

I also agree with what you say about the proper journalistic handling of such documents. I’ve spent most of my career as a journalist and I’ve handled similar issues according to a similar standard. But we’re in a brave new world here and I think Wikileaks is proposing an interesting new standard: instead of letting Michael Scherer and his editors, or me and my editors or even the Swampland commenters decide what should and shouldn’t be disclosed, you lay it all out there and let the people decide what’s important.

As I said to you earlier, in this document dump I learned that something I had suspected about Iran and the Middle East is actually true. Why did my government not want me to know that? Aren’t I better off with this information? I certainly feel more informed.

Not trying to take up your day here. Thanks for the thoughtful reply.

“Except, I have yet to see anything in the reporting on these documents that show’s the U.S. government engaged in any behavior that would upset the great mass of the American public.”

With over a quarter of a million WikiLeaks documents coming to light today a number of previously stalled stories are being given new life, including the bungled kidnapping of German citizen Khalid El-Masri and his subsequent abuse in US custody.
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A 2007 State Department document revealed the US “warned” the German government against making any moves to secure the arrests of the CIA agents responsible for the kidnapping, saying any such move would have “repercussions” to the relationship between the two nations.
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German officials, according to the document, conceded that they understood the possible diplomatic consequences but also warned hat given the outcry from the German media their options were limited. The US admonished them to consider the “political context” of the kidnapping of the innocent man.

http://news.antiwar.com/2010/11/28/us-warned-germany-over-bungled-el-masri-kidnapping
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Move along, nothing to see here.
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Makes you proud that so many are so shameless.

I do agree that the wikileak people should stop commenting on the content, and just release the material.
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I disagree with Michael that there needs to be so much secrecy in diplomatic negotiations, at least on the part of the US. If the US adheres to basic principles of openness, honesty and commitment to principles, like democratic governance, individual rights, and open markets, then there is no need for secrecy.
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See, for instance, Eisenhower’s Open Skies proposal. Or consider START.
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It’s when you’re heading off to Tehran with a cake, in order to work a deal with a supposedly sworn enemy to supply arms to a supposed ally in violation of the law that secrecy comes into play.
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Or when you’re engaged in “trade” negotiations that are exchanges of subsidies for particular companies in particular industries.
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If you are trying to work some deal where you have to bribe a government with arms or aid, then I suppose it makes sense to keep secret how big a bribe you’re willing to give. But, you know, if you didn’t use the bribery tactic, the secrecy wouldn’t be necessary. And, of course, in a state with a representative government, the elected officials do have an obligation to make it clear to the electors what they are doing.

“There is nothing in these documents, apparently, that approaches the outrages disclosed by the Church Commission in the 1970s, or even the viciousness of the harsh interrogation program under President Bush.”
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Life is full of little disappointments, isn’t it? And you meant “viciousness of the Bush/Cheney torture program,” right? Obviously, they set a high bar for disgusting conduct by government that will seldom be met by our diplomatic corps.

I think it was a larger blow against secrecy within Arab governments who say the locally popular thing about Middle East politics to the public while quietly doing the right thing in private (Iran, Yemen). Whether it’s a good thing in those cases, that’s not clear. On the one hand, it might make these nations less inclined to working cooperatively with America when their nation’s populace is against it, on the other, perhaps a few of these extreme dictatorships will end up having to stop funnelling rage at the West and Israel instead of their oppressive natures.

I haven’t read them, but surely the leaks are a wealth of info for future historians of this time period, right?

They may be, but don’t call me Shirley.

There is a system of declassifying these cables for historians, but the declassification tends to take place thirty or forty years later.

Since people are asking, Canada has seen nothing notable yet. I don’t think the Omar Khadr documents have been found yet though they are expected to surface and like most of these documents, they’ll probably say exactly what everyone already knew – that the Conservative government, in defiance of nearly every level of the Judiciary including our Supreme Court, did everything within their power to not end up with Omar Khadr. Well, one minister may get in trouble for claiming that Canada had never signed off on the plea deal if those documents say otherwise (which we already are pretty sure he is lying about). So far, the only Canadian thing I’ve heard is some Diplomat speculating that the Afghan elections weren’t valid.

For certain, these communications are meant to be kept confidential for good cause. Many of the countries’ governments that communicated with the US to aid the US in helping Iran stay neutralised where doing so with great risk. Releasing the cables and other documents are more than embarrassing, it is risking the delicate balance of foreign governments with their own people and foreign government’s trust in the US as allies or supporters for a common good of the civilised world. Communication breaches will only hinder US’s ability to work with other countries when gathering intelligence of dodgy governments around the world, for the good of everyone.

Mr. Assange’s attitude is ego-driven and self promoting. Just because you CAN publish private communications, does not mean that you should. It might be flattering for him that he is enjoying so much notoriety, but he has failed to “no” in the name of humanity and decency.

Furthermore, Assange has difficulty discerning what is “legally” permissible to leak. If you don’t understand what you’re leaking, don’t publish it. Such as the case of a court protected reacted document in the Turks and Caicos British Enquiry of last year. That document that Assange had published included unredacted text that was court ordered protected. He was used by the UK government for propaganda to leak that enquiry with the unredacted text. The UK government’s bullying of Turks and Caicos and other targeted Caribbean nations is sheer imperialism for which Assange appears to be championing. The UK is trying to rape small Caribbean countries’ resources and had used Wikileaks to do its bidding. So much for Assange’s so-called ideals.

I hope his safe-haven Iceland turns on him, just like he’s does to others for his own self aggrandisement.

Uh… under what authority do you think the government of Turks and Caicos can tell Assange what to do?

Thanks, Michael. I didn’t know that. All the more time scholars have for producing work, though I guess you would need a bigger time window if you were going to write a history of the period, so that events can play out and perspective can be reached. But if so inclined, journalists and think tankers can use the leaks in writing immediate, first draft history or prescriptive policy books on relations with the Mid-East.

Greenwald in March:

“At exactly the time when U.S. government secrecy is at an all-time high, the institutions ostensibly responsible for investigation, oversight and exposure have failed. The American media are largely co-opted, and their few remaining vestiges of real investigative journalism are crippled by financial constraints. The U.S. Congress is almost entirely impotent at providing meaningful oversight and is, in any event, controlled by the factions that maintain virtually complete secrecy….

The need for independent leaks and whistle-blowing exposures is particularly acute now because, at exactly the same time that investigative journalism has collapsed, public and private efforts to manipulate public opinion have proliferated.”

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/03/27/wikileaks

“Is Hillary Clinton wrong?”

About this?

“In contrast, what is being put on display in this cache of documents is the fact that American diplomats are doing the work we expect them to do. They are helping identify and prevent conflicts before they start. They are working hard every day to solve serious practical problems, to secure dangerous materials, to fight international crime, to assist human rights defenders, to restore our alliances, to ensure global economic stability.”

F@ck yes

Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs Elizabeth King:

“We anticipate that the release could negatively impact U.S. foreign relations.”

Arthur Silber’s reaction:

“Since the overall purpose of U.S. foreign policy is American global hegemony, to be achieved by deadly sanctions, covert operations, overthrow, criminal wars of aggression, torture and the murder of huge numbers of innocent human beings, we can only fervently pray that this release will ‘negatively impact U.S. foreign relations.’”

But, hell, otherwise, Clinton, the smirking face of empire, is soooo right.

Hello deconstructiva.
I agree with Michael’s overall take on this. I don’t think there’s anything intrinsically wrong with diplomacy behind closed doors or anything intrinsically right with exposure. Both have their uses. Certainly don’t think WikiLeaks promotes its case by editorializing.
As far as how this is playing abroad, for once it’s not a story about the U.S. in the world but about each of the countries mentioned in the dispatches. So the interest is in seeing what matters to the media – and our audiences – in different territories. As one example, El Pais’s coverage tonight is all about State Dept-Argentina relations. Whereas Britain is agog – agog I tell you – at news that the Duke of York may have said something inappropriate.
By the way, since Man U is at the top of tables, all is right with the world.

Thanks, Catherine, much appreciated… especially for the word “agog”. I value wordsmiths who access the secret corners of our language in expressive ways (such as you, Katy Steinmetz, etc.). I’m not worked up about this batch of leaks but the localized coverage of other countries is interesting as you’ve noted. It’s frustrating that this can be a gray area on where to draw the line.
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However, even if these wiki docs are “secret” (or were), there’s often so much public info. out there most people don’t find (or bother to). From corporate scandals like Enron to public ones like Erin Brockovich’s exposure of water contamination in Hinkley, CA, sometimes the truth is in plain view (sort of); it just takes reporters and concerned folks to look and dig ‘em up. Thanks for your thoughts, Catherine; please post here more often.

Just so you’d know…we Americans think Man U is the British equivalent of “Yankees Suck.”

Without addressing the Wikileaks phenomenon directly, I would like to point out that the run-up to the Iraq war and the public’s response to Abu Ghraib does not point to would upset the great mass of the American public as representing much of a moral standard.

The inability to see ourselves through other’s eyes has become a rather enduring aspect of our National Character.

Yes, MS, I agree. There is nothing in the cables (I have not read any of it but rely on you) that indicates anything other than America’s self-interest in play, as every country does.
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But…we do know, and the world knows, that our foreign policy has been destructive, our government has played us for fools, successfully, and that all is not good and decent in Camelot. Every country seeks its own benefit. America over-does it.
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Secrecy is necessary sometimes. Again, the spy agencies, including American (and others) over do it. Most often it is to hide nefarious motives. I support necessary secrecy, but given the we can’t agree on what is necessary, I also support eavesdropping in on it. Some of the releases are just stupid and juvenile…Robin to Bat Man in Russia, give me a break, that author should have been slapped by the supervisor.
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This story will be gone within weeks, if not days, but the manipulations we should be mindful of will continue, and I look forward to further releases. The main failure with these Wikileaks people is that they are so late and behind the curve as to be useless. We needed such information during the run up to the Iraq attack not after the damage had been done.
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To emphasize, these releases seem to do nothing to America’s prestige. The damage has already been done and is no secret.
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Thanks for the Drebin reference.

Is spying on UN officials, including the Secretary General, legal? Diplomats certainly do some intelligence gathering of sorts in their day to day interactions, but obtaining biometrics, pin numbers, credit card numbers?

And please don’t respond “yes, but everybody does it.” That’s neither the question nor the issue.

As for whether the “wishes of the American people are reflected in the cables” I guess that depends which Americans you ask. Throwing taxpayer money at the brother of Hamid Karzai, who was known to have brought $51 million US dollars out of Afghanistan with him, is not my wish. Nor is active US and Israeli sponsored regime change in Iran (which would likely backfire as it has in the past) my wish.

There is some hypocrisy revealed in these documents- basically, we apply different standards of evilness and unacceptability depending on whether we like the country- it’s ok for Saudi Arabia and Turkey to support terrorism, it’s ok for Egypt to squash human rights, Pakistan’s nukes sound as though they are anything but secure while it’s govt supports our enemies while we throw billions of taxpayer dollars at them (Pakistan) but Iran is the order of the day because it also does those things?

At the very least, it would be nice to have an actual debate or discussion about these things instead of just assuming that the govt is telling us the truth and supporting democratic principles and ideals in its foreign policy. There’s a reason much of the rest of the world thinks we are hypocrites.

It would seem as though there is little accountability with respect to waging war these days- we’re bombing Yemen, Pakistan and various other nations we haven’t formally declared war against. Suddenly is it “everything goes” so long as the govt can try to claim it’s all in the name of national security.

Huh, new one about CSIS (CIA equivalent) saying our judges are idiots with an unrealistic view of security.

There are no surprises here. The American people, after decades of indoctrination by successive governments in bed with the “defense” industry, have a deep mistrust of other nations and believe that military force is the only foreign policy tool worth having. There was a short period after 9/11, at which point the same philosophy was projected back to the US, when enlightened Americans actually sought to understand how the rest of the world worked. But, two failed (but highly lucrative) wars later, the mistrust is back. Hell, these foreigners have rejected American values! Now back to the defence industries to prospect for new opportunities around the world.

This is not a myth…. Body Scanner Operator Caught Masturbating at Colorado Airport http://conservativeblogscentral.blogspot.com/2010/11/body-scanner-operator-caught.html

Freeinpa should know better than to stop by a gun show on his way to work!

[US diplomats] are working hard every day to solve serious practical problems, to secure dangerous materials, to fight international crime, to assist human rights defenders, to restore our alliances, to ensure global economic stability.
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Since 1966, the efforts of American officials have been wholly benign, even benevolent, and always in the interest of the world, not merely the US? Interesting.
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Do our problem solving efforts extend to blocking UN Security Council initiatives that illuminate Israel’s efforts to quash human rights?
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And in our righteous zeal to secure dangerous materials, does that include our assistance to India in its nuclear development programs, a move that edged Asia ever closer to an arms race?
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We doggedly pursue international criminal enterprises, yet US business law gives International criminals a frequently used safe-haven in continuous shell companies.
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Does our assistance to human rights defenders ever affect change in the Occupied Territories?
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In these so-called alliances that have been restored, I’m assuming those don’t apply to our once Arab friends, who have been sold out post-Cold War time and time again, replaced by a dangerous and zealous Israeliphilia.
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Global economic stability? Like the World Bank?

“The inability to see ourselves through other’s eyes has become a rather enduring aspect of our National Character.”
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An exceptional aspect, wouldn’t you say?
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OT: Thanks for sharing your T-Day menu last week. Yum!
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Another Swamp-tradition worth keeping alive…recipe swap!

“Is Hillary Clinton wrong?”

Having let the Iraq war criminals off free, the reactionary Obama regime has decided to prosecute Wikileaks — in addition to declaring war on unions — as the propagandists in the media bellow about how wrong it is that someone actually has the nerve to publish information.

Everything seems about normal.

“to secure dangerous materials”

Do you think this would “upset the great mass of the American public”, Mr. Scherer?

http://michaelfury.wordpress.com/2010/11/11/circle-ix/

The point of these communications was not to be published, these are internal memos that represent private opinions and unfiltered or unfinished viewpoints. The main threat i see from these documents is that diplomats will become less and less willing to speak candidly with each other since they must alway worry about a leak of this sort. That is what bugs me the most, these are not official reports or wrongdoing or cover-up but rather a set of semi private communications of the sort that every organization has and that, by there secrecy allow the members of these organizations to be candid without having to worry about the “correctness” of what they’re saying.
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Also, just out of curiosity, why is the “Robin to batman” thing a big deal, it is just an opinion and was never intended to be a public statement, it might be awkward now but for all we can tell it was an inside joke.

“Except, I have yet to see anything in the reporting on these documents that show’s the U.S. government engaged in any behavior that would upset the great mass of the American public.”
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Yea your right, if using cluster bombs on women and children isn’t bad behavior that upsets us nothing will.
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Nothing new here just move along folks.

This is an interesting insight into what you think are American wishes.

No – it’s not my wish to have people with names kinda like people who may be terrorists kidnapped, tortured and dumped in the woods in a foreign country with no identification, no protection and no way to get home. It’s not my wish to have the criminals who engaged in that behaviour protected from investigation and prosecution. It’s not my wish to have the US use its diplomatic and political and moral capital up by conveying mafia-esque threats to prosecutors who are trying to do their job and pursue criminals. I guess if that’s your wish and you perception of most Americans’ wishes, then we are in for a forever war.

It’s not my wish to have General Petraeus actively assist in lies and disinformation to American citizens about illegal US bombing campaigns in Yemen or to have the US gov actively involved in assisting the Yemeni President in outright lies and fabrications to his parliament. Once upon a time, it was illegal for the US miltary and gov to engage domestic propaganda with classified info. I guess if you think most Americans want their military to government to engage in and lie about illegal boming campaigns and to assist in actively undermine elected parliaments, then we are in for a forever war.

It’s not my wish to have credit card information of UN officials stolen or to have their “biometric” information collected and, since many UN officials are US citizens, I’m not crazy about my government doing that to its citizens through its “diplomatic” corps and without court supervision.

It’s so very sad that this is what Time coughs up – hairball journalism.

“The proper journalistic response … is to weigh the value of the information against the harm that would be done …”

The problem is that main stream journalists have been an utter value in making those kinds of value judgments and wikileaks exists because it’s hard to trust the value judgments of men and women whose employers make money on war and war coverage; who have no personal integrity to take stands on torture or to even bother with asking the hard questions; and who conveniently ignore that what they are really valuing is their paycheck and their access – that’s the filter that’s used to determine what Americans are allowed to know about. Hold back info on illegal surveillance and war lies until after re-elections, lay low on coverage of Saudi funding for terrorists, refuse to use the word torture for Executive branch torturers and make sure every conversation on torture revolves around KSM while virtually ignoring torture of Maher Arar, Khalid el-Masri and the unaccounted for dozens who went through blacksites. Almost silence on the August 2002, still unreleased, CIA memo affirming that a huge chunk of those held under torture rules at GITMO were not combatants of any kind, much less not al-Qaeda. Almost silence on the Chinese Uighur who lost his mind under GITMO conditions to the extent where he “couldn’t” be released bc of the severity of his mental deterioration. Before the Abu Ghraib pictures came out, I remember foreign footage of hordes of women and children outside of US concentrated population camps, trying to get info on their disappeared family members, including women and children taken hostage to get their male family members to turn themselves in- apparently the US *journalisms* thought that coverage would be too “harmful” to cover.

There is always harm when bad things are covered. The worse the actions, the more harm. To respond by deciding that the “harm” of revealing things like torture programs and torture killings and calling torture what it is creates too much “harm” by giving people reason to be upset, is ridiculous, but its what the press here has come to far too often.
Sure, things like troop positions need protection, but when the US press sits silent on things like what happened to Ibn Shaykh al-Libi and allow him to be disappeared and suicided without comment or attention and never even mention his name to Dick Cheney when he was touting torture and its great results (ask the 2 million Iraqi refugees we created about the great results of our torture of al-Libi and Powell’s laundering of that torture to the UN and the US media and Congress hiding away from asking questions while he was conveniently and permanently resolved – when that’s the kind of value judgments the US press is making, color me unimpressed. My values aren’t yours. Thank God. But you do help shape American values – you shape them by what you cover up and what you disseminate. The US DOJ and media are horribly and horrifically responsible for creating an unrepentant torture nation and destroying what should have been very basic American values. We’ll all pay the price for your decisions.