U.S. Facing Global Diplomatic Crisis Following Massive WikiLeaks Release of
Secret Diplomatic Cables
Democracy Now Round Table
Monday, November 29, 2010
The whistleblowing website WikiLeaks has begun releasing a giant trove of
confidential U.S. diplomatic cables that is sending shockwaves through the
global diplomatic establishment. Among the findings: Arab leaders are urging
the United States to attack Iran; Washington and Yemen agreed to cover up
the use of U.S. warplanes to bomb Yemen; the United States is using its
embassies around the world as part of a global spy network and asking
diplomats to gather intelligence; and much more. We host a roundtable
discussion with
Daniel Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistleblower.
Carne Ross, a British diplomat for 15 years who resigned before the Iraq
war. He is the founder and head of a non-profit diplomatic advisory group,
Independent Diplomat
Greg Mitchell, writes the Media Fix blog for The Nation. He was the longtime
editor of Editor & Publisher magazine and is the author of 10 books
including The Campaign of the Century: Upton Sinclair's Race for Governor of
California and the Birth of Media Politics.
As'ad Abu Khalil, professor of political science at California State
University, Stanislaus and visiting professor at UC, Berkeley. He's the
author of "The Battle for Saudi Arabia" and runs the Angry Arab News Service
blog.
AMY GOODMAN: The whistleblowing website WikiLeaks has begun releasing a
giant trove of confidential American diplomatic cables that's sending
shockwaves through the global diplomatic establishment. The more than a
quarter million classified cables were sent by U.S. embassies around the
world, most of them in the past three years. WikiLeaks provided the
documents to five newspapers in advance: the New York Times, the London
Guardian, Germany's Der Spiegel, France's La Monde and Spain's El Paiz. The
revelations in the cables are extensive and varied.
Among the findings, Arab leaders are privately urging the United States to
conduct air strikes on Iran; in particular, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia
has repeatedly called on U.S. to attack Iran to destroy its nuclear program,
reportedly calling on American officials to "cut off the head of the snake".
Jordan, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, also said they support a U.S.
attack. The cables also highlight Israel's anxiety to preserve its regional
nuclear monopoly; it's readiness to 'go it alone' against Iran, and its
attempts to influence American policy. The cables also name Saudi donors as
the biggest financiers of Sunni militant groups like Al-Qaeda. The cables
also provide a detailed account of an agreement between Washington and Yemen
to cover up the use of U.S. warplanes to bomb targets in Yemen. One cable
records that during a meeting in January with General David Petraeus, the
Yemeni president Abdallah Saleh said, "We will continue saying these are our
bombs, not yours."
Among the biggest revelations is how the U.S. uses its embassies around the
world as part of a global spy network. U.S. diplomats are asked to obtain
information from the foreign dignitaries they meet including frequent flier
numbers, credit card details, and even DNA material. The United Nations is
also a target of the espionage with one cable listing the
information-gathering priorities to American staff at the UN headquarters in
New York. The roughly half a dozen cables from 2008 and 2009 detailing the
more aggressive intelligence collection were signed by Secretaries of State
Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton. The New York Times says the
directives, quote: "Appear to blur the traditional boundaries between
statesmen and spies." The cables also reveal that U.S. officials sharply
warned Germany in 2007 not to enforce arrest warrants for CIA officers
involved in an operation in which an innocent German citizen with the same
name as a suspected militant was abducted and held for months in
Afghanistan. The cables also document suspicion of corruption in the Afghan
government. One cable alleges that Afghan vice president Zia Massoud was
carrying fifty two million dollars in cash when stopped during a visit to
the United Arab Emirates. Only 220 cables were published by WikiLeaks on
it's
website on Sunday with hundreds of thousands more to come. The Obama
administration has been warning allies about the expected leaks since last
week. A statement from the White House on Sunday said, "We condemn in the
strongest terms the unauthorized disclosure of classified documents and
sensitive national security information." It also said the disclosure of the
cables could, "deeply impact not only U.S. foreign policy interests, but
those of our allies and friends around the world."
For more, I'm joined for this hour by four guests Carne Ross is with us, he
is a British diplomat for fifteen years who resigned before the Iraq war.
He's
the founder and head of a non-profit diplomatic advisory group, Independent
Diplomat. He is joining me here in New York in our studios along with Greg
Mitchell who writes the Media Fix blog for the Nation. And before that was
the longtime editor of Editor and Publisher Magazine. Joining me via
Democracy Now! Video Stream is Daniel Ellsberg, perhaps the countries most
famous whistleblower, he leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971. We are also
joined by As'ad AbuKhalil, a professor of political science at California
State University Stanislaus, and visiting professor at UC Berkeley. He is
author of The Battle for Saudi Arabia and runs the Angry Arab News Server
blog. Daniel Ellsberg, we're going to begin with you. We were talking to you
on October 20 at Democracy Now! when you were headed to London to
participate in the WikiLeaks news conference on the release of close to
400,000 documents. What are your thoughts today?
DANIEL ELLSBERG: Well, this is totally a process and this stage of the
process has just begun. It's going to go on day after day. We have seen one
out of one thousand so far of the cables that WikiLeaks is prepared to
release. So it's very early to judge, really, the value or the dangers, if
any, of releasing that. Back in October when we were releasing or when he
was releasing I think it was the Afghan documents at that point, they were
still new to the process, and I think they made some mistakes in terms of
releasing some names that they shouldn't have released at that time and were
properly criticized for that. As a result, it appears that the last batch
before this one was redacted fairly heavily by Assange- by WikiLeaks- with
the result that when the Pentagon said that there were 300 names that were
endangered by that release, they said right away, based on their own files
and their own knowledge of the cables, it turned out within a couple of days
that WikiLeaks had released none of those names, that none of those had been
redacted. They were not endangered. The upshot right now appears to be that
as of now, with the hundreds of thousands of documents that WikiLeaks has
put out, the Pentagon has had to acknowledge that not one single informant
or soldier has been endangered. In fact, they have not even felt the need to
protect one or inform one that he or she was in danger. So that risk, which
we're hearing again, now, right now has obviously been very largely
overblown and is a lot of blather.
AMY GOODMAN: Greg Mitchell, you've been tweeting this since it came out
yesterday- 1:30 in the afternoon on Sunday Eastern Standard Time- the
beginning of the release of the documents. First of all, talk about their
significance, what they are; what are the different places they are from?
GREG MITCHELL: Well there from 79 different embassies from around the world,
so it really is quite unprecedented. And as Dan said, the way this is
different from the previous WikiLeaks, when they came out on the Iraq war
and on Afghanistan those were basically one-day stories. There were gigantic
document dumps, got massive media coverage for a day or so and then it was
pretty much over. This is gonna be emerging over the next nine days, for
example in the New York Times, and WikiLeaks on their own site has said it's
gonna on for months. So it is a little early to say exactly what the effects
are gonna be what the down side might be and the revelations are already
quite significant. We already see in some of the outlets are summarizing
some of the revelations yet to come. So when you read, even some of the
things you read at the top of the hour, they're actually not cables that
have been released yet, but some of the media outlets are kind of previewing
what's coming.
AMY GOODMAN: Interestingly, there is a file on BitTorrent- in case the full
release doesn't go forward for some reason. The files are encrypted, but all
that is needed to decrypt it is a pass phrase, which will be released in the
worst-case scenario.
GREG MITCHELL: What is also different about this release is that even the
previous leaks, WikiLeaks worked closely with news organizations. But here
they gave the news organizations these files very early on and news
organizations, at least the _New York Times, have gone to the
administration, it's run names pass the State Department and has redacted
many of the documents, which then WikiLeaks has then taken redacted
documents and these are among the over 200 they've already posted. So, in a
sense, WikiLeaks is letting the news media help them in making sure these
documents are safe. So, I would imagine that as they emerge, there is going
to be even fewer worries about what might be in them and that might have
been in the past.
[music break]
From Ed: Click on the URL for the rest of this important discussion:
http://www.democracynow.org/2010/11/29/us_facing_global_diplomatic_crisis_following
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