- WASHINGTON, DC -- For the
last (nine) days, newspaper headlines around the globe have covered a cornucopia
of diplomatic scandals, resulting from the "leaking" of some
250,000 cables of the US State Department to the New York Times
and several other newspapers. In case there is anyone left on the planet
who hasn't heard of this, the cables were leaked to the media by "wikileaks,"
a mysterious non-governmental organization which purports to publish <#>classified documents
while guaranteeing anonymity to the providers.
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- The scandals covered a variety of topics of interest
to the American public and government, from China's interest in the re-unification
of Korea, to Iran's purchase of missiles from North Korea,
to Pakistani General Kayani wondering whether the US would support
him in a military coup. (1) Oddly enough, there are no scandals of
any significance involving Israel or any other American ally.
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- The reason for this appears to lie in the editorial process
of the world's newspapers 'of record.'
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- Despite public perceptions, Wikileaks does not make the
material it receives available directly to the public. It sends the documents
to newspapers, which decide what news is fit to print. As of this writing,
Dec 2, 2010, four days after the New York Times and other newspapers
began publishing scores of articles; Wikileaks has only posted 623 of the
250,000 documents they <#>claim to have released to their
website. (2) Neither the New York Times, the Guardian or the
other newspapers apparently in possession of these materials have published
them either.
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- Worse, these 623 'leaks' were apparently cleared by the
State Department itself. According to noted American civil rights attorney
Michael Ratner, "In the recent disclosure, Wikileaks has only posted
cables that were reviewed by the news organisations and in some cases redacted.
The news organisations showed them to the Pentagon and agreed
to some of the government's suggested redactions." (3)
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- Wikileaks' reluctance to post the materials to the internet
probably results from a combination of factors. First and foremost, they
have been threatened with prosecution in the US although this author
believes that is no more than a bluff and accused of having "blood
on their hands" already, despite the fact that even after several
months, they haven't yet released the scandalous "Afghan war logs"
documents which, among other things, accused the Pakistani ISI
of running a suicide bomber network in Kabul, and former DG ISI Hamid
Gul of being the ISI's liaison to the Taliban.
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- (4) Pakistan is left with no way to defend against these
accusations, since it does not even know the nature of the sources, although
Afghan intelligence (led by Amrullah Saleh) is suspected. And apparently,
Wikileaks' priority is to put more materials into the hands of the NY Times,
rather than putting them on the internet.
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- It's not a matter of resources. There are dozens, if
not hundreds or thousands of people who would gladly volunteer to post
this material to their websites. One of them is John Young, who really
is what Mr. Assange, spokesman for Wikileaks, pretends to be. For the past
14 years, Young has posted the most remarkable materials to his site, including
personal information and photographs of the homes of CIA officials.
(5) Young joined Wikileaks when it formed, but in January of 2007, left
the organization, claiming it was a CIA front. While this author does not
join him in making that accusation, it is noteworthy that the person who
has actually done what Wikileaks claims to do, not only thinks Wikileaks
is fake, but is a disinformation campaign.
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- Julian Assange was arrested on rape charges for incidents
that allegedly occurred on a speaking tour he did in Sweden. Assange claims
that the women are part of a Pentagon "dirty tricks campaign"
to discredit him. There are continual media reports that he is living a
kind of underground fugitive existence. And now reports that the Wikileaks
website is being hacked to the point that the mundane Afghanistan documents
they did post online are no longer there. This is all an overreaction to
what Wikileaks has actually done, which is act as an intermediary between
persons unknown in the government, and the ever-compliant news media. The
Wikileaks paranoia comes across as self-serving and insincere.
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- The solution to all this, of course, is quite simple.
Wikileaks should hand over the goods to someone who will actually post
them to the internet. Then we would at least have a fair process wherein
people of different political ideologies could put whatever spins they
wanted on them. Failing that, Assange should just take a job at the New
York Times and stop being such a poser.
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- Mr. Wolf is a human rights attorney based in Washington DC.
Description of his work as an anti-war lawyer is available on his website, www.paulwolf.org.
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- http://www.pakalertpress.com/2010/12/04/shocker-us-state-department-%e2%
80%98cleared%e2%80%99-the-release-of-wikileaks-documents-published-so-far/
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