The U.S. Recognizes that WikiLeaks Have Damaged Its Foreign Relations

“Diplomatic relations will be more complicated,” indicated the spokesperson from the State Department; even the Pentagon has affirmed that the cooperation of various governments has changed ever since the appearance of the cables.

WASHINGTON (EFE) — The Pentagon and the State Department recognized today that the filtration of the diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks has done damage to U.S. foreign relations, upon changing the way individuals and governments act, and by feeding information to its enemies.

“For some time, diplomatic relations will be more complicated,” explained P.J. Crowley, the spokesperson for the State Department, in a meeting with foreign press. “We understand that these revelations have opened up a gap of trust in our country’s ability to maintain privacy, which we lament,” added Crowley.

Pentagon spokesperson Colonel Dave Lapan affirmed, “There are indications that foreign powers will be pulling back from their dealings with the U.S.,” in an informational meeting with some media.

The Pentagon has received “indications” that there exists “at least some change in the way in which individuals and governments cooperate and share information with each other,” Lapan specified.

That change is evident, for example, in the presence of “meetings that used to involve several diplomats and ones that now involve fewer diplomats,” according to the State Department spokesperson’s explanation in his daily press conference. “We’re conscious of at least one meeting where it was requested that notebooks be left outside the room,” Crowley said.

Lapan considered the more than 250,000 diplomatic cables that Wikileaks began to publish on Nov. 28 would supposedly create a mine for those who seek to hurt the United States.

“We know, through various sources, that our opponents are rummaging in this (the filtrations) to get information,” assured Lapan; however, it is “difficult to assess the exact way” in which those enemies “are changing their tactics.”

That difficulty of assessing the damages that the filtrations will have in the mechanisms of the United States foreign relations involves, for Lapan, a significantly higher risk than the “modest” danger that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates forecasted last week.

“How can we assess the information that our enemies have obtained, which has showed them things about how we function, which has allowed them to alter their behavior as a result of what they have found out?” the colonel asks. “All of that is real danger that we believe to have occurred,” he added.

Lapan, as much as Crowley, avoided making comments about the arrest in London of Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, and about the possibility of exiling him to Sweden, or, if he is charged, being tried in the United States.

“The United States isn’t involved in this matter,” assured Crowley, who added that the only countries involved are “England and Sweden,” whose public prosecutor’s office released an order to capture Assange with relation to his supposed sexual assault crimes.

*Editor’s note: The quotations in this article, accurately translated, could not be verified.