The World After WikiLeaks

The number one question that confronts the United States of America and some of its allies today is not Osama bin Laden, but rather the Australian Julian Assange, founder of the website WikiLeaks, which laid bare American diplomacy after publishing thousands of cables between embassies and Washington from the State Department and the Foreign Service. Now Assange is being pursued by Interpol on charges of sexual assault in Sweden. However, some prominent American politicians have demanded his head and consider him a terrorist and an enemy of the United States who must be liquidated. In addition, the site is under fierce attacks intended to stop him at once.

These calls to take Assange seriously are due to his scrutiny of powerful nations of the world and the great embarrassment he has caused them. Assange is being villainized even though the American public still considers the issue a matter of the right of access to information, especially as regards the involvement of the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq. The legal intrigue used against Assange will probably succeed in catching him, to kill him or confiscate his belongings, just as some American politicians have demanded. This will make him a martyr and a hero. Several activists have pushed back, making an impact and revealing more diplomatic leaks.

What has Assange done? He has achieved a scoop of millions of leaked secret documents and war diaries from Afghanistan and Iraq and the administration’s method for American foreign policy. I believe that the damage was caused by leaking documents on the war, much more than the U.S. embassy cables with their impressions of the countries, presidents and politicians in various regions of the world. It is true that the content of some of these cables embarrassed the U.S. administration and highlighted diplomats’ opinions of what is happening in the conflicts raging in North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan and Palestine, but in the end this is what diplomats do, wherever they are. They send reports and observations and impressions concerning the country for which they are responsible. I do not think that the French or English or Chinese diplomats behave differently. WikiLeaks’ crime is that it exposed the secret of this role to the public and made the work of diplomats difficult in the future. Confidence, secrecy and specialization are pillars of diplomacy, and without them the role of embassies is transformed into merely protocol activity.

The WikiLeaks issue raises several controversial questions about the duty of a country — any country — to maintain the secrecy of letters and communication between ambassadors and foreigners without intrusion into the privacy of those by the likes of Assange and his website. Questions had been raised about whether what Assange is doing falls within the purview of the press. Assange clearly thinks it does, and he wants to politically disgrace major countries and expose their crimes and desecrations. It is true that he made progress in this area. WikiLeaks leaked the details of the murders of civilians, journalists and Iraqi civilians in cold blood by a U.S. helicopter in Baghdad. Those documents confirmed theories that the number of civilian deaths in Iraq is higher than all the official public figures. This information may be the basis for charges of committing war crimes in Iraq in the future.

The second issue relates to the right of any state to protect its secrets for the sake of national security. We know that there are facts and contacts related to the Cold War and before that are still confidential and will not be disclosed in the foreseeable future, due to their seriousness and their impact on public opinion. But that does not prevent the free press from attempting to discover the mysterious circumstances related to events. Recently, the press revealed the existence of German war criminals in America, with the knowledge of the U.S. government. In the past few days, previously unpublished details have been disclosed concerning massacres committed by the Russian army in Chechnya and elsewhere. In the early 1970s, The New York Times challenged the U.S. administration by publishing the so-called Pentagon Papers about the war in Vietnam and how the administration of President Johnson lied to the American people. The leaks, made by an influential person in the Nixon administration known as “Deep Throat,” were pursued by journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to uncover the circumstances of the Watergate scandal, which toppled the president. After 31 years, his name was revealed, and it was discovered that he was a senior manager in the FBI.*

Where is the dividing line between the role of the press, the responsibility for uncovering national corruption and a nation’s right to protect its secrets for security? WikiLeaks’ work demonstrates that this is a controversial issue that people cannot agree on. Another question is: Is the damage of WikiLeaks’ work greater than its benefits? Is the role of the journalist, ethically, protecting state secrets or disclosing them if the community has a right to know the truth and halt its government’s excesses? Those who urge killing Assange show the ugly side of American policy. They insult their country. Any state has the right to protect its secrets, just as the free press has the right to disclose these secrets, offering them to the public opinion, the final arbiter of this issue. When we talk about two long wars in both Iraq and Afghanistan, the public has the right to know the hidden details.

*Editor’s note: The Pentagon Papers, leaked by Daniel Ellsberg in 1971, were not related to the Watergate scandal.