WikiLeaks Exposes Government’s Secrets

After the publications of 300,000 documents on the invasion in Iraq and Afghanistan in July and October, WikiLeaks once again published 250,000 diplomatic cables between the State Department and U.S. embassies. Because of that, the Obama administration has been busy apologizing to its allies; the government criticizes WikiLeaks’ actions as immoral, destructive to the country and damaging to America’s relationships with its allies. Republican representative Peter King from Long Island, New York, who is very likely to be the next Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee in January, demanded that the State Council list WikiLeaks as a “terrorist group.” Is it really such a serious matter? Is it really so terrifying?

Prior to publication, the New York Times and some other European media have already filtered out the sensitive documents found in the 500,000 documents they received from WikiLeaks. If you attentively read the released cables found in the New York Times and the Internet, you would get a sense of reading celebrity gossip, but not confidential documents; it is more reasonable to describe the cables as insider reports. On top of regular duties, U.S. ambassadors also work as eavesdroppers, and even spies in order to gather information. Hillary Clinton requested American U.N. officials to dig into the privacy of the foreign diplomats, including their flying and credit card records. According to the cables, we can tell that American diplomats have spent a huge amount of time on the task. For example, we now know that Libyan leader Gaddafi prefers his personal nurses to be Ukrainian with blonde hair and that Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi loves to party. These documents are filled with slanderous, libelous, judgmental, denouncing, ridiculing comments and speculations about foreign high officials. This is extremely impolite, embarrassing, and immoral behavior. It is natural that within the White House and the Department of State, every U.S. diplomat under Hillary Clinton has been making phone calls day and night to apologize to the involved foreign officials.

Diplomatic cables are meant to be private; hence they are filled with gossip and angry words that you do not want the third party to know about (for example, how Saudi Arabia would like the U.S. to bomb Iran in order to destroy its nuclear power). The release of the cables certainly has negatively affected America’s image, reputation and reliability; however, the consequences for U.S. foreign policy are fairly modest. Foreign leaders involved probably just laugh it off once they read the cables because most diplomatic cables contain similar contents, regardless of their origin.

Every time there is a leak of a secret document, governments always use excuses to criticize or even prosecute whistle-blowers, saying that it endangers the safety and the interests of the country. At first, Daniel Ellsberg gave the 7,000-page, 2,500,000-word-long Pentagon Papers to the New York Times. After intense discussion, the management of the New York Times decided to publish the Pentagon Papers in 45 volumes on Sunday, June 13, 1971. Then the Nixon administration requested that the Supreme Court stop the materials from being published, saying that it would “endanger the safety of the country.” As a result, the New York Times was forced to cease publication for 15 days. After that, Ellsberg gave the publication rights to the Washington Post. During the event, the government sued both the New York Times and Washington Post. On June 30th, The Supreme Court ruled that publication was permissible, and the New York Times and Washington Post were victorious. This was an important milestone of freedom of speech and of the press in the history of America. In the decision, Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black left his famous quote: “Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people.” Black passed away three months after the decision and his penetrating insight passed on from generation to generation.

Ellsberg claims that if the U.S. government remained secretive and closed, America would turn into an authoritarian country. He even suggests that Washington Post reporter and author of Obama’s War, Bob Woodward, who reported the Watergate scandal back in the day, should donate the secret documents he has gathered on the war in Afghanistan to WikiLeaks. It is certain that Woodward would not follow Ellsberg’s advice. The two have totally opposite criteria: While Ellsberg is blunt and honest with authority, Woodward worked with authority to gain fame and profit. What upsets Ellsberg is the fact that WikiLeaks’ release of the military documents only grabbed the public’s attention for a few days, and was out of the spotlight forever after that. Back in the day, the release of the Pentagon Papers brought long-lingering effects to every part of the world. It changed the relationship between the media and the government in every country. The leaks of the diplomatic cables are able to get more attention because they contain gossip on many world leaders and hence are more “readable.”

In 1969, even though Ellsberg stole and copied the documents from the RAND corporation everyday, it took the New York Times another month to organize them. The Internet has changed everything. It is hard to keep information disclosed among people and government departments nowadays. From individuals to government, everyone is naked and exposed, and privacy no longer exists.