It may not be immediately apparent to some, but the release of top secret US diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks – a website that relishes the leaking of state secrets, with a founder, Julian Assange, of questionable character (read more on that here) – poses serious and harmful threats to American diplomats and their contacts in foreign corridors; to existing operations in foreign lands; to our sometimes delicate relations with foreign nations and their leaders, and ultimately to our national security strategy with potentially dangerous regimes in places like North Korea, Iran and Pakistan. My colleague Shaun Donaldson on the Power Politics blog outlines a compelling case on these points. More specifically, the WikiLeaks release of diplomatic cables undermines the US position on sensitive nuclear weapons negotiations with unstable regimes in Pakistan and North Korea; it reveals our economic foreign policy end-game with China and Russia on issues like currency devaluation, the role of the Greenback as the global currency standard, and the accumulation of US Treasury debt by foreign nations; and most important, it undermines our status and trustworthiness in foreign capitols from this day forward. From my view, the release of these cables – even in the name of constitutionally protected free speech – is, in the least, professionally profligate and downright irresponsible. At worst, it can only be seen as a broad based attack on US Foreign Policy operations.
The only public good this serves is to satiate a shallow and puerile fascination in the workings of necessarily confidential diplomatic channels. This leak can hardly be justified in light of the real and perceived harm it creates. Afterall, direct, candid, unvarnished communications is a necessary tool of diplomats and diplomatic analysis that is fed back to Washington in order to make clear-headed assessments and decisions in our foreign policies. Not to mention that ultimately this leak leads to legislative actions that can, and will, erode those freedoms which we hold so dear. Even now as I write these words, the recriminations have begun and Congressmen, being led by US Rep Peter King (R-NY) – incoming Chair of the House Homeland Security Committee – have already begun to mount-up a legislative offensive against the harm that WikiLeaks poses to our national security.
—
(NYTs) WASHINGTON — The United States has expanded the role of American diplomats in collecting intelligence overseas and at the United Nations, ordering State Department personnel to gather the credit card and frequent-flier numbers, work schedules and other personal information of foreign dignitaries. Revealed in classified State Department cables, the directives, going back to 2008, appear to blur the traditional boundaries between statesmen and spies.
The cables give a laundry list of instructions for how State Department employees can fulfill the demands of a “National Humint Collection Directive.” (“Humint” is spy-world jargon for human intelligence collection.) One cable asks officers overseas to gather information about “office and organizational title
Read more here.
Sources: ARS, Reuters, Guardian (UK), WSJ, NYT Video: CNN