by David Leigh
The United States was catapulted into a worldwide diplomatic crisis today,
with the leaking to the Guardian and other international media of more than
250,000 classified cables from its embassies, many sent as recently as
February this year.
At the start of a series of daily extracts from the US embassy cables - many
designated "secret" - the Guardian can disclose that Arab leaders are
privately urging an air strike on Iran and that US officials have been
instructed to spy on the UN leadership. These two revelations alone would be
likely to reverberate around the world. But the secret dispatches which were
obtained by WikiLeaks, the whistleblowers' website, also reveal Washington's
evaluation of many other highly sensitive international issues.
These include a shift in relations between China and North Korea, high level
concerns over Pakistan's growing instability and details of clandestine US
efforts to combat al-Qaida in Yemen.
Among scores of disclosures that are likely to cause uproar, the cables
detail:
-- Grave fears in Washington and London over the security of Pakistan's
nuclear weapons programme, with officials warning that as the country faces
economic collapse, government employees could smuggle out enough nuclear
material for terrorists to build a bomb.
-- Suspicions of corruption in the Afghan government, with one cable alleging
that vice president Zia Massoud was carrying $52m in cash when he was
stopped during a visit to the United Arab Emirates. Massoud denies taking
money out of Afghanistan.
-- How the hacker attacks which forced Google to quit China in January were
orchestrated by a senior member of the Politburo who typed his own name into
the global version of the search engine and found articles criticising him
personally.
-- The extraordinarily close relationship between Vladimir Putin, the Russian
prime minister, and Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, which is
causing intense US suspicion. Cables detail allegations of "lavish gifts",
lucrative energy contracts and the use by Berlusconi of a "shadowy"
Russian-speaking Italian go-between.
-- Allegations that Russia and its intelligence agencies are using mafia
bosses to carry out criminal operations, with one cable reporting that the
relationship is so close that the country has become a "virtual mafia
state".
-- Devastating criticism of the UK's military operations in Afghanistan by US
commanders, the Afghan president and local officials in Helmand. The
dispatches reveal particular contempt for the failure to impose security
around Sangin - the town which has claimed more British lives than any other
in the country.
-- Inappropriate remarks by a member of the British royal family about a UK
law enforcement agency and a foreign country.
The US has particularly intimate dealings with Britain, and some of the
dispatches from the London embassy in Grosvenor Square will make
uncomfortable reading in Whitehall and Westminster. They range from
political criticisms of David Cameron to requests for specific intelligence
about individual MPs.
The cables contain specific allegations of corruption, as well as harsh
criticism by US embassy staff of their host governments, from Caribbean
islands to China and Russia. The material includes a reference to Putin as
an "alpha-dog", Hamid Karzai as being "driven by paranoia" while Angela
Merkel allegedly "avoids risk and is rarely creative". There is also a
comparison between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Adolf Hitler.
The cables names Saudi donors as the biggest financiers of terror groups,
and provide an extraordinarily detailed account of an agreement between
Washington and Yemen to cover up the use of US planes to bomb al-Qaida
targets. One cable records that during a meeting in January with General
David Petraeus, then US commander in the Middle East, Yemeni president
Abdullah Saleh said: "We'll continue saying they are our bombs, not yours."
. . .
FULL TEXT
Article 19: Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression;
this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to
seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and
regardless of frontiers.--The Universal
Declaration of Human Rights
[As reported by Wayne
Madsen, Wikileaks is most likely a Mossad/CIA front. . . .
To top it off, Julian Assange is apparently annoyed with conspiracies [sic]
theories such as those that mention 9/11--Alex Thomas, "Wikileaks, Legitimate Whistleblowers or CointelPro?,"
theintelhub.com, August 7, 2010]
"US
embassy cables: full coverage," Guardian, November 28, 2010
"US embassy cables: browse the database,"
Guardian, November 28, 2010
"WikiLeaks embassy cables: download the key data and see how it
breaks down," Guardian, November 28, 2010
"General
Petraeus' Meeting With Yemen's President Saleh," Guardian, November
28, 2010
Ian Black and Simon Tisdall, "Saudi Arabia urges US attack on Iran to stop nuclear
programme," Guardian, November 28, 2010
Simon Tisdall, "Fear of 'different world' if Iran gets nuclear
weapons: Embassy cables reveal how US relentlessly cajoles and bullies
governments not to give succour to Tehran," Guardian, November 28,
2010
Simon Jenkins, "US embassy cables: The job of the media is not to protect the
powerful from embarrassment," Guardian, November 28, 2010
[Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad, the Iranian president, on Monday disputed however
that the allegations would hurt ties with the country's neighbours and
accused the US of orchestrating the affair. "We don't think this information
was leaked. We think it was organised to be released on a regular basis and
they are pursuing political goals," he
said.--Daniel Dombey and George Parker, "US embassy cables: The job of the media is not to protect
the powerful from embarrassment," Guardian, November 28, 2010
Barak Ravid, "WikiLeaks cables show
U.S.-Israel fear of 'fundamentalist' Erdogan," Haaretz, November 29,
2010
ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: It's not a question of worry. It's, rather, a question
of whether WikiLeaks are being manipulated by interested parties that want
to either complicate our relationship with other governments or want to
undermine some governments, because some of these items that are being
emphasized and have surfaced are very pointed.--"How Will New WikiLeaks Revelations Affect
Diplomatic Candor," pbs.org, November 29, 2010
Joe Quinn, "Wiki-Leaks Serves Israeli Agenda Of Demonizing
Iran," sott.net, November 30, 2010
[It's not that US diplomats don't understand the Middle East; it's just that
they've lost all sight of injustice. Vast amounts of diplomatic literature
prove that the mainstay of Washington's Middle East policy is alignment with
Israel, that its principal aim is to encourage the Arabs to join the
American-Israeli alliance against Iran, that the compass point of US policy
over years and years is the need to tame/bully/crush/oppress/ultimately
destroy the power of Iran.--Robert Fisk, "Now we know. America really doesn't care about injustice in
the Middle East," Independent, November 30, 2010]
Jack Khoury, "WikiLeaks cables:
Qatar okays use of airbase for U.S. attack on Iran," Haaretz,
November 30, 2010
Jeff Gates, "Israeli psy-ops typically serve multiple purposes.
Wikileaks is no exception," veteranstoday.com, November 30, 2010
"Zbigniew Brzezinski: Who is Really Leaking to
Wikileaks?," economicpolicyjournal.com, November 30, 2010
John Pomfret and Walter Pincus, "Experts question North Korea-Iran
missile link from WikiLeaks document release," Washington Post,
December 1, 2010
Jeff Gates, "When waging intelligence wars, timing is often the
critical factor for game-theory war planners. The outcome of the WikiLeaks
release suggests a psy-ops directed at the U.S.," veteranstoday.com,
December 1, 2010
[Spiegel itself has said that the magazine is permitting the U.S. government
to censor, at least in part, what it prints about the leaked material.--Paul
Craig Roberts, "Who, Precisely, Is Attacking the World?,"
atimes.com, December 1, 2010]
[This "leaked" information however is far from the whole story.--"Statement
on WikiLeaks Cables on Honduras," iacenter.org, December 2, 2010]
[The New York Times and the Washington Post reported only that the United
States believed Iran had acquired such missiles... from North Korea.
Neither newspaper reported the detailed Russian refutation of the US view on
the issue or the lack of hard evidence.--"How the US media is dumping on WikiLeaks - and
censoring the cable disclosures ," Guardian, December 2, 2010]
[Perhaps the most discouraging development is the accusation that is being
spread via the Internet that Julian Assange is a dupe or even a covert agent
used by the CIA and Mossad to spread disinformation that furthers U.S. and
Israeli agendas.
. . . the U.S. government cannot openly say that it is endeavoring to create
a climate of opinion that gives the U.S. a green light for eliminating the
independent Iranian government and re-establishing an American puppet state.
U.S. "diplomats," a.k.a. spies, understand this and fabricate the
information that supports the agenda.
In my opinion, the most important of all the cables leaked is the secret
directive sent by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to 33 U.S.
embassies and consulates ordering U.S. diplomats to provide credit card
numbers, email addresses, phone, fax and pager numbers, frequent-flyer
account numbers, and biographic and biometric information including DNA
information on U.N. officials from the secretary-general down, including
"heads of peace operations and political field missions."--Paul Craig
Roberts, "Western Civilization Has Shed Its Values,"
antiwar.com, December 6, 2010]
Sahil Kapur, "Flashback: Sec.
Clinton hailed Internet freedom as tool to 'spread truth and expose
injustice'," rawstory.com, December 7, 2010
"U.S. to
Host World Press Freedom Day in 2011," state.gov, December 7, 2010
Ray McGovern, "What's Behind the War on WikiLeaks?,"
antiwar.com, December 9, 2010
Martin Hickman, "WikiLeaks vs The Machine: US government tells
firms to pull plug on whistleblowing website as hackers cause chaos with
revenge attacks on Assange's 'enemies'," Independent, December 9,
2010
Shashank Bengali, "WikiLeaks: Cables reveal U.S. military role in Muslim
world," McClatchy Newspapers, December 9, 2010
Heather Brooke and Andrew Brown, "WikiLeaks cables: Pope wanted Muslim Turkey kept out of
EU," Guardian, December 10, 2010
[1. Most of the documents seem to cover material already fairly well- known
to informed people. . . . 2. An overblown media story is not the only
difficulty with Wikileaks. . . . 3. Now comes a report that Julian Assange
cut a deal with Israeli officials to keep anything damaging to Israel out of
the revelations. . . . 4. But maybe all this is just the price Assange has
to pay to get wide coverage in the Western mainstream, largely dominated by
Zionist editors, writers, and publishers? . . . 5. The fate of
whistle-blowers and tellers of dangerous truth is rarely rock-star
celebrity. . . . 6. Then again, if Assange's message is so subversive to
the state, why are the state's most reliable mouthpieces plastering his
message everywhere?. . . 7. But he didn't, so again I ask you, how
libertarian can he really be?
. . . the conclusions Wikileaks supports are downright provincial: our
government lied us into war in Iraq; Hillary Clinton's a bitch; Arab regimes
are corrupt and deserve regime change; private contractors are bilking
tax-payers; corporate corruption is the real conspiracy, not 9-11.--Lila
Rajiva, "The Case Against Wikileaks," veteranstoday.com, December 12,
2010]
[In recent weeks, the US Justice Department has established a secret grand
jury just across the river from Washington in the eastern district of the
state of Virginia. The object is to indict Assange under a discredited
espionage act used to arrest peace activists during the First World War, or
one of the "war on terror" conspiracy statutes that have degraded American
justice. Judicial experts describe the jury as a "deliberate set up,"
pointing out that this corner of Virginia is home to the employees and
families of the Pentagon, CIA, Department of Homeland Security, and other
pillars of American power.--"John Pilger's Investigation Into
the War on WikiLeaks and His Interview With Julian Assange,"
truth-out.org, January 14, 2011]
[The only competing revelations that come to mind were the publication by
the victorious Bolsheviks in 1917 of secret treaties, including plans to
carve up the Middle East by Britain and France. A more obvious parallel was
the publication of the Pentagon Papers thanks to Daniel Ellsberg in 1971,
revealing systematic lying by the Johnson administration about Vietnam. In
similar fashion to Assange, Ellsberg was reviled by the US government and
threatened with the severest punishment.
An extraordinary aspect of the campaign against Assange is that op-ed
writers feel free to pump out thousands of words about his alleged faults,
with never a mention of far more serious state crimes revealed by
WikiLeaks.--Patrick Cockburn, "How Julian Assange's private life helped conceal the real
triumph of WikiLeaks," Independent, July 1, 2012]
[The US interest in deterring others from following the WikiLeaks path is
obvious. And it would be bizarre to expect a state which over the past
decade has kidnapped, tortured and illegally incarcerated its enemies, real
or imagined, on a global scale - and continues to do so under President
Barack Obama - to walk away from what Hillary Clinton described as an
"attack on the international community".--Seumas Milne, "Don't lose sight of why the US is out to get Julian
Assange," Independent, August 21, 2012]
"WIKILEAKS CABLES," google.com
"MORE ON
WIKILEAKS," whatreallyhappened.com
"WIKILEAKS: CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE AND KEY RESOURCES LOCATED ABROAD"
"WIKILEAKS"
