WikiLeaks

[deepfiend]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/no ... ssy-cables

In late 2008 the Moscow embassy wired back about the relationship between Russia's president, Dmitry Medvedev and the prime minister, Vladimir Putin, remarking that Medvedev, officially the senior partner, "plays Robin to Putin's Batman".

Kim Jong-il, the ailing dictator of North Korea fared no better, with diplomats quoting sources who described him variously as a "flabby old chap" and someone who had suffered "physical and psychological trauma" as a result of his stroke.

The Paris embassy remarked on the "thin-skinned and authoritarian personal style" of French President Nicholas Sarkozy after it reported his tendency to repeatedly rebuke his team and the French prime minister.

Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was "feckless, vain, and ineffective as a modern European leader", according to Elizabeth Dibble, US charge d'affaires in Rome. Another report from Rome recorded the view that he was a "physically and politically weak" leader whose "frequent late nights and penchant for partying hard mean he does not get sufficient rest".

Key allies in the war on terror are not spared either. A dispatch from Kabul reports the view that the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, is "an extremely weak man who did not listen to facts but was instead easily swayed by anyone who came to report even the most bizarre stories or plots against him".

In Yemen, the power base of al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, President Ali Abdullah Saleh was "dismissive, bored and impatient", during a meeting with John Brennan, Barack Obama's deputy national security adviser.

Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe, is simply branded "the crazy old man" by Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, South Africa's international relations and cooperation minister, according to a cable from Pretoria, while Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, is "just strange" according to an adviser to Sultan Qaboos of Oman.

Israel's prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu is "elegant and charming" but never keeps his promises, according to a cable from Cairo recounting a meeting with President Hosni Mubarak, who added: "I have told him so personally".

My mirth was audible.

[deadly_habit]

it's like high school drama

[deepfiend]

Pakistan stand-off

The cables show US concern over radioactive material in nuclear power stations in Pakistan, with fears it could be used in terror attacks. They reveal the US has been attempting to remove highly enriched uranium from a research reactor in Pakistan since 2007.

In a May 2009 cable, US ambassador Anne W Patterson says Pakistan had refused a visit from US experts. She quotes a Pakistani officials as saying removing the fuel would be seen in Pakistan "as the United States taking Pakistan's nuclear weapons".

China hacking

There is concern over the alleged growing use of large scale computer hacking by the Chinese government. Cables reports claims that a network of hackers and private security experts has been employed by China since 2002and that it has hacked into US government and business computers, those of Western allies and the Dalai Lama.

The cables quote a Chinese contact telling the US embassy in Beijing that the Chinese government had been behind the hacking of Google's computer systems in the country in January.

Iran attack

Several Arab leaders and their representatives are quoted as urging the US to carry out an attack on Iran to bring an end to its suspected nuclear weapons programme.

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia is reported to have "frequently exhorted" the US to attack Iran in order to bring an end to its nuclear programme.

In a report of a 2008 meeting with US General David Petraeus, the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Adel al-Jubeir, said King Abdullah wanted the US to "to cut the head off the snake".

King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa of Bahrain is reported to have told the US to stop Iran "by whatever means necessary", while the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed, told the US he believed Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was "going to take us to war".

Biometric spying on UN

A cable to US diplomats issued under US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's name tells them to collect "biographic and biometric" information - including iris scans, DNA samples and fingerprints - on key officials at the UN. They are also ordered to find credit card details, email addresses and passwords and encryption keys used for computer networks and in official communications.

The officials covered include "undersecretaries, heads of specialised agencies and their chief advisers, top SYG [secretary general] aides, heads of peace operations and political field missions, including force commanders".

At least nine similar directives covering various countries are included in the Wikileaks release, both under the name of Mrs Clinton and her predecessor, Condoleezza Rice.

Korea plans

US and South Korean officials have discussed plans for a united Korea, should North Korea collapse.

The US ambassador to Seoul said South Korea would consider offering commercial incentives to China to "help salve" Beijing "concerns about living with a reunified Korea".


Guantanamo

The cables appear to reveal discussions between various countries on whether they would take prisoners released from the Guantanamo Bay detention facility.

Slovenia is offered the chance to meet President Barack Obama if it takes a prisoner, while Kiribati, in the South Pacific, is offered millions of dollars of incentives. Brussels is told taking prisoners could be "a low-cost way for Belgium to attain prominence in Europe".

dem leaks

[deepfiend]

This one from the Spiegel is quite funny

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's emissaries also learn of a special "Iran observer" in the Azerbaijan capital of Baku who reports on a dispute that played out during a meeting of Iran's Supreme National Security Council. An enraged Revolutionary Guard Chief of Staff Mohammed Ali Jafari allegedly got into a heated argument with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and slapped him in the face because the generally conservative president had, surprisingly, advocated freedom of the press.

[nicenice]

Quite an amazing thing this.

[yooamatwa]

What is the angle? Why has the information been released/leaked ... I wonder if in a few years we step we may see a bigger picture here.

[wormcode]

A bit pointless if they are censoring parts and redacting identities... I think a lot of it wasn't too surprising, just finally some confirmation rather than speculation.

[alphacat]

While I fully support the efforts of WikiLeaks to aid various governments achieve true transparency, what's going down now is... scary.

US embassy cables leak sparks global diplomatic crisis

• More than 250,000 dispatches reveal US foreign strategies
• Diplomats ordered to spy on allies as well as enemies
• Saudi king urged Washington to bomb Iran

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.

• Inappropriate remarks by Prince Andrew about a UK law enforcement agency and a foreign country.

• 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.

• 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".

• 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 Italiango-between.

• 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.

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" and 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."

Other revelations include a description of a near "environmental disaster" last year over a rogue shipment of enriched uranium, technical details of secret US-Russian nuclear missile negotiations in Geneva, and a profile of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, who they say is accompanied everywhere by a "voluptuous blonde" Ukrainian nurse.

Clinton led a frantic damage limitation exercise this weekend as Washington prepared foreign governments for the revelations, contacting leaders in Germany, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf, France and Afghanistan.

US ambassadors in other capitals were instructed to brief their hosts in advance of the release of unflattering pen-portraits or nakedly frank accounts of transactions with the US which they had thought would be kept quiet. Washington now faces a difficult task in convincing contacts around the world that any future conversations will remain confidential.

As the cables were published, the White House released a statement condemning their release. "Such disclosures put at risk our diplomats, intelligence professionals, and people around the world who come to the US for assistance in promoting democracy and open government. By releasing stolen and classified documents, WikiLeaks has put at risk not only the cause of human rights but also the lives and work of these individuals."

In London, a Foreign Office spokesman said: "We condemn any unauthorised release of this classified information, just as we condemn leaks of classified material in the UK. They can damage national security, are not in the national interest and, as the US have said, may put lives at risk. We have a very strong relationship with the US government. That will continue."

The US ambassador to Britain, Louis Susman, said: "We have briefed the UK government and other friends and allies around the world about the potential impact of these disclosures … I am confident that our uniquely productive relationship with the United Kingdom will remain close and strong, focused on promoting our shared objectives and values."

Sir Christopher Meyer, who was British ambassador to the US in the Blair years, thought the leaks would have little impact on diplomatic behaviour. "This won't restrain dips' [diplomats'] candour," he said. "But people will be looking at the security of electronic communications and archives. Paper would have been impossible to steal in these quantities."

The state department's legal adviser has written to the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange and his London lawyer, warning that the cables were obtained illegally and that the publication would place at risk "the lives of countless innocent individuals … ongoing military operations … and co-operation between countries".

The electronic archive of embassy dispatches from around the world was allegedly downloaded by a US soldier earlier this year and passed to WikiLeaks. Assange made it available to the Guardian and four other news organisations: the New York Times, Der Spiegel in Germany, Le Monde in France and El País in Spain. All five plan to publish extracts from the most significant cables, but have decided neither to "dump" the entire dataset into the public domain, nor to publish names that would endanger innocent individuals. WikiLeaks says that, contrary to the state department's fears, it also initially intends to post only limited cable extracts, and to redact identities.

The cables published today reveal how the US uses its embassies as part of a global espionage network, with diplomats tasked to obtain not just information from the people they meet, but personal details, such as frequent flyer numbers, credit card details and even DNA material.

Classified "human intelligence directives" issued in the name of Clinton or her predecessor, Condoleezza Rice, instruct officials to gather information on military installations, weapons markings, vehicle details of political leaders as well as iris scans, fingerprints and DNA.

The most controversial target was the UN leadership. That directive requested the specification of telecoms and IT systems used by top officials and their staff and details of "private VIP networks used for official communication, to include upgrades, security measures, passwords, personal encryption keys".

PJ Crowley, the state department spokesman in Washington, said: "Let me assure you: our diplomats are just that, diplomats. They do not engage in intelligence activities. They represent our country around the world, maintain open and transparent contact with other governments as well as public and private figures, and report home. That's what diplomats have done for hundreds of years."

The acting deputy spokesman for Ban Ki-moon, Farhan Haq, said the UN chief had no immediate comment. "We are aware of the reports."

The dispatches also shed light on older diplomatic issues. One cable, for example, reveals, that Nelson Mandela was "furious" when a top adviser stopped him meeting Margaret Thatcher shortly after his release from prison to explain why the ANC objected to her policy of "constructive engagement" with the apartheid regime.

"We understand Mandela was keen for a Thatcher meeting but that [appointments secretary Zwelakhe] Sisulu argued successfully against it," according to the cable. It continues: "Mandela has on several occasions expressed his eagerness for an early meeting with Thatcher to express the ANC's objections to her policy. We were consequently surprised when the meeting didn't materialise on his mid-April visit to London and suspected that ANC hardliners had nixed Mandela's plans."

The US embassy cables are marked "Sipdis" – secret internet protocol distribution. They were compiled as part of a programme under which selected dispatches, considered moderately secret but suitable for sharing with other agencies, would be automatically loaded on to secure embassy websites, and linked with the military's Siprnet internet system.

They are classified at various levels up to "secret noforn" [no foreigners]. More than 11,000 are marked secret, while around 9,000 of the cables are marked noforn.

More than 3 million US government personnel and soldiers, many extremely junior, are cleared to have potential access to this material, even though the cables contain the identities of foreign informants, often sensitive contacts in dictatorial regimes. Some are marked "protect" or "strictly protect".

Last spring, 22-year-old intelligence analyst Bradley Manning was charged with leaking many of these cables, along with a gun-camera video of an Apache helicopter crew mistakenly killing two Reuters news agency employees in Baghdad in 2007, which was subsequently posted by WikiLeaks. Manning is facing a courtmartial.

In July and October WikiLeaks also published thousands of leaked military reports from Afghanistan and Iraq. These were made available for analysis beforehand to the Guardian, along with Der Spiegel and the New York Times.

A former hacker, Adrian Lamo, who reported Manning to the US authorities, said the soldier had told him in chat messages that the cables revealed "how the first world exploits the third, in detail".

He also said, according to Lamo, that Clinton "and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available in searchable format to the public … Everywhere there's a US post … there's a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed".

Asked why such sensitive material was posted on a network accessible to thousands of government employees, the state department spokesman told the Guardian: "The 9/11 attacks and their aftermath revealed gaps in intra-governmental information sharing. Since the attacks of 9/11, the US government has taken significant steps to facilitate information sharing. These efforts were focused on giving diplomatic, military, law enforcement and intelligence specialists quicker and easier access to more data to more effectively do their jobs."

He added: "We have been taking aggressive action in recent weeks and months to enhance the security of our systems and to prevent the leak of information."

[64hz]

hmmm im not sure what stance to take on this. . .

[alphacat]

At this point it seems like the potential for abuse - say, as a vehicle of deliberate misinformation - is too great for the world players to ignore. WikiLeaks can't survive long as-is if the intelligence community vultures are sniffing for a weak spot.

[knell]

Iran was surprisingly cool about the whole thing, from what i saw

[64hz]

they probably knew already?

[knell]

yeh there's no telling...

as much grief as ahmadinejad gets for being "crazy" and "maniacal" he always comes across as informed and intellectual in his speeches...

albeit a tad on the stern side

[64hz]

yeh there's no telling...

as much grief as ahmadinejad gets for being "crazy" and "maniacal" he always comes across as informed and intellectual in his speeches...

this. always seems fairly calm and collected. He really does get demonised by most western press

i mean between him and Bush . . .

heres a couple of interesting articles:
http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast ... cnn_latest

especially this:
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/201 ... s-release/

seems faily plausible tbh.

[knell]

if the US govt really did orchestrate the wikileaks cablegate for some sort of agenda....

i'll have to tip my hat to them. that is some next level wool-over-the-eyes shit

would definitely explain why assange seems to just tapdance around the CIA, not to mention the fact he's still alive...

[nicenice]

There's something not quite right about the Iran side of things.

[deadly_habit]

i'm pretty sure most nations with a decent intelligence department knew most of this info beforehand
i don't see the implications being as huge as the media seems to be making it out to be
the general public may be shocked a bit, but it's government as usual and most people are content to lap up whatever the boob tube news says without looking any further

[hayze99]

There was actually a pretty interesting column in the Metro today about the fear of the public starting to see even things as important as 250,000 confidential documents, as just a soap opera. The reason is because we're all constantly drowned by information. Couldn't be more true.

[therook]

Can someone explain to me what this wikileaks is? My professor brought it up in class today and I googled a bit but couldn't find a straight answer. Is it about war diaries? Or did this guy leak gov. documents or something?

[deadly_habit]

yea leaked classified documents made public to the media and general public
you can find more of this type of stuff on the deep web, just not exactly idiot friendly access