Blowback: Robert Baer (former CIA) inadvertantly argues that Wikileaks is a very good thing.

[JackRiddler]

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For today only -- we'll see about tomorrow -- I've been sold on the goodness of the ongoing Wikileaks release, although it is still only up to 290 out of 251,000 total on the "Cable Viewer" site. (I'm not even looking at that before it cracks four digits or 1/250th of the total.)
http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/

The persuader was none other than Mr. 21-year CIA veteran Bob Baer, now a columnist for that flagship of pure journalism, TIME magazine (that Henry Luce Zombie-thing that curiously is still publishing).

Baer was just on the WNYC/NPR Brian Lehrer Show and decried the release in plain and pained language, giving as his examples the following:

1) It may make it harder for "us" to conduct illegal surprise drone bombings in Yemen and pretend that it's actually Yemenese forces doing the bombing;

2) It may make it harder for "us" to get clearance for air routes over Arab countries to bomb Iran, if "we" decide that's what "we" need to do, which decision really should be left to "us" as he understands "us," which is to say, certainly not you, dear reader, but them;

3) In general, it gets in the way of state officials saying one thing to the public and pursuing a different, contrary policy in secret.

He specifically said that exposing "duplicity" is bad, as this is essential to "diplomacy." It's especially bad to let the Arab peoples know (or to confirm by documentation what is already obvious) that their unelected tyrants are telling them one thing and in secret saying something else to their US backers.

Although Baer (author of a book on the "New Iranian Superpower," no less, now I'm scared) claims to have supported the Pentagon Papers release back in the day (when he would have been 19 years old and apparently at Culver Military Academy in Indiana, according to his bio on Wikipedia), he is incensed that anyone other than the Executive branch should be deciding what is secret and what is not.

His comments echo the contempt for democracy and transparency that characterizes both the State Department cables and, in general, the ruling and policy-making elites of this and many other countries. They must be allowed to lie to us -- the only possible real "us," we the people -- because otherwise it would be much harder for them to do whatever they've secretly decided is necessary.

During the morning's discussion you also had a series of very angry Joe Blow callers demanding the death of Julian Assange, stat, including one guy who was pretty sure that if only this was still the 1970s, Assange would already be "taken out," or "disappeared." This one offered that he would do the job himself, if the government would only give him the gun and point him at the target.

Lehrer, a scold who is extremely stingy on giving time to callers and always looking to spin whatever is said to his next talking point, let these guys go on for much longer than is usual for him. He repeatedly announced upcoming segments with the tag line, "More reactions as the Wikileaks information BOMB EXPLODES ON EVERY CONTINENT," which besides making me gag also prompts the question: When do we get the Antarctica memos?

So yeah, notwithstanding the so-far extremely limited release and the "Bomb Iran, Gossip About Prince Andrew" spin being put on it by the gatekeeper press organs who so far get to pick and choose which cables to release in which way, for today I'm a big fan of Assange -- whatever he might really turn out to be.

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[JackRiddler]

1. Recs and recs, what's a guy gotta do around here for kicks?

And dare we hope for comments?

[nadinbrzezinski]

2. Comments you say?

I'm of the opinion that it will change nothing, 'sept who gets access.

I am quite blasé about it since these things get released every year to scholars after a decade or two. At times five decades, and they're the same shit, just different decade. Humans been doing this for thousands of years.

[pauldp]

3. Kick!

Thanks Jack. I'm at work - I'll comment later.

[JackRiddler]

15. Thanks! Don't forget now!

[pauldp]

21. Comment - will it all just end up a huge limited hangout?

The first large Wikileak dump was the Afghan war logs which confirmed what the London School of Economics had reported - that the ISI was not just funding, but directing the Taliban in Afghanistan.
We of course give millions to the ISI every year through the CIA and State Dept. Actually I think it's a couple of billion. I really can't think of a bigger wikileaks story than this. This story was highlighted in a Democracy Now edition when it first broke :

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwLnqRwkL8o

Yet now the Afghan war documents are simply characterized by the Guardian, the NYT etc. as "revealing the harsh realitites of war" -more civilian casualties and IEDs than we had realized etc. The Revelations about the Taliban links to the ISI - our supposed ally - have apparently been deemed less important. Will this happen to the Yemen US bombing story? Is this because The Guardian, the NYT and Der Spiegel have first crack and get to define what is important in these documents? ....." We knew that already, that's been covered, but let's talk about Momar Kadafi's blond Ukranian prostitute."

[xchrom]

4. that was pretty funny reading -- but that guy? -- he's fuckin NUTS. nt

[JackRiddler]

7. Which one -- Baer, Lehrer, or the call-in assassins?

[xchrom]

9. baer -- if i understood that right.

he was doing the commenting on the leaks right?

and it's brian lehrer's show?

[JackRiddler]

12. Yes and yes. Still, it sounded like a regular Mad Hatter's tea party to me.

;)

[NuclearDem]

5. I've got a rebuttal to one of those...

"3) In general, it gets in the way of state officials saying one thing to the public and pursuing a different, contrary policy in secret."

Sort of like when the US and Soviet governments stared each other down in public in October 1962, but secretly agreed to withdraw missiles from Turkey and Cuba, respectively?

Some diplomacy needs to be conducted in secret. Not ALL diplomacy, but some done in secret can complement diplomacy done in the open.

[JackRiddler]

6. Get real.

NuclearDem, here's a nice comment apropos your "point."

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cartoon/2010/nov/30/steve-bell-us-embassy-cables

EastFinchleyite

30 November 2010 12:39AM

The single thing that stands out for me is before Wikileaks published these confidential emails, reports, and other documents, access to them was restricted to only 3 million other US personnel.

3 million.

The only people who didn't know what was going on was the general public; the poor sods like me who have to pay for this incompetence.

If it wasn't so tragic it would be a good laugh.

Second thoughts; it's both tragic and funny.

Although note that as with most people, the commenter is still employing the past tense ("published") for something that is still in the future: only 290 cables are available to the public so far.

But anyway, the Presidential Hotline to Moscow, this isn't.

---

NuclearDem, I know you're straining to find an example to support a seret state, and we could play at counter-examples (what about all the lies about Iraq used to justify an aggressive war that clearly has also devastated US interests, etc.) but first get some context: how in the first place did we get to that insane moment in 1962? Could it have been related to the creation of vast, unaccountable, deceptive state bureaucracies that seriously went about planning contingencies for justified nuclear war, and set about selling the public on how it wouldn't be that bad?

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By the way, the above quoted comment appears under this cartoon:

[laughingliberal]

8. K & R nt

[xchrom]

10. +2

[NuclearDem]

11. That was good, except for the part where you missed my point entirely

And claimed I was in favor of a secret state.

If I was in favor of a secret state, I'd say just rubbish to the UN or any open diplomacy in general. Do it all behind our backs, I'd say. But no, I said some (SOME. SOME.) diplomacy can be conducted in secret. Whether you're in favor of it or not, and regardless of how badly the Cold War had fucked our mindset up until that point, that back-door deal we made with the Soviets defused the Crisis. The showdown at the UN wasn't going to do it. The quarantine wasn't going to do it.

Our minds are just as completely fucked now as they were in the Cold War. If it takes a back door deal to save the world again, I'm in favor of it. Don't get me wrong, it shouldn't be necessary--we as Americans shouldn't be so blinded by propaganda and bullshit thoughts that our diplomats shouldn't consider any compromise or deal made in public in fear that it'll run contrary to our paranoid mindset, but it happens.

Now let's reiterate: I am NOT in favor of our State Dept telling diplomats to collect credit card information. I'm NOT in favor of conducting all of our diplomacy in secret and keeping the American people completely blind as to what we're doing in the world. And I'm NOT in favor of a secret state.

Secret diplomacy should be the ABSOLUTE last resort, when all other diplomacy has failed. It's evil, but it's a necessary evil given how fucked our country is and how stupid most of our countrymen are.

[JackRiddler]

13. Some reasonable thoughts in there...

However, I'd point to the relationship between a secret state (which therefore must rely on a lot of deceptive propaganda) and to your finding about widespread stupidity. The two go together, they are not unrelated facts of the world. In fact the one (secret state/propaganda) in the main reinforces the other (widespread stupidity). It's no easy matter to start counteracting that stupidity. One element has to be telling truth and ending public deceptions, and the present controversy can contribute to that.

(Or, alternatively, serve as the pretext for an even worse clampdown and more deceptions, which is where our policymaking class wants to push it.)

[NuclearDem]

14. Exactly the point I was making in the first place

If it were up to me and Iran came to us today in secret with a deal to dismantle their nuclear program in exchange for withdrawing our navy from the Gulf, I'd take it. We'd get to make up any story we'd like, and they'd get to make up whatever they'd like.

But your point is valid. We can't keep doing it forever, because it won't solve the problem of the public being sucked in by propaganda. We've got a lot of other problems we have to fix before that to make it easier for us to spread the truth and deescalate tensions openly, but for now, it's a necessary evil.

Good points though. :hi:

[zipplewrath]

16. Why we need state secrecy

Conducting diplomacy in secrecy creates the need to have state secrets. It is circular logic. You want to make a case why we should conduct SOME diplomacy in the manner you describe, but that situation arose BECAUSE we had state secrecy. It's not a "last resort", it is the seed of the moral hazard. It's what you do because you avoided doing all the "right" things because you always knew you could resort to secrecy in the end. Take away the tool, and they avoid needing it in the first place.

[JackRiddler]

17. +1

[NuclearDem]

19. Fair enough, all good points nt

[JackRiddler]

18. kick for readers

[JackRiddler]

20. kick for writers

[Iterate]

22. I've read a fair number,

enough to quit at the risk of being numbed by it all, and was actually more impressed by how mundane most (90%??) of it is. The rest are summaries only slightly more sophisticated than a good newspaper, and some behind-the-scenes detail of already reported stories.

Is there anything there to this point that wasn't know, assumed, or guessed at by the well read DUer? Did anyone think that Prince Andrew wasn't a horses ass? or does the shock come from seeing in detail of just how he accomplishes it? Did anyone still believe that China does have influence over NK? or that the US didn't pressure Spain?

Some of the cables offer new background detail to known stories, such as the effort to get German MEPs to support US efforts to monitor European electronic banking. Not surprising there either.

Actually, if anyone would stop and take a deep breath, unless there would be some unknown game-changer lurking in the release, the egg will be on the face of the daily media -for being such lazy shits and endlessly repeating the same conventional, talking point stories.

[JackRiddler]

23. Less than 300 total out of 251 thousand cables have actually been released.

Going by the Wikileaks "Cable Viewer" site, which is currently down. That's the actual public access to the cables. And even out of that, we've seen items like evaluation of the Honduran coup, the order to spy on the UN, the Saudi king pressuring the US to bomb Iran, the Russians refuting the US story that Iran has long range missiles from NK, etc.

The rest so far is what the big press organs want to release, entirely with their own spin. Thus the NY Times and Co. trying to turn this into bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.

Before I even call this a leak, I'm waiting until at least 1/100th of the documents are available to me, not being fed to me in spinning chunks by the Times and Co.

[JackRiddler]

24. Part II: Gideon Rose, Editor of Foreign Policy,

But first, today's Guardian Headlines:

Putin labels embassy cables 'slanderous'

Russian prime minister condemns US cable describing him and President Dmitry Medvedev as Batman and Robin

Leaks culprit should be executed, says Mike Huckabee
UK police seek Julian Assange over rape claims


If Assange is genuine I'd be advising him that the time has come to dump the whole thing online, anywhere, everywhere. Somewhere between 600,000 and 3 million people had access to the cable database, which means all of the major powers and intel agencies downloaded it quietly long ago, which means any individual agent who can be compromised already was, and the only ones without access are the people. These aren't intel cables, they're the business memos of supposed public servants.


My dishwashing today featured more of Brian Lehrer, this time with Gideon Rose (identified as the "liberal" editor of Foreign Affairs, the CFR organ) in a controlled froth about the child anarchist Assange and his attack on diplomacy and America. To summarize his spin: Spying is fine because everybody does it. (1) The apparent exception, however, is Manning. He's a traitor!!! and they will and should throw away the key. The cables show nothing, just a lot of irrelevant personal gossip that no one needs to know (2). But the cables also show how American diplomats are conscientious grown-ups trying to manage the world responsibly, and those who think otherwise have seen too many conspiracy movies. (He did a little review of "Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" and said Assange thinks he's the girl.) If you've got a problem with that, how would YOU like to tell us the best way to run the Middle East?! Come on, what's your alternative for ruling the world? Let the adults take care of business! At one point he veered into complaining about how so many other countries also don't get how hard it is to be in charge of the whole planet and each and every region. (3)

(1) This was said plainly, as though that makes it all right to bug Ban Ki Moon's office and steal his credit card number. I'm sure Moon's doing it to Clinton, or goddamn it he would be if the roles were reversed, because that's the only way the world works.

(2) except for the hundreds of thousands who had access?

(3) Of course no mention was made that still so far less than 300 cables have been released to the public (Cable Viewer is currently DOWN) and that the spin and cherrypicking has been conducted entirely by NYT and Co.

Yesterday Baer showed the empire's mode of thinking from a more operative level -- damn it, how can we bomb people if we can't keep secrets?! -- and now Rose shows the perspective from the top: elite hatred of democracy.

This illustrates Chomsky's take:

Noam Chomsky: WikiLeaks Cables Reveal "Profound Hatred for Democracy on the Part of Our Political Leadership"
By Noam Chomsky and Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!
Posted on November 30, 2010, Printed on December 1, 2010
http://www.alternet.org/story/149032/

[JackRiddler]

25. Next-day kicker!