Two thousand cables have been posted by news organizations via WikiLeaks by late Sunday, leaving another 250,000 that could surface to embarrass kleptocrats for months to come. However, former U.S. Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger points out that most foreign officials are likely to overcome any reticence with the United States within six months to a year.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates points out the fact is governments deal with the United States because it's in their interest, not because they like Uncle Sam, not because they trust Uncle Sam, and not because they believe Uncle Sam can keep secrets.
Most classified material is improperly classified; governments oftentimes invoke claims of secrecy to shield themselves from embarrassment, not to protect national security. The attention on minute and often mundane details that shouldn't be classified precipitate a closer look at overclassification, Leaks have a beneficial side effect.
There is a tension between individuals sharing their genuine opinions about another country, or that country's leaders, and concern that their candid assessments in private conversations be revealed. People do keep secrets from one another, including their kith and kin. It is basic human nature. And it is basic human nature to clam up the next time you're talking to a friend who recently blabbed your secrets to a third party.
Not all laws are sacrosanct, and much classified material shouldn't be. Releasing such information is a legitimate form of civil disobedience, because the laws governing release of documents are unjust. Overclassification and other resorts to secrecy to shield the government from public scrutiny are on par with far more egregious violations of the basic rights and liberties of all citizens.
Kleptocrats, traditional media, and courts have lost the power to control the way information is drip-fed in their self-interest. The closed doors of power need to be open to public review. We live increasingly in an Age of Secrecy. It has become the American Way of War, and increasingly draws the curtains over American democracy itself. The wars in Pakistan and Yemen are secret wars. The war in Afghanistan is dominated by secret US Special Operations raids and killings. The CIA has its own secret army in Afghanistan. General Stanley McChrystal's entire record in Iraq was classified. And so on, ad nauseam.
The official fear is we might revolt if we knew the secrets being kept from us. In Rolling Stone's expose of McChrystal's war this year, one top military adviser said that if Americans pulled back and started paying attention to this war, it would become even less popular. McChrystal himself joked about sending out Special Forces units to kill at night then having to scold them in the morning. We should revolt against those who would keep the affairs of empire shrouded. We should not be distracted by the juicy tidbits that may or may not be better left unreported.
Anything that reminds the powerful that they cannot act with complete impunity all the time has to be a good thing. There has been a lot of anguish about how the disclosure of diplomatic cables will make kleptocrats think twice before they candidly express their views, and that this will impede the flow of important information to our government. But such leaks also impede unscrupulous behavior. If you believe our diplomats are unfailingly pure of heart and unerring in judgment, then there is no upside to forcing them to think twice about their words and deeds.
If we assume that at least some of our government agents are flawed human beings, in one way or another, the fact that they might have to think twice not only about what they say, but about what they do, doesn't strike as a clear negative. Granted, shame and embarrassment don't come easily to those in high places.
Leaks, while causing a good deal of embarrassment to our foreign policy apparatus, have not caused harm to ordinary folks. And Secretary of Defense Gates has said that concerns about the disclosures were over-wrought in terms of their likely adverse impact on ordinary diplomatic activities. In other words, we're getting a lot of important information here, things that the public has a right and a need to know, including disclosures about malfeasance and wrong-doing by government agents, without a lot of downside except, again, to embarrass those agents and their bosses.
Forced to choose between truth and power, the Bolsheviks chose power. Their regime and its spinoffs became the gold standard for secretive government. The strength of leaks is that it faces no similar choice. It's not a state, nor do its principals evince any intention of making it one. Truth is its entire portfolio, and this drives kleptocrats insane. It threatens their aspirations to unquestioned power. It forces them to explain themselves to the rest of us: To the serfs who, as kleptocrats see things, exist for the sole purpose of footing the bill, in money and in blood, for those aspirations. Treason and betrayal of the state is service to humanity. Leakers are your friends. Kleptocrats are your enemies. Never forget that.
Prosecuting leakers would be unconstitutional, a stupid idea. The courts have made clear that the First Amendment protects independent third parties who publish classified information. Leakers would be no different from prosecuting the media outlets that also published classified documents. If newspapers could be held criminally liable for publishing leaked information about government practices, we might never have found out about the CIA's secret prisons or the government spying on innocent Americans. Prosecuting publishers of classified information threatens investigative journalism that is necessary to an informed public debate about government conduct, and that is an unthinkable outcome. Politicians should recommit to the ideals of transparency. The public should not have to depend on leaks to the news media and on whistleblowers to know what the government is up to.
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