- By Jack Shafer - Slate Magazine]
http://www.slate.com/id/2276190/?wpisrc=obnetwork
A U.S. diplomat must possess patience, poise, and tact. He must also be
attentive to cultural differences, a good observer, and proficient in
several languages. When called upon, he must use his skills as a
negotiator
in the national interest. And, as the latest dump of WikiLeaks tells us,
if
the dip works for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, he must also be
prepared to spy on his fellow diplomats.
To be fair to Clinton, she isn't the first secretary of state to issue
cables telling U.S. foreign service officers to spy on other diplomats.
According to the leaked diplomatic cables, Condoleezza Rice likewise
instructed State Department diplomats to collect such intelligence, and
I
wouldn't be surprised if previous secretaries of state encouraged if not
instructed their diplomats to push information-collection all the way to
intelligence-gathering.
But what makes Clinton's sleuthing unique is the paper trail that
documents
her spying-on-their-diplomats-with-our-diplomat orders, a paper trail
that
is now being splashed around the world on the Web and printed in top
newspapers. No matter what sort of noises Clinton makes about how the
disclosures are "an attack on America" and "the international
community," as
she did today, she's become the issue. She'll never be an effective
negotiator with diplomats who refuse to forgive her exuberances, and
even
foreign diplomats who do forgive her will still regard her as the symbol
of
an overreaching United States. Diplomacy is about face, and the only way
for
other nations to save face will be to give them Clinton's scalp.
How embarrassing are the WikiLeaks leaks? A secret cable from April 2009
that went out under Clinton's name instructed State Department officials
to
collect the "biometric data," including "fingerprints, facial images,
DNA,
and iris scans," of African leaders. Another secret cable directed
American
diplomats posted around the world, including the United Nations, to
obtain
passwords, personal encryption keys, credit card numbers, frequent flyer
account numbers, and other data connected to diplomats. As the Guardian
puts
it, the cables "reveal how the US uses its embassies as part of a global
espionage network."
----------------------------------------------------------
Related in Slate
Fred Kaplan explains what the WikiLeaks documents tell us about the
practice
of foreign policy.
Additionally, Clinton's State Department specifically targeted United
Nations officials and diplomats posted to the United Nations. Among the
targeted were Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and permanent
security-council
representatives from China, Russia, France, and the United Kingdom, as
this
secret cable from July 2009 lays out. The State Department also sought
biometric information on North Korean diplomats, security-council
permanent
representatives, "key UN officials," and other diplomats at the United
Nations.
Of course, U.S. diplomats have always collected information, no matter
where
posted. And, as the New York Times reports today, the United States has
routinely placed intelligence officers abroad under the diplomatic cover
of
a State Department posting. But the price of a diplomat (or undercover
intelligence officer) overstepping to engage in what the host nation
considers to be spying has always been expulsion or, as illustrated
earlier
this month in Norway, a demand that the U.S. ambassador explain the
"spying."
As the Times and other publications report, international treaties make
the
United Nations a spy-free zone-or at least they're supposed to make it
spy-free. "In one 2004 episode, a British official revealed that the
United
States and Britain eavesdropped on Secretary General Kofi Annan in the
weeks
before the invasion of Iraq in 2003," the Times reports. Anne Applebaum
writes in Slate today that nobody should be honestly horrified at the
image
of the United States spying in the United Nations. Nobody in the
diplomatic
community is. But that doesn't mean that they're not going to take
advantage
of the moment to demand retribution that will shame the high-and-mighty
United States.
There is no way that the new WikiLeaks leaks don't leave Hillary Clinton
holding the smoking gun. The time for her departure may come next week
or
next month, but sooner or later, the weakened and humiliated secretary
of
state will have to pay.
******
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I guess she did learn something from Nixon whom she helped investigate.
CWSIV
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