POLITICS NOVEMBER 29, 2010
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The Wikileaks cables are certainly important: They make public the sort of first-hand, original-source information that, until now, it has taken historians and journalists years or decades to obtain. But does this mean that the days of secret diplomacy are over? Not even close. The reason is that the foreign policy bureaucracy will adjust, as it has before.
True, Wikileaks has taken us well beyond the types of disclosures that the Freedom of Information Act, for the past several decades, has provided to journalists and historians. Like other authors, I occasionally file requests for State Department cables and other documents. Often, the files you’re seeking come back years too late. The hapless State Department officials assigned to handle Freedom of Information requests—who are generally not the most talented, up-and-coming people in the department—seem to delight in releasing only the most trivial and meaningless cables, and in doing so after a book has already been published.
Even my one unusually successful use of the Freedom of Information Act took five years. I had noticed a reference to a study of China’s negotiating behavior, done for the National Intelligence Council. When I filed for it, I got back several years of denials and excuses. Finally, my newspaper, the Los Angeles Times, filed suit, and, a year later, the study was released, with abundant detail about the development of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger’s diplomacy with Beijing. And yet, even that study was heavily redacted. (There are sections about American arms sales to Taiwan in the study that, I believe, have still not been made public.) Now, with the Wikileaks documents, we have State Department cables about events from 2010, with no deletions, blackouts, or redactions.
But secret diplomacy is not going to suddenly become a thing of the past. After the Freedom of Information Act was passed in 1966, there were predictions by mournful government officials that there could be no more secrets—and yet, our bureaucrats quickly adapted, finding ways to keep things in the dark. Not everything has to be put in a State Department cable. There are intelligence channels, sensitive compartmentalized information, and so on.
In fact, let’s come back to that example of the Nixon-Kissinger diplomacy on China. Virtually none of it went through the regular State Department cables. Kissinger kept the State Department out of the opening to China from the beginning—because he was scared the news would leak. He wasn’t afraid of Wikileaks, of course, or even the Freedom of Information Act. He was afraid that friends of Taiwan inside the U.S. government, like the CIA official Ray Cline or Senator Barry Goldwater, might see the cable and leak the news on their own to Chiang Kai-shek’s government.
When the Nixon administration opened a liaison office in Beijing, the precursor to the embassy, it very quickly arranged to have an intelligence channel that was separate from the State Department cables. Kissinger and the Chinese agreed that each government would have a single, declared intelligence officer in the other’s capital; the late Jim Lilley became the first CIA officer in Beijing. And one of his first jobs was to make sure that the real secrets didn’t go into the regular State Department cables.
So, while the cables released by Wikileaks will give new meaning to the words “modern history,” and, while we now know more than we ever did before about the State Department’s recent diplomacy, it’s also worth remembering that State Department cables don’t contain everything. And, yes, there will still be secrets in the future.
James Mann is an author-in-residence at Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies.
11 comments
What Mann reveals, maybe unintentionally, is that we don't know what we know or what we don't know about international relations (or diplomacy, to use the optimistic and scientific sounding term - diplomacy, it's like political "science") since only those with an objective provide the "information" deemed suitable for public disclosure. That an Afghanistan politician is carrying around suitcases full of US cash ($52 million) may embarass our "friends" in Afghanistan, but it also will make most Americans mad as hell. And that's a bad thing?
- rayward
November 29, 2010 at 2:57pm
What I find most interesting/bizarre about the whole Wikileaks episode(s) is that all of the documents thus far released, whether on Iraq, Afghanistan, or this week's diplomatic cables were supplied to Julian Asange by a single US Army private. Why in the world does an Army pfc have access to State dept cables and in a format that he can readily download hundreds of thousands of pages to a CD and walk off with it? It makes no sense. In her New Yorker blog post on the subject, Jane Mayer suggests that most of the DoS docs leaked weren't all that secret and mentions that even the most secret among them were viewable by 3 million different people in the USG. Okay, but why could this private grab all of them at once? I've worked in a VA hospital. All VA hospitals rely upon an electronic medical record and all use the same IT system. As a VA doc, I was granted access to the electronic records of my patients. As an ethical matter I was prohibited from view the records of anyone who wasn't actually my patient, but as a practical matter I could have looked up the record of anyone who had ever been seen at that particular VA, at least those records generated on site. What I couldn't do was automatically view records generated at other VAs. Nor could engineer a dump of the records of all patients at my VA; if I wanted to see them, I'd have to bring them up one at a time. Now maybe this Pfc was some kind of skilled computer hacker and he hacked the system from the inside, but nobody I've read has suggested that. If not, why did he--or anyone--have access to such large pools of documents in a readily downloadable form?
- AaronW
November 29, 2010 at 7:33pm
AaronW: the correct question indeed. I vaguely recall from the New Yorker profile of Assange that the data dumps were accumulated over a period of some time. But, that Army pfc must have been as engaged a hacker as SA McGee on NCIS. I believe a few other small fish will be rolled out in due time. And the theory that 'foreign intelligence services' seeded documents in the data dumps as Zbignew$#@% suggested on the PBS Newshour will no doubt get echo. yeah, I feel really confident about cyber-security in general these days :)
- K2K
November 29, 2010 at 8:09pm
This is long, but if you want to know more about how US intelligence works from the inside, read on. AaronW and K2K: It was not necessary at all that the PFC was a hacker, or even uncommonly skilled with computers. From 1995 to 2005 I worked in the same environment that he did, first as an enlisted intelligence analyst just like Manning and then as a DoD civilian. What Manning did was technically very simple and easy to explain. The US government supports several distinct 'Internets', each completely, physically removed from the others, and of course also from this one that you're now reading on. Each net serves a different broad classification level of data. The first step in seeing how Manning got away with this is a gradual move of the intelligence community over the past few decades towards off-the-shelf computer systems, for purely cost purposes. No more expensive (but highly secure) bespoke hardware and software designed by trusted contractors. Now, it's Microsoft and Oracle for everyone. This makes it technically as easy to manage the data on those multiple internets as it is on your own computer at home. Next, before 9/11, each intelligence agency (and there are more than you know) kept its own secrets and generally shared them only under duress. This was partly just bureaucratic fief-building, but it was also a practical solution to a real problem. Each agency, and each person within the agencies, had a "need to know" that encompassed a limited slice of the enormous pie of knowns, unknowns, and possiblies that make up a nation's intelligence resources. If someone was "turned" or just got pissed off, he or she could cause only limited harm because they had very limited access. The falling of the twin towers and subsequent "war on terror" radically changed that. In the ensuing investigation, it was apparent that CIA knew some stuff, FBI knew other stuff, NSA knew something similar from a different angle, and so on. No one was talking to anyone else because everyone was handcuffed by "need to know" restrictions and bureaucratic mistrust. Consequently, pooling the country's cumulative knowledge about a particular person or group---connecting the dots---was rare and next to impossible. As a result, the way that the US intelligence world operates was radically transformed almost overnight. While those multiple internets had been around for a while, they now became much more open and widely used, to a point where anyone with a TS/SCI clearance had the same effective access as anyone else with the same clearance. Except in very limited spheres, "need to know" was replaced by "share with your neighbor." Part two of this is that there was a deluge of money from the Bush administration into intelligence work, both government and corporate. As a result, there were very, very many more people who had those TS/SCI clearances. And part three is that all the intel agencies were forced under a single roof and told to share and play nice. Don't think they liked it. So, this was the environment that PFC Manning was working in. Aside from the fact that he would have had several computers on his desk, he was operating within a space that looked exactly like normal office work: he was doing internet research, writing reports, interacting with co-workers who were often in other parts of the world, etc. Technically, nothing more challenging than your average journalist is capable of. Furthermore, the technical and organizational barriers that 20 years ago would have made him incapable of finding and collating all that data no longer existed; intel was now wide open, by design. Perhaps it became too open. I suspect that this is exactly what the Obama administration will conclude from this and that another shake-up is imminent. But I hope this explains a bit how easy it is for someone in Manning's position, once one possesses a high level clearance, to walk off with a great deal of damaging information. Frankly, it could have been much, much worse. (And the government knows it.)
- bacchant
November 29, 2010 at 9:08pm
This Wikileaks data dump really exposes how poorly run our State Department is. First, The Sec of State is appalled by the leak, but really this is her failure. She fails and lets out 250,000 documents and thinks this is not her fault. It's some nefarious hacker. No, our government failed us. Second, the President jumped right in on the Military and fiered General Stanley McChrystal when his candid comments were aired. But the Diplomats get to run their mouths inappropriately? Heads should roll. This is an embarassment of epic proportions. Sadly, no one will be held accountable. Can you imagine this happening any where else in the world?
- CRS9TNR
November 29, 2010 at 10:29pm
Related article from The Atlantic on the Pentagon's strategy for preventing future leaks: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/opinions/view/opinion/How-the-Pentagon-Hopes-to-Prevent-More-WikiLeaks-Embarrassments-5961
- bacchant
November 29, 2010 at 11:36pm
Uh, CRS9TNR, the DOS leak was at the hands of the same person and was of similar magnitude both in volume and sensitivity as leaks from DOD and the military. You will surely not take offense if I ask whether after the Iraq and Afghanistan Wikileaks dumps you were so quick to demand that heads roll among the Army brass. You will no doubt correct me if I'm mistaken, but I'm betting after the military communications were leaked, you demanded no one's head but Julian Assange's and Private Manning's. If I'm right, why the sudden outrage? It couldn't have anything to do with the fact that DOD is run by a Bush admin holdover and the Joint Chiefs are, well, the Joint Chiefs while State is run by Hillary Clinton, could it?
- AaronW
November 30, 2010 at 6:30am
"Can you imagine this happening any where else in the world?" No, but not for the reason you suppose. It couldn't happen anywhere else in the world because there is no other country in the world that is simultaneously as powerful and as open as the United States of America. Julian Assange could play his games in his native Australia--where I happen to live--but who would pay any attention? The Australians certainly wouldn't. China's secrets would definitely be worth a look, but that'll never happen because any potential Chinese leaker in Pfc Manning's position would have to understand that his life wasn't worth a hill of moldy beans. I wouldn't make book on Mr. Assange's long-term survival either.
- AaronW
November 30, 2010 at 6:41am
AaronW: "I wouldn't make book on Mr. Assange's long-term survival either." This made me laugh out loud. :) At the moment, Assange has little to worry about since what we've seen of the leaks is merely embassy chatter. Sensitive and secret, but not "top secret" in the sense that details of current operations are. Really, every embassy in the world spies on and gossips about it's friends and every government understands this. The current US tactic of calling this "terrorism" is a gross overstatement of the material's importance. However, if Assange starts posting names of CIA contacts in Waziristan, I wouldn't want to be in the same car with him. Or near him. Or even in the same city.
- bacchant
November 30, 2010 at 10:42am
AaronW - The DOD leaks did not raise my hackels. The Army is fighting 2 wars and is constantly undere attack from all directions. In addition they had a figure who they felt was responsible and were going to take responsibility and action. DOS is not taking responsibility and they are acting like this is a surprise. Step 1, admit you have a problem. Step 2, Do something about it.
- CRS9TNR
November 30, 2010 at 8:54pm
"DOS is not taking responsibility and they are acting like this is a surprise." CRS9TNR, Taking responsibility for what? The Army trained, vetted, cleared and supervised Manning. He had access to virtually everything on siprnet from a variety of military service and agencies, and apparently chose to upload and transmit State Dept. cables as well as Army sitreps. What is it you think DoS could have or should have done?
- ccarrick@vzavenue.net-old
November 30, 2010 at 10:33pm