WikiLeaks and War Crimes
Jeremy Scahill
The Nation
August 12, 2010
http://www.thenation.com/article/154000/wikileaks-and-war-crimes
Four months before WikiLeaks rocketed to international notoriety, the Robin Hoods of the Internet quietly published a confidential CIA document labeled "NOFORN" (for "no foreign nationals")—meaning that it should not be shared even with US allies. That's because the March "Red Cell Special Memorandum" was a call to arms for a propaganda war to influence public opinion in allied nations. The CIA report describes a crisis in European support for the Afghanistan war, noting that 80 percent of German and French citizens are against increasing their countries' military involvement. The report suggests that "Afghan women could serve as ideal messengers in humanizing the [International Security Assistance Force] role in combating the Taliban because of women's ability to speak personally and credibly about their experiences under the Taliban, their aspirations for the future, and their fears of a Taliban victory."
On July 25 WikiLeaks published its massive cache of classified documents on the war in Afghanistan. Four days later, Time magazine posted on its website its August 9 cover story, featuring a horrifying image of a beautiful young Afghan woman named Aisha with a gaping hole where her nose once was, under the headline "What Happens if We Leave Afghanistan"—echoing the strategy laid out in the Red Cell report [see Ann Jones, "Our Afghan Demons," page 4].
These two media events unfolded in starkly different ways. While Time has been praised for telling Aisha's story, WikiLeaks has been characterized as a criminal syndicate with blood on its hands. Former Bush administration speechwriter Marc Thiessen called for the United States to use whatever means necessary to snatch WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, including rendering him from abroad. Others have called for the United States to shut down WikiLeaks and prosecute its members. Michigan Republican Congressman Mike Rogers has called for the alleged leaker, 22-year-old Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning, to be executed if he is convicted.
Time managing editor Richard Stengel drew the contrast with WikiLeaks in an editor's letter accompanying the story, claiming that the WikiLeaks documents, unlike the Time article, fail to provide "insight into the way life is lived" in Afghanistan or to speak to "the consequences of the important decisions that lie ahead." Actually, the documents do exactly that. WikiLeaks may not be a media outlet and Assange may not be a journalist, but why does it matter? The documents provide concrete evidence of widespread US killings of Afghan civilians and attempts to cover up killings, and they portray unaccountable Special Operations forces as roaming the country hunting people—literally. They describe incidents of mass outrage sparked by the killing of civilians and confirm that the United States is funding both sides of the war through bribes paid to the Taliban and other resistance forces.
There was a brief moment when it seemed the contents of the WikiLeaks documents would spark an inquiry into what they say about the war and the way the United States is conducting it. "However illegally these documents came to light, they raise serious questions about the reality of America's policy toward Pakistan and Afghanistan," said Senator John Kerry, chair of the powerful Foreign Relations Committee, on the day the documents were revealed. "Those policies are at a critical stage, and these documents may very well underscore the stakes and make the calibrations needed to get the policy right more urgent."
But two days later, the official meme about WikiLeaks was in full swing: the leaks had endangered American lives. Kerry swiftly changed his tune. "I think it's important not to over-hype or get excessively excited about the meaning of those documents," Kerry said at a hearing on Afghanistan.
But what if what Daniel Ellsberg says about the leaker being a heroic whistleblower is true? What if, like Ellsberg with the Pentagon Papers, Manning really was motivated by conscience to leak documents he believed the American people and the world deserved to see?
Then again, Manning—who has been charged only in connection with the release of the "Collateral Murder" video of a helicopter assault in Iraq—might not even be the leaker. Assange has not confirmed any dealings between WikiLeaks and Manning. In Manning's online chats with Adrian Lamo, the hacker turned government informant who turned him in, Manning claimed to have access to 260,000 classified State Department cables exposing "almost criminal political backdealings." Lamo asked Manning to list the "highlights" of what he gave to WikiLeaks. Among those described by Manning are documents on the US Joint Task Force at Guantánamo, which Manning called the "Gitmo papers," a video of an airstrike in Afghanistan that killed civilians and State Department cables—the information, Manning said, would cause Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to "have a heart attack." Curiously, there was no mention of Afghan war documents. We may never know whether Manning leaked those documents. But what is clear from the chat logs is that Manning believed he was performing a public service by leaking what he did.
In one chat, Manning and Lamo are discussing Manning's passing of documents to WikiLeaks. Lamo asks Manning what his "endgame" is. Manning replies, "god knows what happens now," and adds, "hopefully worldwide discussion, debates, and reforms if not... than [sic] we're doomed as a species."
In one of his last chats with Lamo, reportedly on May 25, Manning says, "what if I were someone more malicious I could've sold to Russia or china, and made bank?"
"Why didn't you?" Lamo asks.
"Because it's public data," Manning responds. "Information should be free it belongs in the public domain...if its out in the open... it should be a public good." He adds: "I’m crazy like that."
Within days, Manning was arrested.
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John Nichols
The Nation
July 26, 2010
The Obama White House was quick to condemn [1] the publication Sunday evening of more than 91,000 secret documents detailing the monumentally misguided and frequently failed attempt by the United States to occupy Afghanistan.
National Security Adviser James Jones took the lead in attacking WikiLeaks for making the details of the war available to the American people—who are, ultimately, supposed to define the direction of US foreign policy—by declaring: “The United States strongly condemns the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organizations which could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk, and threaten our national security."
Despite the fact that the "Afghanistan War Logs," [2] which are being published by the New York Times, the Guardian and Der Speigel, detail the mess in Afghanistan, and point to the bigger mess that will be made if the occupation is expanded as the Obama administration proposes, Jones offered a classic don't-confuse-us-with-the-facts response. "These irresponsible leaks will not impact our ongoing commitment to deepen our partnerships with Afghanistan and Pakistan; to defeat our common enemies; and to support the aspirations of the Afghan and Pakistani people."
The echo you are hearing is that of the Nixon administration responding to the publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Indeed, as Dan Ellsberg, the military analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers says: "I'm very impressed by the release. It is the first release in thirty-nine years or forty years, since I first gave the Pentagon papers to the Senate, of the scale of the Pentagon papers."
We can only hope that Obama and his aides have read enough history to recognize that Nixon's over-reaction to the Pentagon Papers began a process that would lead—at least in part—to a House Judiciary Committee vote to impeach him and the only presidential resignation in the country's history.
It happens that, on the eve of the publication of the Afghanistan logs, I was with Ellsberg. We were in Cleveland at the Progressive Democrats of America conference, [3] where a terrific documentary on Ellsberg—The Most Dangerous Man in America [4]—was screened and I then interviewed the man who exposed the truth about the Vietnam War.
Ellsberg is a fan of WikiLeaks in particular and whistleblowers [5] in general. He argues that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange "is serving our democracy and serving our rule of law precisely by challenging the secrecy regulations, which are not laws in most cases, in this country."
“I’ve sort of been waiting for somebody to do this for forty years," he says [6] of the release and publication of the Afghanistan War Logs.
Of Obama administration attacks on Assange and others, and the administration's broader crackdown on whistleblowers, Ellsberg says wryly: "The's not the kind of change I voted for when I voted for him."
What's the right response from officials who take seriously their oaths to obey a Constitution that places all power with the people—and that necessarily requires that the people get information about wars being waged in their name but without their informed consent?
Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman John Kerry, D-Massachusetts, did a whole lot better than the administration.
"However illegally these documents came to light, they raise serious questions about the reality of America's policy toward Pakistan and Afghanistan," said Kerry, whose discomfort with the Afghanistan operation has grown increasingly evident. "Those policies are at a critical stage and these documents may very well underscore the stakes and make the calibrations needed to get the policy right more urgent."
Kerry should hold hearings with regard to the Afghanistan War Logs.
Other members of the House and Senate should respond as the late Vermont Republican Senator George Aiken did to the publication of the Pentagon Papers: with an objection that "for a long time, the executive branch has tended to regard Congress as a foreign enemy—to be told as little as possible."
Already, there are those who are trying to distinguish between the Pentagon Papers case and the Afghanistan War Logs. The Washington Post's Walter Pincus [7] argues that we all should "pause for a moment before accepting the comparison that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange makes between his release of more than 90,000 secret military documents about the Afghan fighting to that of the Pentagon Papers back in 1971."
Pincus makes a credible point. Of course there are differences in content and the character of that content, in the timing of the release and in the identities of those responsible for the leaks. Even Ellsberg has questions about whether the review of the documents that were recently released was as thorough as his review of the 7,000 pages of the Pentagon Papers
But there is a fundamental—and overarching—similarity that makes Assange right when he tells the Guardian that "the nearest analogue is the Pentagon Papers that exposed how the United States was prosecuting the war in Vietnam."
Ellsberg said in 1971, when he surrended to authorities who planned to try him: "I felt that as an American citizen, as a responsible citizen, I could no longer cooperate in concealing this information from the American public." Ellsberg's argument was that the oaths he had sworn as a Marine [8]and a military analyst were to the Constitution, a document that Jefferson said in his first inaugural address is best defended by "the diffusion of information and the arraignment of all abuses at the bar of public reason."
WikiLeaks says today that: "We believe that transparency in government activities leads to reduced corruption, better government and stronger democracies. All governments can benefit from increased scrutiny by the world community, as well as their own people. We believe this scrutiny requires information.”
Ellsberg has frequently noted "immediate parallels [5]" between the people who these days provide information about the Iraq and Afghanistan occupations to WikiLeaks and the leaking he did during the Vietnam War to the New York Times.
“The secrecy that has enveloped the war in Afghanistan is very costly to us,” argues Ellsberg. [6]
And Ellsberg is no fan of secrecy.
Those who leak and publish the true facts about America's wars, he explains, can usually be said to have "showed better judgment in putting it out than the people who keep [the facts] secret from the American people."
Links:
[1] http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0710/40204.html
[2] http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/world/war-logs.html
[6] http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2010/07/26/ellsberg-wikileaker-should-be-admired-for-his-courage/
[7] http://voices.washingtonpost.com/checkpoint-washington/2010/07/wikileaks_afghanistan_war_log.html
[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg