The ongoing saga of Julian Assange's leaked documents raises some interesting issues. They are pretty much the same ones raised by earlier such revelations, beginning at least with the Pentagon Papers. With each iteration, these incidents become more and more ho-hum, because the pattern of publication, denial, argument over whether the leaks hurt or help, vacillation over whether the leaker will be or can be prosecuted -- is pretty much the same.
One thing that stands out to me, in considering a continuing succession of such cases, is that the leakers must generally be immense egotists. They know far better than an entire government what should be public, and better than any intelligence service what damage can be done by releasing information.
Do leaks do damage? Yes, of course. The damage can range from the lethal to the merely humorous. The immediate effects -- the careless release of a document that might reveal the identities of spies and get them killed -- are often clear, even to the leakers, but they go ahead in pursuit of a more important "truth." Less visible are the effects known to every intelligence pro: That espionage works bit by bit, combining a shred of information from one source with something else from halfway around the world, adding some others, until a story can be pieced together. The more little bits available, the more the chances of success; a sentence or a reference can confirm an analyst's hypothesis and give him/her just the certainty needed to piece together the truth.
Assange and his ilk also seem to share a certain naiveté about foreign affairs and diplomacy. So, for example, we have learned that the President of Yemen agrees to take the rap for U.S. strikes against terrorist targets by saying publicly they are being carried out by his own forces. He wants to cooperate with us in fighting terrorism but doesn't want to be public about it, or to have it said that U.S. forces are operating in his country, because that would generate political backlash against him. By participating in this charade, the U.S. may keep a cooperating foreign government from being deposed. Is there anyone who really thinks that's a bad deal for U.S. security? Conversely, when the arrangement becomes public, cooperation is jeopardized.
Sometimes the "harm" is only to put the spotlight on facts already in evidence. The U.S. public pays little attention to foreign affairs, but may get its collective dander up over revelations of the seamy side of foreign affairs. Anyone who has followed the available unclassified news stories about Pakistan and terrorism should already be aware that elements in Pakistan, including some parts of the government, appear to have worked against our policies in the region. It's not news, but having it highlighted in the media can penetrate the uninterest barrier of those who don't really care, creating a sense, for a few seconds at least, that something untoward is occurring.
Finally, I suspect leakers don't have much sense of humor. Leaked documents do have a lighter side, as Dana Milbank attests in "Amidst Wikileaks, Novel Diplomacy," in the Washington Post. Milbank has unearthed one of the gems of a special genre. This kind of diplomatic dispatch, poking fun where not much serious is going on, offering a sampling of atmosphere where there is little substance, is classic. Some have been published as books, for example, several short works by Lawrence Durrell (more famous as the author of The Alexandria Quartet) entitled Stiff Upper Lip, Esprit De Corps, Sauve Qui Peut, and Antrobus Complete. Others make the rounds among diplomats (I recall a long dispatch by an Australian diplomat from the early 1970s about his attendance at the election ceremony of Liberian President Tubman). I wrote some similar ones myself, back in the day.
Reports like this don't seem to give away much regarding national security. They may be mildly embarrassing, if they leak out while the parties (or the author) are still alive or while the author is still active in diplomacy and trying to maintain good working relations with his contacts. For that reason, they are often classified. They shouldn't be.
To conclude: How should government deal with a leak? Should it, as Charles Krauthammer suggests today, vigorously seek out and prosecute those responsible? It is clear why government may hesitate: Leakers seldom have the long-term impact they anticipate (if anything they create an atmosphere in which even less detail of sensitive arrangements will be committed to writing); government often isn't successful in demonstrating in court that serious harm has been done; and prosecution only serves to give the bean-spillers more publicity. Nevertheless, there are laws against giving away secrets, and an attempt must be made to enforce them if there is to be any hope of maintaining the confidentiality that is often required in our dealings with other nations.
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