As , Wikileaks and its controversial spokesmodel Julian Assange released on the Web this week, kicking off Cablegate and causing a crisis in international relations not seen since the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, the opening shot of World War I.
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It will probably take months to tease out all the nuggets buried in those documents, none classified Top Secret but many of which contain candid, juicy tidbits about foreign leaders and their governments not intended for public consumption. Recovering from the damage caused by the release of this information will take much longer, if it happens at all.
Imagine every unkind thing you've thought or said about everyone you've ever met exposed to the very people you said or thought them about. That would empty your Facebook friends list in a hurry. Now imagine some of those friends having nuclear weapons. In a word: Ka-boom.
The New York Times -- not from WikiLeaks but from the U.K.'s Guardian newspaper, which shared the docs as part of a collaborative agreement to parse out the impact of the revelations. Reuters and other news organizations have also been since their official release. Some of the choicer bits:
* U.S. authorities have concluded that yes, the Chinese government was responsible for the and more than 30 other U.S. companies last winter. We are shocked -- shocked, we tell you -- to learn of such evildoing on behalf of our Chinese comrades.
* The Saudis are still the primary bankrollers of Al-Qaeda but also wouldn't mind seeing Iran bombed back to the stone age (or at least its pre-nuclear state).
* The increasing coziness between Russian strongman Vladimir Putin and Italian Prime Minister/Party Animal-in-Chief Silvio Berlusconi has the United States a little worried.
* China is sick to death of Korea's Kim Jong Il and his ridiculous shenanigans. Even to Beijing, the puppet version of Jong Il in "South Park: The Movie" was less of a nut job.
Alternately, some of the revelations were, well, a bit more soap opera:
* It seems Libyan strongman Muammar el-Qaddafi has a voluptuous blonde Ukrainian travel mate who doubles as his "senior nurse." (Hey, when you live in a desert and want to stay fresh, you require a lot of sponge baths.)
* Ali Abdullah Saleh, president of conservative Muslim Yemen, apparently appreciates a snort of fine American whiskey now and again. (But he's quite devout about drinking it on his knees while facing east.)
* The United States suspects Argentine President Cristina Fernandez may be off her rocker. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reportedly wanted to find out if Fernandez was taking medication. You know, you ask the same question of a lot of world leaders.
That certainly will result in some awkward silences at the next state dinner, assuming the White House can find anyone willing to RSVP.
Meanwhile, a self-appointed "hacktavist" known only as yesterday, taking the site offline for a few hours before . It seems all the good supervillian nicknames were taken.
Cablegate has great entertainment value, I grant you. I'd lay you odds somebody in Hollywood is negotiating the movie rights at this very moment, though nothing revealed so far seems to do more than a) state the obvious, or b) embarrass the guilty, let alone put lives at risk. Still, you have to wonder, what the frak was WikiLeaks thinking? And what does this era of transparency at any cost portend for more deadly state secrets that find their way onto the Web? The outlook isn't pretty.
As much as it might claim to be otherwise, WikiLeaks is hardly acting like an impartial, disinterested party. For example, it appears to play favorites with news outlets based on how favorably they treat the site and Assange, its controversial public face. WikiLeaks offered early versions of the documents to some (like the Guardian, Spain's El Pais, France's Le Monde, and Germany's Der Spiegel) but withheld them from the New York Times. Presumably the Times found itself unfriended after it published in October. One juicy excerpt: "...some of his own comrades are abandoning him for what they see as erratic and imperious behavior, and a nearly delusional grandeur unmatched by an awareness that the digital secrets he reveals can have a price in flesh and blood."
According to the Washington Post, Assange and company offered the docs to CNN and the Wall Street Journal but with conditions neither outlet was unwilling to accept -- including if either outlet revealed the documents before WikiLeaks wanted them to. He's not exactly the sainted Daniel Ellsbergian figure he might want the world to see him as, Mr. Assange.
I've defended WikiLeaks in the past, arguing that the world needs a resource that can reveal the unvarnished truth without falling prey to coercion from suppressive governments and/or corporate overlords. But Cablegate strays into territory less like whistleblowing and more like reality TV. Just how newsworthy is the fact that Libya's leader has a Ukrainian sponge-honey or Yemen's Muslim leader has a fondness for Johnny Walker Black?
WikiLeaks promised to release even more documents this week. Maybe these will reveal news the world desperately needs -- something vital and earth shaking. But I doubt it.
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