At first blush, WikiLeaks' disclosure to newspapers of hundreds of thousands of State Department cables seems like a win for transparency and accountability in government. After all, these documents offer a never before seen window into U.S. diplomacy. But upon closer inspection, WikiLeaks' document dump illustrates the perils of going outside the system, and is likely to result in less transparency in the long run.
For those of us in the transparency business, the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) offers a useful tool to pierce government secrecy. Designed to let the public know what its government is up to, the FOIA mandates disclosure upon request, subject to nine limited exemptions. Those exemptions represent a congressional balancing of governmental interests, such as national security and investigative needs, against the public's need to know. For agencies that stray off course, the FOIA provides judicial review, allowing courts to view requested documents in camera to determine if they were properly withheld. While the FOIA is far from perfect, it provides the public with a useful tool for scrutinizing government actions and policies balanced by oversight and procedural safeguards.
Some may attempt to justify the flaws in WikiLeaks' disclosure process by pointing out the usefulness of the leaked cables. While in the short run we may have gained valuable insight into how the U.S. conducts foreign diplomacy, in the long run WikiLeaks' reckless actions likely will endanger transparency. The government has long relied on a "mosaic theory" to justify withholding unclassified information from FOIA requesters. According to this theory, bits of unclassified and seemingly innocuous information may threaten national security when they are pieced together in a broad compilation or "mosaic." The next time the government attempts to invoke this theory to justify withholding a document under the FOIA, it will point to the actions of WikiLeaks as Exhibit A for why the government must maintain the secrecy of non-classified documents. Courts will be more likely to agree that the FOIA's exemptions should be stretched to accommodate the government's concerns. Post-WikiLeaks, the mosaic theory may have no discernable limits.
We can also anticipate legislation equating the actions of WikiLeaks with those of journalists, subjecting both to greater risk of criminal prosecution. However irresponsibly WikiLeaks has acted, the newspapers that published portions of the leaked cables appear to have proceeded with far greater caution. And, unlike WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the newspapers were not motivated by a desire to harm U.S. interests. Nevertheless, in the emotional aftermath of such an enormous leak, any legislative backlash against WikiLeaks may also sweep in journalists, failing to distinguish WikiLeaks and similar entities from other media.
Finally, contrary to some suggestions, WikiLeaks is not a whistleblower. Decades ago a whistleblower by the name of Daniel Elsberg, motivated by a desire to inform the public of illegal governmental misconduct, leaked to the New York Times and Congress a copy of the Pentagon Papers. The newspaper published the papers after discussions with the government to aid public debate on issues of great national importance. WikiLeaks, by contrast, seeks to advance an agenda of self-aggrandizement at the expense of U.S. interests, with reckless disregard for the consequences of its actions. Furthermore, the State Department cables are hardly the Pentagon Papers, but instead a vast collection of documents that, at most, reveal some embarrassing moments in our foreign diplomacy. Steven Aftergood, who has campaigned tirelessly against government secrecy, has it right: "WikiLeaks must be counted among the enemies of open society because it does not respect the rule of law."
Note: This article was updated at 9:53 AM EST, 12/15/10
Follow Anne L. Weismann on Twitter: www.twitter.com/CREWcrew
Actually she has become part of the spin cycle by regurgitating the nonsense that there is a difference between the Pentagon Papers and the Wikileaks leaks. Both have undergone scrutiny and redaction. The US government was requested to be a part of the redaction process but declined, leaving it to the journalists. So journalist do what journalists do, they publish.
Has anyone seen the reports of the Rove connection? Rove is a friend of the Prime Minister of Sweden.
I'm with Glenn......
The FOIA is irretrievably broken... just ask the ACLU.
The warning the author offers - that publishing the unspun truth merely drives truth further underground - is woefully misguided. Had we heeded her advice, Nixon would have completed his term - and the Viet Nam war might still be raging.
Ellsberg strongly rejects the mantra "Pentagon Papers good; WikiLeaks material bad." "That's just a cover for people who don't want to admit that they oppose any and all exposure of even the most misguided, secretive foreign policy. The truth is that EVERY attack now made on WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was made against me and the release of the Pentagon Papers at the time."
I constantly read thru comments that hoist up the strong tradition of a "freedom of the press." What is never mentioned in many of the comments, is, that it works both way. The government has equal rights under the law to state its concern. Just as any citizen has the right to have their "papers" secure, the government also has that right. Mr. Assange came into possession of classified material, to what extent is the Government of the United States aware of the possible dissemination of that information?
Wrong. The people are (or are intended by the fundamental principles of our democratic system as codified by the US Constitution) soverign, NOT THE GOVERNMENT. We are citizens, not subjects. The government's business is OUR BUSINESS and we have every right to see everything, and the government has no "right" to conceal anything. The government certainly has a duty to act responsibly -- good luck on that one -- but that's an entirely different matter. The simple fact is that government secrecy has become the means by which the ruling elite secures its power OVER the people. Consequently government secrecy -- and the control of information that it implies -- is the fundamental tool for the restoration of the authoritarianism of old.
I suspect that Ms. Weissman holds her view because she already sees herself as one of the ruling elite. Or perhaps she's just a political partisan and sees Wikileaks as an assault on her tribe and its current control of the executive.
Monroe warned that there would be those who continually seek to erode our liberties in the name of safety and security, until finally all liberty has been erased. It didn't hold water when Bush used it, and it doesn't hold water here.
If Obama actually ran a "transparent" administration like he promised, he and his staff might have a case. But the failure to prosecute for war crimes the actions in Iraq? For torture and other violations of the Geneva Accords? The failure to hold account the massive fraud perpetrated by the bankers and mortgage houses, and indeed, keeping on some from the prior administration so they can continue their dirty deeds? Welfare for corporations and the super-rich? No. Bring on the lights. I'd rather go hunting for rats.
There hasn't been anything this potentiallÂÂÂÂÂÂÂy historic at least since the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle. (Last Friday's Democracy Now captures the hysteria Assange & Co. have provoked.)
Martin Luther King, Jr. (and Erich Fromm before him) famously pointed out the problem of being "well adjusted". Being "well adjusted" means tolerating the morally intolerablÂe in the name of practicaliÂty.
We should all be "maladjustÂed" -- to Pax AmericanisÂm, to power abuse (in all its forms), to grotesque inequalityÂ, to cultural vapidity, to the smugness of elites, to lifestyle uber alles, to ethnocentrÂism and financial elite supremacy, to barbaric secretive military actions abroad and authoritarÂian civil libertiesÂ-obliteratÂing surveillanÂce/policinÂg state practices at home, to the fall of rehabilitaÂtion-based correctionÂs and the rise of a nationwide punitive Gulag, aka "Houses of the Dead".
As Martin Luther King said: "The world is in desperate need of such maladjustmÂent."
Julian Assange is "maladjustÂed". He has now joined the pantheon of illustriouÂs predecessoÂrs (King, Henry David Thoreau, et al) temporarilÂy jailed for his peaceable actions against a world "out of joint". He now has in common with them ShakespearÂe's (Hamlet's) lament: "O cursed spite, That ever I was born to set it right!"
More power to him and his similarly "maladjustÂed" Wikileaks colleaguesÂ.
Eric C. Jacobson
Public Interest Lawyer
Culver City, California
"Prior to joining CREW, Ms. Weismann served as deputy chief of the Enforcement Bureau at the Federal Communications Commission, where she had responsibility for all of the Bureau’s telecommunications matters. Before that, she worked in the of the Department of Justice where for many years she served as an assistant branch director with supervisory responsibility over banking litigation, housing litigation, and from 1995 through 2002 all government information litigation. Prior to that she worked in the Solicitor’s Office of the Department of Labor."
and thank god for julian assange and wikileaks.
"WikiLeaks must be counted among the enemies of open society because it does not respect the rule of law."
So do we add to this list most all banks and loan companies to this. Do we add Blackwater, Most from the Bush administration?? Lady you may write but you are not the press.
It is precisely that agitation that so alarms Feinstein, for the inconvenieÂÂÂnt truths she has concealed in her Senate role would have indeed shocked many of those who voted for her. She knew in real time that Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack, yet she voted to send young Americans to kill and be killed based on what she knew to be lies. It is her duplicity, along with the leaders of both political parties, that now stands exposed by the WikiLeaks documents.
That is why U.S. governmentÂÂÂal leaders will now employ the massive power of the state to discredit and destroy Assange, who dared let the public in on the depths of official deceit—a deceit that they hide behind in making their claims of protecting national security. Claims mocked by released cables that show that our puppets in Iraq and AfghanistaÂÂÂn are deeply corrupt and anti-democÂÂÂratic, and that al-Qaida continues to find its base of support not in those countries but rather in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates, the very nations we arm and protect.
balance of article
http://wwwÂÂÂ.commondÂrÂeÂams.orÂg/ÂviÂew/2Â010Â/12Â/0Â8-2
After a CT state's attorney threatened me with prosecution if I continued to expose my accusations of theft against corporate lawyers, I contacted the Bridgeport, CT, office of the FBI; and followed up with a written account of the instance of being threatened and evidence supporting my accusations. After a couple of phone calls, the FBI agent said they were starting a file on the matter. When nothing happened after a while and the entrapment scheme and witness intimidation of me was escalating, I put in a FOIA request to see what was in the file with the FBI.
When I received the material, not only were some of the documents I had sent in not in it, but the name of the CT state's attorney I had identified who had threatened me was blacked out. The assumption to be drawn from the material in the file including the reason the file was started was that I was some kind of troublemaker who needed to be watched closely. The FBI had started a "file" on me, with anyone (such as me) who wanted to see it being obviously intentionally mislead about me, the grounds for my contact with the FBI, and the reason the file was started.
Resources independent of government are critical.
An impeccable argument, Ms. Weismann.