In the ultimate analysis, what Wikileaks really exposed is the ugly side of all of us. Perhaps it is even the repressed side. We all want to know everything that has been kept from us. Knowing the things we are in denial about makes our other self secure in the blissful ignorance of not knowing those things to begin with.
So Wikileaks breached state secrets, maybe even put a few people at risk. What we don't care to clarify is that those people chose a line of work where risk comes with the territory. You cannot plunge into the cloak and dagger world and complain that someone blew your cover. If your cover got blown that easy, you weren't going to be very effective in the clandestine world very long, anyway. And just like natural selection strengthens the species, blown covers expose the weaknesses in the intelligence community. It all remains for that community to do the intelligent thing.
You do not want that weakness to be discovered by terrorists. You want it to be exposed by a bunch of guys that you know, that you can talk to albeit in fierce disagreement and who do not have any motive more sinister than to massage their own ego with the thrill of the scoop and the triumph of blowing the whistle on some very indiscrete red-faced diplomats or sloppy field agents. Crucifying Wikileaks for its mischief achieves nothing for the diplomatic establishment. But it could end up martyring some people who do not necessrily support al Qaeda, to the latter's delight. True, what Wikileaks did was to splatter egg in the face of US foreign policy. But if all the US government does is spank the egg-thrower and not clean up the egg itself, it is sending the message that it is an easy target--and not what it is obviously aching to send: that Wikileaks is a poor shot.
I have seen on YouTUBE the leaked footages of a US Apache helicopter shooting up a group of men, which included two reputable photojournalists of Iraq, before I even heard about the latest spillage of diplomatic cables. The first thing that came to my mind--okay, the second thing after the shock of the carnage--was how the American pilot flying the most sophisticated machine with the sharpest forward imaging capability couldn't tell the difference between a camera and an AK-47.
I had hoped that the reaction of the Pentagon would be to ignore the cutting-edge surveillance and imaging technology that was aboard that Apache helicopter and re-evaluate the cognitive skills of the men flying it instead. It would be utterly useless to have imaging technology that can read license plates from 20 miles out, if the people using such equipment are preconditioned to recognize weapons out of any found object. And it is pointless to ground gunners in pinpoint accuracy if their mentality is to shoot anything that moves.
Before Wikileaks leaked that footage, sparking universal outrage, I doubt if any field evaluation protocols would have taken into account any of these target-side factors. Most likely. the focus would have been on gun-side factors and how to further enhance what gunners do wrong in the battlefield.
This is the dangerous field predisposition that the leaked footage exposed. It's the same danger, in a different but no less malevolent form, that the leaked diplomatic cables expose.
The principle of the error is the same whether you're tripping the trigger of a gatling gun that spits out depleted uranium slugs, or the "send" button of a diplomatic fax machine. If diplomats employ too candid a means to communicate among themselves, and carry over that kind of recklessness in talking to foreign states, something is going to be missent. It's just a matter of time--and of disastrous consequences.
The Wikileaks spill has exposed a critical weakness in the very fiber of US foreign diplomacy. It not only bared the cavalier and loose tongue with which US diplomats converse, it also illustrated how easy it is to lose confidential information like sand through one's fingers at the beach--with none really causing you to. If America's adversaries can discover her failings without even really trying, then those failings must be so obvious and compelling there's little justification for the enormous cost and effort of pretending that everything is on the hush hush.
So how the intelligence establishment reacts to the Wikileaks embarassment will determine whether it can continue to collect intelligence using its elaborate machinery, or just take out an ad in a newspaper and ask volunteers to come forward and submit information in the future.
In the grand scheme of things, Wikileaks is acting like a tracer dye that muddies up the water but shows you just where the hole in the reservoir is--and how much water can pass through.* jrd
