The US ambassador to Britain, Louis Susman, said: "We have briefed the UK government and other friends and allies around the world about the potential impact of these disclosures … I am confident that our uniquely productive relationship with the United Kingdom will remain close and strong, focused on promoting our shared objectives and values.
Sir Christopher Meyer, who was British ambassador to the US in the Blair years, thought the leaks would have little impact on diplomatic behaviour. Paper would have been impossible to steal in these quantities. The state department's legal adviser has written to the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange and his London lawyer, warning that the cables were obtained illegally and that the publication would place at risk "the lives of countless innocent individuals … ongoing military operations … and co-operation between countries".
The electronic archive of embassy dispatches from around the world was allegedly downloaded by a US soldier earlier this year and passed to WikiLeaks. All five plan to publish extracts from the most significant cables, but have decided neither to "dump" the entire dataset into the public domain, nor to publish names that would endanger innocent individuals.
WikiLeaks says that, contrary to the state department's fears, it also initially intends to post only limited cable extracts, and to redact identities. The cables published today reveal how the US uses its embassies as part of a global espionage network , with diplomats tasked to obtain not just information from the people they meet, but personal details, such as frequent flyer numbers, credit card details and even DNA material.
Classified "human intelligence directives" issued in the name of Clinton or her predecessor, Condoleezza Rice, instruct officials to gather information on military installations, weapons markings, vehicle details of political leaders as well as iris scans, fingerprints and DNA.
The most controversial target was the UN leadership. That directive requested the specification of telecoms and IT systems used by top officials and their staff and details of "private VIP networks used for official communication, to include upgrades, security measures, passwords, personal encryption keys". PJ Crowley, the state department spokesman in Washington, said: "Let me assure you: our diplomats are just that, diplomats.
They do not engage in intelligence activities. They represent our country around the world, maintain open and transparent contact with other governments as well as public and private figures, and report home. That's what diplomats have done for hundreds of years. The dispatches also shed light on older diplomatic issues. One cable, for example, reveals, that Nelson Mandela was "furious" when a top adviser stopped him meeting Margaret Thatcher shortly after his release from prison to explain why the ANC objected to her policy of "constructive engagement" with the apartheid regime.
In , US diplomats reported France as being a difficult ally in the fight against international terrorism , because its specialist investigating magistrates were insular, centred on Paris and operating in "another world".
Spain's political situation and public opinion made this "almost impossible", an official said. The head of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, privately criticised David Cameron and George Osborne now the prime minister and chancellor before the election for their lack of experience , the lack of depth in their inner circle and their tendency to think about issues only in terms of their electoral impact.
Osborne lacked gravitas and was seen as a political lightweight because of his "high-pitched vocal delivery" according to private Conservative polling before the election. US and British diplomats fear that Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme could lead to terrorists obtaining fissile material , or a devastating nuclear exchange with India.
Also, small teams of US special forces have been operating secretly inside Pakistan's tribal areas , with Pakistani government approval. And the US concluded that Pakistani troops were responsible for a spate of extra-judicial killings in the Swat Valley and tribal belt, but decided not to comment publicly. David Cameron said British people generally believe McKinnon is guilty "but they are sympathetic".
The US ambassador to Pakistan said the Pakistani army is covertly sponsoring four major militant groups, including the Afghan Taliban and the Mumbai attackers, Laskar-e-Taiba LeT , and "no amount of money" will change the policy. Also, US diplomats discovered hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to Pakistan earmarked for fighting Islamist militants was not used for that purpose.
Pakistan's army chief, General Ashfaq Kayani, considered pushing President Asif Ali Zardari from office and forcing him into exile to resolve a political dispute, the US embassy cables reveal. Separately, Zardari once told the US vice-president, Joe Biden, he feared the military "might take me out". He told the Americans his sister would lead if he was assassinated.
Another cable revealed that the Pakistani president was described as a "numbskull" by Sir Jock Stirrup, Britain's then chief of defence staff. Senior Lib Dem officials, who now work in No 10 and the Cabinet Office, planned a campaign to depict David Cameron as "fake" and "out of touch" during the election campaign, but abandoned the strategy because it was deemed too aggressive after the death of his son, Ivan. The Tories told the US before the general election that a Conservative government could be tougher on Pakistan as it was less reliant on votes from people with a Pakistani connections than Labour.
Referring to Muslim extremists coming to Britain from Pakistan, Cameron said that under Labour "we let in a lot of crazies and did not wake up early enough".
Zardari claimed that the brother of Pakistan's opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, "tipped off" LeT about impending UN sanctions after the Mumbai attacks , allowing the group to empty its bank accounts.
British diplomats feared India would respond with force to the attacks but the US thought the UK was "over-reacting". The French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, is portrayed as a self-absorbed, thin-skinned, erratic character who tyrannises his ministers and staff but is also a brilliant political tactician, in US memos.
The Saudis were irritated by Sarkozy planning to take Carla Bruni on a state visit to their country before she was married. Sarkozy invited Gordon Brown and the Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper, to last year's D-day commemorations because "the survival of their governments was at stake".
The British government promised to protect US interests during the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war. The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, has been sheltering the leader of the nationalist insurgency in Pakistan's Balochistan province for years.
Le Monde focuses on what the cables say about Sarkozy , notably his pro-Americanism, his idea that an international force could replace the US in Iraq, and the US view on his election that he was "a novice" in international affairs with a poor grasp of English.
The paper has significant coverage of Pakistan, with a story that the Pakistani military and secret service are heavily involved in the country's politics and often work against US interests. A subsidiary of the US private security firm Xe then known as Blackwater flouted German arms export law. It transported German helicopters to Afghanistan via Britain and Turkey without a permit because it was taking too long to get the German export papers.
Russia is a "virtual mafia state" with rampant corruption and scant separation between the activities of the government and organised crime. Vladimir Putin is accused of amassing "illicit proceeds" from his time in office, which various sources allege are hidden overseas.
And he was likely to have known about the operation in London to murder the Russian dissident Alexander Litvinenko, Washington's top diplomat in Europe alleged.
British and US officials colluded to manoeuvre around a proposed ban on cluster bombs , allowing the US to keep the munitions on British territory, regardless of whether a treaty forbidding their use was implemented.
Parliament was kept in the dark about the secret agreement, approved by then-foreign secretary David Miliband. US diplomats believed that the Sri Lankan president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, bore responsibility for a massacre last year that is the subject of a UN war crimes inquiry.
Russia armed Georgian separatists in South Ossetia and Abkhazia and carried out a wave of "covert actions" to undermine Georgia in the runup to the Russian-Georgian war, according to US diplomats. Moscow's veteran mayor Yuri Luzhkov was accused by the US ambassador of sitting on top of a "pyramid of corruption" involving the Kremlin, Russia's police force, its security service, political parties and crime groups by the US ambassador.
Miliband's campaign to champion aid and human rights during the Sri Lankan humanitarian crisis last year was largely motivated by a desire to win favour with Tamil voters in the UK , according to a Foreign Office official. The US is sceptical that Russian President Medvedev has much of a future , believing Putin to be "in the driver's seat". Having helped to build up Georgia's military capabilities, the US made last-ditch diplomatic attempts to try to prevent it going to war with Russia in Washington's envoy to the Caucasus warned Georgia that war would "cost it valuable support in Washington and European capitals" , while publicly George W Bush and his secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, continued to give their unqualified support to Georgia.
The US has long been trying to loosen Russia's grip on Ukraine, according to diplomatic cables. On the inauguration of the new Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, they sought to make him a US partner thereby striking a diplomatic blow against the Kremlin. One of the biggest objectives at the US embassy in Madrid over the past seven years has been trying to get the criminal case dropped against three US soldiers accused of the killing of a Spanish television cameraman in Baghdad.
US diplomats held a host of meetings about the case with high-ranking members of the Spanish government. The Russian prime minister, Putin, often did not show up at his office , according to rumours cited in a document titled Questioning Putin's Work Ethic. US diplomats warned of increasing distrust of the United States in Canada. They described "negative popular stereotyping" of Americans on Canadian TV. They also said Canadians "always carry a chip on their shoulder" in part because of a feeling that their country "is condemned to always play 'Robin' to the US 'Batman'".
The British military was criticised for failing to establish security in Sangin by the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, and the US commander of Nato troops, according to diplomatic cables. Gordon Brown was written off as prime minister by the US embassy in London a year into his premiership. It concluded that an "abysmal track record" had left him lurching from "political disaster to disaster", according to cables released by WikiLeaks.
He briefly earned some praise when he led the recapitalising of banks after the collapse of Lehman Brothers but within months his government was deemed a "sinking ship". Brown's international initiatives, from food summits to global disarmament and a UK national security council, were treated with indifference bordering on disdain by the Americans, according to US embassy cables. The Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, is erratic, emotional and prone to believing paranoid conspiracy theories , according to frustrated diplomats and foreign statesmen.
He has also been accused by his own ministers of complicity in criminal activity, including ordering the physical intimidation of the top official in charge of leading negotiations with the Taliban.
US diplomats have reported suspicions that Silvio Berlusconi could be "profiting personally and handsomely" from secret deals with the Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin , according to cables released by WikiLeaks. They centre on allegations that the Italian leader has been promised a cut of huge energy contracts. Another memo quoted a friend of Berlusconi saying the Italian prime minister's fondness for partying had taken a physical and political toll on him. American officials dismissed British protests about secret US spy flights taking place from the UK's Cyprus airbase , amid concerns from Labour ministers, upset about rendition flights going on behind their backs, that the UK would be an unwitting accomplice to torture.
The British Foreign Office misled parliament over the plight of thousands of islanders who were expelled from their Indian Ocean homeland — the British colony of Diego Garcia — to make way for a large US military base , according to secret US diplomatic cables released by WikiLeaks. It has privately admitted its latest plan to declare the islands the world's largest marine protection zone will end any chance of them being repatriated.
Publicly ministers have claimed the proposed park would have no effect on the islanders' right of return. The cables reveal Washington's opinion on Gordon Brown's potential successors. David Miliband was deemed "too brainy", Alan Johnson had a "lack of killer instinct" and Harriet Harman was a "policy lightweight but an adept interparty operator".
A scandal involving foreign contractors employed to train Afghan policemen who took drugs and paid for young "dancing boys" to entertain them in northern Afghanistan caused such panic that the interior minister begged the US embassy to try to "quash" the story, according a US embassy cable.
The Afghan government feared the story, if published, would "endanger lives" and was particularly concerned that a video of the incident might be made public. Germany has threatened to cancel contributions, raising concerns that money is going to the US treasury.
Iran is financing a range of Afghan religious and political leaders , grooming Afghan religious scholars, training Taliban militants and even seeking to influence MPs, according to cables from the US embassy in Kabul. The US has lost faith in the Mexican army's ability to win the country's drugs war , branding it slow, clumsy and no match for "sophisticated" narco-traffickers. The US is convinced that Ahmed Wali Karzai, the Afghan president's younger half-brother and a senior figure in Kandahar, is corrupt , according to embassy cables.
He is described as dominating access to "economic resources, patronage and protection". Two of Hamid Karzai's brothers planned to ask for asylum in the US, while other family members stayed away and kept their money out of Afghanistan — so anxious were they that the Afghan president would lose last year's election. The Obama administration and Hamid Karzai, the Afghan president, are determined to reject talks with Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, and have consistently worked to split his movement , according to US diplomatic cables.
Karzai has sometimes publicly floated the idea of dialogue with Omar and other top Taliban, but the cables show his private position is the opposite. A Kremlin campaign to airbrush Stalin's role in Russian history by dictating how academics write about the past is only half-hearted , US diplomats believe. They also feel there are enough Russians striving to remember the purge victims to combat any rewrite.
The cable concerns the so-called "history wars", a nationalist campaign to defend Russia's honour. Turkmenistan's president, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, is "vain, suspicious, guarded, strict, very conservative", a "micro-manager" and "a practised liar" , US diplomats say. Four months before his death the Nobel-prize winning writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn offered qualified praise for Vladimir Putin , arguing that he was doing a better job as Russia's leader than Boris Yeltsin or Mikhail Gorbachev.
Solzhenitsyn was exiled from the Soviet Union in and returned to Russia 20 years later. Afghanistan emerges as a land where bribery, extortion and embezzlement are the norm. Describing the likely lineup of Afghanistan's new cabinet last January, the US embassy noted that the agriculture minister, Asif Rahimi, "appears to be the only minister that was confirmed about whom no allegations of bribery exist".
A top German diplomat complained the fee would be a tough sell to taxpayers. Karzai is convinced the US has thrown its backing behind his rival Abdullah Abdullah. The leaked cables contain allegations of personal business interests that both politicians deny.
US diplomats are concerned about the growing power of Russian organised crime and believe it has contacts with the highest levels of government in Moscow. France is committed to staying the course in Afghanistan even though public opposition to the war and electoral considerations have weighed heavily on Nicolas Sarkozy. Amid concerns that the French president was trying to distance himself from the US to improve his popularity, Barack Obama was advised that a phone call to him could have a decisive impact.
The US president was told: "Flattery would lead very far. Iran is extending its influence in Afghanistan in the same way it did in Iraq. It has been supporting insurgent groups as well as financially backing politicians. Conservative party politicians promised before the election that they would run a "pro-American regime" and buy more arms from the US if they came to power.
The president of Yemen secretly offered US forces unrestricted access to his territory to conduct unilateral strikes against al-Qaida terrorist targets. Yemen's president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, is variously labelled as "petulant" and "bizarre" in his negotiations with US security officials who met him. If you are at high risk and you have the capacity to do so, you can also access the submission system through a secure operating system called Tails. Tails is an operating system launched from a USB stick or a DVD that aim to leaves no traces when the computer is shut down after use and automatically routes your internet traffic through Tor.
Our submission system works hard to preserve your anonymity, but we recommend you also take some of your own precautions. Please review these basic guidelines. If you have a very large submission, or a submission with a complex format, or are a high-risk source, please contact us. In our experience it is always possible to find a custom solution for even the most seemingly difficult situations.
If the computer you are uploading from could subsequently be audited in an investigation, consider using a computer that is not easily tied to you. Technical users can also use Tails to help ensure you do not leave any records of your submission on the computer. If you have any issues talk to WikiLeaks. We are the global experts in source protection — it is a complex field. Even those who mean well often do not have the experience or expertise to advise properly. This includes other media organisations.
If you are a high-risk source, avoid saying anything or doing anything after submitting which might promote suspicion. In particular, you should try to stick to your normal routine and behaviour.
Even with this much effort, the five current media partners will only scratch the surface of this material. As a result, Wikileaks will continue seeking media partners to work on the embassy cables. Wikileaks is staging the release of the embassy cables in order to maximise the impact of their release and do justice to the source material. A later phase of this release will involve working with partners in a far wider selection of countries to ensure each country gets to see the real workings of its government's relations with the USA.
Wikileaks protects its sources. We will not publicly comment on the source of any of our releases, how the information was obtained, or on the security measures used to protect sources identities. Our submission systems are secure and anonymized. The US embassy cables cover serious issues for every country in the world with a US diplomatic prescence.
The cables extensively cover the past five years, and reach back to As far as knowledge about what is truly going on in the world can influence our decisions, this material must result in political change and reform. One newspaper has alleged the cables might destabalize the Middle East. These cables, by giving the players an unvarnished description of how they are seen, there will be a common ground on which to effectively negotiate peace and stability.
0コメント