c.2010 New York Times News Service
WASHINGTON - A cache of a quarter-million confidential U.S. diplomatic cables, most of them from the past three years, provides an unprecedented look at backroom bargaining by embassies around the world, brutally candid views of foreign leaders and frank assessments of nuclear and terrorist threats.
Some of the cables, made available to The New York Times and several other news organizations, were written as recently as late February, revealing the Obama administration's exchanges over crises and conflicts. The material was originally obtained by WikiLeaks, an organization devoted to revealing secret documents. WikiLeaks posted 220 cables, some redacted to protect diplomatic sources, in the first installment of the archive on its website on Sunday.
The disclosure of the cables is sending shudders through the diplomatic establishment, and could strain relations with some countries, influencing international affairs in ways that are impossible to predict.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and U.S. ambassadors around the world have been contacting foreign officials in recent days to alert them to the expected disclosures. A statement from the White House on Sunday said: "We condemn in the strongest terms the unauthorized disclosure of classified documents and sensitive national security information."
The White House said the release of what it called "stolen cables" to several publications was a "reckless and dangerous action" and warned that some cables, if released in full, could disrupt U.S. operations abroad and put the work and even lives of confidential sources of U.S. diplomats at risk. The statement noted that reports often include "candid and often incomplete information" whose disclosure could "deeply impact not only U.S. foreign policy interests, but those of our allies and friends around the world."
The cables, a huge sampling of the daily traffic between the State Department and some 270 embassies and consulates, amount to a secret chronicle of U.S. relations with the world in an age of war and terrorism. Among their revelations, to be detailed in The Times in coming days:
- A dangerous standoff with Pakistan over nuclear fuel: Since 2007, the U.S. has mounted a highly secret effort, so far unsuccessful, to remove from a Pakistani research reactor highly enriched uranium that U.S. officials fear could be diverted for use in an illicit nuclear device. In May 2009, Ambassador Anne Patterson reported that Pakistan was refusing to schedule a visit by U.S. technical experts because, as a Pakistani official said, "if the local media got word of the fuel removal, 'they certainly would portray it as the United States taking Pakistan's nuclear weapons,' he argued."
- Thinking about an eventual collapse of North Korea: U.S. and South Korean officials have discussed the prospects for a unified Korea, should the North's economic troubles and political transition lead the state to implode. The South Koreans even considered commercial inducements to China, according to the U.S. ambassador to Seoul. She told Washington in February that South Korean officials believe the right business deals would "help salve" China's "concerns about living with a reunified Korea" that is in a "benign alliance" with the United States.
- Bargaining to empty the Guantanamo Bay prison: When U.S. diplomats pressed other countries to resettle detainees, they became reluctant players in a State Department version of "Let's Make a Deal." Slovenia was told to take a prisoner if it wanted to meet with Obama, while the island nation of Kiribati was offered incentives worth millions of dollars to take in Chinese Muslim detainees, cables from diplomats recounted. The Americans, meanwhile, suggested accepting more prisoners would be "a low-cost way for Belgium to attain prominence in Europe."
- Suspicions of corruption in the Afghan government: When Afghanistan's vice president visited the United Arab Emirates last year, local authorities working with the Drug Enforcement Administration discovered he was carrying $52 million in cash. With wry understatement, a cable from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul called the money "a significant amount" that the official, Ahmed Zia Massoud, "was ultimately allowed to keep without revealing the money's origin or destination." (Massoud denies taking any money out of Afghanistan.)
- A global computer hacking effort: China's Politburo directed the intrusion into Google's computer systems in that country, a Chinese contact told the U.S. Embassy in Beijing in January, one cable reported. The Google hacking was part of a coordinated campaign of computer sabotage carried out by government operatives, private security experts and Internet outlaws recruited by the Chinese government. They have broken into U.S. government computers and those of Western allies, the Dalai Lama and U.S. businesses since 2002, cables said.
- Mixed records against terrorism: Saudi donors remain the chief financiers of Sunni militant groups like al-Qaida, and the tiny Persian Gulf state of Qatar, a generous host to the U.S. military for years, was the "worst in the region" in counterterrorism efforts, according to a State Department cable last December. Qatar's security service was "hesitant to act against known terrorists out of concern for appearing to be aligned with the U.S. and provoking reprisals," the cable said.
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