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PUBLIC FORUM DEBATE February 2011

Dr. John F. Schunk, Editor

"Resolved: Wikileaks is a threat to United States national security."

PRO P01. WIKILEAKS IMPAIRS U.S. DIPLOMACY P02. WIKILEAKS IMPAIRS FOREIGN POLICY COOPERATION P03. WIKILEAKS THREATENS LIVES OF COLLABORATORS P04. RISK OF CRISIS IS INCREASED IN MANY COUNTRIES P05. WIKILEAKS THREATENS LIVES OF U.S. TROOPS P06. WIKILEAKS IMPAIRS INFORMATION-SHARING P07. WIKILEAKS INVITES TERRORIST ATTACK P08. WIKILEAKS AIDS AND ABETS TERRORISM P09. FIRST AMENDMENT DOESN’T JUSTIFY WIKILEAKS P10. WIKILEAKS IS NOT LIKE PENTAGON PAPERS P11. HARMS OF WIKILEAKS OUTWEIGH BENEFITS

CON C01. WIKILEAKS IS NO THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY C02. WIKILEAKS DOES NOT IMPAIR U.S. DIPLOMACY C03. WIKILEAKS DOES NOT IMPAIR COOPERATION C04. WIKILEAKS DOES NOT ENDANGER LIVES C05. RISK OF CRISIS IN OTHER COUNTRIES EXAGGERATED C06. WIKILEAKS HAS NOT REVEALED ANY BIG SECRETS C07. WIKILEAKS DOES NOT AID TERRORISM C08. WIKILEAKS HAS NOT VIOLATED U.S. LAW C09. CYBERWAR HAS NOT BEEN HARMFUL TO SECURITY C10. WIKILEAKS BENEFITS PUBLIC RIGHT TO KNOW C11. HARMS OF WIKILEAKS DO NOT OUTWEIGH BENEFITS

S-K PUBLICATIONS PO Box 8173 Wichita KS 67208-0173 PH 316-685-3201 FAX 316-685-6650 [email protected] http://www.squirrelkillers.com SK/P01. WIKILEAKS IMPAIRS U.S. DIPLOMACY

1. WIKILEAKS REVEALS DIALOGUE MEANT TO BE PRIVATE

SK/P01.01) Carne Ross [head, Independent Diplomat, the world’s first nonprofit diplomatic advisory group], NEW STATESMAN, December 6, 2010, p. 22, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Don't buy the argument that the really important stuff is kept "Top Secret" and hasn't been compromised. Even a cursory perusal of the WikiLeaks store reveals cables that are the very meat and drink of diplomacy - what foreign leaders and governments really think and want in their relations with the US.

2. DIPLOMATS WILL BE LESS CANDID IN THE FUTURE

SK/P01.02) Howard LaFranchi, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, November 29, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. The real impact of the new WikiLeaks release, he [Lawrence Korb, Center for American Progress] says, is likely to be on the US diplomatic corps - and on the conversations with foreigners that they depend on to do their work. "The real issue here is whether our own diplomats now are going to be as forthcoming as they used to be," he says, "and will the people they talk to be as open with them?"

SK/P01.03) Dan Murphy & Laura Kasinof, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, November 29, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. While Iran has been given ammunition in its diplomatic dance with its regional rivals, and some of the countries may face limited blowback from angry citizens, the most immediate impact of the WikiLeaks release may not be a shift in strategy so much as in diplomacy. Arab leaders could well be reluctant to speak candidly with US diplomats, since America's ability to keep such conversation private has now been cast into doubt.

SK/P01.04) Charles Freeman, THE NEW YORK TIMES, December 5, 2010, p. 9, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. While some hard-line analysts and pundits are relieved to find the Arabs “on our side” and feel that this disclosure will help us form a stronger alliance against Tehran, it's more likely that the leaks will simply raise Iran's prestige by adding to the persistent overestimation of its influence and abilities. More troubling, the leaks will reduce the candor of American dialogue in the region and elsewhere. Arab leaders in particular will now think twice before either speaking honestly or telling American visitors or diplomats what Washington wants to hear.

SK/P01.05) Charles Freeman, THE NEW YORK TIMES, December 5, 2010, p. 9, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. Mr. Assange's grand accomplishment will be nothing more than to make it far harder for American diplomats to get candid answers from their Gulf Arab and Israeli counterparts. The Middle East is a place where yes means maybe, maybe means no, no is never heard (except in Israel), and a plea for a foreign solution to regional problems is a cop-out, not a serious request for action. It is where hypocrisy first gained a bad name. WikiLeaks has hurt America without changing that. 3. WIKILEAKS IS COUNTERPRODUCTIVE TO TRANSPARENCY

SK/P01.06) Jeffrey Bleich [US ambassador to Australia], THE AGE (Melbourne, Australia), December 23, 2010, p. 17, LEXISNEXIS Academic. Third, and most ironically, rather than advancing the cause of transparency, these indiscriminate leaks discourage people from being forthcoming with candid observations and sensitive information, and discourage decision-makers from recording the reasoning behind important decisions for fear of premature disclosure. I will defend freedom of expression until my last day. This wholesale publication of purportedly classified material is a bad idea, and those who honour free expression have a duty to say so.

4. INFORMATION NEEDED FOR POLICYMAKING IS THUS REDUCED

SK/P01.07) Richard N. Haass [President, Council on Foreign Relations], NEWSWEEK, December 13, 2010, p. 22, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. As a result of the leaks, foreign officials will be less inclined to provide candid assessments to their U.S. counterparts, thereby depriving U.S. officials of valuable insights. American diplomats will be less willing to put on paper their candid assessments, thereby depriving policymakers in Washington of the local information they need most.

SK/P01.08) Editorial [by director of the Eurasia Center at the Atlantic Council of the United States and a former U.S. ambassador], THE WASHINGTON POST, December 13, 2010, p. A18, LEXISNEXIS Academic. Anne Applebaum's Dec. 7 op-ed, "Beware the WikiHype," correctly observed that the breach of national security by WikiLeaks isn't revolutionary, but she was wrong to suggest that it is not a gigantic problem. U.S. diplomats around the world are having to spend time on rear-guard "management" of the leaks' impacts rather than discussing real political, security, economic and other problems. Many diplomats in Europe will not be deterred from talking with us confidentially, but others will clam up. "Stovepiping" of information flows will return to the U.S. government, undermining the ability of policymakers and analysts to see and think laterally across diverse issues and problems.

5. IMPAIRMENT OF DIPLOMACY IS A THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY

SK/P01.09) Editorial [by director of the Eurasia Center at the Atlantic Council of the United States and a former U.S. ambassador], THE WASHINGTON POST, December 13, 2010, p. A18, LEXISNEXIS Academic. WikiLeaks' releases also are adding to regional problems and rivalries, playing into some countries' domestic politics in ways not anticipated by the leaked cables' authors. U.S. diplomats may face scrutiny over reporting and analysis they may be only vaguely associated with, or they may be rejected by other countries because, in confidential reporting to their own capital, they dared to express criticism or report distasteful information. Surely there are risks to U.S. cipher codes as well. With American power and the effectiveness of coercive strategies declining in relative terms, we need agile diplomacy. These leaks harm that diplomacy, and for some time America's effectiveness in a dangerous world will be diminished. SK/P02. WIKILEAKS IMPAIRS FOREIGN POLICY COOPERATION

1. WIKILEAKS DISCLOSURES BETRAY TRUST IN U.S.

SK/P02.01) Charlie Savage, THE NEW YORK TIMES, July 30, 2010, p. A8, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Thursday denounced the disclosure this week of 75,000 classified documents about the Afghanistan war by the Web site WikiLeaks, asserting that the security breach had endangered lives and damaged the ability of others to trust the United States government to protect their secrets. Speaking to reporters at the Pentagon, Mr. Gates portrayed the documents as “a mountain of raw data individual impressions, most several years old” that offered little insight into current policies and events. Still, he said, the disclosures -- which include some identifying information about Afghans who have helped the United States -- have “potentially dramatic and grievously harmful consequences.”

SK/P02.02) PC MAGAZINE ONLINE, November 29, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. At the time, Crowley [State Department spokesman] said the agency was aware that Sunday's data dump would include State Department cables. That information is "diplomacy in action," Crowley said. "It is part of the system through which we collaborate and cooperate with other countries. Inherent in this day-to-day action is trust that we can convey our perspective to other governments in confidence and that they can convey their perspective on events to us." "And when this confidence is betrayed and ends up on the front pages of newspapers or lead stories on television and radio it has an impact," he continued. "They are going to create tension in our relationships between our diplomats and our friends around the world."

SK/P02.03) John Hughes [former editor], THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, December 14, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. Disclosure of US moves to remove a Pakistani stockpile of highly enriched uranium is much more significant. Working to keep such material from hostile hands may have been immensely important. Revealing it may jeopardize that effort. Similarly, reports that Arab leaders privately urged the United States to take out Iran's nuclear weapons capacity can hardly have resonated well in their capitals. During my stint in government I sat through many meetings in foreign capitals with heads of state who blasted rivals and other governments but who in public proclaimed lasting friendship with the same characters and entities. Trusted diplomatic correspondents know how to garner information and inject their dispatches with depth and detail without embarrassing sources that must be protected.

SK/P02.04) Daniel Flitton, THE AGE (Melbourne, Australia), December 7, 2010, p. 2, LEXISNEXIS Academic. In Melbourne yesterday for a summit on counterterrorism, Mr Benjamin told The Age the WikiLeaks disclosures were damaging for US foreign relations. "Obviously if you have your discussions aired and you are violating the confidence and the trust in which they were entered into, it's not good." Mr Benjamin was a reporter for Time magazine and The Wall Street Journal before taking a job in the Clinton White House in the 1990s, but does not see any public benefit from the leaks. 2. COOPERATION WILL BE REDUCED ON MANY CRITICAL ISSUES

SK/P02.05) Howard LaFranchi, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, November 29, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. Clinton [U.S. Secretary of State] acknowledged that the unauthorized release of classified diplomatic cables "undermines our efforts to work with other countries on shared problems." She said she had personally contacted dozens of her counterparts and other foreign leaders to convey her and President Obama's dismay at the leaks and intentions to pursue the administration's "hard work" on alliance-building and international partnerships.

SK/P02.06) Jeffrey Bleich [US ambassador to Australia], THE AGE (Melbourne, Australia), December 23, 2010, p. 17, LEXISNEXIS Academic. For the minority of US government information that is classified, a legal process exists for individuals or media organisations to seek declassification and official release of documents where appropriate. As a lawyer, I have used that process - it is fair, it works and it advances the public interest in accord with the rule of law. The recent indiscriminate and wholesale leaks of purported US State Department cables, on the other hand, followed no such process. These disclosures were made by self-appointed arbiters, regardless of the very real harm they inflicted on the public interest in at least three distinct ways. First, they impair frank dialogue and co-operation among countries. The US-Australian relationship is more than solid enough to weather this storm. But in other parts of the world, the fallout may consist of less well-informed foreign policy decisions, more difficulties in peacefully resolving international conflicts, and reduced chances of reaching multilateral agreements on everything from halting nuclear proliferation to combating climate change.

SK/P02.07) Howard LaFranchi, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, November 29, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. The US intensified its efforts at damage control on Monday following the publication by WikiLeaks of more than a quarter-million diplomatic cables, with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton calling the massive release not just a problem for American foreign policy but "an attack on the international community." In a statement to journalists in the State Department's Treaty Room before she was to leave on a four- country trip through Central Asia and the Persian Gulf, Secretary Clinton said that both the furthering of US national interests and the operation of the world's international political system depend on thousands of confidential exchanges, assessments, and conversations every day. Far from being a "laudable" effort to make the workings of government transparent, the leaking of classified cables, she said, can have a chilling effect on such US foreign policy goals as the promotion of human rights or expansion of religious freedoms by discouraging the foreign proponents of those goals from working with the US. SK/P03. WIKILEAKS THREATEN LIVES OF COLLABORATORS

1. CONFIDENTIALITY IS VITAL FOR SAFETY OF COLLABORATORS

SK/P03.01) John Hughes [former editor], THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, December 14, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. Sometimes the journalist is checking out a questionable rumor. Sometimes the diplomat is offering background on a situation that for good reasons cannot then, or ever, be made public. For example: Dissidents given secret sanctuary in a US embassy; a foreign diplomat barred from travel because he is actually a high-ranking intelligence officer recruiting American nuclear scientists; US diplomats caught outside the US Embassy in Tehran when it was seized by extremists, but hidden safely for months by diplomats of other countries. Exchanges and agreements between responsible journalists and senior diplomats go on each day with clear understanding about what can, or should, be published.

2. DISCLOSURE THREATENS LIVES OF THOSE HELPING U.S.

SK/P03.02) Howard LaFranchi, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, November 29, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. But she [U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton] added that what may be routine assessments and appraisals in the diplomatic world can, if divulged, be matters of life and death for activists and political dissidents in foreign countries who work with the US on the promotion of rights, for example, but find their identities released publicly.

SK/P03.03) Jeffrey Bleich [US ambassador to Australia], THE AGE (Melbourne, Australia), December 23, 2010, p. 17, LEXISNEXIS Academic. Second, those responsible for revealing conversations between US diplomats and sources in less- tolerant societies who put themselves at risk - religious or political activists, opposition leaders, whistleblowers and human rights advocates - have jeopardised those people's careers, liberties, and in some cases their lives. This is not rhetoric. Just like the sources that journalists depend on, those individuals shared their insights on sensitive, even dangerous, issues in the faith that these would be kept confidential, to protect both themselves and their families. That security has been compromised.

SK/P03.04) Editorial, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, July 30, 2010, p. B2, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. Word is out that the Wikileaks classified- document dump contains reports naming Afghans who have been cooperating with Coalition forces. This is the kind of information that can get people killed. It also raises the data release to a new level of criminality. The Washington Times Editorial Board reviewed the reports in question on the day of their release but chose not to write about them because of the potential damage that revealing the information could do to the war effort as well as to cooperative Afghans. These secret reports have the greatest possibility of causing deadly consequences, which under the American legal tradition is why those who leaked them should be held accountable. SK/P03.05) Steve Coll, THE NEW YORKER, November 8, 2010, p. 27, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Assange disclosed the names of informants in some of the war reports, even though doing so might endanger them and possibly cause their death.

SK/P03.06) NATIONAL REVIEW, December 20, 2010, p. 4, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Altogether they have a chilling effect on negotiating and snooping, both vital diplomatic tasks; and who knows what details could be dangerous, even lethal, to their sources or their recipients?

3. TALIBAN IS SCOURING DISCLOSURES TO TARGET INFORMERS

SK/P03.07) Christopher Dickey, NEWSWEEK.COM, October 27, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Raw intelligence is ugly stuff, perverse and treacherous. "A little learning is a dangerous thing," wrote the 18th- century poet Alexander Pope, who had a keen ear for political posturing. How much more dangerous is a little learning based on an inassimilable pile of hundreds of thousands of documents dumped on the public by WikiLeaks ? Inevitably, these war logs written in haste from the field by hard-pressed and ill-informed Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq are cherry-picked by people looking to bolster their own causes, make their own cases. And while the whole process of leaking and disseminating them has been widely (if warily) endorsed by antiwar liberals and moderates, there is plenty of material ready to be exploited by extremists. The Taliban already are hard at work on the earlier leaks, looking to sniff out--and snuff out--those they deem informers and collaborators.

SK/P03.08) Eric Schmitt & David E. Sanger, THE NEW YORK TIMES, August 2, 2010, p. A4, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates said Sunday that an announcement by the Taliban that they were going through classified military dispatches from Afghanistan posted by the Web site WikiLeaks “basically proves the point” that the disclosures put at risk the lives of Afghans who had aided American forces.

SK/P03.09) Ron Moreau, NEWSWEEK.COM, August 2, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. After WikiLeaks published a trove of U.S. intelligence documents--some of which listed the names and villages of Afghans who had been secretly cooperating with the American military--it didn't take long for the Taliban to react. A spokesman for the group quickly threatened to "punish" any Afghan listed as having "collaborated" with the U.S. and the Kabul authorities against the growing Taliban insurgency. In recent days, the Taliban has demonstrated how seriously those threats should be considered. Late last week, just four days after the documents were published, death threats began arriving at the homes of key tribal elders in southern Afghanistan. And over the weekend one tribal elder, Khalifa Abdullah, who the Taliban believed had been in close contact with the Americans, was taken from his home in Monar village, in Kandahar province's embattled Arghandab district, and executed by insurgent gunmen. SK/P03.10) Ron Moreau, NEWSWEEK.COM, August 2, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The frightening combination of the Taliban spokesman's threat, Abdullah's death, and the spate of letters has sparked a panic among many Afghans who have worked closely with coalition forces in the past, according to a senior Taliban intelligence officer who declined to be named for security reasons. The officer said he has seen reports of Afghans rushing to U.S. and coalition bases in southern and eastern Afghanistan over the past few days, seeking protection and even asking for political asylum. (U.S. military officials would not verify this information.) The Taliban officer claimed that the group's English-language media department continues to actively examine the WikiLeaks material and intends to draw up lists of collaborators in each province, to add to the hit lists of local insurgent commanders.

4. REDACTION OF NAMES IS AN INSUFFICIENT PROTECTION

SK/P03.11) Anna Mulrine, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, October 25, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. The Pentagon continued to stress the danger of the leaks, however. "I'd emphasize that just because the names have been removed, it doesn't remove the danger," says Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan. "The names still exist in the documents that are in possession of Wikileaks." He added that, "As long as [ Wikileaks ] remain in possession of un-redacted documents, they're still a danger."

5. FEAR OF REPRISAL WILL REDUCE COLLABORATION WITH U.S.

SK/P03.12) Ron Moreau, NEWSWEEK.COM, August 2, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The big question going forward is whether the leaked material will make regular Afghans more wary about cooperating with coalition forces. The intelligence officer, unsurprisingly, believes this will be the case. "The impact of this should be good for us and a slap in the face to those who are working with America," he says. "America is not a good protector of spies." Locals have long known that the Taliban deals harshly with those it suspects of working against it: the ruthless guerrillas have assassinated scores, if not hundreds, of tribal elders and Afghans of all ages for their alleged cooperation with the coalition. In one particularly gruesome case a few months ago, according to the intelligence officer, the Taliban discovered that a group of recent high-school graduates in Ghazni province had been feeding information to the Americans. The youths were arrested, and around 10 of them were hanged. The Taliban is also shutting down cell-phone networks after dark in an effort to prevent villagers from alerting coalition forces to the insurgents' locations.

6. PUTTING LIVES AT RISK THREATENS U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY

SK/P03.13) PC MAGAZINE ONLINE, July 26, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The White House on Monday condemned Wikileaks for publishing and distributing 90,000 classified documents relating to the war in Afghanistan. "The United States strongly condemns the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organizations which could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk, and threaten our national security," national security advisor James Jones said in a statement. SK/P03.14) Elizabeth Bumiller, THE NEW YORK TIMES, October 17, 2010, p. A8, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. In the letter to Mr. Levin, which was released to The New York Times, Mr. Gates said the disclosure of the Afghans' names was “likely to cause significant harm or damage to the national security interests of the United States.” On July 29 at the Pentagon, Mr. Gates told reporters that disclosure of the names has “potentially dramatic and grievously harmful consequences.”

SK/P03.15) PC MAGAZINE ONLINE, November 29, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. During a November 24 press briefing, State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley said the Wikileaks data releases are "harmful to our national security. It does put lives at risk. It does put national interests at risk." SK/P04. RISK OF CRISIS IS INCREASED IN MANY COUNTRIES

1. DISCLOSURES WEAKEN COUNTERTERRORISM IN PAKISTAN

SK/P04.01) Mark Landler & J. David Goodman, THE NEW YORK TIMES, November 30, 2010, p. A14, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. A senior Pakistani diplomat said that whether or not the cables exposed secret talks between his country and the United States, confidence would be seriously shaken. “The WikiLeaks explosion of cables come at a time when some officials in Pakistan had started overcoming their distrust, and started talking frankly,” said the official, adding that the leaks would “feed further paranoia.”

SK/P04.02) Issam Ahmed, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, November 29, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. Long derided in liberal Pakistani circles as a fanciful conspiracy theory, the notion that the US has designs on Pakistan's nuclear arsenal will likely gain traction here following a report that the US has mounted a secret effort to remove highly enriched uranium from a Pakistani reactor since 2007. The report, based on a leaked cable released by Wikleaks, was first carried in The New York Times, though the full text has not yet been released. The perception that America is attempting to rob Pakistan of its nuclear capability has long been touted by Islamists and hardliners in Pakistan, and is frequently brought up alongside the theory that the security firm Xe (formerly known as Blackwater) is responsible for a spate of suicide bomb attacks on civilian targets over the past few years.

SK/P04.03) Issam Ahmed, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, November 29, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. According to security analyst Gen. (ret.) Talat Masood, the WikiLeaks revelations will prove a boon to hardliners in Pakistan. "It really reinforces [what until now] has been a conspiracy theory - that America has always been after nuclear assets and gives a big handle to the right and those who have been saying America is not a our friend and saying they are following a dual policy: with India they are friends but with Pakistan they are trying to simultaneously undermine us." General Masood predicts the WikiLeaks cable report will have a serious short-term and long-term impact on US-Pakistan relations, and undermine those Pakistanis who have spoken up in favor of closer cooperation with the US in recent times.

SK/P04.04) Howard LaFranchi, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, July 26, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. To be fair, some analysts say, it should be noted that the released documents end in December 2009, before some of Pakistan's most direct actions against extremist elements inside its borders. "There's no reason to believe that Pakistan's problematic behavior came to a screeching halt simply because of the advent of the Obama strategy on Afghanistan," says Wayne White, a former State Department intelligence and policy-planning official. "But it's also true that it's been in the last six months that the Pakistanis have stepped up their actions against these groups that they increasingly see as internal security threats." 2. DISCLOSURES WILL DESTROY COUNTERTERRORISM IN YEMEN

SK/P04.05) Howard LaFranchi, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, November 29, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. On the other hand, the exposed confidential communications could make some of the US's prickliest dealings all the more difficult, some analysts note. Two examples are Pakistan and Yemen. Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in New York, says that while much of the WikiLeaks release "confirms more than it informs," in other cases the documents will likely cause immediate problems. "Working with Pakistan's weak government to ensure that its nuclear materials remain under tight control - a process described in the WikiLeaks papers - will prove even more difficult," Mr. Haass says in a CFR commentary. "Counterterrorism efforts in Yemen might also be set back as the leadership there might well feel the need to distance itself from the United States."

SK/P04.06) Editorial, THE TORONTO SUN (Canada), December 7, 2010, p. 19, LEXISNEXIS Academic. Assange revealed secret U.S. counterterrorism work in Yemen. That will likely end now, and Yemen may fall to al-Qaida.

3. DISCLOSURES INCREASE RISK OF WAR WITH IRAN

SK/P04.07) Christopher Dickey, NEWSWEEK.COM, October 27, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. But the most volatile trove in the more heavily redacted Iraq collection is, in fact, about Iran--and it's likely to benefit the extremists in both Iran and the United States who are pushing those countries toward war.

SK/P04.08) Christopher Dickey, NEWSWEEK.COM, October 27, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The record of Iranian bombings, ambushes, and abductions is stunning. Throughout history, wars have been launched with much less provocation, and while none of these general allegations is new, they're now being recounted at a critical time. Iran already is firing up one of its nuclear reactors, and if Americans were not so distracted by their own domestic politics right now, they would see that a violent showdown grows more likely every day, with WikiLeaks helping the hawks in the U.S.

4. DISCLOSURES INCREASE RISK OF ESCALATION IN KASHMIR

SK/P04.09) Issam Ahmed, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, December 17, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. A leaked US embassy cable in which the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) describes routine Indian torture against detainees in Kashmir between 2002 and 2004 threatens to heighten tensions in the disputed region after a summer of deadly violence. The cable, which is one of 250,000 secret US documents WikiLeaks has been releasing in recent weeks, was among several published today from US diplomats in India. SK/P04.10) Issam Ahmed, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, December 17, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. But the revelations could also provoke fresh tensions in the Indian-held side of the territory [Kashmir]. Violent clashes between police and pro-independence protestors have claimed more than 100 lives since June.

5. DISCLOSURES INCREASE SECURITY RISKS IN THE BALTICS

SK/P04.11) BALTIC NEWS SERVICE, December 7, 2010, pNA, LEXISNEXIS Academic. The information about defense plans for the Baltic states revealed by the whistleblower website WikiLeaks harms general security, Estonian Defense Minister Jaak Aaviksoo says. "Defense plans are something that is not publicly commented on. Comments are not made even on the existence of defense plans, not to mention their structure and content. In this sense it's a regrettable leak. It concerns not only the Baltic states and Poland. Disclosure of the information harms the security situation in general and undermines trust," Aaviksoo told BNS.

6. DISCLOSURES INCREASE RISK OF RUSSIAN ADVENTURISM

SK/P04.12) Howard LaFranchi, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, November 29, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. And Mr. Korb [Center for American Progress] offers the example of Russia. He says that if the Senate fails to ratify the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) now before it, he could imagine Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin using the leaks' revelations - among other things, an unflattering characterization of Mr. Putin's relationship with President Dimitry Medvedev - to promote a tougher line with the US.

7. DISCLOSURES INCREASE RISK OF UNREST IN MEXICO

SK/P04.13) Mike Giglio, NEWSWEEK, December 13, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. But the official also acknowledged that the cables could still cause plenty of trouble, especially given the region's special sensitivity to U.S. influence. The most worrying case might be Mexico, about which WikiLeaks has released just a handful of the nearly 3,000 cables it claims to be hoarding. The Mexican population and military have long been resistant to what they consider U.S. overreach, and America has been toeing a delicate line in offering financial and military assistance for Mexico's bitter fight against narcotrafficking. "We have a lot of history and a 2,000-mile border, and there are things that don't roil the waters elsewhere that do in Mexico," the official said. SK/P05. WIKILEAKS THREATENS LIVES OF U.S. TROOPS

1. DISCLOSURES INCREASE RISKS TO U.S. PERSONNEL

SK/P05.01) Peter Grier, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, December 17, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. Assange appears to have no compunction about releasing such things as the names of Iraqis who work with the US military, pointed out the Judiciary panel's ranking Republican, Rep. Louie Gohmert of Texas. "This isn't simply about keeping government secrets secret. This is about the safety of American personnel overseas at all levels, from the foot soldier to the commander-in-chief," said Representative Gohmert.

SK/P05.02) NATIONAL REVIEW, August 16, 2010, p. 4, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The outfit called WikiLeaks managed to tell us what we already knew about the Afghan War, while endangering our sources on the ground and revealing information about our tactics in the process.

2. RISK OF TROOPS BEING KILLED IS INCREASED

SK/P05.03) Editorial, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, July 27, 2010, p. B2, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. The Wikileaks release of 92,000 mostly secret documents on the Afghanistan War has produced no bombshell revelations, but it has revealed the dangers of the open government movement. The main impact of the document dump may be to teach the enemy how better to kill our fighting forces.

SK/P05.04) Editorial, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, July 27, 2010, p. B2, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. America's enemies now will have a complete picture of events. Since there is no equivalent Taliban data dump, the enemy will be the only side with full knowledge. Terrorists will see how U.S. forces report and assess incidents, and thus armed, they will be able to adapt their tactics to make them more effective. Put simply, Wikileaks is going to get American troops killed. SK/P06. WIKILEAKS IMPAIRS INFORMATION-SHARING

1. DISCLOSURES WILL REDUCE SHARING OF INTELLIGENCE DATA

SK/P06.01) Chris Strohm, CONGRESS DAILY PM, October 6, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said today he was "ashamed" of leaks about U.S. intelligence operations, adding that the disclosure by the website WikiLeaks of war-related documents "will have a very chilling effect on the need to share."

SK/P06.02) Noam Cohen, THE NEW YORK TIMES, April 19, 2010, p. B3, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. One of the consequences of the publicity surrounding the video is that the military may keep fewer of them and certainly will not circulate them as freely, said Fred Burton, vice president of intelligence at Stratfor, a global intelligence agency, who has written about his experiences as a counterterrorism agent for the government. “It's the same kind of argument you have with your kids,” he said. “Be careful what you post to Facebook, because it will come back to haunt you when you go to a job interview.” The timing couldn't be worse, he added: “Ultimately, it hurts the U.S. intelligence operation” because it hinders efforts to improve communication among agencies.

2. FAILURE TO SHARE DATA WAS ONE OF THE CAUSES OF 9/11

SK/P06.03) Richard N. Haass [President, Council on Foreign Relations], NEWSWEEK, December 13, 2010, p. 22, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The leaks will also make U.S. government officials even more wary of sharing information with their colleagues in other departments lest the information become public. Sound familiar? It should. It was precisely this reticence to share intelligence across departmental lines that helped make the United States vulnerable on 9/11. Intelligence must be shared if information is to be pieced together to make a narrative that can be acted on. We should take the right lessons from the leaking of these cables, not hurt ourselves further by learning the wrong ones.

SK/P06.04) William Courtney [former US ambassador to Kazakhstan & Georgia] & Kenneth Yalowitz [Dartmouth College], THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, December 23, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. After the September 2001 terrorist attacks, US policy on sharing national security information took a pendulum swing from "need to know" to "need to share." Proponents argued that if fragmentary threat data had been better shared, the attacks may have been detected and thwarted. It is now clear, however, that insufficiently controlled sharing has abetted damaging leaks. SK/P07. WIKILEAKS INVITES TERRORIST ATTACK

1. WIKILEAKS HAS DISCLOSED LIST OF CRITICAL SECURITY SITES

SK/P07.01) Mark Clayton, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, December 6, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. Undersea cable landings off Japan, Hong Kong, and China; vital energy terminals in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Kuwait; natural gas pipelines from Canada to United States population centers; transformer plants in Mexico; vaccine manufacturers across Europe. It's a laundry list of "critical infrastructure" - a global grab bag as big as the world - hundreds of sites listed in a cable marked "secret." It was compiled by US embassies and sent to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton as a cable in February 2009 - but released over the Internet by WikiLeaks Sunday. In all, the list includes well over 200 energy pipelines, undersea cables, strategic metal mines, vaccine suppliers, dams, ports, and power generators along with the names of 35 companies spread across 59 nations. The cable sought to identify "critical US foreign dependencies" that "if destroyed, disrupted or exploited, would likely have an immediate and deleterious effect on the United States."

SK/P07.02) Editorial, THE AUSTIN AMERICAN-STATESMAN, December 14, 2010, p. A8, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. Just as a case in point, look at WikiLeaks' recent publication of a lengthy list of commercial and other installations considered critical to America's national security. The list was produced by U.S. officials in February 2009 when the Obama administration told our missions around the world to list facilities, which, if destroyed, could adversely effect our national interests. The list included such installations as an insulin plant in Denmark, satellite communications sites, a cobalt mine in Congo and an anti-snake venom plant in Australia. Inevitably, the list probably includes some installations whose existence neither is or needs to be secret. But the list probably includes some that do need to remain secret. In listing them all, WikiLeaks dangerously ignores that potential.

2. DISCLOSURE PROVIDES A TARGET HIT LIST FOR TERRORISTS

SK/P07.03) Kevin Johnson & Mimi Hall, USA TODAY, December 7, 2010, p. 6A, LEXISNEXIS Academic. WikiLeaks' disclosure of key sites that the U.S. has deemed critical to national security marks an increasingly dangerous step by the online organization, whose actions are at the center of a broad criminal investigation, U.S. officials and some security analysts said Monday. The list of power suppliers, dams, chemical manufacturers, transportation systems and communication grids spans the globe from Africa to Mexico and is part of a cache of classified State Department documents released by WikiLeaks. "It is a map for terrorists, plain and simple," said Tom Kean, a co-chairman of the 9/11 Commission.

SK/P07.04) Arnaud de Borchgrave [Editor-in-Chief], THE WASHINGTON TIMES, December 13, 2010, p. B4, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. In a major blast before Mr. Assange's arrest, WikiLeaks listed key infrastructure sites whose loss could critically impact the national security and public health of the United States, from bauxite mines in Guinea to snake-bite anti-venom manufacturing in Italy to a hydroelectric dam in Canada - all potential targets for terrorist attacks. SK/P07.05) Mark Clayton, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, December 6, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. "It's a menu for terrorists that is probably one of the most overtly destructive things WikiLeaks has done," says Anthony Cordesman, a national security analyst for the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. "This has given a global map - a menu, if not a recipe book - to every extremist group in the world. To me it would be amazing to see how WikiLeaks could rationalize this." US officials condemned the release of the list. "This is really irresponsible. It is tantamount to giving a group like Al Qaeda a targeting list," State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley told the Washington Post. Even if it is just a country listing, it is in essence a prioritization with political meaning valuable to terrorists, Dr. Cordesman argues. Once the US flags something officially, you are creating a target and helping with their planning, he says.

SK/P07.06) Editorial, THE TIMES (London, England), December 7, 2010, p. 2, LEXISNEXIS Academic. Yet the lack of any apparent agenda for reform or improvement, beyond wreaking havoc, makes WikiLeaks an unpredictable force. Its decision to publish a list of pipelines, satellites, smallpox factories and other pieces of infrastructure seems to present a clear risk to security and safety. Mark Stephens, WikiLeaks' lawyer, claims that the information is not new, merely embarrassing to individual governments. But that is something of a cop-out. Most of the sites mentioned were undoubtedly already known, at least within certain circles. But their incorporation into a list of installations whose loss could critically affect US security surely increases the risk of attack. It is bound to prompt would-be attackers to broaden the range of targets that they are considering.

3. TARGET HIT LIST IS DIRECT THREAT TO U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY

SK/P07.07) Kevin Johnson & Mimi Hall, USA TODAY, December 7, 2010, p. 6A, LEXISNEXIS Academic. U.S. officials denounced the disclosures [of key sites that the U.S. has deemed critical to national security] and did not dispute authenticity of the document. "The national security of the United States has been put at risk," Attorney General Eric Holder said.

SK/P07.08) Andrew Zajac, LOS ANGELES TIMES, December 7, 2010, p. A3, LEXISNEXIS Academic. U.S. officials on Monday denounced a WikiLeaks posting that catalogs hundreds of crucial overseas facilities that, if attacked by terrorists, could harm American interests -- including vaccine makers, undersea communications cables and mines that supply key metals. Officials said the Internet posting of the list -- compiled by the Department of Homeland Security with the assistance of the State Department and other government departments -- threatens national security.

SK/P07.09) Mark Clayton, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, December 6, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. But even if the information is not a revelation to a terrorist, it is not helpful to the US or other nations, Dr. Millar [director of the Center on Global Counterterrorism Cooperation] says. "Helping organize and collate information for people who can't do it themselves isn't doing a good thing," he says. "If you're doing the homework for some of these homegrown terrorists it's not helpful - it's dangerous to our security." SK/P08. WIKILEAKS AIDS AND ABETS TERRORISM

1. WIKILEAKS GIVES SUPPORT TO TERRORIST ACTIVITY

SK/P08.01) PC MAGAZINE ONLINE, November 29, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. [Representative] King said that Wikileaks could qualify as a terrorist organization because it is a foreign organization that is engaging in terrorism that threatens the security of U.S. nationals or the national security of the U.S. "WikiLeaks engaged in terrorist activity by committing acts that it knew, or reasonably should have known, would afford material support for the commission of terrorist activity," King wrote.

SK/P08.02) PC MAGAZINE ONLINE, November 29, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The congressman [Representative Peter King] said the data released by Wikileaks "provide valuable information and insights to FTOs throughout the world on U.S. military and diplomatic sources and methods and allow our enemies to better prepare for future U.S. and allied military, intelligence, and law enforcement operations targeting them." The information also provides countries like Russia, China, and Iran with access to information about how the U.S. collects, analyzes, and produces intelligence products, King wrote. "WikiLeaks presents a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States," he concluded. "I strongly urge you to work within the Administration to use every offensive capability of the U.S. government to prevent further damaging releases by WikiLeaks."

2. WIKILEAKS QUALIFIES AS A TERRORIST ORGANIZATION

SK/P08.03) PC MAGAZINE ONLINE, November 29, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Wikileaks released more classified, war-related documents this weekend, which highlighted some of the backroom dealings related to the Iraq War. But should those leaks be viewed as terrorist activity? If you ask Rep. Peter King, a New York Republican, the answer is yes. King on Sunday penned a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asking that her agency investigate whether Wikileaks could be designated as a foreign terrorist organization (FTO).

SK/P08.04) THE INDEPENDENT (London, England), December 20, 2010, p. 16, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. The US Vice-President, Joe Biden, yesterday likened Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks who is currently under house arrest in a private mansion in Suffolk, to a "hi-tech terrorist" and confirmed that the administration is searching for ways to take legal action against him.

SK/P08.05) THE INDEPENDENT (London, England), December 20, 2010, p. 16, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. When Mr Biden [US Vice- President] was asked if he saw Mr Assange more as a "hi-tech terrorist" or as a whistle- blower in the tradition of those who leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times during the Vietnam War, Mr Biden responded: "I would argue that it's closer to being a hi-tech terrorist. This guy has done things and put in jeopardy the lives and occupations of people in other parts of the world. He's made it difficult to conduct out business with our allies and our friends... It has done damage." SK/P09. FIRST AMENDMENT DOESN’T JUSTIFY WIKILEAKS

1. WIKILEAKS IS NOT RESPONSIBLE JOURNALISM

SK/P09.01) John Hughes [former editor], THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, December 14, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. The WikiLeaks dump of US embassy cables last month was a reckless act. It is a far cry from the responsible reporting on foreign affairs with which I am familiar. When I was the State Department spokesman in the Reagan administration, Bernard Kalb, then diplomatic correspondent for NBC, called me about a tip that the bad guys in Beirut, Lebanon, had captured and were holding an American CIA officer. "Bernie," I said, "I'll only talk off the record about that." "No way," Bernie replied, "If it's off the record I can't use it." "Well, that's the deal," I said. "See what your network says." The network agreed to the deal. I told Bernie that the officer being held was the CIA station chief in Beirut. We didn't know whether the captors knew of his CIA association. If Bernie went with the story, the officer would certainly be killed.

2. WIKILEAKS IS IN VIOLATION OF NATIONAL SECURITY LAWS

SK/P09.02) NATIONAL REVIEW, December 31, 2010, p. 6. Nobody doubts that Pfc. Bradley Manning can and should be prosecuted for giving classified information to WikiLeaks. Debate has centered on whether WikiLeaks itself, and its creepy leader Julian Assange, can also be prosecuted. Is what it does sufficiently similar to what newspapers do to grant it free-speech protection? That is the wrong question. The Supreme Court has never held, even in the Pentagon Papers case, that journalists are immune from prosecution for breaking laws regarding national-security secrets. Under the courts' reasonable interpretation of the Espionage Act, prosecutors must prove that the discloser of classified information had "bad faith" and an "underhanded motive." That requirement will in almost all cases shield journalists. It should not protect Assange.

SK/P09.03) Sarah Barmak, THE TORONTO STAR (Canada), December 11, 2010, p. IN2, LEXISNEXIS Academic. Dianne Feinstein, Democratic U.S. senator, Wall Street Journal: "The law Mr. Assange continues to violate is the Espionage Act of 1917. That law makes it a felony for an unauthorized person to possess or transmit 'information relating to the national defence which information the possessor has reason to believe could be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.' . . . Mr. Assange claims to be a journalist and would no doubt rely on the First Amendment to defend his actions. But he is no journalist: He is an agitator intent on damaging our government, whose policies he happens to disagree with, regardless of who gets hurt." 3. COURTS UPHOLD NATIONAL SECURITY RESTRICTIONS IN WARTIME

SK/P09.04) Editorial, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, July 30, 2010, p. B2, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. The First Amendment does not protect publishing information likely to result in troops being killed or that directly hampers military operations. The government has an overriding interest in safeguarding such information, even to the point of justifying banning publication before the fact. In 1931's Near v. Minnesota, the Supreme Court struck down a state law sanctioning prior restraint. It nevertheless reaffirmed the logic of Schenck that in some circumstances, the right of government to limit publication of sensitive national security information is self-evident. No one would question, Justice Charles Evans Hughes wrote, but that a government might prevent actual obstruction to its recruiting service or the publication of the sailing dates of transports or the number and location of troops. SK/P10. WIKILEAKS IS NOT LIKE PENTAGON PAPERS

1. UNLIKE WIKILEAKS, PENTAGON PAPERS EXPOSED VALUABLE INFO

SK/P10.01) Bob Furnad [Associate Professor of Journalism, U. of Georgia], THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION, December 10, 2010, p. A23, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. The publication of WikiLeaks by Julian Assange on his Web site would have had limited exposure. But when one mainstream media outlet picked up the leaked communications, all others followed suit and the world looked at the U.S. in a different light, no doubt a more negative one. Did all news organizations that broadcast or published these leaks go through the process, the filtering, the discussion among senior staffers about whether this story met the criteria as worthy? Analogies to the leak of the Pentagon Papers in the '70s are being used. This looks like an attempt to rationalize broadcast or publication of the WikiLeaks. But the Pentagon Papers revealed an inept military. This information was absolutely beneficial to lawmakers and citizens alike to make sure the same mistakes are not repeated. Of what benefit to the U.S. government or to our citizenry are these embarrassing leaks?

SK/P10.02) Howard LaFranchi, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, July 26, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. But in many ways, WikiLeaks' 92,000 Afghanistan documents are no Pentagon Papers. In the first place, the Pentagon Papers revealed how the US government had been trying to deceive the public by holding back information and offering a whitewashed version of the Vietnam conflict's history and evolution. In the case of the Afghanistan documents, on the other hand, much of the information to be gleaned from the thousands of ground-level reports was already well substantiated: from Pakistan's collusion with the Afghanistan Taliban to the damage done by civilian casualties that were caused by the Western alliance.

SK/P10.03) Howard LaFranchi, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, July 26, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. In addition, the WikiLeaks documents span a period of time (2004-2009) that the Obama administration reviewed extensively before the president announced his Afghanistan strategy in December 2009. The Obama White House appears to have adjusted Afghanistan policy - ranging from a sharper focus on protecting civilian lives to demanding a cutoff of Pakistani double-dealing - in ways that responded to the kinds of problems revealed by the divulged documents.

SK/P10.04) Editorial, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, July 27, 2010, p. B2, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. The moral case for the document dump is hard to sustain. Defenders of open government make the argument that some secrets need to be revealed in the public interest, such as high-level official malfeasance, fraud and other criminality. In matters of abuse of power, unauthorized leaks may be justified. But there are no such revelations in these documents, some of which are unclassified, and all of which are fairly low-level routine reports. Leaking them doesn't serve the public interest, but definitely serves the interests of the enemy. A large number of the documents deals with small-scale attacks, discoveries of weapons caches and other aspects of the day-to-day routine in a counterinsurgency. 2. PENTAGON PAPERS DID NOT PLACE LIVES AT RISK

SK/P10.05) Editorial, THE WASHINGTON TIMES, July 30, 2010, p. B2, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. The Wikileaks document dump has been erroneously compared to the Pentagon Papers, but the latter were high-level, internal bureaucratic decision-making documents that dealt primarily with the origins and conduct of the Vietnam War. They did not reveal the names of pro-government village leaders or directly place lives at risk. SK/P11. HARMS OF WIKILEAKS OUTWEIGH BENEFITS

1. THERE ARE SO MANY HARMS, IT IS TOUGH TO ASSESS THEM ALL

SK/P11.01) Peter Grier, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, December 17, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. In fact, WikiLeaks has displayed so little regard for its actions, and has employed such sophisticated Internet technology to acquire and disseminate its information, that it might be said to have created "Leaks of Mass Destruction," or LMDs, said Gabriel Schoenfeld, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, at the House hearing. These are "leaks so massive in volume and so indiscriminate in what they convey, that it becomes very difficult to assess the overall harm, precisely because there are so many different ways in which that harm is occurring," said Mr. Schoenfeld.

2. NATIONAL SECURITY OUTWEIGHS ACCESS TO DATA

SK/P11.02) PC MAGAZINE ONLINE, December 23, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. LaRue [UN’s special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression] and Marino [special rapporteur on freedom of expression for OAS], however, note that national security and the rights and security of other persons trumps the right of access. But, "exceptions to access to information on national security or other grounds should apply only where there is a risk of substantial harm to the protected interest and where that harm is greater than the overall public interest in having access to the information."

3. WIKILEAKS DOES MORE HARM THAN GOOD

SK/P11.03) Dean Barrett, THE NATION (Thailand), December 18, 2010, pNA, LEXISNEXIS Academic. There are times in diplomacy that secrecy is absolutely necessary to reach agreements that benefit both parties. Ask yourself two questions: Because of WikiLeaks, if you are a diplomat, are you now more likely to be cautious and secretive or more likely to be open and say what you mean? And if you are a dissident in a horrible regime such as North Korea or Burma, are you now more likely to dare pass on information or less likely? It is my belief that WikiLeaks is doing far more harm than good. SK/C01. WIKILEAKS IS NO THREAT TO NATIONAL SECURITY

1. ALLEGED THREATS TO NATIONAL SECURITY ARE BOGUS

SK/C01.01) Editorial, THE AGE (Melbourne, Australia), December 18, 2010, p. 24, LEXISNEXIS Academic. So far WikiLeaks has published only a tiny fraction - fewer than 2000 - of its cable cache, in association with newspapers including The Age. Yet even that is an avalanche of information compared with the usual drip-feed from leaks, and it has in equal measures unnerved, frustrated and infuriated the world's governments. This not because publication of the cables has endangered lives or threatened the security of the US, Australia or other nations, although politicians have been quick to make such claims. It is an accusation of last resort, made by people who have been profoundly embarrassed by the WikiLeaks revelations.

SK/C01.02) Stephanie Strom, THE NEW YORK TIMES, March 18, 2010, p. A18, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. Julian Assange, the editor of WikiLeaks, said the concerns the [Pentagon] report raised were hypothetical. “It did not point to anything that has actually happened as a result of the release,” Mr. Assange said. “It contains the analyst's best guesses as to how the information could be used to harm the Army but no concrete examples of any real harm being done.”

SK/C01.03) Howard LaFranchi, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, August 2, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. Adrian Lamo, a convicted hacker who now speaks on issues surrounding hacking and information access, turned over to the FBI the text of his detailed chats with Manning, which seem to suggest the young soldier's passing of voluminous information to WikiLeaks. Mr. Lamo says he acted out of concern for national security and the risks he believed Manning's actions posed to American lives - motivations that some champions of information access have derided as right-wing excuses and as groundless.

SK/C01.04) Editorial, ST. PETERSBURG TIMES, December 19, 2010, p. 2P, LEXISNEXIS Academic. Earlier this month, the Whistleblower Protection Enhancement Act passed the U.S. Senate by unanimous consent. But there is a snag in the House, where baseless concerns raised by Republican lawmakers over the WikiLeaks disclosures may doom the effort. This bill would reduce the likelihood that insiders leak sensitive information since there would be a safe, alternative means of bringing issues to light. The WikiLeak concern is nothing but a red herring.

2. CABLE DISCLOSURES HAVE NOT HARMED NATIONAL SECURITY

SK/C01.05) Editorial, THE NEW YORK TIMES, November 30, 2010, p. A30, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. The latest WikiLeaks revelations will cause awkward moments not least because they contain blunt assessments of world leaders. The claim by Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton that the leaks threaten national security seems exaggerated. The documents are valuable because they illuminate American policy in a way that Americans and others deserve to see. SK/C01.06) Henry Porter, THE OBSERVER (London, England), December 12, 2010, p. 31, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. Publication of the cables has caused no loss of life; troops are not being mobilised; and the only real diplomatic crisis is merely one of discomfort. The idea that the past two weeks have been a disaster is self-evidently preposterous.

3. AFGHAN WAR DISCLOSURES DID NOT HARM NATIONAL SECURITY

SK/C01.07) Elizabeth Bumiller, THE NEW YORK TIMES, October 17, 2010, p. A8, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said in a private letter over the summer that while the release of 75,000 classified documents about the war in Afghanistan by the Web site WikiLeaks endangered the lives of Afghans helping the United States, the disclosures did not reveal any significant national intelligence secrets. The letter, dated Aug. 16 and sent to Senator Carl Levin, the Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, does not substantially differ from Mr. Gates's public denouncements of WikiLeaks at the time, when he focused his anger on the identification of Afghans who had helped American forces in the field.

4. SECRETARY OF DEFENSE ADMITS NO HARM TO NATIONAL SECURITY

SK/C01.08) Brendan Nicholson & Lanai Vasek, THE AUSTRALIAN, December 15, 2010, p. 7, LEXISNEXIS Academic. The US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates has also admitted that no sensitive intelligence sources or methods had been compromised.

5. FUTURE HARMS TO NATIONAL SECURITY CANNOT YET BE ASSESSED

SK/C01.09) Carne Ross [head, Independent Diplomat, the world’s first nonprofit diplomatic advisory group], NEW STATESMAN, December 6, 2010, p. 22, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. It will take some time, perhaps a generation, for the full impact of the WikiLeaks disclosure of thousands of US diplomatic cables to become known. For this is an event of historic importance for all governments, not only the US. While they may roar their condemnation, governments are also pretending that it's business as usual. But what we have witnessed is something very dramatic in the world of diplomacy - and thus in the way that the world runs its business. We may now date the history of world politics as pre- or post- WikiLeaks . The press may have concentrated on Gaddafi's voluptuous nurse or Karzai's corruption (which is depicted in excruciating detail in the cables), but this event carries a much deeper significance than merely the highly embarrassing and, in some cases, destabilising revelations in the enormous hoard of documents. Neither the US State Department nor WikiLeaks can say with any confidence whether the effects of this release will be good or bad, for in truth neither of them can know. There will be manifold and long-lasting consequences; that is all we can know for sure. SK/C01.10) NATIONAL REVIEW, December 20, 2010, p. 4, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Yesterday the CIA announced the formation of a task force to determine the impact of WikiLeaks' recent e-dump of state secrets, called the WikiLeaks Task Force, a.k.a. WTF. "The Director asked the task force to examine whether the latest release of WikiLeaks documents might affect the agency's foreign relationships or operations. This group, which is made up of seasoned officers, will conduct a thorough review and present their findings to senior agency officials," said Jennifer Youngblood, a CIA spokesperson, in a statment.

SK/C01.11) THE AUSTRALIAN, December 24, 2010, p. 15, LEXISNEXIS Academic. A CIA taskforce -- known by the suitable acronym WTF -- is to assess damage done by WikiLeaks' release of classified US documents, an official says. The WikiLeaks Task Force will “examine whether the latest release of WikiLeaks documents might affect the agency's foreign relationships or operations”, CIA spokesman George Little said. SK/C02. WIKILEAKS DOES NOT IMPAIR U.S. DIPLOMACY

1. DIPLOMATS WILL NOT BE LESS CANDID IN THE FUTURE

SK/C02.01) Robert M. Gates [U.S. Secretary of Defense], THE NEW YORK TIMES, December 1, 2010, p. A10, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. Now, I've heard the impact of these releases on our foreign policy described as a meltdown, as a game-changer, and so on. I think those descriptions are fairly significantly overwrought. The fact is, governments deal with the United States because it's in their interest, not because they like us, not because they trust us, and not because they believe we can keep secrets. Many governments -- some governments -- deal with us because they fear us, some because they respect us, most because they need us. We are still essentially, as has been said before, the indispensable nation. So other nations will continue to deal with us. They will continue to work with us. We will continue to share sensitive information with one another. Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward? Yes. Consequences for U.S. foreign policy? I think fairly modest.

SK/C02.02) Editorial, THE NEW YORK TIMES, November 30, 2010, p. A30, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. The business of diplomacy is often messy and when private communications become public, it can also be highly embarrassing. But what struck us, and reassured us, about the latest trove of classified documents released by WikiLeaks was the absence of any real skullduggery. After years of revelations about the Bush administration's abuses -- including the use of torture and kidnappings -- much of the Obama administration's diplomatic wheeling and dealing is appropriate and, at times, downright skillful.

2. SECRECY IS NOT REQUIRED FOR EFFECTIVE DIPLOMACY

SK/C02.03) Sheldon Richman [Editor, THE FREEMAN magazine], THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, November 29, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. WikiLeaks' critics will say that foreign policy cannot be conducted in public. As stated, that assertion is false. It is only an imperial foreign policy that cannot be conducted in public. A policy of global policing and intervention does indeed require secrecy and intrigue, but the pacific foreign policy envisioned by Jefferson and George Washington - "The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible" - does not.

3. GOVERNMENTS WILL SIMPLY NEED TO DO WHAT THEY SAY

SK/C02.04) Carne Ross [head, Independent Diplomat, the world’s first nonprofit diplomatic advisory group], NEW STATESMAN, December 6, 2010, p. 22, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. There is only one enduring solution to the WikiLeaks problem - and this is perhaps what Assange wants, if one can get past his rather confusing statements - which is that governments must close the divide between what they say and what they do. It is this divide that provokes WikiLeaks; it is this divide that will provide ample embarrassment for future leakers to exploit. The only way for governments to save their credibility is at last to do what they say, and vice versa, with the assumption that nothing they do will remain secret for long. SK/C03. WIKILEAKS DOES NOT IMPAIR COOPERATION

1. CABLE DISCLOSURES WON’T IMPAIR U.S. FOREIGN POLICY

SK/C03.01) Howard LaFranchi, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, November 29, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. The release of more than 250,000 cables primarily from the Bush and Obama administrations by WikiLeaks - the same organization that released classified information on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars earlier this year - is a cause of deep embarrassment to the US. But it is not likely to lead to any significant geopolitical shifts or fundamental reworkings of US relations with other countries, many foreign-policy analysts say. And that is because foreign partners were assumed to be acting in their own national interest in their dealings with the US before the revelations, and presumably will continue to do so now. "No country is going to suddenly act against its own self interest because of this," says Lawrence Korb, a foreign-policy expert and former Pentagon official at the Center for American Progress in Washington.

SK/C03.02) Mark Landler & J. David Goodman, THE NEW YORK TIMES, November 30, 2010, p. A14, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. During a news conference, Mrs. Clinton said that many of her counterparts around the world had shrugged off any insults. One of them, she said, told her, “Don't worry about it. You should see what we say about you.”

2. DISCLOSURES WON’T IMPAIR U.S.-PAKISTAN COOPERATION

SK/C03.03) PC MAGAZINE ONLINE, July 26, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. One of the things revealed in the documents, according to the Times, is suspicion that Pakistan's military might be helping the Afghan insurgency. Pakistani government officials reportedly allowed members of its spy service to attend strategy sessions with the Taliban. Jones [national security advisor] insisted Monday that since 2009, the "United States and Pakistan have deepened our important bilateral partnership, 'and' counter-terrorism cooperation has led to significant blows against al Qaeda's leadership." "These irresponsible leaks will not impact our ongoing commitment to deepen our partnerships with Afghanistan and Pakistan; to defeat our common enemies; and to support the aspirations of the Afghan and Pakistani people," Jones said.

3. DISCLOSURES WON’T IMPAIR U.S.-INDIA COOPERATION

SK/C03.04) BBC MONITORING SOUTH ASIA, December 23, 2010, pNA, LEXISNEXIS Academic. India and the US agree that the recent unauthorized leak of classified American diplomatic cables that created a worldwide storm, will not affect the growing relationship between the two countries. 4. DISCLOSURES WON’T IMPAIR U.S.-RUSSIA COOPERATION

SK/C03.05) BBC MONITORING FORMER SOVIET UNION, December 22, 2010, pNA, LEXISNEXIS Academic. Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev has said that the Russian leadership does not care about assessments of the internal situation in Russia made in documents published on the WikiLeaks website. He said it was possible that if confidential correspondence involving the Russian special services was leaked, the Americans would also learn many interesting things about themselves. "Altogether we do not at all give a damn about what is being said in the diplomatic circles when making an assessment of one or another public process in our country. These are just opinions. What is actually happening is far more important," Medvedev said when commenting on his attitude to the publication of confidential diplomatic cables on the WikiLeaks website. SK/C04. WIKILEAKS DOES NOT ENDANGER LIVES

1. ALLEGED THREATS TO SOLDIERS’ LIVES ARE BOGUS

SK/C04.01) Eric Margolis, WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS, November 2010, pOV-10, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The Obama administration and the Pentagon insist release of these old reports from 2004-2009 "endanger our boys." Nonsense. The only thing the truth endangers are the politicians who have hung their hats on the Afghan War and some paid Afghan informers who are most likely well known to the Taliban and its allies.

SK/C04.02) Daniel Ellsberg [defense analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers], THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, July 29, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. When I hear these charges that it is irresponsible to have done this by [ WikiLeaks founder] Julian Assange ... I don't think that charge comes very well from people who are so irresponsible as to put our troops in harm's way in Afghanistan. The charge we hear - that his release is risking lives - is almost ludicrous.

SK/C04.03) Howard LaFranchi, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, July 26, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. Still, those same analysts say, it is ironic to hear the White House argue that the information puts American lives at risk, when it was very likely someone in the US military - with personal experience of how the war is endangering Americans - who leaked the documents. "I don't know why they [in the White House] want to hide behind the troops, when it's probably one of the troops who put this information out," says Lawrence Korb, a military analyst at the Center for American Progress in Washington who was an assistant secretary of Defense in the Reagan administration. "I just don't buy the argument that this endangers our soldiers or in some way has some negative impact on operations" on the ground.

SK/C04.04) PC MAGAZINE ONLINE, July 26, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange held a press conference Monday morning in London, during which he defended his decision to publish, according to The Guardian. "We don't see any difference in the White House's response to this case to the other groups that we have exposed. We have tried hard to make sure that this material does not put innocents at harm," Assange said, according to the paper. "All the material is over seven months old so is of no current operational consequence, even though it may be of very significant investigative consequence."

2. COLLABORATORS’ NAMES HAVE BEEN REDACTED FROM CABLES

SK/C04.05) Henry Porter, THE OBSERVER (London, England), December 12, 2010, p. 31, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. In the WikiLeaks cables, knowledge and the editing and reporting skills found in the old media, combined with the new ability to locate and seize enormous amounts of information on the web, has actually resulted in responsible publication, with names, sources, locations and dates redacted to protect people's identities and their lives. SK/C04.06) Polly Curtis Whitehall, THE GUARDIAN (London, England), December 31, 2010, p. 2, LEXISNEXIS Academic. The Guardian and four other newspapers around the world have published in-depth reports from the cables, redacting some information to protect individual sources where publication could put them or their families at personal risk, where there are questions of national security and military sensitivity, or legal considerations of defamation.

3. NAMES WERE REDACTED FROM IRAQI WAR DOCUMENTS

SK/C04.07) Anna Mulrine, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, October 25, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. Of greatest concern to Pentagon officials last week was the potential revelation of the names of 300- plus Iraqis that have worked with US forces and were identified by the Pentagon as being "potentially at risk if their identities were made public." For that reason, the Pentagon had a 120-member team working in the weeks before the leaks came out to identify and track down the Iraqis in order to be able to notify them in the event that their names were made public. But the team, known as the Information Review Task Force, found that the 300- plus names of those most at risk for retribution were redacted from the Wikileaks posting.

4. NAMES WERE REDACTED FROM AFGHAN WAR DOCUMENTS

SK/C04.08) John Pilger, NEW STATESMAN, August 23, 2010, p. 18, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Before the release of last month's Afghanistan war logs, WikiLeaks wrote to the White House asking that it identify Afghan names that might draw reprisals. There was no reply. More than 15,000 files were withheld and these, Assange says, will not be released until they have been scrutinised "line by line" so that the names of those at risk can be deleted.

SK/C04.09) Eric Schmitt & Charlie Savage, THE NEW YORK TIMES, July 29, 2010, p. A1, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. The Times and two other publications given access to the documents -- the British newspaper The Guardian and the German magazine Der Spiegel -- posted online only selected examples from documents that had been redacted to eliminate names and other information that could be used to identify people at risk. The news organizations did this to avoid jeopardizing the lives of informants.

5. NOT ONE LIFE HAS YET BEEN ENDANGERED

SK/C04.10) Mirko Bagaric [Deakin U., Australia], THE COURIER MAIL (Australia), December 17, 2010, p. 44, LEXISNEXIS Academic. Indeed, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called the leaks an attack on the international community and claimed they endanger security and the lives of innocent people. The tangible evidence, however, is the leaks have not endangered one person, apart from WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange who, as of yesterday, continued to languish in jail. SK/C05. RISK OF CRISIS IN OTHER COUNTRIES EXAGGERATED

1. DISCLOSURES ABOUT PAKISTAN BENEFIT U.S. SECURITY

SK/C05.01) Howard LaFranchi, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, July 26, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. Still, even some military analysts who generally agree that leaking classified documents can harm national security say that in this case, the information more than anything draws attention to some very serious problems. "Leaks do real damage to our national security, but this is a security issue for a different reason," says Ralph Peters, a military-affairs analyst and former Army intelligence officer. "This reveals what I've been saying and what my friends still in uniform have been saying for years - that the Pakistanis are helping the Taliban kill our troops, and they are shielding Al Qaeda."

2. DISCLOSURES DO NOT INCREASE RISK OF WAR WITH IRAN

SK/C05.02) Charles Freeman, THE NEW YORK TIMES, December 5, 2010, p. 9, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. In the end, contrary to the hopes and fears of some, the leaks do not make war with Iran more likely or demonstrate a basis for Arab-Israeli solidarity against Tehran.

3. DISCLOSURES ABOUT KASHMIR MAY IMPROVE CONDITIONS

SK/C05.03) Issam Ahmed, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, December 17, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. Kashmir activists say they hope the leak can bring more attention to their plight. "These kind of events have been happening for the last 20 years and are still ongoing. In the last two years we have collected the testimonies who have been picked up by Indian forces after taking part in peaceful protests," says Abdul Qadeer, a resident of Srinagar in Indian-held Kashmir and president of the Peoples Rights Movement. "We can only hope that this report will cause the world to take notice and take action," he says.

SK/C05.04) Mark Magnier, LOS ANGELES TIMES, December 19, 2010, p. 12, LEXISNEXIS Academic. Others said the leaks underscored the need for a new approach in the troubled Kashmir region. "The leaks have vindicated our stand about the systematic torture prevalent in the jails in Kashmir," said Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, chairman of the Hurriyat umbrella group in Jammu and Kashmir. "It was unfortunate that the United States of America had been maintaining an intentional silence on the human rights situation in Kashmir."

4. BALTIC DEFENSE DISCLOSURES DON’T HARM NATIONAL SECURITY

SK/C05.05) Anne Applebaum [columnist, WASHINGTON POST], SPECTATOR, December 11, 2010, p. 16, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Just this week, the Guardian declared that the cables 'reveal secret Nato plans to defend the Baltics'. But the existence of these routine contingency plans has been public for some time. President Obama made a speech about them last year, and they've been discussed openly ever since. SK/C05.06) BALTIC NEWS SERVICE, December 7, 2010, pNA, LEXISNEXIS Academic. In his [Estonian Defense Minister Jaak Aaviksoo’s] words, it is not probable that bigger state secrets would become public through WikiLeaks. "The information disclosed by this website so far represents confidential material from the U.S. embassy in Tallinn. More sensitive information obviously moves via other channels, so this is a leak of confidential information rather than state secrets. Going by previous revelations including the material concerning all other states it's rather information that harms trust and only sideways concerns security," the minister said. SK/C06. WIKILEAKS HAS NOT REVEALED ANY BIG SECRETS

1. CABLE DISCLOURES REVEALED LITTLE OF SIGNIFICANCE

SK/C06.01) NATIONAL REVIEW, December 20, 2010, p. 4, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The latest info dump of WikiLeaks was a quarter of a million American diplomatic cables sent during the last three years. On first pass, none of the strategic revelations seemed very surprising--Arab states want the United States to smite Iran: indeed--while the personal items resembled a foreign-policy Page Six--Moammar Qaddafi travels with a bosomy Ukrainian "nurse."

SK/C06.02) Mike Giglio, NEWSWEEK, December 13, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The latest WikiLeaks document dump hasn't offered much about Latin America so far, and Hugo Chavez seems to be champing at the bit for more--he responded to early reports of the leaks by calling for Hillary Clinton to resign. The dispatches are bound to raise tensions in a region already angst-ridden over American influence, on top of ruffling plenty of feathers (Clinton asks about Argentine President Cristina Kirchner's mental health in one cable; Chavez is called "crazy" in another). But if the content is similar to what's been leaked from other regions, the cables might actually weaken some of the wilder conspiracy theories that have become prime political currency for Chavez and allies such as Bolivia's Evo Morales and Ecuador's Rafael Correra. "I don't think we've seen anything that suggests that there is a hidden agenda in U.S. policy that we didn't know about already," says Andrew Selee, director of the Latin American Program at the Woodrow Wilson Center.

SK/C06.03) Anne Applebaum [columnist, WASHINGTON POST], SPECTATOR, December 11, 2010, p. 16, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Alas, the cables do not live up to Assange's fantasies: these are records of private conversations, not human rights abuse. Some are fascinating--but so far none are shocking. Almost universally, they show American diplomats pursuing the same goals in private as they do in public--more so than most.

SK/C06.04) Mike Giglio, NEWSWEEK, December 13, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The cables should continue to support the official U.S. line, a senior State Department official told NEWSWEEK. "You know, if [the cables] come out in close proximity to those kinds of comments, we'll let people draw their own conclusions," the official said. "If you take a sampling of U.S. cables at any particular time, in any particular embassy, I think what you're going to find is--lo and behold--U.S. foreign policy as stated is very similar to U.S. reporting from the people on the ground." 2. IRAQI WAR DOCUMENTS RELEASE HAD LITTLE IMPACT

SK/C06.05) Nancy Scola, NEW YORK, December 13, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. What Assange dreads is a repeat of November 2007, when his team published a cache of U.S. military records the world promptly ignored. "This was such a fantastic leak: the Army's force structure of Afghanistan and Iraq, down to the last chair," Assange told The New Yorker. "And nothing." This October's release of 400,000 tactical reports from the Iraq War made a big splash but produced little ripple.

3. DISCLOSURES OF FAR LESS SIGNIFICANCE THAN PENTAGON PAPERS

SK/C06.06) Steve Coll, THE NEW YORKER, November 8, 2010, p. 27, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. In fact, the archives that WikiLeaks has published are much less significant than the Pentagon Papers were in their day. Ellsberg and his collaborators in the press exposed lies by President Lyndon Johnson and his cabinet about critical decisions in the Vietnam War, such as Johnson's exaggeration of enemy action in the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which he used as a rationale for escalating combat. The WikiLeaks files contain nothing comparable. Nor are they distinctively comprehensive; there are many open archives in the United States and Europe that chronicle the depredations of wars past, unit by unit, prison camp by prison camp. SK/C07. WIKILEAKS DOES NOT AID TERRORISM

1. CRITICAL SECURITY SITES LIST IS OF LITTLE VALUE TO TERRORISTS

SK/C07.01) Mark Clayton, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, December 6, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. "Much information today that is classified as 'secret' is often available publicly (online or otherwise), even without WikiLeaks," writes Terry O'Sullivan, a University of Akron researcher who has analyzed global critical infrastructure for the Department of Homeland Security. "It's not the items on that list that are secret, per se. It's the fact that someone in the State Dept. thinks they are worthy" of that designation. The real value to a terrorist, would be "if that list were prioritized, with specific vulnerabilities outlined," he says. "Absent that, I'd say this publication of a raw list, at least, is not any grand threat to the security of the nations involved or the United States."

SK/C07.02) Mark Clayton, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, December 6, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. Terrorists break down into three groups: those wanting to inflict damage locally, those looking for regional targets, and those with a global strategic outlook, says John Daly, a non-resident Fellow at the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University says. "There's nothing in this cable that indicates a revised wish list for the third group - the global strategists," Dr. Daly says.

SK/C07.03) Kevin Johnson & Mimi Hall, USA TODAY, December 7, 2010, p. 6A, LEXISNEXIS Academic. Stewart Baker, a former DHS policy chief in the George W. Bush administration, said terrorists would do some damage if they hit most sites on the list, but the U.S. likely would recover quickly. "So they blow up a gas pipeline and the price of gas goes up a little and other mechanisms for getting gas to market are brought to bear," he said. "A profound effect on the United States strikes me as remote." Attacks on the sites listed would produce "very little in the way of horror or death, so I'm not convinced this is somehow revealing the crown jewels or somehow making the United States less safe," Baker said.

2. CALLING WIKILEAKS A TERRORIST ORGANIZATION IS BOGUS

SK/C07.04) THE ECONOMIST (US), December 11, 2010, pNA, LEXISNEXIS Academic. Calling Mr Assange a terrorist, for example, is deeply counterproductive. His cyber-troops do not fly planes into buildings, throw acid at schoolgirls or murder apostates. Indeed, the few genuine similarities between WikiLeaks and the Taliban--its elusiveness and its wide base of support--argue against ill-judged attacks that merely broaden that support. After a week of clumsy American-inspired attempts to shut WikiLeaks down, it is now hosted on more than 700 servers around the world. SK/C08. WIKILEAKS HAS NOT VIOLATED U.S. LAW

1. WIKILEAKS HAS NOT VIOLATED U.S. ESPIONAGE LAW

SK/C08.01) Bob Barr [former U.S. House Member], THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION, December 27, 2010, p. A10, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. Many legal scholars, not prone to the pressures of public sentiment (which polls suggest strongly supports prosecuting Assange), correctly argue there simply is no proper basis for a case against Assange under the Espionage Act, federal conspiracy laws, or other statutes. In testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, several constitutional scholars eloquently presented the case for not prosecuting Assange, based on a fair reading of the First Amendment to the Constitution, the law and sound policy.

2. WIKILEAKS IS NO MORE GUILTY THAN U.S. NEWSPAPERS ARE

SK/C08.02) Bob Barr [former U.S. House Member], THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION, December 27, 2010, p. A10, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. Reading the Espionage Act the way Assange's critics prefer would open a Pandora's box of virtually unlimited reach. As Benjamin Wittes, a legal analyst from the Brookings Institution, explained on his blog, such interpretation would reach even "casual discussions of such disclosures by persons not authorized to receive them to other persons not authorized to receive them --- in other words, all tweets sending around those countless news stories, all blogging on them, and all dinner party conversations about their contents." There wouldn't be enough jails to hold us all.

SK/C08.03) Sarah Barmak, THE TORONTO STAR (Canada), December 11, 2010, p. IN2, LEXISNEXIS Academic. Adam Serwer, The American Prospect: "If WikiLeaks is prosecuted under the Espionage Act as it currently exists, then no journalistic institution or entity is safe. The idea that any time that a journalist obtains a document that has 'information related to the national defence' that could be used 'to the injury of the United States' they could be subject to prosecution would destroy national security journalism as it currently exists." Glenn Greenwald, Salon: "How can it possibly be that WikiLeaks should be prosecuted for espionage, but not The New York Times or The Guardian or any other newspaper that publishes these cables?" SK/C09. CYBERWAR HAS NOT BEEN HARMFUL TO SECURITY

1. CYBERWAR HAS TURNED OUT TO BE CYBERHYPE

SK/C09.01) Mark Clayton, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, December 23, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. "Welcome to Infowar" between WikiLeaks supporters and detractors, blared one headline. London's Guardian newspaper declared the first "Internet-wide Cyber War." But it turns out that cyberwar this month may have been mostly cyberhype, Internet security experts say.

2. WIKILEAKS SUPPORTERS’ CYBERATTACKS HAVE FAILED

SK/C09.02) Mark Clayton, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, December 23, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. A WikiLeaks support group calling itself Anonymous organized "Operation Payback" after Visa, MasterCard, PayPal, and others had cut services to WiliLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange. The group launched so-called "distributed denial of service" (DDoS) attacks against these businesses. DDoS attacks, which have been growing in size and intensity across the Internet, seek to clog websites by making millions of virtual requests for information simultaneously. The attacks slowed or blocked for hours a number of targeted websites, but they notably failed against Amazon and others. Thus the breathless "cyberwar" reports by major media outlets - at least one of which evoked visions of 16- year-olds ruling the world from their laptops - were well off the mark, security experts say. In fact, a fresh, detailed analysis shows that the cyberattacks related to the WikiLeaks controversy were more like a college-level cyber sit-in than global cyberwar.

SK/C09.03) Mark Clayton, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, December 23, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. "Despite the thousands of tweets, press articles and endless hype, most of the attacks ... were both relatively small and unsophisticated," wrote Craig Labovitz, chief scientist at Arbor Networks, an Internet security company in Chelmsford, Mass., on his blog recently. "Other than intense media scrutiny, the attacks were unremarkable." SK/C10. WIKILEAKS BENEFITS PUBLIC RIGHT TO KNOW

1. WIKILEAKS IS INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM

SK/C10.01) Drew Campbell [President, PEN International Scottish Centre], THE HERALD (Glasgow, Scotland), December 15, 2010, p. 14, LEXISNEXIS Academic. WikiLeaks has not broken any US or UK law. This is investigative journalism and, by publishing, it performs a similar function to those who exposed the Watergate cover-up, the Iran-Contra conspiracy, the Enron scandal and many other stories, and in doing so help protect democracy from tyranny.

SK/C10.02) PC MAGAZINE ONLINE, December 23, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The United Nations and the Organization of American States have stepped into the WikiLeaks issue with a joint statement that promotes protection for journalists, media workers, and civil society representatives who disseminate classified information in the public interest. They "should not be subject to liability unless they committed fraud or another crime to obtain the information," according to Frank LaRue, the UN's special rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, and Catalina Botero Marino, special rapporteur on freedom of expression for OAS.

2. JOURNALISM HAS RESPONSIBILITY TO INFORM THE PUBLIC

SK/C10.03) Arthur S. Brisbane, THE NEW YORK TIMES, December 5, 2010, p. 8, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. What if, instead of publishing what it knew, The Times had chosen to pass on WikiLeaks's 250,000-plus secret documents? What if The Times had mulled it all over and determined that the release of such sensitive information would endanger the government's efforts to advance American interests in the world, and so concluded reluctantly that the newspaper would have to suppress the story? Journalistic “problems” notwithstanding, it's simply inconceivable that The Times would choose this path. The Times, like other serious news organizations in democracies, exists to ferret out and publish information -- most especially information that government, business and other power centers prefer to conceal. Arming readers with knowledge is what it's about, and journalists are motivated to pursue that end.

SK/C10.04) Arthur S. Brisbane, THE NEW YORK TIMES, December 5, 2010, p. 8, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. The impulse to obtain and publish inaccessible information is greatly strengthened in an age in which, if anything, government secrecy is growing. As The Washington Post reported earlier this year in its illuminating series “Top Secret America,” the government has expanded secrecy so much that 854,000 people now hold top-secret security clearances. SK/C10.05) Arthur S. Brisbane, THE NEW YORK TIMES, December 5, 2010, p. 8, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. What if The New York Times in 1964 had possessed a document showing that L.B.J.'s intent to strike against North Vietnam after the Gulf of Tonkin incident was based on false information? Should it have published the material? What if The Times had possessed documentary evidence showing that the Bush administration's claims about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction were unfounded? Should it have published the material? These questions, which need only be posed rhetorically, supply an answer to the larger question: Would you as a reader rather have the information yourself or trust someone else to hang on to it for you?

3. WIKILEAKS HAS MADE AMERICANS BETTER INFORMED

SK/C10.06) Arthur S. Brisbane, THE NEW YORK TIMES, December 5, 2010, p. 8, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. But I don't think that's the point. The real question should be: Are Times readers and Americans at large better informed on these issues because of the stories? The answer is unquestionably yes. To cite just a few specifics: North Korea: The Chinese don't know what's going on with Kim Jong-il's nuclear program, a surprising revelation for anyone who thought the Chinese could, as a last resort, put a lid on little brother. Pakistan: American diplomats seriously doubt that Pakistan's military, which effectively controls the state, will ever suppress extremist groups that conduct operations against our forces in Afghanistan and threaten India. That knowledge implies continuing futility for further American efforts to combat such groups in Afghanistan. Iran: United States officials believe that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government obtained so-called BM-25 missiles from North Korea, enabling Iran to extend its range enough to strike Western Europe or Moscow. This development largely explains the Obama administration's willingness to shift its missile defense strategy in Europe.

SK/C10.07) Henry Porter, THE OBSERVER (London, England), December 12, 2010, p. 31, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. Yet the leaks are of unprecedented importance because, at a stroke, they have enlightened the masses about what is being done in their name and have shown the corruption, incompetence - and sometimes wisdom - of our politicians, corporations and diplomats. More significantly, we have been given a snapshot of the world as it is, rather than the edited account agreed upon by diverse elites, whose only common interest is the maintenance of their power and our ignorance.

4. WIKILEAKS EXPOSES CORRUPTION, INJUSTICE, AND INCOMPETENCE

SK/C10.08) John Pilger, NEW STATESMAN, August 23, 2010, p. 18, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. On 26 July, WikiLeaks released thousands of secret US military files on the war in Afghanistan. Cover-ups, a secret assassination unit and the killing of civilians are documented. In file after file, the brutalities echo the colonial past. From Malaya and Vietnam to Bloody Sunday and Basra, little has changed. The difference is that today there is an extraordinary way of knowing how faraway societies are routinely ravaged in our name. WikiLeaks has acquired records of six years of civilian killing in both Afghanistan and Iraq, of which those published in the Guardian are a fraction. SK/C10.09) Eric Margolis, WASHINGTON REPORT ON MIDDLE EAST AFFAIRS, November 2010, pOV-10, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. The facts revealed by WikiLeaks are indeed shocking: wide-scale killing of civilians by U.S. and NATO forces; torture of prisoners handed over to the Communist-dominated Afghan secret police; American death squads; endemic corruption and theft; double-dealing and demoralization of Western occupation forces facing ever fiercer Taliban resistance.

SK/C10.10) Carne Ross [head, Independent Diplomat, the world’s first nonprofit diplomatic advisory group], NEW STATESMAN, December 6, 2010, p. 22, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Because the most embarrassing thing about the WikiLeaks disclosures is not that they happened (though this is bad enough for the American government), but the revelation-long suspected but now proven - of the yawning discrepancy between US words and actions in that most contested area, the Middle East. Cable after cable details the extraordinarily intimate and codependent relations between the US and various despotic and unpleasant Arab regimes. One Arab intelligence chief plots with the Americans to target Iranian groups, or destroy Hamas. Another undemocratic Arab leader invites US bombers to attack targets in his own territory. It is this discrepancy - between word and deed - that will keep fuel in WikiLeaks's tanks and those of others like it.

SK/C10.11) Editorial, THE WASHINGTON POST, December 8, 2010, p. A18, LEXISNEXIS Academic. Embassy staff members seem way too interested in collecting all kinds of silly gossip and information about inconsequential events and making assumptions on what the (fill in the blank) of a country are like. When I ask staff members about this or that investment project, my questions are met with blank stares. When I ask them to help me set up meetings or use the clout of the United States, they seem to come up with every excuse in the world about why that can't be done. The cables on WikiLeaks are important for showing the American people what we pay billions of dollars for - a bunch of silly gossip - and very little action.

SK/C10.12) Sheldon Richman [Editor, THE FREEMAN magazine], THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, November 29, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. Naturally, WikiLeaks refuses to confirm that Manning was the source of the documents, but assuming he was, what are we to make of him? Is he a hero or a villain? I say hero. When a government secretly engages in such consequential activities as aggressive wars justified by at best questionable and at worst fabricated intelligence, covert bombings and assassinations, and diplomatic maneuvering designed to support such global meddling, the people in whose name that government acts - and who could suffer retaliation - have a right to know. 5. WIKILEAKS IS COMPARABLE TO PENTAGON PAPERS

SK/C10.13) Sheldon Richman [Editor, THE FREEMAN magazine], THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, November 29, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. Yet how can Americans exercise vigilance against government threats to their liberty if critical information is systematically withheld? They can't. That's why people such as Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers 39 years ago, and perhaps Manning heroically risked personal ruin and defied authority to bring that information to us.

SK/C10.14) Daniel Ellsberg [defense analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers], THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, July 29, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. One of the most important messages or conclusions to be drawn from the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago is what they didn't reveal, and that was: In some 7,000 pages of high-level discussions, they didn't reveal a single compelling or even remotely realistic basis for continuing the war. Nor did they answer the question of: Why are we there? And that's the conclusion: that there wasn't an answer to be given. It couldn't be inferred from a very small release of papers, say 10 pages or 20 pages. You really had to see that, year after year, nobody was coming up with or reporting any kind of success. And the same is true with this six-year compilation to show that, year after year, the process really isn't changing, and that the more we increased our presence in Afghanistan, the stronger the Taliban was growing.

SK/C10.15) Editorial, THE AGE (Melbourne, Australia), December 18, 2010, p. 24, LEXISNEXIS Academic. It must be wondered whether the Prime Minister thinks the New York Times publication of the Pentagon Papers, which detailed the Johnson administration's deception of Congress and the US public about the Vietnam War, was grossly irresponsible. Those documents were also illegally copied and provided by a person with access to them. Yet it cannot seriously be argued that their publication was not in the public interest. It mattered to Americans that their government's public statements on the war were contradicted by actions it had concealed from them. And so it is now with the WikiLeaks revelations, in Australia and many other countries around the world.

SK/C10.16) John F. Burns & Ravi Somaiya, THE NEW YORK TIMES, October 24, 2010, p. A12, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. Mr. Assange, speaking at a news conference in a London hotel a stone's throw from the headquarters of Britain's foreign intelligence agency, MI6, was joined by Mr. Ellsberg, 79, the former military analyst who leaked a 1,000-page secret history of the Vietnam War in 1971 that became known as the Pentagon Papers. Mr. Ellsberg, who said he had flown overnight from California to attend, described Mr. Assange admiringly as “the most dangerous man in the world” for challenging governments, particularly the United States. SK/C11. HARMS OF WIKILEAKS DO NOT OUTWEIGH BENEFITS

1. PUBLIC RIGHT TO KNOW IS PARAMOUNT

SK/C11.01) Sheldon Richman [Editor, THE FREEMAN magazine], THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, November 29, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. War is the most serious thing to which a government can commit a society. A government that can make war while keeping essential information about its justification and conduct secret is neither open nor fit for free people. President Obama, like his predecessors, asks for our trust. He'd say can't tell us everything, but government in a democratic society requires confidence in its leaders. A similar appeal for trust failed to impress Thomas Jefferson in 1798. In his protest of the Adams administration's Alien and Sedition Acts (which essentially criminalized harsh criticism of the government), Jefferson wrote in the Kentucky Resolutions, "[I]t would be a dangerous delusion were a confidence in the men of our choice to silence our fears for the safety of our rights: that confidence is everywhere the parent of despotism - free government is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; it is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power."

SK/C11.02) John Pilger, NEW STATESMAN, August 23, 2010, p. 18, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. Having skilfully published the WikiLeaks expose of a fraudulent war, the Guardian should now give its most powerful and unreserved editorial support to the protection of Assange and his colleagues, whose truth-telling is as important as any in my lifetime.

2. WIKILEAKS IS VITAL TO U.S. DEMOCRACY

SK/C11.03) Daniel Ellsberg [defense analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers], THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, July 29, 2010, pNA, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Custom Newspapers. A democracy requires this information. Unauthorized disclosures are the lifeblood of a republic. That remains true. We can't rely only on the authorized handouts from the government any more now than we could under [British King] George III. The First Amendment was a marvelous invention, one of our best contributions to human society.

SK/C11.04) Steve Coll, THE NEW YORKER, November 8, 2010, p. 27, GALE CENGAGE LEARNING, Expanded Academic ASAP. America's all-volunteer military has left many in the country at a remove from the debasements of the wars; the WikiLeaks archives offer an authentic transcript of them. All wars are terrible, but some must be fought. A democracy is strengthened when its citizens are confronted with the raw truths that follow from the choices of their elected leaders.

SK/C11.05) Mirko Bagaric [Deakin U., Australia], THE COURIER MAIL (Australia), December 17, 2010, p. 44, LEXISNEXIS Academic. They [WikiLeaks leaks] have also opened up to the world community fascinating insights into the workings of governments and underlined the utter self-interest and duplicity with which governments often act. These leaks, then, have done nearly as much for democracy as the right to vote.

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