All right, y'all.
Welcome back to the show.
It's anti-war radio And our next guest on the show today is trevor tim from the electronic frontier foundation.
That's eff.org And uh, this article is our spotlight today on anti-war.com cablegate one year later How wiki leaks has influenced foreign policy journalism and the first amendment welcome to show trevor.
How are you doing?
Great.
Thanks for having me.
Oh, i'm very happy to have you here great article today And you know just the other day I was trying to come up with a bunch of examples off the top of my head about all the great stories that wiki leaks, uh was responsible for breaking over the past year and I know I fell short, but you have a great little list in here And um, so I was wondering if we could just start with that maybe remind people a little bit of what we've learned from wiki leaks Yeah, absolutely.
Um, so my article looks at six countries basically Um the six countries that have been in the news the most in foreign policy terms, um, Libya, pakistan, yemen, egypt, tunisia and iraq Um, so libya libya was a really interesting case because it kind of infuriated both american politicians and gaddafi because so back in this summer, uh, senator john mccain was probably one of the most vocal members of congress that was Um criticizing obama for not being aggressive enough, um towards gaddafi and not um sending in enough troops Um, but it was the wiki leaf cable revealed that just two years earlier senator mccain had actually promised gaddafi to arm him with U.S. Military equipment so it kind of uh brought out the hypocrisy in mccain's statements that he was he was just kind of pushing for war even though Um, he had been he had claimed he was friends with gaddafi just years earlier and in fact that one was really funny because There had already kind of been a few critical articles in the media pointing out his cozy relationship and his trip that he made with Senators, uh lieberman and graham over there and he was already I think denying that anything untoward had gone on And then the wiki leaks cable on that issue hit that, you know Finally verified it and made him, you know, uh come out publicly denouncing the wiki leak for just not having the story Right and all that brought even more attention to it.
I know he had been he had made comments like he was meeting with gaddafi He was an interesting man And uh that you know this video of him shaking gaddafi's hand and everything, but you know, he denied Making these statements and then the cable came out and basically just proved he was lying.
Um, but you know on the on the flip side um, the cable made gaddafi look horrible, too, um, he He actually I mean they seemed to obviously he was a little crazy already, but they seemed to drive him more crazy Um, he was even accusing the cia of leaking the documents just to undermine him so, um, it kind of cut both ways in that situation, um, and then there's there's pakistan, which um, You know with osama bin laden being killed in august the u.s had gone in there without pakistan's permission um with ground forces um, or at least more than drones and um The wiki leaks cables actually showed that we had been going into pakistan For a long time before this ever happened, um, not just with drones but with um Jsoc ground forces and had been uh operating with the pakistani military for quite some time There had been a report in the nation about this About a year ago, but the government actually strenuously denied The whole story and then when the wiki leaf cables came out it basically confirmed that they were lying about that as well Mm-hmm, and you know, it may not be good politics for them But I don't buy the story that the pakistani military wasn't in on the osama bin laden raid for a minute There's no way they did that without their loyal puppet.
Kiani being in on it.
So, um, you know, it Worked really bad for pakistan in terms of you know pr here in america But of course the degree of cooperation to the degree cooperated with the americans is the degree to which he loses Legitimacy there in pakistan.
So it was in both sides interests, I guess to lie about that Yeah, absolutely.
I mean I think that The whole relationship with pakistan is called in the question these cables too because at the same time I mean, I guess this is this is again more common knowledge now that the u.s believes that the pakistani intelligence services is Basically supporting al-qaeda and the taliban But you know a year ago when these cables came out, um, you know, the u.s was putting on a very public face Um saying how much they support a pakistan, you know, we give them two billion dollars a year in military aid um, but all these cables were uniformly basically said that the the U.S. diplomats consider the isi a terrorist organization basically So this stuff was you know, it's kind of in the news now congressmen are commenting on it Um, even the department of defense and the cia comment on it now Um, but it wasn't known at the time and so this kind of uh broke the whole story open I think and now I guess I ought to mention here.
This article is really derived because it's the anniversary of the Beginning of the leaks of the state department diplomatic cables That's what this is a rundown of not the iraq and afghan war logs, which of course are also available at wikileaks.org Is where I throw that in yeah, um because uh on monday it was the uh, one year anniversary of cable gate, so this article focuses on um, Just what the cables did and the problem is, you know, I I go down I probably talk for a thousand words just about these these six countries But I mean, there's just thousands and thousands of cables are important and this kind of just Scratches the surface I'll go ahead since you said that i'll go ahead and throw in one rob prince at foreign policy and focus wrote about these cables that proved that Uh, the americans didn't just help with the ethiopian invasion of 2006 They hired the ethiopians to do it and put a lot of pressure on them to make them invade christmas 2006 and turn somalia upside down ever since and uh, that was a very important one that didn't get that much coverage, but Uh, maybe it got as little coverage as it is important, you know I know, you know, I could probably write a whole nother article on cables that should have got um More coverage that didn't and that's the problem with this.
Maybe you should do that, but i'm sorry I would actually love to um, because you know part of the reason I wrote this article, um was to show how The media used these cables, um to their advantage and how the new york times, you know, half of their issues in 2011 Um referenced wikileaks cables, um yet at the same time they refused to stand up for Julian Assange and wikileaks as there's a grand jury investigation going on basically saying i'm trying to criminalize national security journalism and I think it's really um kind of sad that they have used wikileaks for so much reporting and yet refuses to stand up for The first amendment and a free press and the fact that if wikileaks is ever charged for anything and convicted that the new york times has most to lose because They print classified information all the time.
Even when it doesn't include wikileaks, you know, there's there's If you open up the paper every week There's an article from a government leak that the new york times is on the front page And if wikileaks ever gets convicted, um The government will have a lot easier Time kind of censoring this information telling the new york times, you know, um, we might charge you so you better drop the story right All right.
Now, uh, we have just a couple of minutes before this first break here Uh, why don't you tell us about the effect of wikileaks with our relations with iraq?
Because this is one of the most important stories of the year.
I think yeah, you know what I think this is getting a this isn't getting enough attention because um, so basically the the back story is Um, there was an incident in 2006 where the u.s Or u.s forces, um went to a house and killed a bunch of innocent people um, including women and children, um, and the u.s tried to cover this up by then, um, Sending a drone in and uh blowing up essentially all the evidence Um, this was reported at the time, but when the cable came out um, it kind of Uh shed new light on the incident and made it made the u.s Look a lot worse than the original report um now at the same time this was going on iraq and u.s were negotiating to keep troops in iraq longer than the 2011 deadline um, and so Iraq the iraqi negotiators found out about this cable.
They read about it and were furious and basically decided um That they weren't going to allow any u.s troops to stay any longer.
There was plans to keep um, Thousands perhaps tens of thousands perhaps, um past the deadline and uh So the wiki leaks cable actually ended up ending the war early All right, we'll have to hold it right there.
We'll be right back after this break with trevor tim from the electronic frontier foundation Eff.org his articles the spotlight today on anti-war.com Cablegate one year later how wiki leaks has influenced foreign policy journalism and the first amendment.
We'll get to more of that right after this Thank you All right y'all welcome back to the show it's anti-war radio I'm scott horton.
I'm talking with trevor tim from the electronic frontier foundation Eff.org And his piece is the spotlight today at anti-war.com cablegate one year later how wiki leaks has influenced foreign policy journalism and the first amendment and uh So he's got a great rundown here and we've been talking about.
Uh, you know how much effect Uh wiki leaks has had on the world in the last year and the important stories to come out of it Really the the important stories to come out of what has come out of it Like we just talked about with iraq where the cables confirmed that they massacred men women And children and babies and called an airstrike to cover it up in iraq back in 2006.
The u.s army did and And how they knew it all along and lied about it all along and how that led to the breakdown the negotiations for the immunity For american soldiers to stay in iraq.
Hence.
They're leaving with only hillary's mercenaries left behind and the cia um so that's really important and then um Uh, but also tunisia tell us about how really this is the story of how the arab spring started was bradley manning's heroic gift to mankind Yeah, absolutely.
This is this is probably uh One of the most influential parts of the cables all year.
Um What happened was there's a there's an influential blogging group in tunisia called nawat who actually just won an eff pioneer war because they had Been uh blogging from the start about the um what became known as the jasmine revolution um in tunisia, so People in tunisia were already pretty much fed up with their president ben ali or their president quote unquote Um who's basically a dictator?um And they had already started uh protesting in the streets when nuwat made a deal with wiki leaks to get all of the tunisian cables um nuwat set up a a their own website called tuni leaks And widely distributed the cables to all the tunisians who had never read them before and so even though the u.s was friends with um Ben ali the cables basically painted this brutal picture of him as you know, someone who's corrupt um was a dictator, um Was a tyrant and um, yeah when they say that let that be a lesson too Whenever the state department is shaking your hand and smiling at you This is what they sound like when they're talking behind your back Exactly they they were telling the truth even um behind behind closed doors, even if they weren't in public Um, so once the tunisian people found out about this, they were worried that the u.s basically um supported this guy wholeheartedly and Once they found out that the u.s knew what they knew Um, they were emboldened and this kind of uh fanned the flames of what was going on there and eventually nsd international would Say that wiki leaks and the media partners Um were catalysts in this this revolution.
Um, so they were really credited with directly affecting this Peaceful revolution into uh democratic society.
So yeah, I mean the way I understood it at the time that the young man I'm, sorry, I forget his name now, uh set himself on fire and protest over The inflation and the local police state that wouldn't even let him sell vegetables on the side of the road The the backdrop for that was basically six weeks Of discussion maybe two months of discussion about these wiki leaks cables and the the whole country being Uh, you know brought into paying very close attention to this developing story about the corruption of their government So then this guy set himself on fire and protest over it and people just reacted you know, the cia could have never come up with a revolution like that where Everyone just storms out in the street and says they've had enough of this yeah, absolutely, I mean this is kind of You know, we we hear all the time that you know The ci is infuriated by wiki leaks or the department of defense or the state department But you know, it's it's if their stated goals are to bring more democratic societies It actually is it's helping their cause um, I think another great example is egypt, um, which is which kind of their revolution kind of happened right after tunisia's um We can't say that I don't think we can say that the wiki leaks cables directly influenced Egyptians because they were they were pretty much fed up with their government at the time Um, and you know, they knew that that their citizens were being tortured and they had enough Um, but there was there was really no better resource for the rest of the world In understanding the relationship between the u.s and egyptians and what was going on in egypt um With their citizens and their police force other than the wiki leaks cables um, basically the cables told of the u.s is Really close ties with mubarak, you know, hillary clinton had previously said that Uh mubarak and his family were were close friends personal friends with the clintons Um, and the you know the long History and relationship with the u.s military and the egyptian military, you know Their their generals come over here and get trained and then go back to egypt.
Um to carry out their orders Um, and the the cables Telled just some horrible stories about torture that was going on in these countries.
Um, just an unflinching look at you know, um Police brutality was quote routine and pervasive um, according to the cables and you know, the use of torture by the Government was so widespread that they weren't even uh, they weren't even denying that they tortured anymore and it's funny that that these cables say that because for the for the Decade previous in the bush administration.
We were actually sending.
Um We were sending detainees to egypt to essentially be tortured Yeah, well back in the clinton years too.
Michael shawyer said if you wanted somebody to disappear completely that's where you sent them Yeah, absolutely.
I mean it started under clinton.
Um And was obviously expanded under bush.
Um, but this is the these were the prisons that we were sending these people to um, even though we were supposed to be getting assurances from them that uh, they weren't torturing which obviously was You know, do you happen to know the wiki leaks say anything about the assassination of rafa kareeri in beirut in?
2005 Uh, you know what i'm not exactly sure but I wouldn't be surprised.
Um I think i'm going to go look that up later on if I can remember too Yeah, that'd be interesting actually.
I wonder if there's any because they're obviously lying They said that asad did it so I wonder if they admit that they're lying in the cables, you know Yeah, that'd be interesting actually.
All right now, um, so here's the thing too and this is really the point of your article I want to give you a chance to talk about it here the long-term impact.
Um This is uh, it's such good journalism that it's really provoked a police state response here as you We're starting to talk about in the previous segment here where you really could just have journalism outlawed Yeah, it's the the reaction by the u.s.
Government has been so hyperbolic and so outrageous Um because especially because they know it's um protected by the first amendment publishing classified information Um, all of these documents are classified secret or below actually a majority of them aren't even classified at all.
They're just under For official eyes only or things like that.
Some of them are classified secret Um, but the problem with that is that the private citizens aren't Regulated by the classification system that's set up by executive order and applies to government officials Once it's leaked to the media The media is free to publish it Um, this goes all the way back to the pentagon papers case in the 1970s where the supreme court Said that the government can't censor papers for publishing classified information And the pentagon papers were actually at a higher classification than the wiki leaks documents.
They were top secret, which is the highest um but yet at the same time, um, the government decided to come down hard on wiki leaks and um As you may know they when they found out that they were constitutionally barred from censoring themselves they pressured payment processors like Uh visa and mastercard and paypal to stop doing business with wiki leaks, even though they had done nothing illegal Um, and now they have this grand jury going on where they're investigating wiki leaks for violations of the espionage act which is a law that was written in world war one that was supposed to I guess Stop dissent essentially back in uh, 1917 But you know it wasn't used for decades and it has been used a few times to go after government leakers Um, but it's never it's never used to go after private citizens and especially media organizations Um, because like I said this stuff's protected by the first amendment papers do it all the time um but so what this will end up happening is if wiki leaks is convicted even though You know, they're they're looked at differently from the government than the new york times is or the washington post is It won't matter under the letter of the law because essentially what wiki leaks is doing is exactly what the new york times does is exactly What the washington post does which is?
Collect information from government officials and publish it truthful information that is in the public interest So the new york times has been busy ignoring this story Um, they don't really report on the grand jury and they especially haven't stuck up for wiki leaks in their editorial pages or bradley manning No or bradley manning absolutely and which is funny you bring bradley manning up because there was um, his lawyer came out the other day and said that There's actually he believes that there's three studies done by the white house the defense department and state department on uh, how much wiki leaks damaged national security and apparently all three of them came to the conclusion that Uh, there was no damage to national security.
So they are going on this witch hunt For wiki leaks and torturing bradley manning for something that actually didn't hurt them All right.
Well, i'm, sorry.
We got to leave it there.
We're all out of time But I really appreciate your time on the show today Yeah, thanks for having me everybody.
That's trevor tim From the electronic frontier foundation eff.org his piece is the spotlight today on anti-war.com cablegate one year later.
We'll be right back
