Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Evaluating the Benefits of Full Disclosure

N THE DISTRICT AND AROUND THE WORLD, THE UPROAR over this week’s leak of secret U.S. diplomatic cables seems to be growing by the minute. On Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called the disclosures, which were released by the fledgling website WikiLeaks, “an attack on America’s foreign policy interests” and “an attack on the international community.” Across the Atlantic, British Prime Minister David Cameron wasn’t happy, either. “Clearly we condemn the unauthorized release of classified information,” a spokesman for Cameron said this week.

These kinds of sweeping condemnations have been the default response by critics of the latest WikiLeaks documents release. But it’s hard to believe that this new disclosure constitutes “an attack,” as Clinton maintains. While many of the WikiLeaks revelations – which contain vivid and unflattering depictions of foreign leaders – are embarrassing for American diplomats, they hardly undermine national security. As The New York Times reported on Sunday, the news organizations that obtained the cables redacted information they deemed too sensitive for publication. They also engaged in extensive discussions with the Obama administration on whether any of the documents contained information that would compromise American security interests.

The most recent WikiLeaks disclosure was far from a gratuitous act of insurrection. Thanks to the leak, we learned that the Bush administration pressured the German government to abstain from prosecuting CIA officers involved with the imprisonment and torture of an innocent German citizen who shared the name of a suspected terrorist. We learned that U.S. diplomats in Afghanistan believe that President Hamad Karzai’s brother, who serves as chairman of the Kandahar province’s legislative council, is a corrupt drug baron. And we learned that Secretary of State Clinton ordered State Department staff to spy on United Nations diplomats – in violation of a U.N. Treaty.

This is information the public should have, and it’s difficult to see why the State Department would want it to remain secret, aside from the fact that it’s highly unflattering. Critics of the leak have argued that it jeopardizes American diplomacy. But the costs of disclosing this information are dwarfed by its benefit: providing Americans with a comprehensive and candid look at the policy-making that is carried out in their name every day.

As Jack Shafer pointed out in Slate Magazine this week, some level of distrust of our most important institutions serves as a safeguard in a democracy. There’s no doubt WikiLeaks has helped maintain the kind of healthy skepticism we need, especially in the wake of the war in Iraq – perhaps the decade’s most devastating product of an over-trusting electorate. And it doesn’t look as if WikiLeaks is going to stop with the State Department. According to several news organizations, the site’s next target will be Bank of America, from which it has allegedly obtained scores of secret exchanges depicting what the site’s founder Julian Assange called “an ecosystem of corruption.”

To be sure, the latest WikiLeaks disclosures are hardly the Pentagon Papers, and they reveal no major scandals. There are no Abu Ghraibs, black sites or Guantanamos among the trove of documents. Most of the published cables, in fact, show American diplomats performing incisively and effectively. But it’s wrong to cast this massive disclosure as an act of international vandalism. The WikiLeaks documents are a remarkable window into American diplomacy, and we should be grateful to those who were brave enough to make them public.

Peter Fulham is a sophomore in the College. He can be reached at fulhamthehoya.com. POTOMAC VIEWS appears every other Friday.

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