What’s been unveiled isn’t so much the stuff of espionage novels as People Magazine for diplomats and policymakers.
Wikileaks released another 250,000 classified documents over the weekend, this time from the Department of State. Since the details concern the everyday workings of U.S. diplomacy, the leaks have much greater potential for scandal than the previous series on Iraq and Afghanistan. Few of the files are currently available at the organization’s site (due to denial of service attacks from you-know-who), but major media outlets have deigned to provide us the most “shocking” revelations:
- Saudi King Abdullah and other Gulf potentates have been exhorting the White House to attack Iran. The Israelis have already seized this opportunity to justify their own pressure campaign on Washington.
- Iranian President Mahmud Ahmadinejad is just like Hitler.
- Secretary of State Hillary Clinton ordered the collection of biometrics and other intelligence on foreign diplomats working at the UN in New York.
- Pakistan teeters on the brink of chaos and its nuclear arsenal isn’t fully secure (Surprise!).
- Clinton views the friendship between Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin with deep suspicion, and wants tabs kept on their business ties.
- Putin is an alpha dog, and Russia a “virtual mafia state”. It is well known the Kremlin uses mob assets overseas for its own purposes, but this allegation is especially rich coming from the United States of Goldman Sachs. More here….