28 Nov Latest Wikileaks Dump: Swan Song for the Diplomatic Cable?
I suspect this will be a much bigger story than the previous Iraq and Afghanistan disclosures, mostly because there will be something here for everyone. I’m not sure that the State Department looks particularly bad, as Timothy Garten Ash explains. It shouldn’t be a revelation to anyone that diplomats sometimes do something that looks like spying. This is much more likely to cause scandals in foreign capitals than in the US (which is not to say that it won’t hurt US foreign policy interests — it will). What you will see are lots of examples of US diplomats executing their briefs, in most cases pretty well.
One possible casualty is the venerable tradition of the diplomatic cable. There is an art to this medium. The best cables have a narrative arc. It would be fun to compose a full typology (including the serious policy assessment, the color story, the ambassador’s farewell cable, memcons, codel reports, and “scenesetters“, among others) — on top of the 250,000 wikileaks cables, we have more than a century’s worth of the Foreign Relations of the United States to work with. US diplomats have always represented the bureaucratic elite (remember the handkerchief-up-the-sleeve stereotype), and some write elegantly. As a sort of private reporting service for the US government, however, it must be getting tougher to add value as the sources of information multiply along with modes of diplomatic communication. With the rise of email and other channels, I wonder if ambassadors and their staffs still consider cables the primary medium for staying in touch. (Even less so in the Department itself, where a cumbersome inter-office clearance process has to make cables the choice of last resort.)
But this episode will surely make cables look less attractive still. It’s one thing to understand that your work will come to light 25 years hence, when you (and your interlocutors) will either be dead or retired, too old much to care; or else flattered to see your handiwork become the stuff of history. It’s another to have to worry about something being disclosed that might affect your ability to function in your next post (or whether you’ll get one at all). The result will be less interesting stuff on paper for the record, more stuff over the phone or scattered in the diplomatic equivalent of tweets. Diplomatic historians will be thrilled with this unexpected Thanksgiving weekend gift, but they may have a lot less to work with in the future.
Cables have been deprecated by the field offices for going on ten years. They are not the favored means of communications, but a required one, required because they serve the needs of various offices in Washington. Truly sensitive materials within State get the highest classification (TS) or sometimes get routed through other-agency channels, if appropriate. And then there’s the telephone, scrambled of course. Time zones can make the phone difficult and it increases the record-keeping burden on both parties. But it is, so far, the most secure means of communication short of a face-to-face in a bubble. One of the problems with cables is that they are expensive to process, well over $100 each. This really cuts down on the traffic if an office is responsible (as it often is) for paying its own bills. It’s doubly so if the office belongs to any of a number of other agencies located within an embassy. State’s idea of cost-sharing, in my experience, off loads a major part of overhead to those other agencies. E-mail has largely supplanted cables for much administrative communications. Classified e-mail (i.e. SIPRNET) was once considered useful, but I think that’s pretty much gone down the toilet now.… Read more »
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John, Very interesting on the budgetary aspects — in the old days no one would have given cost any thought at all in deciding whether to send a cable (even though it must have been relatively more expensive back then). What I’m not clear on is the use of informal emails (not subject to clearance and not subject to cable-like distribution), classified or not. I assume that blackberries are also a part of the picture now.
Informal e-mails are frowned upon, but nonetheless used. They are not supposed to be used (and use is monitored for compliance) for the transmission of any material classified at any level. It’s a firing offense to do so.
E-mail, even through public systems (GMail, Yahoo, etc.) are certainly monitored, though less easily than in-house e-mail. All are subject to subpoena, of course. In-house e-mail is also searchable by IT and DS, with no subpoena required. I’ve had officers get dinged for improper use of e-mails and indiscreet content. I think it a safe assumption that if you’re working for the government, the government is perfectly capable of watching what you’re doing on company time.
Have a look in this context at the case of Stoll v. Switzerland before the European Court of Human Rights. That case concerned a confidential report which the Swiss ambassador in Washington D.C. had sent back to the capital city in the context of the holocaust claims in the US in the 1990’s. In the report he wrote, inter alia, “this is a war Switzerland must wage and win on the external and domestic fronts. Most of our adversaries are not to be trusted.” This diplomatic document was leaked to a Swiss newspaper which published it together with a commentary (the article, which expressed outrage, was entitled “That’s all we need”). The newspaper was eventually fined by the Swiss courts for breach of confidentiality. The Second Section of the European Court saw in the fine a violation of the freedom of the press (Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights), the Grand Chamber eventually found not (judgment of 10.12.2007). So you get the whole panoply of views on the matter.
To me it was surprising that WikiLeaks was able to get a hold of these cables in the first place. However, this might be due to my naivety when it comes to technology. What caught my attention with this story was not only the amount of cables that were produced for such a short period of time, but the information that was contained within them. Although with the way advances in technology have allowed for the leaking of information from other means of communication, I can see an argument for the continuation of the use of cables for information of such confidential nature. Cables might have been deemed as “safer” due to their limited use. Well, that is until now. It will be interesting to see what changes the government will implement in the communication of similar information in the future and whether cables will continue to be used for this purpose. Maybe WikiLeaks will provide us with this answer in the near future.
Response…I’ve quoted you and linked to you here: http://consul-at-arms2.blogspot.com/2010/11/re-latest-wikileaks-dump-swan-song-for.html