Wikileaks: The Real Stuff
By
Israel Shamir
After
the tremendous coup of Wikileaks, this semi-clandestine site and organisation,
which had recently brought to public knowledge so many government crimes through
so many hundreds of thousands of documents (with even more of the way), has
predictably come under attack. Not only from Pentagon hacks, but also from
various bodies we would expect to back them rather than knife them in the back.
Reporters Without Borders
accused Wikileaks of being irresponsible, for having published the names of US
agents in Afghanistan. This accusation reveals the true nature of these
Reporters. They do not care about freedom of the press, they care about
protecting American interests and American spies. Whoever is old enough to
remember the revelations of Philip Agee will recognise the pattern: All of a
sudden these guys, who normally do not mind murdering others, recognise their
own mortality and vulnerability. This is very good. Spies and agents should be
outed: it will cause them to behave responsibly.
So
much for the pro-establishment line. What a pity that some of our friends in the
blogosphere joined in the chorus of detractors. Theirs are familiar and
respected names of the free web:
F. William Engdahl,
Gordon Duff,
Zahir Ebrahim.
Psychologically, one understands them. Could it be that all of a sudden we got
such a windfall? Is it not a bit like those emails from Nigeria offering us
millions for the simple information about our bank account? A diffident man is
likely to get cold feet when a beautiful girl smiles back and proposes having a
drink in a pub. The Wikileaks-deniers created an elaborate conspiracy theory:
these hundreds of thousands of real documents were fabricated by the CIA and
offered to an innocent public.
This
conspiracy argument cuts both ways: Way one, we are asked to believe that the
CIA went to unbelievable expense and bother of dumping so many secret papers,
including lists of their own agents, including the revelation that US
nuclear-bearing bombers were up on their way to Russia on 9/11, and what not –
for quite negligible gains.
The
second way is much more plausible and economical: what could be easier and
cheaper way to minimise damage than to claim that the stuff is fake? In his
spirited defence of Wikileaks
John Pilger
says: “A
Pentagon document states bluntly that US intelligence intends to 'fatally
marginalise' Wikileaks. The preferred tactic is smear, with corporate
journalists ever ready to play their part.” Alas, not only corporate
journalists, but even freelancers are doing it. There is no better way to
marginalize and smear than to insist that the files in question are
“chickenfeed” provided by CIA or Mossad.
I
know, respect and like some deniers of Wikileaks’ feats. I do not think that
they are inspired by the CIA in an attempt to minimise damage, but I do think
that they are committing a great error of judgment.
Let us
check the deniers’ arguments. William Engdahl writes: “far from an honest leak,
it is a calculated disinformation to the gain of the US and perhaps Israeli and
Indian intelligence and a coverup of the US and Western role in drug trafficking
out of Afghanistan.” What is his reasoning? It is 9/11. Engdahl is a true
believer in 9/11 conspiracy, and the simple fact that the editor of Wikileaks
Julian Assange does not subscribe to it fully and squarely is enough to dismiss
him as a stooge.
His
other arguments are derivatives of this position. In the documents published by
Wikileaks, there are ten references to the former head of the ISI, Pakistan’s
intelligence agency, General (Ret) Hamid Gul; and this General Gul, according to
the documents, has dealings with the Afghan Taliban. This is just a way to
demonise Pakistan, says Engdahl, because Gul was critical of the official 9/11
version and claimed the attack was done by the Israeli Mossad.
In
other documents it is said that Osama bin Laden is alive and kicking. This also
annoys Engdahl: no lesser person than Benazir Bhutto proclaimed Osama dead.
There
is a small ad hominem: Engdahl does not know Assange from Adam, and that
is why he is “mysterious” (and other sinister adjectives). Assange did not
express his belief in Engdahl’s favourite theory of 9/11, and that makes him
non-kosher.
Engdahl (and other detractors) do not understand the way these documents emerged
in the first place. The sheer volume of the leak is enormous. We of the
independent web media have no resources to analyse them. This work was carried
out by the New York Times and two European newspapers of record. These
three papers tried to get some jewels out of this sea of raw data. Naturally, if
somewhat regrettably, they fished out what was palatable for them and their
readers and managers.
The
New York Times found the leaks which fit its official mainstream attitude.
The Guardian found quite different documents, altogether more
interesting. If Global Research were to go after raw data, perhaps they
would be able to find something even more exciting.
So
Engdahl could say correctly: in the documents chosen and presented by the NY
Times there are such and such tendencies. That would be a fair presentation.
Other
arguments of Engdahl could be valid if Assange were an author of the leaked
documents. However, the authors were US officials. They wrote these papers in
their official capacity for other officials. It would not be even plausible that
they would wink and write “we know who really did 9/11, ha-ha-ha.” They would
lose their jobs the next day, if not the next hour!
It
makes sense that some US officials want to continue to draw money from Osama's
search. It is a small industry by now, which feeds a lot of contractors. For
this reason, it is in their interest to claim they know he is around,
disregarding the point whether he is alive or dead.
General Gul is not my cup of tea. He is a manipulative beast that made
Afghanistan bleed. He is the guy who trapped the Soviets in the
Brzezinski-designed quagmire at a huge cost for Afghans, Russians and
Pakistanis. Thousands of Afghanis and Russians died because of him. All the
troubles of Pakistan are direct consequences of ISI aiding and abetting the US
and Saudi Arabia in their fight against the Russians and against the Afghani
progressive forces, socialists and communists. Gul was godfather to the real
Osama bin Laden and his mujahideen. He had a very good, even the best and most
personal reason to point to any alternative culprit – to Mossad or to little
green men, anybody at all, but not to his disciple Osama.
It is
plausible that he plays ball with some men in Afghanistan: ISI armed and trained
them even in 1980. It is hardly possible to demonise him: he is as bad as any
head of any secret service from Gestapo to the CIA, and they are all evil guys,
in my book.
However, this is all beside the point. Some US officials could have a jaundiced
view of the old general meeting armed Afghanis, and any NY Times
researchers were bound to find their documentation of this by simple search. In
short, the bias – if any – is that of the NY Times, not of Wikileaks.
As for
Engdahl’s ad hominem: Julian Assange is neither a writer nor an activist;
he could not have been known previously. He is against the US war in Afghanistan
and Pakistan; he’s got a huge catch, he wanted to deliver it to the people, and
there was no alternative to mainstream media. We may be able to read a hundred
documents, but we can’t even glimpse thousands, let alone hundreds of thousands.
So his choice was judicious.
A
second denier, young Pakistani intellectual cum American Ivy League
graduate Zahir Ebrahim, writes: “The core-lies retained in the Wikileaks'
disclosure is to once again reaffirm that there is a real nemesis called “Osama
Bin Laden”, that the “war on terror” is real, that it is being inflicted upon
the West from the Pakistan-Iran nexus, in order to re-substantiate the handoff
of former President George W. Bush's clairvoyance to the Obama Administration
that “If another September 11 style attack is being planned, it probably is
being plotted in Pakistan, and not Afghanistan”!
Zahir
makes the same mistake. The files are the reports of what US officials believe
or claim to believe. I’d ask Zahir: if you were to get hold of all reports sent
from and to Afghanistan, would you censor them to remove ideas and names that
are not to your liking? Remember, these are not files from God Almighty, this is
the kind of stuff that spooks and soldiers write, and it naturally reflects
their view of the world. So it is not “core-lies”, but “core-truth”: US
officials express under the stamp of “top secret” the very same views they
openly espouse.
Gordon
Duff is the least temperate of all. He writes: “The [Mossad’s] game today is
using Wikileaks, given its 15 minutes of fame for trashing the US in Iraq with
the helicopter video, to spread imaginary stories about Pakistan, the enemy of
India and the only nuclear power in the Middle East capable of standing up to
Israel… Israel would have been cited for laundering drug money for the Taliban.
It is in the documents. I didn’t release them. That is illegal. Nothing
involving drug flights being serviced by Israeli companies was released. It was
in the files. If we really want to leak things, they are out there. It can get
bloody. Wikileaks is simply another ploy by the ultra powerful Israel lobby, a
cheap game meant to humiliate the United States, destroy Pakistan and build a
reputation for a puppet.”
It is
sectarian logic, like that of Engdahl, though of a different sect. Sectarians
insist on the centrality of their thesis and they hate everybody who does not
sign for it on the dotted line. We have so many sects, some quite big: the 9/11
sect of the “truthers”, the Mossad-under-every-bed sect, the Holocaust
revisionist sect… They have some good arguments, but they are too intolerant. As
for me, I am ready to listen to their arguments, even to support their right to
express their views, but I am not ready to subscribe to them. Nor would it even
be possible: these sects are divided into many subsects all in disagreement with
each other.
The
sectarian mindset is too venomous, too restricted. Why can’t we have a chance to
express our views freely without being forced to conform to a dogma? We
witnessed a sectarian attack on Chomsky: why doesn't this important intellectual
subscribe to the sectarians’ beliefs? Now it is an attack against Assange: why
does he not produce documents demonstrating Mossad involvement and 9/11
conspiracy? The answer is simple: probably because he has not got such
documents.
If
Duff, a neophyte anti-Zionist, has access to such documents as he claims, let
him publish them or shut up. These insinuations “we could, we know, it will be
bloody” are just empty words. His claim that “Pakistan is the only nuclear power
in the Middle East capable of standing up to Israel” shows that he is rather
detached from reality. Pakistan is not in the Middle East by any definition, and
has invested zero effort in the Palestine conflict. Pakistan has never tried to
stand up to Israel, has never assisted the Palestinian cause, and its nuclear
capabilities are quite limited. Moreover, Pakistan is a loyal client of the US
with a lot of problems, some of which are of its own making.
In
order to understand Wikileaks and its success one should comprehend the way it
works. This is not a body of dedicated political activists. Though generally
sympathetic to our enlightened views, Wikileaks is an organisation of hackers,
and some of them hack just for the heck of it. We are beneficiaries of their
work, but they do not work for us. Let us be thankful for what they do, and
avoid assisting Pentagon in marginalising them.