Assessing the Impact of Wikileaks Cablegate

My main interest in visiting the Wikileaks Cablegate site and viewing documents available is to read any diplomatic cables in the date range of 1966 through 1990 or 1992, and as of yesterday there wasn't much available. Today I am unable to access the site and must imagine that the problem is another Denial of Service (DoS) attack.

The cables released are available through a torrent site, but with all that is going on this week in relation to Homeland Security and ICE taking down torrent sites I won't be downloading anything from any of them. I did sift through the cables available yesterday and copy/pasted any that I considered significant into Word for later reading. I did this in anticipation of a DoS attack.

Some of this stuff makes for interesting reading, but really I found nothing earth shattering. Much of it is diplomats assessing nation leaders' positions on specific policies. In so far as the approved spying on U.N. leaders is concerned, is anyone surprised here? I'm not, but then after a career in the USAF my father worked for a U.S. private contractor through late 1989, traveling to Moscow and Helsinki often. He spent most of his time in Moscow as he was contracted to check the building materials for electronic bugs when the U.S. Embassy in Moscow was being rebuilt following the USMC scandal. I have tons of photos from his time in Moscow.

One nation spying on another is far from major news if you have my background. Still, I anxiously await additional diplomatic cables being released from the Cold War era.

The cables that I have read in the date range of 2003 through 2010 are not a national security risk by any stretch of the imagination. Most involve a U.S. diplomat assessing specific situations and leaders in the country wherein he is assigned. Many are responses from the State Department. Some discuss one leader's views concerning another and we could say that many in the Middle East seem to have negative opinions of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and serious security issues with Iran.

Perhaps the cables are enlightening to the Iranian president – he gets to read what they say behind his back as they smile in his face. I do not hear any denials coming from the Arab world. In this sense there was some interesting reading – I never had a clue they considered Ahmadinejad so negatively. I also thought the anti-Iran position belonged to the U.S. and Israel and not most of the region. I would think that some of these cables are planted; however, I do not hear any denials coming from the Arab leaders involved, especially on the "cut off the head of the snake" quote. If nothing else, President Ahmadinejad now knows who his friends and enemies are, or not.

I still cannot access the Wikileaks Cablegate website today.

Edit @ 1030pm EST December 1st: No problem accessing the Cablegate site this evening and latest cables released are more interesting - most are from the U.S. Embassy in Moscow. So far I will only say that Burns may soon be out of work... more tomorrow.