The truth hurts
Arguably, WikiLeaks has helped changed the course of history, leaving diplomatic embarrassment and a journalistic goldmine in its wake. Sian Powell looks at the legacy of the whistle blowing website
If nothing else, the torrent of revelations released on the WikiLeaks whistle-blower website has changed our understanding of how the world works. It has also landed key WikiLeaks figures in an ocean of trouble.
Legions of supporters view founder and editor-in-chief Julian Assange and his faithful insiders as rebellious truth-seekers; dodging lawsuits and criminal investigations, doing battle with global finance and taking on the might of the United States government. Critics, on the other hand, regard the WikiLeaks crew as dangerous, law-breaking, cyberfreak misfits.
WikiLeaks, which was launched in 2006, invoked the wrath of the US authorities in 2010 when it published a chilling video shot from the cockpit of an Apache helicopter showing a group of mostly unarmed men – including two Reuters employees – being gunned down in Baghdad by American airmen. WikiLeaks enraged those authorities further later that year when it started to release hundreds of thousands of leaked US State Department cables. Certainly, some of the cables have been explosive. One 2007 cable describes how Israel’s spy organisation, Mossad, was contributing covert assistance to Saudi Arabian intelligence.
In 2008, a cable noted that Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah repeatedly asked the US to “cut off the head of the snake” by launching military strikes to destroy Iran’s nuclear programme. A 2009 cable described the visit of an Afghanistan vice-president to the United Arab Emirates: it was discovered he was carrying US$52 million in cash.
In other cables, an Olympic Azerbaijani boxer, accused of bribery last year, was described by an American diplomat as an important and corrupt player in the country’s government; and, in 2009, US diplomats reported on an unexpected relationship between the then Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin and the then Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, which featured “lavish gifts”, expensive energy deals and a “shadowy” Russian-speaking Italian linkman.
In India, political rage erupted when WikiLeaks published a 2009 cable noting that Rahul Gandhi, son of Sonia Gandhi and heir apparent to the Congress party, had told the US ambassador that radical Hindu groups could be a bigger threat to India than Pakistan-based Islamic militants.
