WikiLeaks - The Secret Life of a Superpower Part 1. BBC Documentary

BBC Documentary about WikiLeaks

It was the scoop of the century.

WikiLeaks lifts the curtain on the secret communications between Washington

and the diplomats that we have stationed all over the globe.

I'm not aware of any release of information in human history comparable to the amount that was released via WikiLeaks.

These were cables that show the superpower's secret thoughts.

It was hard for me to look Secretary Clinton in the eye when she was like, "How did this happen?"

A quarter of a million US diplomatic messages apparently stolen by one of their own soldiers,

turned into a global sensation by a whistle-blowing website and its controversial founder, Julian Assange.

I like crushing bastards.

I think every diplomat around the world would have one overriding thought, "Thank God it wasn't me," and "Thank God it's not us."

In the first in-depth television analysis of the secret cables,

we lift the lid on how the world's greatest superpower does business and how it gets what it wants.

We reveal a superpower on a mission to change the world.

But a superpower that sometimes fails to live up to its own ideals.

It's a complete outrage --

Diplomats stepping in to attempt to obstruct the course of the criminal investigation.

Over a year has passed since the leaking of the cables.

[Protests]

Now we assess what the impact of the leak has been in the US and beyond.

And we ask, can American Diplomacy ever be the same again?

They don't trust you anymore.

Many of them don't, and it will take a long time, I think, to recover that trust.

[WIKILEAKS: The Secret Life of A Superpower]

It's late November 2010.

Two journalists arrive at the US State Department in Washington DC --

The enormous ministry that controls America's relationship with the rest of the world.

They're not here for a friendly chat.

They're about to blow the lid on America's diplomatic secrets.

They were maybe a dozen senior officials and, behind them,

you know, at least a dozen more minions taking notes on laptops and so on.

They represented not just the State Department

but all of the intelligence agencies and the defense department.

They did not look happy.

The US State Department was facing a crisis unlike any other.

A quarter of a million internal messages, or cables, between Washington and US embassies all over the world

had found their way into the hands of the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks

and, from there, to five major newspapers.

Their message at the opening of the meeting, in uncertain terms, was "You've been given stolen material -- classified material.

There would be grave consequences if you publish any of it."

At that meeting, one of the people leading the state department's response to the crisis was P.J. Crowley.

These stories resulted from a crime.

For us, this was still classified material.

It was our responsibility to, you know, continue to protect them.

The State Department was right to be worried.

The cables reveal what American diplomats say when they think the world will never know --

Who they trust and who they mock,

what they want and how they get it.

"Some inside the US government dismiss [Berlusconi] as feckless, vain, and ineffective as a modern European leader."

"Merkel is risk averse and rarely creative."

"Gaddafi relies heavily on his long-time Ukrainian nurse, who has been described as a 'voluptuous blonde.'"

Detailed records from thousands of secret meetings and conversations involving US diplomats

were about to become a media sensation.

"Bank of England Governor Mervyn King expressed great concern about Conservative leaders' lack of experience."

"It was related that King Abdullah remains a heavy smoker, regularly receives hormone injections, and uses Viagra excessively."

Here were records of American diplomats' secret plans and strategies, their uncertainties and fears.

"We should aim at influencing the narrow group of individuals that surround him."

"Saudi energy facilities remain highly vulnerable to external attack."

"[The Secretary of Defense] pointedly warned that urgent action is required. Without progress in the next few months, we risk nuclear proliferation in the Middle East."

All of this classified information was now in the hands of journalists.

In Washington, there was panic.

When the newspapers gave us access so that we could begin to get a sense of it,

I think there was just a growing sense of horror.

Can you remember Secretary Clinton's reaction?

She wasn't thrilled. [laughs]

I mean, Secretary Clinton knew probably better than anybody exactly just how delicate some of our relations were with different countries.

The leak threatened the basics of US diplomacy.

When you're confronted with 250,000 cables, in a way, it's overwhelming.

You know, it involves everything.

But there was little they could do.

The five newspapers had already agreed on a publication date.

Nothing was going to stop them.

All the US government could do now was try to get ready.

They knew that within a matter of weeks, the world would know their secrets, and the only question was how bad it would be.

We knew that it was going to potentially do an enormous amount of damage to some of our key relationships.

What was the atmosphere like in the State Department that these cables would be there for all to see?

Battening down the hatches.

On the 28th of November of 2010, it began.

Huge trove of documents released just hours ago by the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks.

The whistle-blowing website released another pile of government documents Sunday, including...

Whoever leaked all those State Department documents to the Wikileaks website is a traitor.

Within 24 hours, the cables had become a global sensation.

It's hard to think of a worse day for US diplomacy.

America's private opinions and conversations splashed across every front page in the world.

[various news reports]

So what's in there? Everything from global fears about Iran's nuclear programme to news that China may have sabotaged Google...

Controversial and often embarrassing revelations include an American diplomat describing Prince Andrew as "rude and cocky."

It was like that moment when an email gets sent to the wrong person, only went to the whole world.

As the leaks poured out, foreign politicians looked on with horror.

I think every diplomat around the world will have had one overriding thought: "Thank God it wasn't me," and "Thank God it's not us."

There is nothing brave about sabotaging the peaceful relations between nations on which our common security depends.

In the weeks after the leak, the US Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, traveled the globe saying sorry.

Clinton even joked about getting special "apology tour" jackets made.

But in some parts of the world, the fallout from the leak would be unstoppable.

We had to pull our ambassador out of Libya, for example, because thugs were making threatening gestures to him.

We had an ambassador in Mexico, the Mexican government had just made clear, "we can no longer do business with this American ambassador,"

and he's now being replaced.

In Washington, tough questions were being asked.

President Obama's a pretty calm guy, even in tough times and stressful times.

But he was clearly incredibly angry along with the rest of us,

and the question, obviously, to me, and to others, was, "How in the world could this happen?"

The suspect had been identified.

Online chat logs had given him away.

The suspected source was not a foreign government or a spy at the heart of the US machine.

It was an American soldier sitting in a remote base in the deserts of Iraq.

Bradley Manning was a lowly PFC, a Private First Class, but he had access to a world of secrets.

We live in a world now when, you know, a 20-something PFC in the American army can cause diplomatic damage of biblical proportions.

An enormous flaw in US military security that left American diplomats and the US State Department compromised.

The State Department security was actually tighter than military security in this instance,

so there was anger, disappointment, a feeling that this simply should not have happened.

Is it embarrassing personally that it came out of your department?

Well, of course, I mean, it was hard for me to look Secretary Clinton in the eye when she'd say, "How did this happen?"

Because it did come out of the Department of Defense, it came out of a military installation.

As the cables made headlines around the world, some in America were demanding a tough response.

For them, the leak was the ultimate crime, and Bradley Manning a traitor.

What do you think of Bradley Manning?

I think he committed treason, I think he should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

What does that mean?

Well, treason is the only crime defined by our Constitution. It says "treason shall consist only of levying war against [the United States],

or adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort."

He gave our enemies a lot of aid and comfort.

So what should happen to him?

Well, he should be prosecuted, and if he's found guilty, he should be punished to the fullest extent possible.

And what is that?

Death.

You think he should be killed?

Yes.

The leak had rocked America and created a global sensation.

The superpower had shown it wasn't in control of its secrets.

It's now over a year since the first cables were released.

So what has been the real impact of the leaking of these documents?

And what have the cables really told us about how America does business in the world?

The fallout from the secret cables was more than just damaged trust or lurid headlines.

We found places where some believe that the cable release itself changed countries.

In mid-October 2010, two Tunisian political activists, Sami Ben Gharbia and Malek Khadraoui, got hold of some of the secret US cables.

At the time, Tunisia was ruled by a dictator, President Ben Ali.

Someone got the cable and they gave me a bunch of Arab leaks, around 300 cables.

Sami Ben Gharbia called and he told me that I had the bomb. So I opened the file and I start tweeting.

Inside the cables were damning reports written by the American ambassador about the dictator Ben Ali.

They showed the extent of his regime's corruption and excess.

Corruption in Tunisia is getting worse, whether it's cash, services, land, property, or, yes, even your yacht.

President Ben Ali's family is rumored to covet it and reportedly gets what it wants.

This is Ben Ali's daughter, Nesrine, and her billionaire husband, Mohamed Sakhr El Materi.

And this was one of their houses, a luxury villa on the Tunisian coast.

This villa's obviously been smashed up by looters.

This place inspired one of the most infamous cables to come out of Tunisia.

The American ambassador was invited here for dinner, and what he found - the wealth, the opulence astounding.

Ancient artifacts everywhere. Roman columns, frescoes, and even a lion's head from which water pours into the pool.

The opulence with which El Materi and Nesrine live and their behavior make clear why they and other members of Ben Ali's family are disliked and even hated by some Tunisians.

The excesses of the Ben Ali family are growing.

This cage is very, very famous in Tunisia, and

it's all because of the cables.

This is where Ben Ali's son-in-law kept his pet tiger,

and from the cables, we're told that at a time when there were people here in Tunisia who couldn't afford to eat,

this animal was fed four chickens a day.

At the time of the cable release, Tunisia was already suffering economic unrest.

Food prices were rising, youth unemployment was at crisis point.

The cables showed the contrast between the lives of ordinary people and their rulers.

For activists like Malek and Sami, the cable leak was an extraordinary opportunity.

The Wikileaks cable was, for us, like a new tool or a new weapon to make this contest come down from the internet to the street.

They published the Tunisian cables on the same day as the Wikileaks splash.

It was a very huge reaction. First of all,

on the social networks, Twitter, Facebook, and, you know, our community,

it was like a bomb.

Now, the secret American reports of the Ben Alis' excess were out there for ordinary Tunisians to read.

It wasn't that Tunisia didn't know about the corruption.

Most people here were well aware of how the elite lived.

It was now that they could see that the Americans knew.

Ben Ali was a president who made an awful lot of his relationship with the United States.

But the cables show that the Americans knew him for what he was.

They were critical, and they were disparaging.

When the people were in the street,

they had in their mind

that this regime is really corrupt, that this regime is not really supported by foreign forces,

so that maybe people were saying, okay, maybe he's not too strong,

maybe he's not too invincible.

Then senior ministers in Ben Ali's regime saw the cables were having an impact.

When the people of Tunisia saw US criticism of the president,

of the surrounding circle, et cetera,

of course maybe they were not expecting this from the Americans.

So what difference did that make?

It did encourage people to speak in a more open and louder way.

And this is, in my opinion,

there is no doubt.

The regime tried to block the websites carrying the cables.

They failed.

The secret documents helped fuel a mood of change in Tunisia.

We published them on November 28th, and the Revolution started on December 17th.

It was two weeks. Two weeks.

[rioting and protesting]

The Revolution began when a young Tunisian, Mohamed Bouazizi,

set himself on fire in protest at his mistreatment by the regime.

His death provoked outrage and brought crowds to the streets.

As they vented their anger, the cables inspired many of their chants.

[shouting, gunshots]

You see, during the Revolution, some slogans talk about the content of these cables,

making reference to the very rich life that those people are living, and

the role of the state, a lot of people were referring to these stories.

[rioting and protesting]

Those protests would bring down a dictatorship that had lasted 23 years.

Ben Ali fled the country.

The Tunisian Revolution spread and prompted a wave of uprisings that became known as the Arab Spring.

The cable leak had played a part in history.

But what about America itself?

What do the cables reveal about the superpower?

We've spent months analyzing these documents.

They show how America's diplomats try to get what they want,

how they gather gossip and how they use it.

How they deal with their enemies, and what they say about their friends,

when they think no one's listening.

So, what does America say about its closest friend of all - us?

Two countries who fought alongside each other in Iraq and Afghanistan,

but the cables reveal harsh US criticism of the British military.

A secret document from December 2008 offered a bleak assessment of British capabilities.

The British are not up to the task of securing Helmand.

It forced Hillary Clinton to offer yet another apology.

I personally want to convey to the government,

and the people of the United Kingdom,

both our deep respect and admiration, or

the extraordinary efforts, and I regret

if anything that was said by anyone suggests to the contrary.

But the secret documents show the Americans were hearing concerns about our political leaders.

In February 2010, the governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King,

and the US ambassador in London discussed the then-Conservative opposition.

This is the cable that followed:

King expressed great concern about Conservative leaders' lack of experience.

Cameron and Osborne have only a few advisors,

and seemed resistant to reaching out beyond their small inner circle.

It is the duty of a diplomat to report those conversations,

so people can take that into account,

so they know what's going on.

And gossip is not gossip if it's conversations that are had.

"Gossip" is speculation. There is no speculation.

But some cables are not so easy to explain away.

In 2009, Ivan Lewis was a foreign office minister in Tony Blair's government.

He got to know the Americans during this time,

and they tried to get to know him.

No detail or rumor was too [unintelligible].

"Lewis reportedly remains a bit of a hound dog where women are concerned."

"Contacts who know him well report he has manic-depressive tendencies."

"He's very up one minute, very down the next.

And at least one Foreign and Commonwealth Office colleague has described Lewis as a bully."

US diplomats may claim to be simply reporting what they hear,

but it seems from the cables that no detail is too trivial.

Biographic data is something that is valuable.

Building and understanding of the personalities, proclivities,

what might be distracting to individuals,

what might explain the behavior of third parties toward that individual.

Finding out that somebody has a reputation, a bad reputation,

with women, once might have been an advantage,

but these days, generally isn't.

So why, then, did Hillary Clinton send this to London one month after the cable about Lewis was written?

"Washington analysts appreciate the excellent background and biographic reporting on Ivan Lewis.

[Cable] regarding Lewis's bullying, possible depression, and scandals,

as well as comments on the state of his marriage

are particularly insightful and timely."

We contacted Mr. Lewis, but he didn't want to comment.

As for America's diplomats, well, the cable speaks for itself.

Dirt and gossip even on America's closest friends goes down very well in Washington.

Gossip can reveal information about people

that shows their strengths and weaknesses,

just like politicians use it, it doesn't mean that you believe everything,

but information is information.

And there is no limit to America's desire for information on its friends.

It's about much more than just gossip.

What we've seen is the Americans want any piece of information no matter how trivial.

And no one, it seems, is off-limits.

America's most important Arab ally in the Middle East is Saudi Arabia.

They're close militarily, and the US relies on Saudi for oil.

But when it comes to information, everything's up for grabs,

including the king's secret medical file.

"Upon arrival, the royal clinic accidentally provided this physician with the king's medical file.

It was related that King Abdullah is 92 years old.

He remains a heavy smoker, regularly receives hormone injections,

and 'uses Viagra excessively.'"

It looks like US diplomats behaving like tabloid hacks, anything to get the story.

But this has a serious side.

There have been cases in which elderly rulers, members of ruling families, that

quite literally in the case of viagra, have died from stroke from an overdose of viagra,

so it's, you know, we laugh about it, but in fact,

as a medical question, it's serious.

The cables seem to bear this out.

"The Saudi Arabian government has always kept close hold any personal information on royal family members.

This medical information provides some detail into the King's health and longevity,

and is provided to Washington for additional analysis.

The cables are a snapshot of America's vast information gathering machine.

But, again, what's most revealing is the sort of behavior that's officially demanded,

even of US diplomats at the United Nations.

Diplomats are not spies,

which is why the US didn't want the world to see these secret requests.

"Reporting officers should include as much of the following information as possible:

credit card account numbers, frequent flyer account numbers,

work schedules, and other relevant biographical information."

This seems pretty clear: the Secretary of State requesting US diplomats to do their best to collect personal and private information on foreign diplomats at the UN.

Even the Secretary General and members of the Security Council were targeted.

"Plans and intentions of the UN Secretary General...

biometric information on UN Security Council Permanent Representatives..."

But those on the inside of the State Department deny the obvious conclusion.

Should we view diplomats as effectively spies, as well?

No.

Why?

They're not.

They're asked to spy in that cable.

That doesn't mean they do.

But for those outside of the US government, that secret cable was disturbing.

What I think is troubling is, here were American diplomats,

in a sense asked to do the spade work of spying,

and collect this kind of data on their counterparts,

and I suspect that's been very damaging to the relationships of trust and confidence and friendship

that they would have been trying to develop with people from other countries.

The cables reveal aspects of US diplomacy that America did not want us to see.

But the real story of the cables is more complicated.

These secret documents show US diplomats apparently trying to do good.

In country after country, even behind closed doors, they're raising issues like freedom, democracy, and human rights.

"[The Assistant Secretary] stressed the importance of human rights to the US government and public."

"The Deputy [Secretary of State] stressed US government concerns about the deteriorating human rights situation in Vietnam."

"We should take every opportunity to promote sustained, democratic change in Burma."

And, yet, the cables show a real tension in American diplomacy.

The US wants to spread its ideals across the world but struggles to reconcile this with its other interests,

like protecting some of its unsavory alliances.

September 11th brought this tension to the fore.

We're really talking about what happened after 9/11.

You have this attack. The question that then arises is

"What happened? Why? What produces this?"

And the answer that President Bush came to, in his own mind,

was repression produces it,

the embitterment of young people who have no place to go, politically, in their own countries,

which are very repressive dictatorships.

And the antidote, therefore, is what he called the "freedom agenda,"

the expansion of democracy.

One of the places where that "freedom agenda" was applied was Egypt.

For over two decades, it had been ruled by Hosni Mubarak, a pro-American dictator.

The Americans were giving him $1.3 billion in military assistance every year,

but the cables show US diplomats were also pushing for reform.

"We do not have a silver bullet, but we can press reforms that will lead, inexorably, to the 'death by 1,000 cuts' of Egypt's authoritarian system."

The cables show that the US push for greater freedom in Egypt reached into Mubarak's home,

targeting his son, Gamal, and his wife, Suzanne.

"We should aim at influencing the narrow group of individuals that surround him [including] Gamal and Suzanne Mubarak."

One man came to symbolize America's drive for change: Ayman Nour.

Nour had challenged Mubarak for the Egyptian presidency in 2005.

Four months later, he was convicted and imprisoned on what the US believed to be trumped-up charges.

"The Embassy has raised strong concerns about the arrest and detention of Ayman Nour with a variety of government-of-Egypt contacts at both senior and working levels."

The cables show that America repeatedly raised Nour's case with the Mubarak regime.

And they reveal the dictator's angry response.

"Mubarak takes this issue personally and it makes him seethe when we raise it."

Nabil Fahmy was Egypt's ambassador in Washington during the Bush years.

The Ayman Nour issue was impacting on Mubarak's dealings with the US.

Reference to specific cases annoyed him quite a bit.

How he reacted toward the US administration generally: he did not come back to the US in Bush's second term.

Not once.

America's push for reform, pursued privately and publicly, was poisoning relations.

When the Americans linked the war against terrorism to democracy promotion,

it really complicated things, and it [unintelligible] the tensions between the two presidents,

in particular President George W. Bush, and President Mubarak.

"[Mubarak] resents and ridicules the US reform agenda."

The cables show US diplomats warning this pressure for reform

had pushed the relationship between America and Egypt to a new low.

"US and Egyptian differences over the pace and direction of political reform have drained the warmth from the relationship on both sides."

But the Americans needed Mubarak.

US security interests depended on the alliance.

The Suez Canal was an artery for American military operations around the world, and

Egypt's peace deal with Israel had helped preserve a kind of stability in the Middle East.

This was a dilemma at the heart of American diplomacy,

and it's captured in a cable.

"An ongoing challenge remains balancing our security interests with our democracy promotion efforts."

A long friendship, a partnership with Egypt against terrorism,

an Egypt under Mubarak who by any measure would be more forward-leaning with regard to Middle East peace,

than an Egyptian government that was more reflective of the Egyptian street.

And then over here, you just had the raw demands of democracy and representative government.

These are hard choices.

The Americans weren't the only ones facing hard choices.

British ministers also had conflicting feelings about Mubarak.

President Mubarak was president of Egypt. We all dealt with him.

That didn't mean that we supported what he did,

either on the economy with his family, or on human rights,

but he was clearly seen as a critical ally,

both by Israel and the Palestinians, on the issue of Middle East stability and peace,

therefore, he was a very important player for us, as well.

In 2009, a new American administration chose a new approach.

President Obama decided it was in America's interest to warm relations up with the Egyptian dictator.

The Bush administration had gotten to a point where relations with Egypt were very, very frosty,

and we concluded that we needed to engage the Egyptian government

much more broadly to be able to advance any of the values that we held and that the Bush administration held.

I really consider President and Mrs. Mubarak to be friends of my family,

and so I hope to see him often here in Egypt and in the United States.

The cables reflect this new stance.

"President Mubarak understands that the administration wants to restore the sense of warmth that has traditionally characterized the US-Egyptian partnership."

President Obama's strategy may have been influenced by a massive miscalculation by US diplomats in Cairo,

a mistake we only know about because of the cables.

"There will be no 'Orange Revolution' on the Nile on Mubarak's watch."

For years, the thrust of advice coming from America's diplomats in Cairo

was that there was no chance the Mubarak regime would be toppled.

If you look at the Arab world, nothing, it seemed, ever changed.

I mean, there was no regime change except when Americans invaded, as in Iraq.

Kings were not overthrown, fake presidents were not overthrown,

it looked as if things had been stable for decades and were going to remain stable.

But we can see in the cables that the Americans were warned that Mubarak's regime was under threat.

A prominent opposition activist, Ahmed Salah, told of plans to make 2011 the year of change.

He met with US embassy officials and the details were wired back to Washington.

"[Salah] claimed that several opposition forces have agreed to support an unwritten plan for a transition to a parliamentary democracy involving a weakened presidency before the scheduled 2011 presidential elections."

They were telling them that we are trying, we are planning, and we are going to do a revolution,

and if non-violence fails, there is only one alternative left, which is violence.

But you were [unintelligible] up to the Americans that change was coming?

Of course. I wasn't sure that Mubarak was going to go,

but I was sure that we will be attempting to launch a revolution in 2011.

In fact, the cables show the Americans were out of touch here in Egypt.

The information-gathering process, that was working.

What was failing was the interpretation.

After the meeting with Salah, this is what the US ambassador in Cairo cabled to Washington.

"[The] stated goal of replacing the current regime with a parliamentary democracy prior to the 2011 presidential elections is highly unrealistic."

The events that happened here in Tahrir Square, the Americans just didn't see coming.

They couldn't imagine that the Egyptian people could rise up against the dictator.

But rise up, they did.

[rioting, protesting]

Inspired by the example of Tunisia in January and February 2011,

protests flared across Egypt against the Mubarak dictatorship.

On the day the protests began, this was what Hillary Clinton had to say, still seeing Mubarak as the future:

Our assessment is that the Egyptian government is stable,

and is looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people.

But within a month, Mubarak was gone.

Congratulations for all my people! Congratulations!

When Hillary Clinton visited Tahrir Square, some of the democracy activists refused to meet her.

Whatever America's ambitions for bringing democracy to Egypt,

the US had thrown its lot in with the dictator.

When he was thrown out, for many in Egypt,

America had put itself on the wrong side of history.

Failed efforts to spread democracy and cozy alliances with dictators are recurring themes in the cables.

There are times, though, when the US position approaches hypocrisy.

Competing pressures make them say one thing but do another.

We can see this tension in the place where the cable leak helped cause revolution: Tunisia.

The cables show that for years, before the revolution,

US diplomats were telling the regime in Tunis it needed to change.

The cables make it quite clear: American diplomats here in Tunisia were not only interested in

the corruption of the Ben Ali regime.

They were also actively raising the issue of reform.

"Our message to [Ben Ali] should be that while we do not seek regime change, we expect real transition to democracy."

And, yet, in spite of these efforts,

many in Tunisia are not convinced that the Americans paid any more than lip service to reform.

In fact, the cables reveal a kind of moral ambivalence in US diplomacy.

America wanted reform in Tunisia, but it also wanted other things, too.

Back in 2006, its diplomats were preaching freedom in Tunisia,

but privately, US ideals coming under strain [?].

This is Guantanamo Bay, a symbol of America's controversial war on terror.

For years, America had been seizing hundreds of foreign terror suspects,

transferring them here.

But in 2006, President Bush announced he wanted to close Guantanamo.

The problem now for the US was what to do with the detainees.

Their solution was to try and send them back to their home countries.

Our goal was to close Guantanamo, so as to reduce the size of the problem,

so there was a policy of trying to repatriate these detainees

where there wasn't some kind of judicial or other action we could take against them,

and where we thought that we weren't running an undue risk by sending them back.

Of the 355 detainees in Guantanamo Bay, 12 were Tunisian.

But the cables show US diplomats in Tunis had concerns about sending them back to Tunisia.

"[The embassy] believes there is a significant likelihood (i.e., more likely than not) that the detainees would be mistreated during the period they are in Ministry of Interior custody."

We had both the concern about how to deal with detainees,

and where they would end up, where they would be sent,

and the issue of how they would be treated under human rights.

Concerns about human rights had meant some detainees were not repatriated to their home countries.

So what about Tunisia?

The cables show that US diplomats obtained limited assurances from the Tunisian government

about how the detainees would be treated.

The US diplomats still had serious concerns.

"[W]e cannot exclude the possibility, given the track record of the Ministry of Interior, that the detainees would be tortured upon their return to Tunisia."

The cables suggest that the assurances the US wanted never arrived,

and yet, in June 2007, two detainees were handed over to the Tunisian authorities.

It's claimed as soon as the two detainees arrived in Tunisia, they were mistreated.

Abdullah Hajji is interrogated, he's threatened, he's slapped around, they threaten to rape his wife,

they make him sign a statement, he's not allowed to read the statement, and that's it.

Then he's transferred to prison where he's held in solitary confinement.

The concerns expressed in the cables had materialized.

Slapping around, threats of torture, threats to rape your wife constitute torture under the international definition,

Sleep deprivation, certainly the accumulation of all these things used against one person

amount to torture, or inhumane treatment, at the very least.

We asked the State Department about the case.

They refused to comment, but the conclusion seems clear.

America's strategic interests had collided with its ideals,

and it was the ideals that gave way.

On the one hand, they wanted the regime in Tunisia to make more progress on human rights,

to be more presentable as an ally.

On the other hand, they wanted security cooperation,

and in this case the security angle trumped the human rights angle, clearly.

This may be the real story of the cables:

a superpower on a global mission to spread democracy and freedom,

but struggling to live up to its own ideals.

Guantanamo Bay highlighted this tension.

But for US diplomats, America's controversial War on Terror brought yet other challenges.

The cables reveal how they deal with the worst allegations against their government.

Cables shed new light on some of the darkest secrets of US foreign policy,

and not just in Tunisia.

After 9/11, the Americans were using tough new measures.

They were seizing terror suspects off the street

and shifting them to interrogation centers in secret foreign locations.

It was called rendition.

We live in the real world.

We had certain tools that were offered to us by our government,

that the Attorney General said was lawful,

and it was our responsibility,

the American intelligence service, the American armed forces,

to carry out these directions to the best of our ability.

This is Khaled El-Masri. He's a German national.

He says he was seized in Macedonia and flown to a secret prison in Afghanistan.

He claims his captors were the CIA.

He says he was beaten and held for four months before being released.

When we approached them, neither the CIA nor the State Department would talk about the case.

But buried in the cables were the secret reports of what the Americans were telling the Germans in private.

"It was a mistake to take Al-Masri."

In 2007, German prosecutors identified 13 suspected CIA operatives understood to be involved in Al-Masri's abduction.

They wanted to issue international arrest warrants,

which is when US diplomats stepped in.

"Global Affairs Counselor underscored the serious negative implications of a German decision to issue international arrest warrants in the Al-Masri case."

"The Deputy Chief of Mission emphasized that issuance of international arrest warrants would have a negative impact on our bilateral relationship."

The message was clear: whatever crimes the CIA might have committed, the Germans should back off.

If they didn't, relations between the two countries would be harmed.

This is the dark side of diplomacy.

Shocking to us, perhaps, but not for those who move in this world.

John Negroponte was number two at the State Department from 2007 to 2009.

We put the Al-Masri cables to him.

He says American diplomats did nothing wrong.

It's a political statement.

Governments undertake certain obligations to protect their own employees,

and so, to me, I think of it as an example of us standing by our people,

rather than threatening another country.

But what does the man who signed the cable think?

We tracked him down and he agreed to talk to us.

We didn't put pressure. We communicated the feelings of the US government.

And that's normal.

The job of the United States government is to represent American citizens.

I believe that the appropriate steps and actions were taken,

and I believe that it would have been ill-advised for Germans to prosecute the Americans.

But outside of the American government, things looked very different.

For many, the Al-Masri cables reveal the dark truth about US diplomacy.

When key American interests are at stake, justice counts for little.

That's a complete outrage.

It is dangerously close to what would be called obstruction of justice in the United States.

You're talking about a pending criminal proceeding,

and you're seeing US diplomats stepping in to attempt to obstruct the course of the criminal investigation through political means.

And this was not an isolated case.

We had an instance like that in Italy,

and it allegedly involved some American intelligence people,

and we went to considerable lengths to try to discourage legal action against those people.

That was an understatement.

The cables revealed the aggression of US messages, even to allies.

"The ambassador explained [to the Italian Undersecretary] that nothing would damage relations faster or more seriously

than a decision by the Government of Italy to forward warrants for arrests of

the alleged CIA agents named in connection with the Abu Omar case."

We have a government running around saying,

the rule is law is our banner, and that's what we seek to promote in the world,

in fact, we're seeing some of the same diplomats who run around with that message

working overtime, and working very aggressively,

to try and suppress the rule of law.

So what are we to conclude about the world's greatest superpower from the cables?

For America's most senior officials, the real revelation of the cables is America's integrity.

I think that if there's a big surprise out of all of the Wikileaks documents,

it is how few inconsistencies there are between what we were doing and saying privately

and what we were doing and saying publicly.

Many of my friends, particularly in Europe,

have the view that United States never means what it says,

and in that context, a lot of these cables show

that diplomats really are working behind the scenes to push governments,

either on behalf of individual political prisoners,

or pushing them toward social or political reform,

or simply being very honest back home, in a way that maybe they don't expect.

But as we've seen, the real story of the cables is much more complicated.

America may want to make the world a better place.

But this sits uneasily with America's unsavory alliances and narrow self-interest.

The cables show that when it comes down to it, all too often,

it's the ideals that give way.

We see a struggle between the world of the CIA,

and this counterterrorism effort, versus

the sort of general diplomatic mission,

the mission of promoting democracy and the rule of law,

and what we see is, there's no reconciling these two things.

They're starkly at odds.

Now, over a year has passed since the cables were released.

Bradley Manning, the man accused of stealing the files,

is facing a court marshal.

Julian Assange, the man behind the Wikileaks website,

is fighting efforts to get him to face sexual assault allegations in Sweden.

But what effect has the leaking of the cables had on US diplomacy?

Has it changed the way US diplomats do business?

Those on the inside say the damage is real.

I found, in my travels, for example, in the Middle East,

whenever there was a big meeting, and notetakers,

the other side would just speak in platitudes.

And the only time I could get real candor, have a real conversation,

was when I was meeting with a foreign leader privately, one-on-one.

So this is a direct consequences?

Absolutely.

They don't trust you anymore?

Many of them don't, and it will take a long time, I think, to recover that trust.

There's going to be reduction in the willingness of people

to talk to American diplomats because, again,

we've proven that we don't have the ability to protect the confidentiality of the communication.

And in the world of intelligence, they foresee other changes.

If information and trust are lost, espionage and spies will have to fill the gap.

Everybody who's used this information will have less to work with.

That will mean the need for greater reliance on some of these things, on clandestine collection.

The US government claims it's tightened up the way it shares its confidential information.

But can the secrets of the superpower ever really be safe again?

Trust and faith in the confidentiality of American diplomacy has been severely dented.

It's reinforced for everybody who was already cautious about Americans' ability to keep secrets,

and for those who had not been burnt before, they've sure been burnt now.

As American diplomats continue to deal with the impact of the cables,

other political challenges loom.

In a century that could see the decline of American power,

her enemies and rivals are becoming more defiant.

Next week, we look at US fears,

what the cables tell us about a new Cold War,

a rogue Chinese army,

and how to stop the Iranian bomb.