WASHINGTON — The Obama administration moved forcefully Monday to contain damage from the release of more than a quarter-million classified diplomatic files, branding the action as an attack on the United States and raising the prospect of legal action against online whistleblower WikiLeaks.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said that WikiLeaks acted illegally in posting the material. She said the Obama administration was taking “aggressive steps to hold responsible those who stole this information.”
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the U.S. would not rule out taking action against WikiLeaks. Attorney General Eric Holder said the administration would prosecute if violations of federal law are found in an ongoing criminal investigation of the leak.
“This is not saber rattling,” Holder said. Anyone found to have broken American law “will be held responsible.”
Gibbs said President Barack Obama was briefed on the impending leak last week and was “not pleased” about the breach of classified documents. “This is a serious violation of the law,” Gibbs said. “This is a serious threat to individuals that both carry out and assist in our foreign policy.”
An Army intelligence analyst named Bradley Manning was arrested in June, then age 22, and charged with illegally releasing classified information. He had said in an online chat in May that the documents he downloaded included “260,000 State Department cables from embassies and consulates all over the world,” The New York Times reported.
Manning has not been charged in the latest release of internal U.S. government documents. But officials said he is the prime suspect partly because of his own description of how he pulled off a staggering heist of classified and restricted material.
“No one suspected a thing,” Manning told a confidant afterward, according to a log of his computer chat published by Wired.com. “I didn’t even have to hide anything.”
Manning is charged in military court with taking other classified material later published by the online clearinghouse WikiLeaks. It is not clear whether others such as WikiLeaks executives might be charged separately in civilian courts.
Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., said that the State Department should designate WikiLeaks as a foreign terrorist organization.
The White House on Monday ordered a government wide review of how agencies safeguard sensitive information. Clinton said steps were already being taken to tighten oversight of diplomatic files. That action would follow a similar move by the Pentagon after leaks of military files.
The U.S. documents contained raw comments normally muffled by diplomatic politesse: Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah pressing the U.S. to “cut off the head of the snake” by taking action against Iran’s nuclear program, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi described as “feckless” and “vain,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel dismissed as “risk averse and rarely creative.”
The release of those documents and others containing unflattering assessments of world leaders was a clear embarrassment to the administration. The director of the White House’s Office of Management and Budget, Jacob Lew, said in ordering the agencywide assessment Monday that the disclosures are unacceptable and will not be tolerated.
“This disclosure is not just an attack on America’s foreign policy interests,” Clinton said in her first comments since the weekend leaks. “It is an attack on the international community: the alliances and partnerships, the conversations and negotiations that safeguard global security and advance economic prosperity.”
“It puts people’s lives in danger, threatens our national security and undermines our efforts to work with other countries,” she told reporters at the State Department.
However, the Obama administration’s ability to conduct effective diplomacy at the United Nations won’t be damaged by the release, U.S. Ambassador Susan Rice said.
“I can say with confidence that American diplomats here at the U.N. and around the world will continue to do excellently the work they do every day in supporting and advancing the interests of the U.S.,” Rice told reporters at the U.N. on Monday. “I am confident their ability to do so will endure and indeed strengthen.”
Most diplomats from other nations will understand the sometimes frank language used in certain cables, Clinton said.
“I can tell you that in my conversations, at least one of my counterparts said to me, ‘Well, don’t worry about it. You should see what we say about you,’” Clinton said.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange alleged that the administration was trying to cover up evidence of serious “human-rights abuse and other criminal behavior” by the U.S. government. WikiLeaks posted the documents just hours after it claimed its website had been hit by a cyber-attack that made the site inaccessible for much of the day.
Clinton would not discuss the specific contents of the cables but said the administration “deeply regrets” any embarrassment caused by their disclosure. At the same time, she said Americans should be “proud” of the work that U.S. diplomats do for the country and that they would not change the tone or content of their reports back to Washington.
Clinton’s comments came before she left Washington on a four-nation tour of Central Asia and the Persian Gulf. She alluded to discussions she expects to have about the leaked documents with officials from Europe and elsewhere. Some of those diplomats may be cited in the leaked documents, confronting her with uncomfortable conversations.
http://arkansasonli…">War leaks
Publication of the secret memos amplified widespread global alarm about Iran’s nuclear ambitions and unveiled occasional U.S. pressure tactics aimed at hot spots in Afghanistan, Pakistan and North Korea.
The leaks unearthed such bluntly candid impressions from both diplomats and other world leaders about America’s allies and foes that Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini described the disclosures as the “Sept. 11 of world diplomacy.”
Most of the disclosures focused on familiar diplomatic issues that have long stymied U.S. officials and their foreign counterparts - the nuclear ambitions of Iran, North Korea and Pakistan, China’s growth as a superpower, and the frustrations of combating terrorism.
But their publication could become problems for the officials concerned and for any secret initiatives they had preferred to keep quiet. The release of material intended for diplomatic eyes was quickly ruffling feathers in foreign capitals despite efforts by U.S. diplomats to shore up relations with key allies in advance ofthe leaks.
In London, Steve Field, a spokesman for British Prime Minister David Cameron, said, “It’s important that governments are able to operate on the basis of confidentiality of information.” French Foreign Ministry spokesman Bernard Valero said, “We strongly deplore the deliberate and irresponsible release of American diplomatic correspondence by the site WikiLeaks.”
Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry said it was an “irresponsible disclosure of sensitive official documents” while Iraq’s foreign minister, Hoshyar Zebari, called the document release “unhelpful and untimely.” In Australia, home country of WikiLeaks founder Assange, Attorney General Robert Mc-Clelland said law enforcement officials were investigating whether WikiLeaks broke any laws.
The documents published by The New York Times, France’s Le Monde, Britain’s Guardian newspaper, German magazine Der Spiegel and others laid out the behind-the-scenes conduct of Washington’s international relations, shrouded in public by platitudes, smiles and handshakes at photo sessions among senior officials.
U.S. officials may also have to mend fences after revelations that they gathered personal information on other diplomats. The leaks cited American memos encouraging U.S. diplomats at the United Nations to collect detailed data about the U.N. secretary general, his team and foreign diplomats - going beyond what is considered the normal run of information-gathering expected in diplomatic circles.
France’s Le Monde reported that one memo asked U.S. diplomats to collect basic contact information about U.N. officials that included Internet passwords, credit-card numbers and frequent-flier numbers. They were asked to obtain fingerprints, ID photos, DNA and iris scans of people of interest to the United States, Le Monde said.
State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley played down the diplomatic spying allegations. “Our diplomats are just that, diplomats,” he said. “They collect information that shapes our policies and actions. This is what diplomats, from our country and other countries, have done for hundreds of years.”
The White House noted that “by its very nature, field reporting to Washington is candid and often incomplete information. It is not an expression of policy, nor does it always shape final policy decisions.” Information for this article was contributed by Matthew Lee, Anne Gearan, Julie Pace, Pete Yost, Juergen Baetz, Lolita C. Baldor, Sarah Brumfield, Kimberly Dozier, Don Melvin, Angela Doland, Robert H. Reid, Brian Murphy, Mark Lavie and Nicole Winfield of The Associated Press; by Bill Verner, Viola Gienger, Tony Capaccio, Jeff Bliss, Joshua Zumbrun, Nicole Gaouette, Mark Lee, Michael Forsythe, Jonathan Ferziger and Ladane Nasseri of Bloomberg News; and by Paul Richter of Tribune Washington Bureau.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 11/30/2010