US Government Officials Admit That They Lied About Actual Impact Of Wikileaks To Bolster Legal Effort

from the and-the-truth-comes-out dept

"We were told (the impact of WikiLeaks revelations) was embarrassing but not damaging," said the official, who attended a briefing given in late 2010 by State Department officials.

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You may recall that when Wikileaks released those thousands of documents on the Afghan war, the official US government position was that it should be shamed for putting lives in danger and "compromising intelligence sources and methods." It was only months later that Defense Secretary Robert Gates admitted no such thing was true . We're now seeing the same thing with the State Department cable leak. A number of grandstanding officials such as Rep. Peter King and Senator Joe Lieberman have argued that these leaks have seriously harmed US diplomacy. In fact, we heard how Wikileaks should be designated a terrorist organization for all the "harm" it's done to US interests. This was also a common refrain in our comments -- especially when it came to stories about the alleged leaker, Bradley Manning. Over and over we were told he deserves no mercy for harming American interests.So... it seems rather interesting to see that US officials are now admitting that no serious "harm" has been caused by the leaks . In fact, the White House has admitted privately that it" Implicated as chief among the official liars: State Department spokesperson PJ Crowley, who lead the propaganda campaign against Wikileaks for the past few months, claiming "there has been substantial damage," and that "hundreds of people have been put at potential risk." And yet, when Congress asked the State Department to back up those statements, officials told them it really wasn't that big of a deal:Basically, the details show what many of us have said from the beginning. Some of the revelations may be embarrassing, but that's mainly because stuff was hidden that shouldn't have been hidden in the first place. In fact, many of the reports have noted that the cables seemed to only confirm what many people already knew. Of course, that won't change the opinion of the people who have already made up their minds that Wikileaks is, by definition, harmful -- which was the point of the propaganda campaign.

Filed Under: politics, wikileaks

Companies: wikileaks