wikileaks- the latin america files

8/13/2019 WikiLeaks- The Latin America Files

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The Nation.

\ T INMERIPIL S

rocked the region, revealing secr ets of state and the hidden hand of the U S .PETER KORNBLUHn June 19 , Wik iLeak s f ounder Julian Assange slipped intothe Ecuadorean Embassy in London, seeking sanctuaryand asylum from extradition to Sweden for questioningon alleged sexual misconduct. If and when the govem-ment of Rafael C orrea g rants his request a decision that The Nationwent to press Assange willecome a resident of Latin America, where the trov e of U S S tates of headl ines , f rom M exico to the S outhern C one.

C ableg ate, as the revelations have c ome to be known,d a different d egr ee of impact in each L atin Americanon on politics, the media, and the public d ebate overled to the forced d eparture of the U S ambassad or; in another

uments revealed the level of U S influenceomestic affairs; in others they d etailed cr iminal, activitiess, the cab les disclosed the parad e ofloc lpolitical, culturaltes who lined up to d ivulge information orssip ^to U S E mbassy officers , never s uspecting that their d is-ns would bec ome front-page news.Col lectively, the Americas have been treated to a mega-cs lesson in glob al ized whist leblowing. And U S citizensegional ties. A year afrer the d iplomatic d ust has sett led

iate to assess dr awing attention to the experiencesrazi l, Mexico and C o lombia what the bigges t l eak o f U Socuments in history has lef r in its wake.in g t o L a t in m e r i c a

uropean news outlets , he always intended to distr ib ute the

America was the perfect region to make a splash with leaks . H istorical ly , the C olossus of the No rt h has exercian imperious if not imperial economic, mil itary and pocal inf luence in its b ack y ard. This interv entionist past cated a nationalist appetite for r evelations on the hidd en tmof U S policies and operations.Th e d ecade cove red by m ost of the cab le s 20002010 also encompassed major c hanges in the region andU S -L atin American re lations: the r ise of H ug o C havez

Venezuela and the resurgence of the populist lefr; the advof P lan C olomb ia ; Brazil 's emerg ence as a world power; disputed 2006 election in Mexico; the transfer of power frFidel to R al C astro in C uba; and the Jime 2009 coupH ondur as. Moreover , a growing numb er of nations passed fd om of information laws, reflecting a popular interest in acto goverrmient documents and an expanding r ight-to-knmov ement that Assange hoped to adv ance. As he explained ininterview withSemanain B ogot, Wik iLeak s is an org anizaopposed to g overnment abuse of secrecy .In Nov emb er 2010, Assange invited w el l-connected jourists, like B razil's Natalia Viana, to come to L ond on and worka regional diss emination plan. Wik iLeak s selected news agenin almost every L atin American country: L aJornadain MexPgina 12 in Argentina; ElComercio and later IDL -R epoin P em; the newspaper ElEspectadorand the magazine Sein Colombia; ElFaro in E l S a lvador ; and C IPE R , the In teinv estigative joumalism center in C hile, among others.Journalists f rom each media group were invited to furrendezvous in L ondon. At WikiL eaks headquar te r s , they whanded a pen drive f i l led with encrypted f i les; once they safely retumed to their own countries , they received a coded ecry pt the col lection. I could n 't bel ieve it , recal l s the eign editor o Pgina/12 S antiago O 'Donnel l . Two thousf ive hundred cab les to and f rom the U S E mbassy in B ueAires , a l l organized on an Excel spread sheet.


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The Nation.- kugust 13120, Of the quarter-million diplomatic cables that WikiLeaks'

e than half were unclassified orlimited distribution cables; they reported on articles in the local public forums, the chit-chat of diplomatic functions andthe cables, Carlos

ardo Hue rtas notes in his article on Colombia, disclosedBut almost 900 cables were stamped Secret and 10,000Confide ntial. Many of those revealed policies, operations,ly, US bilateral relations with a handful of coun tries.In Mexico, as Blanche Petrich Moreno reports, USrlos Pascual's critical comm entary on the Mexican

ha Jornada s stories o n the ambassador's candid 2011, Pascual was forced to resign.In Ecuador, Rafael Correa expelled US Ambassador Heather

visa of former N ational Police chief Jaime Aquilino Hu rtado ,used his office...to extort cash and property, misap-gation and prosecution of corru pt colleagues. Someofficers, according to the cable, believe that Pres identust have been aware of Aquilino Hurtado's corruption,

whom he could easily manip ulate.Despite those flaps, as Latin American journalists examined

isre ported elsewhere, by the covert operatives of theThe State Department documents did reveal that diplomatsst W ashingto n analysts an a ppar-

Cristina Kirchner, including her mentaland what kinds of medication she took to manage heranxiety. And there were other insidious spying-

But the cables also provided less sinister, and often useful,

ter Komhluh s asenioranalyst o n Latin America at the National Securitydeclassified documentation center in Washington, DC. He s guestof Th e Nation and thanks Andrew Kragiefor energetic

clear that Washington did not sponsorthe overthrow of PresiJos Manuel Zelayaeven though US officials later acquiesto it. The actions taken to remove the President were pateillegal, US Ambassador Hug o Llorens reported in a cable ti Honduran Coup Timeline.. From Havana, where US relations with the governmenRal Castro remain hostile, the US Interests Section repeatfiled cables on Cuba's desire to expand the areas of dialoand rapprochement. In a Ma rch 2 009 cable tided Keep YFriends Close and Cuba Even Closer, one Cuban ofwas quoted telling a US official t hat negotiations neededstart somewhere. Th e US official was reminded that CuPresident Ral Castro had offered to talk to President Obin a neutral place. Guantnam o Bay, the Cuban suggesteda good place to meet.L a t in m e r ic a U n v e i le dFrom the Cuba cables, as much can be ascertained aboutthinking of Raul Castro's government as about US potoward it. This is true for the broader region as well. In LAmerica, where declassification of records on internal govment deliberations is severely limited, the WikiLeaks caprovide detailed information on official conversations, mings, national security plans, social policies, foreign poHeconomic policies and more .Readers in Argentina, for example, can track the dewithin Cristina Kirchner's administration on decriminalithe use of marijuana. Hondurans can hsten in as those geneand politicians who overthrew Zelaya plotted to consolitheir post-coup powers. Chileans can better understand their government alters building codes on the constructiothermonuclear plants at the behest of foreign corporations.The ability of the US Embassy to issue comprehenreports on the inner workings of these governments rests onquahty and connections of its local sources. Across the regUS Embassy visitor logs recorded a veritable Who's WhoLatin American society trying to curry favor with Washingand advance their agendas. Cabinet ministers, ex-cabinet misters, senators, congressmen, priests, businessmen, judgeseven some journalists shared information about matters of sconfiding their unvarnished opinions to US ambassadors withe ostensibly safe confines of the embassy walls. WikiLeexposed their identities along with their words.

In Brazil, the cables captured the defense minister repedly disparaging the foreign ministry as anti-AmericanArgentina, Nestor Kirchner's former chief of staff reportdenounced the former president as perverse, a coward a psyc hop ath. In Peru, the FujimoristasApolitical minof deposed President Alberto Fujimori, including his daugKeiko, who came close to winning the presidency last yeafiocked to the embassy to share their strategies for restohim to power. Their revealing conversations, publishedthe Peruvian investigative group IDL-Reporteros during2011 election campaign, undermined Keiko's claims of inpendence from her disgraced father and helped to swingelection to the populist candidate, Ollanta Hmala.That story might never have reached the Peruvian pu


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14 The Nation.^ August 13/20, because, inidally, WikiLeaks provided the Pem cables only tothe pro-Fujimori newspaper, / Comercio, whose editors wereresistant to publishing damaging stories on Keiko. Ac^ts ofpolidcal self-censorship crossed bo rders throu ghou t the region.Th e long-term impact from Cablegate in Ladn America, asveteran reporter Sandago O'Donnell tells T he Nation, is a lossof credibility for the tradidonal news media and the growingimportance of social, alternadve and citizen media, as dram ad-cally reflected by the WikiLeaks ph enom enon.Sdll, informadon is power. As the ensuing stories of the

WikiLeaks phenomenon in Brazil, Mexico and Colommake clear, the publicadon of the cable traffic has gerated scandals, sdrred debates, and exposed governmconduct (and often misconduct), policies and power sttures throughout the Americas. From the United StateArgentina, commimides have been empowered by a bunderstanding of what our governments are doingin names, but so often without our knowledge. W hat we cidof the Western Hemisphere do with that power will becthe uldm ate legacy of the Wik iLeaks experience.

B r a z il s M e d i a M e t a m o r p h o s isThe WikiLeaks revelations inspired anew culture of investigativejournalism in Brazil.b y N A T A L IA V I A N A

s the Boeing 777 from Londonarrived at the gate of GuamlhosInternadonal Airport in Sao Pauloon Decem ber 2 ,2010 , its passengersqueued up to deplane, many withthe local newspaper imder their ami. Brazilfears terrorism at the 2016 Olympics, saysUS Em bassy blared the headline of thedaily olha de S.Paulo front-page storygenerated from the first oftensof thousandsof classified US diplomadc cables obtainedand released by the whistleblower websiteWikiLeaks. Unnodced among those pas-sengers was a young woman with a backpack slung over hershoulder. Concealed within a bundle of messy clothing insideher bag was a pen drive containing nearly 3,000 sensidve cablesto and from the US Embassy and consulates in Brazil between2003 and 2010a cache of documents provided by WikiLeaks.This trove of records covered the two terms of PresidentInacio Lula da Suva's progressive gove rnm ent and capturedthe pohcies, operadons and diplomadc efforts of US presidentsGeorge W. Bush and Barack Obama, as well as those of theBrazilian government itself at a dme when the country wason the rise as a world-class economic and polidcal power. AsWikiLeaks-generated stories appeared in the Brazilian mediain the ensuing months, the cables would reveal how the BushWhite House curried favor with the country's defense min-ister and mihtary, how Bush tried to persuade Brazil to spyon Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, and how the Obamaadministradon became increasingly uncomfortable with Brazil'sclose reladonship with Iran. Brazilians would learn some star-thng details about their own government as well.Beyond the reveladons themselves, Cableg ate in Brazilwould have a significant impact on the profession of jour-nalism and strengthen the culture of transparency even asNatalia Vtana s the direaor of P ubl ica, B razil s first nonprofit investigativejournalism center (apublica.org).

the country was starting to revisit the leof its m ilitary dictatorship. Brazil, wasfirst South American country to receivecablesthanks to WikiLeaks founder JuAssange's strategic disseminadon plan, anthat litde pen drive.I was a member of the team carly assembled by WikiLeaks in the wbefore the inidal publicadon of the cableNovem ber 29, 2010. The goal was to bunetwork of local media partners in counrich and poor that would make the storieglobal. A task force of independent jouists would review the cables, write groundbreaking storiesthe WikiLeaks website, and devise a strategy for other moudets to invesdgate and report on the leaked documentsAssange, the product ofacj'berpunk culture based on cooradon and data sharing, formed his strategy around that phophy, balancing it with an acknowledgment of the mainstrmedia's tradidonal demand for exclusivity. WikiLeaks' oripartnership was with four major news oudetsthe G uardiaMonde, ElPas and DerSpiegelthat received the clle250,000 cables months in advance. A fifdi, the New York Tobtained them from the Guardian. These publicadons ato surrender their exclusive control over the material in Jan2011. In the end, WikiLeaks was able to partner with moreninety media oudets around the world.

I was one of the first journalists to reach Ellingham HaNorfolk, England, where WikiLeaks had established its sheadqua rters ahead of the Cablega te release. For a hten days in November, I^along with other journalists, aists and lawyersworked secredy around the clock at a crowded with laptops and cellphones, drafdng rdeles discussing how to distribute the documents in January.When it came to Brazil, however, dme was of the esseLula was lea\'ing office at the end of the year, so I argued thacables exposing his administradon should be brought to ligsoon as possible. Assange and the WikiLeaks team agreed.


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