WikiLeaks

by Harding, Luke

  Less comic was the overall tone adopted by the Americans towards their junior UK allies, who craved a “special relationship”. While there was evidence everywhere of the intimacy and intelligence-sharing which went on worldwide between the two Anglophone states, there were also signs of a condescending attitude. The cables showed that the US superpower was mainly interested in its own priorities: it wanted unrestricted use of British military bases; it wanted British politicians to send troops for its wars and aid its sanctions campaigns, against Iran in particular; and it wanted the UK to buy American arms and commercial products. Richard LeBaron, the US charge d’affaires at the Grosvenor Square embassy in London, recommended that the US continue to pander to British fantasies that their relationship was special: “Though tempting to argue that keeping HMG [Her Majesty’s government] off balance about its current standing with us might make London more willing to respond favourably when pressed for assistance, in the long run it is not in US interests to have the UK public concluding the relationship is weakening, on either side. The UK’s commitment of resources – financial, military, diplomatic – in support of US global priorities remains unparalleled.”

  In the leaked cables, the unequal relationship between senior and junior partners was visibly played out. When then British foreign secretary David Miliband tried to hamper secret US spy flights from Britain’s Cyprus base, he was peremptorily yanked back into line. When Britain similarly thought of barring US cluster bombs from its own territory on Diego Garcia, the Americans soon put a stop to it. Britain even offered to declare the area around the US Diego Garcia base a marine nature reserve, so the evicted islanders could never go back. However, when Gordon Brown, as British prime minister, personally pleaded in return for compassion for Gary McKinnon, a British youthful computer hacker wanted for extradition, his plea was humiliatingly ignored. The incoming British Conservative administration, headed by foreign secretary-designate William Hague, lined up cravenly to promise the US ambassador a “pro-American regime”.

  Sifting through this huge database of diplomatic documents, it was hard not to come away with a depressing view of human nature. Mankind, the world over, seemed revealed as a base, grasping species. Many political leaders showed remarkable greed and venality. One of the most egregious examples was Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese president. He was reported to have siphoned as much as $9 billion out of the country, and stashed much of it in London banks. A conversation with the chief prosecutor of the international criminal court said some of the funds may be held by Lloyds Bank in London. The bank denied any connection.

  It was a similar story in Afghanistan, a regime – like Russia – sliding into kleptocracy. The cables show fears of rampant government corruption; the US is apparently powerless to do anything about it. In one astonishing alleged incident in October 2009, US diplomats claimed that the then vice-president Ahmad Zia Massoud was stopped and questioned in Dubai, after flying into the emirate carrying $52 million in cash. Officials trying to stop money laundering interviewed him. Then they let him go. (Massoud denies this happened.)

  The US was also deeply frustrated by Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan’s leader. It regarded him as erratic, emotional, prone to believing conspiracy theories – and linked to criminal warlords. US diplomats spelled out their conviction that Ahmed Wali Karzai, the president’s younger half brother and a senior figure in Kandahar, is corrupt.

  Some of the world’s biggest companies have also been involved in dubious practices and dirty tricks, the communiqués alleged. Shell’s vice-president for sub-Saharan Africa boasted that the oil giant had successfully inserted staff into all of the main ministries of Nigeria’s government. Shell was so well placed that it knew of the government’s plans to invite bids for oil concessions. The Shell executive, Anne Pickard, told the US ambassador Robin Renee Sanders that Shell had seconded employees to every government department so knew “everything that was being done in those ministries”.

  The revelations appeared to confirm what campaigners had long been saying: that there were intersecting links between the oil giant and politicians in a country where, despite billions of dollars in oil revenue, 70% of people still lived below the poverty line.

  Pfizer, the world’s biggest pharmaceutical company, was also identified in Africa dispatches. According to a leaked cable from the US embassy in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, Pfizer hired investigators to unearth evidence of corruption against the country’s attorney general. The drug firm wanted to pressure him to drop legal action over a controversial drug trial involving children with meningitis. Pfizer denies wrongdoing. It says it has now resolved a case brought in 2009 by Nigeria’s government and Kano state, where the drug was used during a meningitis outbreak.

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  What did this worldwide pattern of diplomatic secrets actually all mean? Some commentators saw it as proof that the United States was struggling to get its way in the world, a superpower entering a long period of relative decline. Others thought the revelations at least showed the bureaucracy of the state department in a fairly good light. In the Guardian, Timothy Garton Ash confessed he had been impressed by the professionalism of the US diplomatic corps – a hard-working and committed bunch. “My personal opinion of the state department has gone up several notches,” he wrote. “For the most part … what we see here is diplomats doing their proper job: finding out what is happening in places to which they are posted, working to advance their nation’s interests and their government’s policies.”

  Some world leaders brushed off the embarrassing revelations, at least in public, while others went on the attack. Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who did not come out well in the disclosures of his regional unpopularity, dismissed the WikiLeaks data drop as “psychological warfare”. He claimed the US must have deliberately leaked its own files in a plot to discredit him. Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, reacted furiously to cables that suggested he was a corrupt closet Islamist. But in countries where there is no free press – Eritrea is a good example, but there are lots of them – there was no reaction at all, only silence.

  The Russians executed a remarkable handbrake turn. President Medvedev at first dismissed the Russia cables as “not worthy” of comment. But when it became clear that the leak was far more damaging in the long-term to the US and its multilateral interests, one of Medvedev’s aides proposed, tongue-in-cheek, that Julian Assange should be nominated for the Nobel peace prize.

  It was Assange himself that dominated the coverage in Australia. The Sydney Morning Herald hailed Assange as the “Ned Kelly of the internet age”, in reference to the country’s 19th-century outlaw folk hero. However, Australia’s prime minister, Julia Gillard, behaved more like the rest of the irritated world leaders: she condemned the publication as illegal, and Assange’s actions as “grossly irresponsible”. The cables themselves revealed an unflattering view of Australia’s political class. The former prime minister – now foreign minister – Kevin Rudd was called an abrasive, impulsive “control freak” presiding over a series of foreign policy blunders.

  Was the Big Leak of the cables changing anything? As the year ended, it was for the most part too early to say. The short-term fall-out in some cases was certainly rapid, with diplomats shuffled and officials made to walk the plank. Der Spiegel reported that a “well-placed source” within the Free Democratic Party had been briefing the US embassy about secret coalition negotiations in the immediate aftermath of the German general election in 2009. The mysterious man was quickly outed as Helmut Metzner, head of the office of party chairman and vice-chancellor Guido Westerwelle. Metzner lost his job.

  In January 2011 Washington was forced to withdraw its ambassador from Libya, Gene Cretz. Colonel Gadaffi had clearly been stung by comments concerning his long-time Ukrainian nurse – a “voluptuous blonde”, as Cretz put it. Other US diplomatic staff were also quietly told to pack their bags and move on. Sylvia Reed Curran, the charge d’affaires in Ashgabat, was reassigned a
fter penning an excoriating profile of Turkmenistan’s president, Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov. She described him as “vain, suspicious, guarded, strict, very conservative”, a “micro-manager” and “a practised liar”. She added, memorably: “Berdymukhamedov does not like people who are smarter than he is. Since he’s not a very bright guy, our source offered, he is suspicious of a lot of people.”

  Curran’s fate? She was sent to Vladivostok, where the sun rarely shines.

  Some other developments were positive and suggested that WikiLeaks’ mission to winkle out secrets might help bring results. One cable, from the US embassy in Bangladesh, showed the British government was training a paramilitary force condemned by human rights organisations as a “government death squad”, held responsible for hundreds of extrajudicial killings. The British were revealed to be training the “Rapid Action Battalion” in investigative interviewing techniques and “rules of engagement”. Since the squad’s exposure in the cables, no more deaths have been announced.

  In Tunisia, the country’s repressive president, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, blocked the website of a Lebanese newspaper that published cables about his regime. The reports from the US embassy in Tunis were deeply unflattering, and made no bones about the sclerotic state of the small Maghreb country, widely considered one of the most repressive in a repressive region. “The problem is clear,” wrote ambassador Robert Godec in July 2009, in a secret dispatch released by Beirut’s al-Akhbar newspaper. “Tunisia has been ruled by the same president for 22 years. He has no successor. And, while President Ben Ali deserves credit for continuing many of the progressive policies of [predecessor] President Bourguiba, he and his regime have lost touch with the Tunisian people. They tolerate no advice or criticism, whether domestic or international. Increasingly, they rely on the police for control and focus on preserving power.”

  The cable went on: “Corruption in the inner circle is growing. Even average Tunisians are keenly aware of it, and the chorus of complaints is rising. Tunisians intensely dislike, even hate, first lady Leila Trabelsi and her family. In private, regime opponents mock her; even those close to the government express dismay at her reported behaviour. Meanwhile, anger is growing at Tunisia’s high unemployment and regional inequities. As a consequence, the risks to the regime’s long-term stability are increasing.”

  The ambassador’s comments were prescient. Within a month of the cable’s publication, Tunisia was in the grip of what some were calling the first WikiLeaks revolution.

  CHAPTER 17

  The ballad of Wandsworth jail

  City of Westminster magistrates court,

  Horseferry Road, London

  7 December 2010

  “I walked, with other souls in pain”

  OSCAR WILDE, BALLAD OF READING GAOL

  If aliens had landed their spaceship outside, they might have presumed that one of God’s saints was about to ascend. Julian Assange had just become, in many eyes, the St Sebastian of the internet age, a martyr pierced by the many arrows of the unbelievers. A scrum of cameramen thronged the gates of the City of Westminster magistrates court. On the pavement a polyglot huddle of journalists waited impatiently to get in. Other reporters had managed to sneak inside and they milled around the ground-floor vestibule.

  The previous evening Swedish prosecutors had decided to issue a warrant for Assange’s arrest, over the still unresolved investigation into allegations he had assaulted two women in Stockholm. He was listed as a wanted man by Interpol – wanted, the Red List notice said, for “sex crimes”. That night, sitting in the Georgian surroundings of Ellingham Hall, and with his options rapidly narrowing, Assange had concluded that he was going to have to hand himself in. He had scarcely slept for days; he was under siege from the world’s media; the way forward must have seemed rocky and difficult. According to his WikiLeaks associates, after taking the decision to go to the police Assange at last fell heavily asleep.

  Early that morning he drove to London. There, he met at 9.30am with officers from the Metropolitan police’s extradition unit. The meeting had been arranged in advance; Assange was with his lawyers Mark Stephens and Jennifer Robinson. The officers promptly arrested him. They explained they were acting on behalf of the Swedish authorities. The Swedes had issued a European arrest warrant, valid in Britain. It accused Assange of one count of unlawful coercion, two counts of sexual molestation and one count of rape, all allegedly committed in August 2010. Westminster magistrates court would decide later that afternoon whether to grant him bail, they said.

  News of his arrest prompted some rejoicing in Washington, which had found little to cheer about in recent days, as the contents of its private diplomatic dispatches were sprayed around the world. “That sounds like good news to me,” said the US defence secretary, Robert Gates, speaking from Afghanistan. There was a big smirk on his face.

  At 12.47pm Assange slipped into court via a back entrance. Stephens told the waiting media his client was “fine”. He had held a successful meeting with police. “It was very cordial. They verified his identify. They are satisfied he is the real Julian Assange and we are ready to go into court.” But the rest of the afternoon’s proceedings didn’t go according to plan. In a beige upstairs courtroom, the district judge Howard Riddle asked Assange whether he consented to his extradition to Sweden. Was he ready to answer the charges in the arrest warrant? “I understand that, and do not consent,” Assange replied. The judge then asked Assange to give his address. Assange fired back: “PO Box 4080.”

  It was the kind of apparently flippant answer you might expect from a global nomad. Assange was, after all, an international man of mystery who moved from country to country, carrying only a couple of rucksacks with computer gear and a slightly rank T-shirt. As his friends well knew, getting hold of Assange was exceptionally difficult. But in fact, his answer may not have been as flippant as it sounded. He had not known what to expect in the courtroom, and was nervous about giving away his location in public for fear of ill-wishers. He would have been better-advised to ask to submit his true current address written down on a piece of paper. That would have been perfectly normal.

  As it was, his answer entertained the gallery, but dissatisfied the court. Riddle made it clear he was not here to pass judgment on Assange’s Manichean struggle with the Pentagon or other dark forces: “This case isn’t about WikiLeaks.” After hearing a brief outline of the evidence from Sweden the judge concluded that Assange’s community ties in the UK were weak. The prosecution also claimed – unreasonably as it later turned out – that it was unclear how Assange had entered Britain. Judge Riddle concluded there was a risk Assange might not show up for his extradition hearing – or, in colloquial British parlance, do a runner. He refused Assange bail.

  The decision at 3.30pm was an unexpected hammer-blow. Assange had confidently expected he would be free to walk out of court. He had even failed to bring a toothbrush. There would be no triumphant press conference, however; instead Assange was carted off in a “meat wagon” to HM Wandsworth prison, his new home. This forbidding ensemble of grey Victorian buildings might have come from the pages of Charles Dickens. It proved to be an excellent setting for another reel in what would surely become Assange’s biopic. His life story already had the trajectory of a thriller. But now it had an unexpected change of pace, with a sequence to come on its protagonist’s suffering and martyrdom. Nelson Mandela, Oscar Wilde, Alexander Solzhenitsyn (Assange’s hero), all had spent time in prison. They had used their confinement to meditate and reflect on the transitory nature of human existence and – in Solzhenitsyn’s case – on the brutalities of Soviet power. Now it was Assange’s turn to be incarcerated, as some saw it, in a dank British gulag.

  Assange’s situation attracted a group of glamorous left-wing Assangistas, many initially rounded up by his lawyers to offer sureties for bail. They included John Pilger, the campaigning UK-based Australian journalist, the British film director Ken Loach, and Bianca Jagger (former wife of Mick), the human
rights activist and onetime model. Also present was Jemima Goldsmith, generally described as a socialite. She was to complain about this appellation, tweeting indignantly “‘Socialite’ is an insult to any self respecting person.” From the US, the left-wing documentary maker Michael Moore had pledged to contribute $20,000 bail money, while urging observers “not [to] be naive about how the government works when it decides to go after its prey”. Other well-wishers who would attend subsequent court hearings included Gavin MacFadyen, the former TV producer from City University’s Bureau for Investigative Journalism who over the summer had given Assange a bed in his London townhouse. Some knew Assange personally; others did not. Some seemed convinced that the court case was unconnected with what happened in a Swedish bedroom. Instead, as they saw it, it was an attempt to imprison Assange for his real “crime”: releasing secret documents that humiliated the United States.

  For a certain kind of radical, Assange had extraordinary appeal: he was brave, uncompromising and dangerous. Did Pilger and Loach, perhaps, see in Assange the ghosts of their own revolutionary youth? Assange’s targets were those that the original 60s radicals had themselves struggled against – chiefly US imperialism, then in Vietnam, but now in Afghanistan and Iraq. There were other secret abuses Assange had revealed, too: the callousness of the US military, and the widespread use of torture. But the proceedings at Horseferry Road had, strictly speaking, little to do with this.