There are some things you come to expect in certain venues, but not in real-life scenarios. Plots to James Bond movies, for instance, aren’t such topics you’d expect to find splashed across the front page of the New York Times.
Yet over the past week there have been several stories in which I can almost hear the gravelly baritone of Sean Connery narrating, complete with spies, secret military operations and, of course, informants breaking through the military-sanctioned confidentiality barrier.
On July 25, WikiLeaks, a public service organization designed to “protect whistleblowers, journalists and activists who have sensitive materials to communicate to the public” blew a great big whistle in the form of tens of thousands of documents they released to news agencies which shed a whole new light on the war in Afghanistan, contrasting the rainbows and sunshine we normally hear through the media.
WikiLeaks was also previously responsible for publishing the American military manual for operating its prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, leading to a verifiable chaotic mess of legal, congressional and military reaction on interrogation processes used there.
In essence, they sent the documents to the four corners of the earth for publishing. They claim, according to their website (http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Afghan_War_Diary,_2004-2010) that in the 91,000 reports dating from 2004 to present, soldiers and intelligence officers describe lethal military actions executed by the US military and include intelligence information reports.
The real ”˜007′ stuff comes from the intelligence reports, claiming Pakistani intelligence agents have been meeting and cooperating with head Al Qaeda officials in the Taliban’s war with America and to plot assassinations against Afghan government officials, according to an article in the New York Times.
According to the same article, Pakistan receives more than $1 billion a year from our country to support them in exchange for their help to the U.S. with our fight against the Taliban, the same insurgence group blamed for the Sept 11 attacks.
The accusations cross all sorts of boundaries, including top-secret military information and accusing one of our NATO allies of harboring double agents.
How very Bond-ey.
Unfortunately, there won’t be any scantily-clad actress strait out of the ’70s popping out to help save the day. Albeit surreal, this appears to be happening in the here and now.
According to CNN World sources, U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, was quoted as saying the reports “reinforce a longstanding concern of mine about the supporting role of some Pakistani officials in the Afghan insurgency.”
However, also according to CNN, Pakistani’s Foreign Office released a statement saying they are “misplaced, skewed and contrary to the factual position on the ground.”
Officially dubbed the “Afghan War Diary,” the reports are adamantly denied by foreign officials and downplayed by several U.S. agencies, claiming they are either baseless or at the very least over-inflated accounts of the war in Afghanistan.
But at the same time, several top U.S. officials, including the White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, are rather upset the documents were released to begin with, calling them a breach of federal law, and they have launched a full investigation into the source of the leak. He was quoted by CNN reporters as saying, “There is no doubt that this is a concerning development in operational security.”
So if the reports don’t hold merit, why would they breech operational security, as opposed to falsely accusing high-standing officials of being spies? Aren’t they saying information was leaked that shouldn’t have been?
WikiLeaks is still withholding another 15,000 reports which will eventually be released due to a “harm minimization process demanded by our source,” according to their website. I, for one, will be quite interested in what they will contain.
Maybe, someone, somewhere will have the genius to enlist Sean Connery to read them to us. I’ll bring the popcorn.
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