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Arab Leaders Urged U.S. to Stop Iran Bombs, NYT Says (Update3)
By Miles Weiss
Nov. 28 (Bloomberg) -- Saudi Arabia and other Arab governments sided with Israel in urging the U.S. to stop Iran from developing a nuclear bomb, according to a New York Times account of 250,000 classified U.S. embassy cables released by WikiLeaks, the non-profit website.
In the documents, American officials say that Iran obtained 19 advanced missiles from North Korea, potentially giving the Islamic Republic the capability to attack Moscow and cities in Western Europe, the newspaper said in articles published online today. At the request of the Obama Administration, the New York Times agreed not to publish the text of the Feb. 24 cable that reported the Korean missile deal with Iran.
U.S. officials denounced the release as jeopardizing the nation’s ties with foreign governments and endangering individuals. WikiLeaks plans to publish the actual cables on its Web site in stages, with the first batch set to go online today, the New York Times reported.
“I can’t provide veracity of anything WikiLeaks has released to the media,” Nicole Thompson, a State Department spokeswoman, said in an interview, adding the agency’s policy is to refrain from commenting on specific leaked materials. “It’s reprehensible for any person to leak classified information because of the risk that it puts to so many individuals, so many international relationships,” she said.
Cable Designations
The New York Times articles are based on 251,287 cables first obtained by WikiLeaks, including 11,000 that were classified as “secret,” and 9,000 that were listed as containing information too sensitive to be shared with a foreign government, the newspaper said. None were listed as “top- secret,” and many are unclassified, according to the Times.
The Guardian of the U.K., France’s Le Monde, Spain’s El Pais and Der Spiegel of Germany also obtained the documents for publication. The papers were originally obtained by WikiLeaks and provided to the Times through “an intermediary” who insisted on anonymity, according to one of the articles published today.
The documents reveal details about many foreign governments and officials, including an episode last year in which Afghanistan’s then-vice president, Ahmed Zia Massoud, was found carrying $52 million in cash while visiting the United Arab Emirates. Massoud denied taking any money out of Afghanistan, according to the Times, which is planning to publish more on the issue.
China, Google
According to another cable, a Chinese contact told the U.S. embassy in Beijing in January that China’s Politburo directed an “intrusion” into Google Inc.’s local computer networks. The Google hacking was “part of a coordinated campaign of computer sabotage carried out by government operatives, private security experts and Internet outlaws recruited by the Chinese government,” the New York Times said in its account of the WikiLeaks cables.
The documents shed light on the views that Arab leaders hold on Iran as well as the inner workings and deliberations of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East, the New York Times said.
For instance, Saudi Arabia’s 86-year-old ruler, King Abdullah Bin Abdulaziz, frequently called for an attack on Iran, urging the U.S. to “cut off the head of the snake” while there was still time(the newspaper reported. In July 2009, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan of Abu Dhabi, then the defense supreme commander for the United Arab Emirates, declared that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad “is Hitler,” according to the newspaper’s description of the embassy cables.
The Obama Administration said in a statement today that embassy reporting to Washington “is candid and often incomplete information,” not an expression of policy.
‘Compromise’ Diplomacy
“Nevertheless, these cables could compromise private discussions with foreign governments and opposition leaders,” according to the statement from the White House Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs. “When the substance of private conversations is printed on the front pages of newspapers across the world, it can deeply impact not only U.S. foreign policy interests, but those of our allies and friends.”
Republicans also condemned the release of the cables, with Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina stating on Fox News Sunday that “the people at WikiLeaks could have blood on their hands.” The top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, called the revelation of the documents “extremely irresponsible.”
Ros-Lehtinen’s Reaction
“This critical and highly sensitive information must be managed carefully,” said Ros-Lehtinen, who is set to become chairman of the committee in January, when her party takes the House majority as a result of this month’s elections. “These leaks come at the expense of U.S. security and, potentially, American lives.”
Since May, people in the government and media have been discussing the possible release of a “large number” of embassy cables, the New York Times said in one of today’s articles. The same month, an Army intelligence analyst named Bradley Manning said in an online chat that he had downloaded classified documents from a military computer system, including “260,000 State Department cables from embassies and consulates all over the world,” the newspaper said.
Private First Class Manning said he had delivered the cables to WikiLeaks during an online discussion with a computer hacker named Adrian Lamo, who subsequently reported the information to authorities. Manning was arrested in June at age 22 and charged with illegally releasing classified information.
The Pentagon announced today that it will take a “series of actions” to prevent future reoccurrences, such as developing procedures to monitor user behavior that is similar to steps taken by credit-card companies to detect fraud. The military will also conduct security oversight inspections at forward bases and remove the ability of classified computers to download information onto removable disks.
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