Will WikiLeaks be a boon for scholars?

That’s just one question surrounding WikiLeak’s controversial publication Nov. 28 of a cache of more than 250,000 U.S. embassy cables, and the website’s release earlier this year of 76,000 documents connected to the Afghan conflict and 400,000 from the war in Iraq.

Others concern the legality and real-world impact on U.S. foreign policy and national security that WikiLeaks poses. If not outright damaging, some of the U.S. characterizations of foreign leaders and countries have been boldly unflattering — Russia is a “mafia state,” for example, and French Prime Minister Nicholas Sarkozy is “thin-skinned and authoritarian.”

To put it into perspective, UC Davis experts weighed in on the issue.

Historical trove

The massive amount of documents made available through WikiLeaks is of deep interest to scholars like Keith David Watenpaugh, a historian and religious studies expert who studies modern Islam, human rights and peace.

“We usually must wait 30 to 40 years for the declassification of State Department documents (like those issued by WikiLeaks),” he said. “Here we can see diplomats reacting in almost real time.”

So far, the information is more juicy than harmful. “It mostly confirms what we already know — U.S. diplomats spy on other diplomats at the U.N., but also, for the most part, U.S. diplomats are thoughtful and perceptive and are doing a good job representing the U.S. and protecting our interests abroad,” Watenpaugh said.

The leaks, he said, attest to the U.S. government’s misgivings about Pakistan's security services support for the Afghan Taliban and how little trust the U.S. has in Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

“Some leaks, like those indicating a rough alignment between Israel and the Arab states about Iranian nuclear ambitions or the ones showing that the government of Yemen is covering up American military intervention in that country, may make life difficult for some leaders in the Middle East,” said Watenpaugh.

He does not see a threat to national security.

“The real problem is that the U.S. classifies far too much information about its activities,” said Watenpaugh, adding that classification should not be used to save bureaucrats from embarrassment or to protect “unpopular or illegal policies” like torture or wiretapping.

“If the U.S. only classified information that is of vital national security value, then very few items would be classified and the government could do a better job protecting those secrets,” he said.

In terms of freedom of expression, Watenpaugh stated, WikiLeaks offers a poignant illustration in how the Internet is changing our political culture.

“This is an acceptable price to pay to live in an open society. We have a right to know what is done in our name around the world,” Watenpaugh said.

Legal limbo

Critics of WikiLeaks believe that the releases compromise American security and will harm relationships with some of our most trusted allies. One question is how does the unauthorized publication of sensitive documents and memos relate to the First Amendment. In other words, did WikiLeaks commit espionage — or break some other crime — in procuring the documents from a U.S. Army analyst?

Not under the traditional definition of espionage, said Andrea Bjorklund, an international law professor who once worked for the State Department.

“There may be the possibility for prosecution under related statutes, but it will be difficult to prosecute Mr. Assange on espionage charges,” Bjorklund said.

“The Espionage Act of 1917 applies to those who seek information regarding national defense in order to harm the United States or to help a foreign nation.” It is not clear that Mr. (Julian) Assange had those goals in mind.

However, she added, there is a federal conspiracy statute that could apply to Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, if the government could prove he was operating in concert with the person accused of leaking the documents.

As for prosecuting newspapers like The New York Times that printed the information, that would likely fizzle the way it did back when the Pentagon Papers were printed in 1971, she said.

However, it is “distasteful” to the government for such a wide distribution of classified material to occur without any recourse for punishment, she said.

Leaking the documents will cause a number of undesirable results, according to Bjorklund. It will discourage foreign interlocutors — even allies — from making confidential communications to the U.S. government. In addition, the State Department is likely to respond by limiting access to its documents by other agencies. After 9-11, when it seemed the intelligence agencies suffered a communication breakdown, many U.S. government agencies took steps to improve the sharing of communications among agencies.

“I fear this will set us back a number of years, and that would be an undesirable result,” Bjorklund said.

“There may be the possibility for prosecution under related statutes,” but there is no likelihood of espionage charges, she said.

But you can only do so much, she said. “There is a limit to how much you can guard against human frailty,” she said, recalling her days of how securely she kept her documents at the State Department.

Global gamesmanship

Miroslav Nincic, an international relations scholar who studies war and national security, agrees that the impact is far less than many predicted.

“The level of classification of the released documents was below the top secret level, so no national security secrets were released,” he said.

As for the pointed remarks about world leaders and countries, Nincic noted that “most nations realize that diplomatic communications require candor and that their own internal communications regarding the United States do not always involve flattering language,” he said.

At the same time, it may affect public opinion in those countries, though, again, the impact on the country's policies toward the U.S. is likely to be very marginal, Nincic said.

“The main consequence is that channels of diplomatic communication, in the future, are likely to be much more carefully guarded,” he said.

Nincic added, “National embarrassment and national security are not synonymous.”
 

Click here for another view on why WikiLeaks and the sheer amount of information released may pose difficulties for scholars.