Minnesotans with foreign service experience analyze WikiLeaks' revelations

By Sharon Schmickle
MinnPost
Tuesday, Nov. 30, 2010

Talk to Minnesotans with deep experience in the U.S. Foreign Service, and you hear that WikiLeaks' daring revelations this week of classified diplomatic cables are a pointless disaster — or, not as bad as they could have been. Definitely a lesson for diplomats in the cyber age. Possibly deadly for overseas sources.

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Diplomat or spy?

The leaks also raise questions of whether the United States is blurring the line between diplomacy and spying. The Times reported that State Department workers have been ordered to snoop on foreign dignitaries, gathering personal information like their credit card and frequent flier numbers, presumably for purposes of tracking their travel.

Without speaking directly to such specifics, Tom Maertens said it's no surprise that foreign service officials around the world were gathering intelligence and sending it back to Washington. Maertens, who now lives in Mankato, worked in American embassies in several countries, and he also was the National Security Council's director for nuclear issues during the administrations of former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

"I've written hundreds of these cables," Maertens said.

"Of the political intelligence that goes into national intelligence estimates, about 90 percent comes from foreign service reporting," he said. "Everybody knows that diplomats are in the information-collection business along with the usual duties of issuing passports, negotiating treaties and protecting citizens and so forth."

Diplomats from other countries do the same and worse, Maertens said.

The real victims of the leaks could be the sources of confidential information whose names might be revealed in the secret dispatches.

"When I was in Ethiopia during the revolution, some things were told to me could have gotten people arrested and who knows — probably summarily executed," Maertens said.

"That's the biggest problem, endangering sources," he said.

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