Wicked Leaks: A lesson from history.

[LazyLion]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/adamcurtis/2010/12/wicked_leaks.html

Bradley Manning, the intelligence analyst who is alleged to have leaked the thousands of state department cables, has often been compared to Daniel Ellsberg who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971.

But I have stumbled on a film in the archives that tells the story of another leaker in America who tried to do the same thing, but even earlier.

He was a young State Department diplomat who stole and copied thousands of Top Secret cables. Like Daniel Ellsberg, his aim was to release them to stop America’s involvement in what he believed was a disastrous foreign war.

He was called Tyler Kent. He was a diplomat at the US embassy in London in 1940 and he wanted to stop President Roosevelt bringing America into the war to help Britain.

It is a fascinating story, but it also brings an odd perspective to the contemporary Wikileaks story.

Tyler Kent was a horrible man. He was a rabid anti-communist who believed that the Jews had been behind the Russian Revolution.

He was convinced that Germany should be allowed to destroy both Communist Russia and the Jews. And America should not get in the way of that being allowed to happen.

Looking back, most people now feel that Daniel Ellsberg was right in 1971 because the Vietnam War had become a horrible disaster that needed exposing.

Today, we are not sure of Bradley Manning’s motives (and it hasn't been proven that he is the source of the leak), but again there is a general feeling that it was good thing because the cables have exposed an empty nihilism at the heart of America’s foreign policy.

But the perspective the Tyler Kent story brings is the realisation that diplomatic leaks are not automatically a good thing. It just depends on who is using them. And why.

Back in the past Tyler Kent wanted to use secret information to destroy the things that the overwhelming majority of the British people believed in and were prepared to fight for.

Back in 1982, Robert Harris tracked Tyler Kent down. He was living in a caravan in a trailer park on the US-Mexico border. Harris persuaded Kent to be interviewed and then made a film for Newsnight that told the story.

It is a great piece of historical journalism. Kent explains how his aim was to release the secret cables during the Presidential election campaign in 1940. Over 80% of the US population didn’t want to go into the war – and the cables showed President Roosevelt secretly promising Churchill help against Germany.

Harris makes a powerful case in the film that if Kent had succeeded America would not have entered the war. And history would have been completely different.

Tyler Kent himself is weird and mesmerising. But still unrepentently anti-semitic.

And the film also shows just how easily Tyler Kent found willing accomplices in the heart of the British Establishment. They wanted to get rid of the Jews and communists too, even at the expense of their own country.

The film begins on the morning of the 20th May 1940. Churchill had been sending secret cables to Roosevelt begging for American help.

Click on the link above to see the video of the documentary.

For the record, I don't think we should be comparing Julian Assange to any figure from past history... since we don't actually know yet what the outcome of Mr. Assange's actions will be yet, or what exactly his agenda is (although see here for one perspective on his agenda).

But this article and the documentary do raise an important question. What if the US (and it's allies were on the verge of fighting a very important war... say for example, a war against radical terrorism), but then this leak changes history and for some reason the US is restrained from acting? And we are then stuck under the dominance of some other tyrant. You may believe the US to be a terrible tyrant. But I think it is also fair to say that there are other terrible tyrants out there waiting in the wings.

What do you think? If the US had not gone into the second world war, Germany might have prevailed. But by going into the war, Soviet style (repressive) communism flourished for 50 years. Is it right to try and change history? Can we really foresee all the consequences of our actions?

To act, or not to act?

 

[tortured]

"What if"

Those two words say a lot.

What if Julian, what if the US.....

Thinking about what if will make me go mad, so I don't.

 

[copacetic]

If we are going to say that we cannot say whether the leaks are good or bad; we cannot make the assumption either way then, for the secrets they may be unveiling.

The point is, America is technically a democracy, with alleged grand talk of government transparency. These leaks are coming from within, which suggests a rotten core.

 

[Alan]

Just as Kent's leak suggested FDR's government was rotten to the core

Thousands had access to those documents and only one person decided to leak the details. Damning indeed


Great link Gary. Assange is to Islamic extremists what Kent was to the Nazis. A useful idiot.

 

[MR.C]

Let the truth be told.

 

[Lope]

Let the truth be told.

+1

 

[Fudzy]

Here’s a thought experiment: Imagine for a moment that the quarter of a million secret government cables from the State Department had been leaked, not to Julian Assange of WikiLeaks, but to Bill Keller, the executive editor of the New York Times.

First, let’s state the obvious: The Times would never have returned the confidential files to the Obama administration. Most likely, the newspaper would have attempted to engage with State to try to scrub life- and source- threatening details from the cables — as Assange and his lawyers did.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politic...edom-of-the-press-apply-to-wikileaks-20101215