WikiLeaks

Let’s talk about secrets. A secret is something that somebody doesn’t want somebody else to know.

Some people keep secrets that should not be kept. Some governments keep secrets which fall into this category. Some people want to know everyone’s secrets, including, perhaps, those which they have no business knowing. We call these latter, “nosey.”

I think most of us are a little nosey. I know I am. I read William Poundstone’s Big Secrets: The Uncensored Truth About All Sorts of Stuff You Are Never Supposed to Know (Morrow, 1983) and Bigger Secrets: More than 125 Things They Prayed You'd Never Find Out (Houghton Mifflin Co., 1986) with gusto, not long after they came out. Topics covered include how David Copperfield made the Statue of Liberty disappear and what is in Coca Cola and in Colonel Sanders’ secret chicken recipe. In this decade, I read 50 Things You’re Not Supposed To Know by Russ Kick (The Disinformation Co., Ltd., 2003), which tells us that Carl Sagan and Richard Feynman both smoked weed. Wow, two of the most intelligent humans who ever lived were potheads? Kind of dashes cold water into that “This is your brain on drugs’ skillet, don’t you think?

But, I tune away from Extra! and Entertainment Tonight as quickly as possible. There are so many so-called celebrity secrets that I just don’t give a rats’ belch about. And I am not one of those people who, if I use your bathroom, is likely to open your medicine cabinet, just to see what prescription meds you might be taking. I will, however, take a look at your bookshelves and your CDs, f they are on display. I might try to glimpse the title of a book being read by a passenger seated next to me on a plane, but I would never try to read what’s on his or her laptop screen.

WikiLeaks (www.wikileaks.org or www.wikileaks.info or www.wikileaks.ch) and Julian Assange, the site’s editor-in-chief and spokesperson, have managed to garner much publicity for themselves, and most of it has not been positive. Some people love WikiLeaks, while others hate it. The WikiLeaks homepage benignly states, “Have documents the world needs to see? We help you safely get the truth out.” That certainly sounds favorable to truth, justice, and the American Way, doesn’t it?

It is said to contain well over a million documents, including about 250,000 diplomatic cables, which were released in one post-Thanksgiving document dump. Yes, you know that more than one television comedian enjoyed commenting on the size of the dump that takes place after Thanksgiving. Some of the documents were embarrassing to the US and other countries, many of them in the way a high-school student might be embarrassed when her friends find out she has a secret crush on the captain of the chess team. Some of them appear to be a lot more damaging to our countries foreign relations and military involvements.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) is one of several republicans who has called Assange a terrorist. Some have said he deserves the death penalty for endangering our military. On the other hand, Assange has been the recipient of several awards, from organizations ranging from Amnesty International to Time Magazine.

I have mixed feelings about WikiLeaks. On the one hand, I don’t like my government’s keeping secrets from me, unless there is a real danger of terrible events taking place, should the information get out. I am sure our government often errs on the side of keeping too much information secret, and that is probably a bad thing. WikiLeaks has, no doubt, uncovered a lot of secrets which should have never been hidden in the first place, and has unearthed some things which are just plain trivial. It has also shown us some thins we should know, such as footage of American troops murdering civilians in Iraq. This is something we need to know about, in spite of the fact that this knowledge could impact our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Such potential harm just does not warrant such a coverup. WikiLeaks has done some of the work of the US news media, and they have been quick to pick up and continue the spread of these facts and allegations. Just mentioning WikiLeaks and its founder gives the site publicity. Yes some of that is negative, but any publicity has to encourage the curious to log on to the site or one its mirrors just to see what the fuss is about. Even this blog entry might further that furor.

I think that WikiLeaks is doing us a service and a favor, and maybe it is filing a void, left by our own news media, with its diminishing budgets for newsgathering and increased reliance on information fed it by press releases over facts elicited by footwork and research.

However, I am too cautious to jump on the WikiLeaks bandwagon. Some of the information being leaked may not be complete or may be inaccurate. There may be some things that concerned Americans really don’t want or need to know and don’t want our enemies – or even our friend – to know. We must remember that Julian Assange is not an American. If nothing else, we might feel a bit shamed that an Australian is revealing information which perhaps should have been first shown to us by own media

Some things need to be kept secret for the sake of personal privacy and safety. You wouldn’t want someone to post your Social Security and credit card numbers for the world to see. But, if your potential babysitter has a prior conviction for child abuse, you would certainly want to be able to find out about that.

We praise Woodward and Bernstein for shining a light on the shady dealings of the Nixon Administration. However, most of us condemn Robert Novak for blowing Valerie Plame’s CIA cover, effectively ending her career with that agency. Woodward and Bernstein were idealistic, young journalists who were doing their best to report the truth to the people of America. Novak was a bitter, old troll of a man, who outed Plame as a way of seeking revenge. After all, Novak’s own autobiography is called The Prince of Darkness: 50 Years Reporting in Washington (Crown Forum, 2007). Novak died in 2009 and I am sure that some believe he is now contending with the real prince of darkness!