The Nation.

AMERICA
PILES
"Cablegate" rocked the region, revealing secrets of stateand the hidden hand of the US. by PETER KORNBLUH

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IN

n June 19, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange slipped into the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, seeking sanctuary and asylum from extradition to Sweden for questioning on alleged sexual misconduct. If and when the govemment of Rafael Correa grants his requesta decision that had yet to be made as The Nation went to pressAssange will become a resident of Latin America, where the trove of US State Department cables he strategically disseminated has generated hundreds of headlines, from Mexico to the Southern Cone. "Cablegate," as the revelations have come to be known, has had a different degree of impact in each Latin American nationon politics, the media, and the public debate over transparency and government accountability. In two countries it led to the forced departure of the US ambassador; in another it helped change the course of a presidential election. In some countries, the documents revealed the level of US influence in domestic affairs; in others they detailed criminal, activities and corruption within a number of host government. In many nations, the cables disclosed the parade of local political, cultural and even media elites who lined up to divulge informationor gossip^to US Embassy officers, never suspecting that their discussions would become front-page news. Collectively, the Americas have been treated to a megacivics lesson in globalized whistleblowing. And US citizens have also peered into the foreign policy abyss of our bilateral and regional ties. A year afrer the diplomatic dust has settled on the WikiLeaks phenomenon in Latin America, it seems appropriate to assessdrawing attention to the experiences of Brazil, Mexico and Colombiawhat the biggest leak of US documents in history has lefr in its wake.

Leaking to Latin America

Although Assange initially gave the cables to four major European news outlets, he always intended to distribute the documents beyond the media organs of the North. Latin

America was the perfect region to make a splash with the leaks. Historically, the "Colossus of the North" has exercised an imperiousif not imperialeconomic, military and political influence in its "backyard." This interventionist past created a nationalist appetite for revelations on the hidden tmths of US policies and operations. The decade covered by most of the cables2000 to 2010also encompassed major changes in the region and in US-Latin American relations: the rise of Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and the resurgence of the populist lefr; the advent of "Plan Colombia"; Brazil's emergence as a world power; the disputed 2006 election in Mexico; the transfer of power from Fidel to Ral Castro in Cuba; and the Jime 2009 coup in Honduras. Moreover, a growing number of nations passed freedom of information laws, reflecting a popular interest in access to goverrmient documents and an expanding right-to-know movement that Assange hoped to advance. As he explained in an interview with Semana in Bogot, WikiLeaks is an "organization opposed to government abuse of secrecy." In November 2010, Assange invited well-connected journalists, like Brazil's Natalia Viana, to come to London and work on a regional dissemination plan. WikiLeaks selected news agencies in almost every Latin American country: La Jornada in Mexico, Pgina/12 in Argentina; El Comercio and later IDL-Reporteros in Pem; the newspaper El Espectador and the magazine Semana in Colombia; El Faro in El Salvador; and CIPER, the Intemet investigative joumalism center in Chile, among others. Journalists from each media group were invited to furtive rendezvous in London. At WikiLeaks headquarters, they were handed a pen drive filled with encrypted files; once they had safely retumed to their own countries, they received a code to decrypt the collection. "I couldn't believe it," recalls the foreign editor o Pgina/12, Santiago O'Donnell. "Two thousand five hundred cables to and from the US Embassy in Buenos Aires, all organized on an Excel spreadsheet."

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Of the quarter-million diplomatic cables that WikiLeaks' source, Bradley Manning, downloaded from a US military database in Iraq, some 30,386 traveled to or from embassies and consulates in Latin America. More than half were unclassified or "limited distribution" cables; they reported on articles in the local press, public forums, the chit-chat of diplomatic functions and the routine of consular affairs. The majority of the cables, Carlos Eduardo Huertas notes in his article on Colombia, "disclosed how the US diplomatic corps tends to official business." But almost 900 cables were stamped "Secret" and 10,000 "Confidential." Many of those revealed policies, operations, sources and classified assessments that infiamed, at least temporarily, US bilateral relations with a handful of countries. In Mexico, as Blanche Petrich Moreno reports, US Ambassador Carlos Pascual's critical commentary on the Mexican Army's lack of action on US-provided intelligence targeting drug kingpins proved politically embarrassing for President Felipe Caldern, ha Jornada's stories on the ambassador's candid critique contributed to a breach in US-Mexican relations; in March 2011, Pascual was forced to resign. In Ecuador, Rafael Correa expelled US Ambassador Heather Hodges after the press reported on a secret cable revoking the US visa of former National Police chiefJaime Aquilino Hurtado, who had "used his office...to extort cash and property, misappropriate public funds, facilitate human trafficking, and obstruct the investigation and prosecution of corrupt colleagues." Some embassy officers, according to the cable, "believe that President Correa must have been aware" of Aquilino Hurtado's corruption, but appointed him anyway because he wanted a National Police chief "whom he could easily manipulate." Despite those flaps, as Latin American journalists examined the cables, they found a more nuanced picture of the US role in the region than they expectedand an incomplete one. By bureaucratic definition. State Department records are the least scandalous of US foreign policy documents; the dark side of US policy is reported elsewhere, by the covert operatives of the DEA, the Defense Department and the CIA. The State Department documents did reveal that diplomats were instructed to assist "Washington analysts"an apparent euphemism for the CIAby gathering intelUgence on Argentine President Cristina Kirchner, including her "mental state" and what kinds of medication she took to manage "her nerves and anxiety." And there were other insidious spyingrelated revelations. In Bolivia, the government of Evo Morales ejected thirty Drug Enforcement Administration officers on espionage charges; the US Embassy in Brasilia, Natalia Viana reports, then circumvented Brazil's foreign ministry to transfer them into the country. In Venezuela, according to Carlos Huertas, US consular officers recruited a key source from the visa line to obtain economic intelligence on Chavez's programs. But the cables also provided less sinister, and often useful, information. In Honduras, secret post-coup dispatches make Peter Komhluh is a senior analyst on Latin America at the National Security Archive, a declassified documentation center in Washington, DC. He is guest editor of this issue of The Nation and thanks Andrew Kragiefor energetic research assistance.

clear that Washington did not sponsor the overthrow of President Jos Manuel Zelayaeven though US officials later acquiesced to it. "The actions taken to remove the President were patently illegal," US Ambassador Hugo Llorens reported in a cable titled "Honduran Coup Timeline." . From Havana, where US relations with the government of Ral Castro remain hostile, the US Interests Section repeatedly filed cables on Cuba's desire to expand the areas of dialogue and rapprochement. In a March 2009 cable tided "Keep Your Friends Close and Cuba Even Closer," one Cuban officer was quoted telling a US official that negotiations "needed to start somewhere." The US official was reminded that "Cuban President Ral Castro had offered to talk to President Obama in a neutral place." Guantnamo Bay, the Cuban suggested, "is a good place" to meet.

Latin America Unveiled

From the Cuba cables, as much can be ascertained about the thinking of Raul Castro's government as about US policy toward it. This is true for the broader region as well. In Latin America, where declassification of records on internal government deliberations is severely limited, the WikiLeaks cables provide detailed information on official conversations, meetings, national security plans, social policies, foreign poHcies, economic policies and more. Readers in Argentina, for example, can track the debate within Cristina Kirchner's administration on decriminalizing the use of marijuana. Hondurans can hsten in as those generals and politicians who overthrew Zelaya plotted to consolidate their post-coup powers. Chileans can better understand how their government alters building codes on the construction of thermonuclear plants at the behest of foreign corporations. The ability of the US Embassy to issue comprehensive reports on the inner workings of these governments rests on the quahty and connections of its local sources. Across the region, US Embassy visitor logs recorded a veritable Who's Who of Latin American society trying to curry favor with Washington and advance their agendas. Cabinet ministers, ex-cabinet ministers, senators, congressmen, priests, businessmen, judges and even some journalists shared information about matters of state, confiding their unvarnished opinions to US ambassadors within the ostensibly safe confines of the embassy walls. WikiLeaks exposed their identities along with their words. In Brazil, the cables captured the defense minister repeatedly disparaging the foreign ministry as anti-American. In Argentina, Nestor Kirchner's former chief of staff reportedly denounced the former president as "perverse," a "coward" and a "psychopath." In Peru, the FujimoristasApolitical minions of deposed President Alberto Fujimori, including his daughter Keiko, who came close to winning the presidency last year fiocked to the embassy to share their strategies for restoring him to power. Their revealing conversations, published by the Peruvian investigative group IDL-Reporteros during the 2011 election campaign, undermined Keiko's claims of independence from her disgraced father and helped to swing the election to the populist candidate, Ollanta Hmala. That story might never have reached the Peruvian pubhc

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because, inidally, WikiLeaks provided the Pem cables only to the pro-Fujimori newspaper, / Comercio, whose editors were resistant to publishing damaging stories on Keiko. Ac^ts of polidcal self-censorship crossed borders throughout the region. The long-term impact from "Cablegate" in Ladn America, as veteran reporter Sandago O'Donnell tells The Nation, "is a loss of credibility for the tradidonal news media and the growing importance of social, alternadve and citizen media, as dramadcally reflected by the WikiLeaks phenomenon." Sdll, informadon is power. As the ensuing stories of the

WikiLeaks phenomenon in Brazil, Mexico and Colombia make clear, the publicadon of the cable traffic has generated scandals, sdrred debates, and exposed government conduct (and often misconduct), policies and power structures throughout the Americas. From the United States to Argentina, commimides have been empowered by a bettet understanding of what our governments are doingin our names, but so often without our knowledge. What we cidzens of the Western Hemisphere do with that power will become the uldmate legacy of the WikiLeaks experience.

Brazil's Media Metamorphosis

The WikiLeaks revelations inspired a new culture of investigative journalism in Brazil.
by NATALIA VIANA
s the Boeing 777 from London arrived at the gate of Guamlhos Internadonal Airport in Sao Paulo on December 2,2010, its passengers queued up to deplane, many with the local newspaper imder their ami. "Brazil fears terrorism at the 2016 Olympics, says US Embassy" blared the headline of the daily Folha de S. Pauloa front-page story generated from the first of tens of thousands of classified US diplomadc cables obtained and released by the whistleblower website WikiLeaks. Unnodced among those passengers was a young woman with a backpack slung over her shoulder. Concealed within a bundle of messy clothing inside her bag was a pen drive containing nearly 3,000 sensidve cables to and from the US Embassy and consulates in Brazil between 2003 and 2010a cache of documents provided by WikiLeaks. This trove of records covered the two terms of President Inacio "Lula" da Suva's progressive government and captured the pohcies, operadons and diplomadc efforts of US presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, as well as those of the Brazilian government itself, at a dme when the country was on the rise as a world-class economic and polidcal power. As WikiLeaks-generated stories appeared in the Brazilian media in the ensuing months, the cables would reveal how the Bush White House curried favor with the country's defense minister and mihtary, how Bush tried to persuade Brazil to spy on Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, and how the Obama administradon became increasingly uncomfortable with Brazil's close reladonship with Iran. Brazilians would learn some starthng details about their own government as well. Beyond the reveladons themselves, "Cablegate" in Brazil would have a significant impact on the profession of journalism and strengthen the culture of transparency even as

Natalia Vtana is the direaor of Publica, Brazil's first nonprofit investigative journalism center (apublica.org).

the country was starting to revisit the legacy of its military dictatorship. Brazil, was the first South American country to receive the cablesthanks to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's strategic disseminadon plan, and to that litde pen drive. I was a member of the team carefully assembled by WikiLeaks in the weeks before the inidal publicadon of the cables on November 29, 2010. The goal was to build a network of local media partners in countries rich and poor that would make the stories go global. A task force of independent journalists would review the cables, write groundbreaking stories for the WikiLeaks website, and devise a strategy for other media oudets to invesdgate and report on the leaked documents. Assange, the product of a cj'berpunk culture based on coUaboradon and data sharing, formed his strategy around that philosophy, balancing it with an acknowledgment of the mainstream media's tradidonal demand for exclusivity. WikiLeaks' original partnership was with four major news oudetsthe Guardian, Le Monde, El Pas and Der Spiegelthat received the cllecdon of 250,000 cables months in advance. A fifdi, the New York Times, obtained them from the Guardian. These publicadons agreed to surrender their exclusive control over the material in January 2011. In the end, WikiLeaks was able to partner with more than ninety media oudets around the world. I was one of the first journalists to reach Ellingham Hall, in Norfolk, England, where WikiLeaks had established its secret headquarters ahead of the "Cablegate" release. For a hecdc ten days in November, I^along with other journalists, acdvists and lawyersworked secredy around the clock at a table crowded with laptops and cellphones, drafdng rdeles and discussing how to distribute the documents in January. When it came to Brazil, however, dme was of the essence. Lula was lea\'ing office at the end of the year, so I argued that any cables exposing his administradon should be brought to light as soon as possible. Assange and the WikiLeaks team agreed.

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