For those of you who don’t know what Wikileaks is, the following description comes from their website: “We provide an innovative, secure and anonymous way for independent sources around the world to leak information to our journalists. We publish material of ethical, political and historical significance while keeping the identity of our sources anonymous, thus providing a universal way for the revealing of suppressed and censored injustices.” This mission has made them, to put it mildly, a controversial group.
Wikileaks has been around for several years, but only last year did it finally reach the mainstream media of the U.S. and become the object of some intense, furious and overly simplistic debate. It was discussed on every channel of cable television, derided around every water cooler in Washington. There were hearings in Congress and leading Republicans even called for the organization to be designated as a terrorist group. Critics argued that Wikileaks revealed U.S. secrets and were further upset by the fact that the revelations from Wikileaks can compromise the ability of the U.S. to negotiate or act in good faith diplomatically, by revealing the fact that it never acts in good faith diplomatically.
In my reading, I found that much of this coverage, while overwhelming at times, could still be reduced to two simple points. The first level of debate circled around the enigmatic Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks. Assange had the uncanny ability to rally people both to him and against him, because of the way he appeared to be both a sickly, pale, James Bond villain on the one hand, and an awkward nerd playboy on the other. When the media was on the hunt for Assange, it seemed possible the trail could lead to either a super-secret-island-volcano-lair or perhaps just his mother’s basement where he was busy playing Call of Duty: Black Ops.
At this level, the “character” of Assange became the issue, not the leaks themselves. The allegations of sexual misconduct in Sweden made things even more complicated, and for those not wanting to pay attention — easier to dismiss.
The second level of critique at least read the leaks but in a very superficial way, becoming stuck in the salaciousness of their revelations. The media was stricken with a case of the indignant giggles. In boring diplomatic terms the leaks were like Tiger Woods’ “sexting” messages. Watching media reports on these silly details, which sometimes amounted to international name-calling, was almost as much fun as watching them be indignant or surprised when we human beings prove once again, with shocking documentary evidence, that we have the ability to talk behind each other’s backs.
What was unfortunate was that few media sources were willing to take Wikileaks seriously and see it for its intended mission. One issue that brought Wikileaks to the forefront of national consciousness was the case of Army Private Bradley Manning, who allegedly gave the organization more than 250,000 files of classified and sensitive material. When asked by a hacker why Manning had chosen to give the data to Wikileaks, when he could have sold it to other countries in order to make some money off the misery and mendacity of the U.S., Bradley responded that he went to Wikileaks because “it’s public data … it belongs in the public domain … information should be free … if it’s out in the open … it should [do the] public good.” This is a central premise of why Wikileaks exists; the old adage that power is built through secrets and is sustained through the withholding of information, the hoarding of it and then the selective disseminating of it.
What makes Wikileaks crucial and also frustrating for many is the way it ignores a defensive nationalistic deference and focuses on the information itself. Most people responded to the “secrets” of Wikileaks negatively as if they were akin to the secret that someone is having a surprise party later in the day. It was as if the entire scandal was not the details of the secrets, but rather that they had been revealed at all, thus ruining the “surprise” that is government. This was accompanied by a feeling that since these are secrets my government keeps from me, they must be OK. This was so because we all naturally feel an instinctive loyalty to our government, giving us an ability to ignore or look past horrible things our government may do, because we assume, even if we don’t know, that the government has our best interests at heart. It is precisely for this reason that the work Wikileaks does is so important.
MICHAEL LUJAN BEVACQUA
Mangilao, Guam
