A large crowd gathered on Wednesday, Jan. 5 in the Robert A. Jones Conference Room to hear a selected panel of knowledgeable sources address the recent controversy over Wikileaks. Wikileaks is an international non-profit media organization headed by Australian activist Julian Assange that publishes private, secret and classified information from anonymous news sources. Its slogan, “We open governments,” reflects the overall objective of the collaboration to submit the political world to public scrutiny. Since its first cable was posted in 2006, Wikileaks has been praised for its goal of transparency as well as criticized for its capacity to harm national security and compromise international diplomacy. The Middlebury panel chose to speak about whether or not Wikileaks is a threat to American interests.
Frederick C. Dirks Professor of Political Science Michael Kraus acted as moderator, and he began the discussion by introducing the panel. The panel included retired U.S. government foreign and defense policy analyst Stanley R. Sloan, Diplomat-in-Residence Jeffrey Lunstead, Charles A. Dana Professor of Political Science Murray Dry and Leng Professor of International Politics Allison Stanger.
A major focus of the discussion was transparency, since Wikileaks forces political transparency, even with regard to information that governments may have chosen to protect. Lunstead addressed the issue by first asking whether leaking is good.
“The question I would ask is: does this new transparency advance goals that people probably all agree on?” Lunstead said. “For instance, we would probably all agree that Pakistan’s nuclear materials be secured and not possibly be leaked or compromised to [those] who would use it in a very bad way. Is that goal of securing these materials advanced or hindered by the fact that these very confidential discussions are out there and that some Pakistani officials who might want to cooperate with U.S. might now want to cooperate even less?”
Sloan saw that some cases of transparency promoted by Wikileaks had negative ramifications, and referred to an op-ed written in the New York Times by Wolfgang Ischinger:
“Leaks would undermine trust, complicate crisis management and, ironically, lead to less openness and more secrecy rather than to a transparent information universe that Wikileaks idealists may have been dreaming of,” said Sloan, “I think that’s a useful observation, the fact that one of the implications for policy officials in the U.S. and elsewhere will be to invoke more secrecy to constrain their comments in diplomatic cables to speak more carefully when speaking to American officials and as a consequence there will be less transparency than more.”
Like her fellow speakers, Stanger began by emphasizing that she did not see Wikileaks as a major threat to American interests. She related Wikileaks’ power to the “dawn of an era of globalized whistle-blowing.” She explained how Assange is neither a spy nor is he a traitor to this country given the fact that he is not American. He and his fellow Wikileaks members are acting to make the political leaders in a globalized world accountable for their actions. She then described Wikileaks as representing the “democratization of leaking.”
“Wikileaks matters because we need a better balance between people and those in power,” said Stanger. “We do want to trust our institutions and transparency enforces honesty and trust with the government.”
Stanger however, concluded by stating that the right government response to Wikileaks is voluntary transparency. In contrast with her co-panelists, Stanger advocates transparency in the political realm, viewing it as not only preferable but necessary.
“Transparency is essential for self-government,” said Stanger.
Dry began by stating that the question of whether Wikileaks threatens American interests “contains an implicit other question: and if so what can be done about it?” He explained that freedom of the press has been an essential right since America’s founding and since then has been consistently reinforced in Congress and the judicial system. The silencing of the press is only acceptable under the strictest of circumstances. Dry said that although many officials would like to stop Assange, there is no evidence that he was involved in the acquisition of the classified cables and that they are attempting to address the issue under the 1917 Espionage Act.
“There never has been prosecution under the act for a first amendment protected media outlet or reporter,” said Dry. “This will be new if they go after him.”
Dry addressed many of the issues regarding Wikileaks that have been under discussion yet remain unanswered. First, he discussed whether the cables can be handled like other matters of prior restraint, which require imminent danger to national security for the government to impede the media. He also talked about whether it is legal for the media to publish classified information obtained illegally. He pointed out that because the topics at hand are very relevant to the public, it might be in contradictory if to America’s political tradition if the government were to stop the dispersal of such information.
Students that attended the panel responded with mixed reviews. While general consensus felt that the talk was interesting and informative, some expressed that for such an important and relevant topic, the discussion was rather tame.
“I really enjoyed the Wikileaks talk because of the variety of perspectives offered,” said Emily Wagman ’13. “It was interesting to hear about the potential diplomatic repercussions of the published cables from an actual diplomat along with the opinions offered by the other professors.”
“To me, the most compelling part of the panel was the discussion about the notion of transparency and to what extent we should value it as a good in itself,” said Jacob Udell, ’12. “In a world where little can be kept secret anymore, whether on a personal or national level, how important is it for the functioning of our society that we track back a little to see transparency as a means to greater good, especially on a diplomatic level?”
Professors pick apart the Wikileaks phenomenon and its implications for American politics and law
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