politics | Headlines from Wikileaks

So out of the mass of documents that were recently released, these look like the most important stuff.

The US used its diplomatic staff to spy illegally on UN officials:

Der Spiegel:Diplomats or Spooks? How US Diplomats Were Told to Spy on UN and Ban Ki-Moon

The subject line of the document sounds harmless. "Reporting and collection needs: The United Nations." But the secret dispatch dated July 31, 2009, is among the more explosive of the raft of embassy cables that have now been reported. In a total of 29 pages, the United States State Department calls on its diplomats to spy on the United Nations and its leaders.

The document containing spying orders was sent to the United States Mission to the United Nations in New York as well as 30 US embassies worldwide, from Amman to Berlin, Paris, London and even Zagreb. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton signed the directive. The "National HUMINT Collection Directive" has, until now, been kept firmly under lock and key.

There has always been a fine line between the work of diplomats and the work of intelligence services. The diplomatic core gathers information, in a legal way, then analyzes it and uses it as the foundations upon which to build a national foreign policy. Meanwhile, the intelligence agencies infiltrate and steer sources, keeping their actions as invisible as possible. But they often operate on the margins or outside of the law.

Going by this division, the State Department also operates an intelligence service in addition to its diplomatic activities. Its mode of operation is clearly outlined in a cable on the Secretary of State's Humint Collection Directive.

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The diplomats were told to learn as much as possible about their contacts, including:

"organizational titles; names, position titles and other information on business cards;"
"numbers of telephones, cell phones, pagers and faxes; compendia of contact information, such as telephone directories (in compact disc or electronic format if available) and e-mail listings; internet and intranet "handles", internet e-mail addresses, web site identification-URLs;"
"credit card account numbers; frequent flyer account numbers; work schedules, and other relevant biographical information."
In many cases, the appetite for information went even further. Among the collected data were:

"Biometric information"
"passwords, personal encryption keys"
Orders were also given to monitor states, including Paraguay, eight west African countries such as Burkina Faso, Mauritania and Senegal, as well as a number of Eastern European countries. In addition, it called for the monitoring of the Palestinian territories.

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Such methods violate all the rules laid down within the UN. In the "Convention on the Privileges and Immunity within the United Nations" as in the "Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations," it is stated that no methods of espionage should be used. In addition, the US and the UN signed an agreement in 1947 ruling out undercover activities. But these agreements are decades old, and no one seemed particularly bothered by the dubious tasks assigned to diplomats. There is "a tradition" of bugging the office of the Secretary General," said former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

For the first time, there was an official government document connected to the National Humint Collection Plan, which formally documents the use of dark methods by the US administration. In the face of the newly released evidence, it will be hard for US diplomats to deny their activities. MORE

The Guardian spends less time taking potshots and more time being detailed and states that the UN was FAR from the only target:

The UN is not the only target. The cables reveal that since 2008 the state department has issued at least nine directives to embassies around the world which set forth "a list of priorities intended to guide participating US government agencies as they allocate resources and update plans to collect information".

They are packed with detailed orders and while embassy staff are particularly encouraged to assist in compiling biographic information, the directive on the mineral and oil-rich Great Lakes region of Africa also requested detailed military intelligence, including weapons markings and plans of army bases. A directive on "Palestinian issues" sent to Cairo, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Amman, Damascus and Riyadh demanded the exact travel plans and vehicles used by leading members of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority, without explaining why.

In one directive that would test the initiative, never mind moral and legal scruples, of any diplomat, Washington ordered staff in the DRC, Uganda, Rwanda and Burundi to obtain biometric information of leading figures in business, politics, intelligence, military, religion and in key ethnic groups.

Fingerprints and photographs are collected as part of embassies' consular and visa operations, but it is harder to see how diplomats could justify obtaining DNA samples and iris scans. Again in central Africa, embassy officials were ordered to gather details about countries' military relations with China, Libya, North Korea, Iran and Russia. Washington assigned high priority to intelligence on the "transfer of strategic materials such as uranium", and "details of arms acquisitions and arms sales by government or insurgents, including negotiations, contracts, deliveries, terms of sale, quantity and quality of equipment, and price and payment terms".

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Missions in Israel, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Egypt were asked to gather biometric information "on key Palestinian Authority and Hamas leaders and representatives, to include the young guard inside Gaza, the West Bank", as well as evidence of collusion between the PA security forces and terror groups.

Taken together, the directives provide a vivid snapshot of America's perception of foreign threats which are often dazzlingly interconnected. Paraguayan drug traffickers were suspected of supporting Hezbollah and al-Qaida, while Latin American cocaine barons were linked to criminal networks in the desert states of west Africa, who were in turn linked to Islamist terrorists in the Middle East and Asia.MORE

US State Dept. knew that Honduras Coup was illegal

In the cable, Ambassador Hugo Llorens, a veteran Cuban-American diplomat, wrote that he'd studied the legal and constitutional issues that led up to the June 28 morning when some 100 soldiers dragged President Manuel Zelaya out of bed and flew him to Costa Rica.

Llorens wrote that Zelaya's foes claimed he sought to alter constitutional articles considered ``carved in stone'' and acted improperly in ousting the military chief.
Llorens said, though, that the charges were never aired in a proper legal fashion.

``Although a case could well have been made against Zelaya for a number of the above alleged constitutional violations, there was never any formal, public weighing of the evidence nor any semblance of due process,'' the cable dated July 23, 2009, said.
Llorens wrote that the Honduran constitution appeared to give impeachment powers solely to the judiciary but that a trial was never conducted.

``Unfortunately, the President was never tried, or convicted, or was legally removed from office to allow a legal succession,'' the cable says.

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Llorens noted that Zelaya's ``forced removal by the military was clearly illegal, and [Speaker of Congress Roberto] Micheletti's ascendance as `interim president' was totally illegitimate.''

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The Narco Sphere continues:

On that date soldiers forced their way into the democratically-elected president's home in the capital and put Zelaya on a plane to San José, Costa Rica after the country's Supreme Court had issued a secret arrest warrant. “Accounts of Zelaya's abduction by the military indicate he was never legally 'served' with a warrant; the soldiers forced their way in by shooting out the locks and essentially kidnapped the President,” Llorens says in the memo.

Zelaya's alleged “crime” according to coup backers was proposing to have a vote to create an assembly to rewrite the country's constitution. Later that day the National Congress passed a resolution to remove Zelaya from office, while presenting a fake resignation letter. Roberto Micheletti, President of the National Congress, was declared the new president of a de facto government run by coup supporters.

The cable says “it is not clear” that promoting a vote to change the constitution is unconstitutional, and that regardless of the legal arguments, the armed forces are not allowed to execute judicial orders and Congress had no authority to remove Zelaya from office.

“Zelaya's arrest and forced removal from the country violated multiple constitutional guarantees, including the prohibition on expatriation, presumption of innocence and right to due process,” Llorens writes. “Furthermore, a source in the Congressional leadership told us that a quorum was not present when there [sic] solution was adopted, rendering it invalid. There was no recorded vote, nor a request for the 'yeas' and 'nays.'”

Despite calling the Micheletti government “illegitimate” and the coup a product of a “hasty, ad-hoc, extralegal, secret, 48-hour process,” it was Llorens and the State Department who later began to support the coup. The US-financed Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), which had “hands on” management by Clinton on its board of directors, gave $6.5 million to the coup regime after Zelaya was ousted. The agency then backed coup supporter Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo as the winner of a presidential election held five months after Zelaya was removed. Lobo denied a coup had taken place, and as president he later gave amnesty to everyone involved in plotting it. MORE

Also from The NarcoSphere
State Dept Memo lays out intelligence gathering agenda in Paraguay

The Guardian sez:China Ready to abandon North Korea

The leaked North Korea dispatches detail how:

• South Korea's vice-foreign minister said he was told by two named senior Chinese officials that they believed Korea should be reunified under Seoul's control, and that this view was gaining ground with the leadership in Beijing.

• China's vice-foreign minister told US officials that Pyongyang was behaving like a "spoiled child" to get Washington's attention in April 2009 by carrying out missile tests.

• A Chinese ambassador warned that North Korean nuclear activity was "a threat to the whole world's security".

• Chinese officials assessed that it could cope with an influx of 300,000 North Koreans in the event of serious instability, according to a representative of an international agency, but might need to use the military to seal the border.MORE

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