Even more underreported WikiLeaks revelations

WikiLeaks

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
It appears increasingly likely that Sweden will extradite Julian Assange to the United States, where the WikiLeaks founder will face espionage charges. But the WikiLeaks revelations keep coming, although not all of them receive the worldwide media attention that they deserve. Take for instance the disclosure that at least three senior Australian Labour Party (ALP) politicians have operated as “protected sources” (diplomatic parlance for secret informants), providing regular updates on internal ALP politics to US embassy operatives in Canberra. According to internal US diplomatic cables released on Thursday, ALP politicians Bob McMullan, Michael Danby and Mark Arbib, who currently serves as the Australian federal government’s Minister for Sport, regularly held secret meetings with US embassy officials after 2004.  All three deny accusations that they acted as spies for the US. Another underreported WikiLeaks revelation concerns a 2008 proposal by the Saudi government to create an US- and NATO-backed Arab military force to invade Lebanon, seeking to obliterate Shiite paramilitary group Hezbollah, which controls large sections of the country. British newspaper The Guardian notes that, had it been pursued, the Saudi proposal, which called for US and NATO assistance in the form of “transport and logistical support, as well as naval and air cover”, would have signified Washington’s first open military intervention in Lebanon since 1983. There are also two widely underreported revelations from the continent of Africa. One of them shows that Washington requested to be notified by the Ugandan government before its forces used US military and intelligence support to commit war crimes in their war against the Lord’s Resistance Army. Interestingly, the secret request did not demand that the Ugandan military refrain from perpetrating crimes of war while fighting the notorious Christian terrorist militia headed by Joseph Kony. Finally, a cable sent to Washington from its diplomatic representation in Nigeria in 2009, discusses the heavy penetration of the Nigerian government by corporate informants of the oil firm Shell. According to the US ambassador in Abuja, the Anglo-Dutch energy giant has placed paid agents “into all the main ministries of the Nigerian government”, and regularly shares intelligence with American operatives in the country.