What the Shed Looks At

Sunday, November 28, 2010

After an hour long comcast outage I figured I would put something up about the cablegate release.

Wikileaks has apparently only released 219 of the 250000+ cables so this will be ongoing.

Wikileaks explanation of cable structure

Understanding cables
Every cable message consists of three parts:
  • The top box shows each cables unique reference number, when and by whom it originally was sent, and what its initial classification was.
  • The middle box contains the header information that is associated with the cable. It includes information about the receiver(s) as well as a general subject.
  • The bottom box presents the body of the cable. The opening can contain a more specific subject, references to other cables (browse by origin to find them) or additional comment. This is followed by the main contents of the cable: a summary, a collection of specific topics and a comment section.
To understand the justification used for the classification of each cable, please use this WikiSource article as reference.

Here is a pdf file from state.gov detailing acronyms and oft used terms you may be unfamiliar with. Just copy the term or acronym and paste it into search of the pdf as the file 115 pages long.

So now for some cables


Finally, Qadhafi relies heavily on his long-time  Ukrainian nurse, Galyna Kolotnytska, who has been described as a  ”voluptuous blonde.” Of the rumored staff of four Ukrainian  nurses that cater to the Leader’s health and well-being, XXXXXXXXXXX emphasized to multiple Emboffs that Qadhafi  cannot travel without Kolotnytska, as she alone “knows his  routine.” When Kolotnytska’s late visa application resulted in  her Security Advisory Opinion being received on the day  Qadhafi’s party planned to travel to the U.S., the Libyan  Government sent a private jet to ferry her from Libya to  Portugal to meet up with the Leader during his rest-stop. Some  embassy contacts have claimed that Qadhafi and the 38 year-old  Kolotnytska have a romantic relationship. While he did not  comment on such rumors, a Ukrainian political officer recently  confirmed that the Ukrainian nurses “travel everywhere with the  Leader.” 
http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/cable/2010/01/10BERLIN128.html
Embassy Berlin strongly recommends that the Washington Terrorist Finance Tracking Program (TFTP) and data privacy experts currently scheduled to visit Brussels next week also visit Berlin to discuss TFTP and U.S. data privacy policy with German officials. Germany is critical to the debate on data protection issues within the EU and we need to engage German government interlocutors, parliamentarians and opinion makers. The exaggerated data privacy views of the current minority governing partner, the Free Democratic Party (FDP), have contributed to a domestic discussion that distorts U.S. policy and is negatively-influencing the European debate. Embassy believes we will be most successful if we address German data privacy concerns in a comprehensive way, including various information sharing programs such as HSPD-6, TFTP, and Passenger Name Records.
For context: TFPT  Maybe this has something to do with how we are adopting china's standards on the internet.  
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704693104575639692746020382.html?mod=googlenews_wsj
http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/cable/2009/07/09TEGUCIGALPA645.html
 In our view, none of the above arguments has any
substantive validity under the Honduran constitution. Some
are outright false. Others are mere supposition or ex-post
rationalizations of a patently illegal act.
Essentially:

-- the military had no authority to remove Zelaya from the
country;

-- Congress has no constitutional authority to remove a
Honduran president;

-- Congress and the judiciary removed Zelaya on the basis
of a hasty, ad-hoc, extralegal, secret, 48-hour process;

-- the purported "resignation" letter was a fabrication and
was not even the basis for Congress's action of June 28;
and

-- 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.
So that means that even though the state department is touting the foreign investment oppurtunities in Honduras, they recognize the illegality of the Honduran coup.
http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/cable/2009/02/09ASHGABAT218.html
¶1. (S/NF) A Turkmen customs official told an Embassy LES on February 13 that an Iranian Embassy diplomatic container with AK-47's, sniper rifles and ammunition hidden in it had been discovered one week earlier at the Serdar Uli (Gaudan) customs point in Ashgabat, where vehicles and containers arriving from or bound for Iran are inspected. The weapons were reportedly hidden underneath two Turkmen carpets that the Iranian Embassy was shipping to Iran.

¶2. (S/NF) The LES went to the Ashgabat Customs Point (a different location) to inquire about an Embassy pouch shipment arriving by truck, and an issue arose about opening the Embassy's container for inspection. The customs official, who is a close friend of LES, then brought up the Iranian container incident. He said that a local shipping employee of the Iranian Embassy had been present when another official, acting on a "hunch that something was not right," opened the Iranian Embassy container. The customs official told LES that the official who discovered the cache was honored for his actions and received a promotion.

¶3. (S/NF) COMMENT: Turkmenistan imposes stringent controls on the importation of any type of firearm, and Chiefs of Missions' security detail are all unarmed. Even assuming that the weapons in question were intended for the Iranian Embassy's internal security, this would not explain the presence of offensive weapons such as sniper rifles, in the cache. The Embassy has no official confirmation about the incident, which was, we note, relayed second-hand to our LES. END COMMENT.
http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/cable/2009/10/09KABUL3068.html
Afghans don't get democracy.    (C) In answer to a question from the RoCK and the SCR 
about the credibility of the elections, A[hmad]W[ali]K[arzai] said democracy
was new for Afghanistan, and that people in the region did
not understand the point of having one election, let alone
two. "The people do not like change," he said. "They think,
the President is alive, and everything is fine. Why have an
election?"
http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/cable/2010/02/10KABUL693.html
Karzai's paranoia is justified.    
¶11. (S//Rel NATO, ISAF) AWK was eager to engage and rarely 
stopped talking in the two hour meeting. While he presented
himself as a partner to the United States and is eager to be
seen as helping the coalition, he also demonstrated that he
will dissemble when it suits his needs. He appears not to
understand the level of our knowledge of his activities, and
that the coalition views many of his activities as malign,
particularly relating to his influence over the police. We
will need to monitor his activity closely, and deliver a
recurring, transparent message to him of where are redlines
are and what we expect of him in the months ahead.




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