{"id":3205,"date":"2011-01-19T11:55:05","date_gmt":"2011-01-19T16:55:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/?p=3205"},"modified":"2011-01-19T11:57:16","modified_gmt":"2011-01-19T16:57:16","slug":"state-dept-admits-wikileaks-was-embarrassing-but-not-damaging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/2011\/01\/state-dept-admits-wikileaks-was-embarrassing-but-not-damaging.html","title":{"rendered":"State Dept. admits Wikileaks was embarrassing but not damaging"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_2960\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-2960\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-2960\" href=\"http:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/2010\/11\/is-wikileaks-a-terrorist-or-a-news-organization.html\/julian-assange-by-new-media-days-on-flickr\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-2960 \" title=\"Julian Assange (by New Media Days on Flickr)\" src=\"http:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/11\/Julian-Assange-by-New-Media-Days-on-Flickr.jpg\" alt=\"Julian Assange\" width=\"300\" height=\"242\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-2960\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Wikileaks founder Julian Assange (photo by New Media Days on Flickr)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>A Congressional official said publicly that the Wikileaks revelations had seriously  damaged American interests in order to bolster legal efforts to shut  down the WikiLeaks website and bring charges against the leakers.\u00a0\u00a0 On condition of anonymity, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/idUSTRE70H6TO20110118?pageNumber=1\" target=\"_blank\">Reuters was told<\/a> that State Department officials have privately said to Congress they expect overall damage to U.S. foreign policy to be  containable.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><em>&#8220;We were told (the impact of WikiLeaks  revelations) was embarrassing but not damaging,&#8221; said the official, who  attended a briefing given in late 2010 by State Department officials.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Previously, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley had said, &#8220;From our standpoint, there has been substantial damage. We  believe that hundreds of people have been put at potential risk because  their names have been compromised in the release of these cables.&#8221;\u00a0 But it turns out those assertions were overblown in an effort to stoke the firestorm of backlash against Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange, a claim Wikileaks defenders <a href=\"http:\/\/www.examiner.com\/independent-in-rochester\/is-wikileaks-a-terrorist-or-a-news-organization\" target=\"_blank\">have been making<\/a> for months.\u00a0 Still, the U.S. government <a href=\"http:\/\/www.examiner.com\/independent-in-national\/congressional-hypocrites-investigate-wikileaks-while-soliciting-whistleblowers\" target=\"_blank\">will continue to investigate<\/a> whether criminal charges can be brought against Assange.\u00a0 This admission by no means lets him off the hook.<\/p>\n<p>This also does not mean the released information is inconsequential.\u00a0 Damage assessments by the State Department,  Pentagon and U.S. intelligence community are still continuing.\u00a0 Meanwhile, the  current view of many officials that damage has been limited could change  if WikiLeaks releases additional material from its trove of unpublished documents.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Claims that Wikileaks revelations had seriously damaged American interests were in order to bolster legal efforts to shut down the WikiLeaks website and bring charges against the leakers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[70,23,69],"class_list":["post-3205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-free-press","tag-obama","tag-wikileaks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3205"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3216,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3205\/revisions\/3216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/timscogitorium.com\/tinblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}