Tabled Cables

As an example of how news organizations may be further hedging their bets - there are many more cables inside of the 1344 released thus far that have been further edited out by news orgs like the Guardian. Why haven't Radat Embassy (Morocco) cables been fully reported on? US General Ward of AFRICOM has been active in negotiations with the Moroccan military having signed an interoperability agreement back in January, part of a major revamping of the Moroccan air force which includes the future delivery of 24 F-16 fighters. Also there were a pile of Brazilian embassy cables also weeded out which include a frank portrayal of the US military certification process of Brazil's "shootdown" policy. As in shooting down planes loaded with drugs or terrorists..... all this just from the last few days of releases. There are over 750 cables that have not been reported on.

Still Reading

The total number of cables that I have read comes to 30. I started to get involved with the actual raw cable reading exercise on Friday. I decided to go through the list of 75 or so cables and just assign quantities to countries in order to see what pattern if any resulted. I read through a few cables if the subject sounded interesting, but at that point I was not committed to reading them all. Here a few things that strike about the cables so far:

The flow of cables that are being published has slowed down considerably. To date only 1344 have been released.

On top of redactions, news articles are selective of information within the cables that is "fit for print". The selectivity also includes obviously which cables are being vetted and, within the daily cable cluster, which cables warrant a story.

The cables have been generally characterized as either dangerous to US foreign policy or trivialized as being simply common knowledge. After reading through it is quickly obvious that there are a variety of viewpoints being expressed along with a number of different interfaces. Any assumption that the cable's authors are US ambassadors writing to Condoleeza or Hillary about their conversations with foreign leaders does not really capture the scope of the cables.

Reading The Cables

Yesterday I started reading the cables.

Not the New York Times's cable stories, not the Guardian's either.  Just the raw cables from the Wikileaks website.  In part, the craziness of the Wiki-spectacle has made it increasingly difficult to stay in touch with the core meaning of the release.

Once Assange was in custody, the imperative shifted.  The sheer drop in the quantity of news focused on the cable's contents, and more and more media focus on the ensuing infowar has threatened to undermine the Wikileaks project.