My Rules of Bureaucratic Decorum

Unredacted has a post today about what the State Department was hiding from a Freedom of Information Act Request. The answer? Someone's intemperate marginalia:

Having won this game of documentary hide and seek [during a two-year long FOIA request], I had a hearty chuckle, finding it quite funny that 1) a person employed by the Department of State (I don’t know who– are there any graphologists out there?) would write “bunch of crap!!” on a copy of a House resolution, and 2) that the Department of State had tried so hard to prevent the public from knowing it had ever happened.

We can all learn a lesson from this episode. Personally, I stopped writing comments on memos and cables long ago, right after I started doing research in the National Archives. It always made me chuckle to see candid handwritten remarks made on working papers by some long-gone FSO who never realized that one day that document would be in the public domain. Now, I keep my remarks on separate, non-archived, papers. Or better yet, make them orally.

Not that I ever express anything other than the highest regard for our elected representatives, you understand. Or for our President's political appointees, who are never less than exemplary in all their professional qualifications and personal characteristics. I have never seen any reason to speak poorly of our news media and Punditocracy. Or of the many think tanks, NGOs, Beltway Bandits and Grand Army of the Consultancy that live off the taxpayer's dime.

As best I understand the protocol, you are always free to disparage the French and the leaders of some hostile foreign nations, mainly Iran and North Korea. Personally, I do not do so, since I actually have high regard for France, and I think it's bad form to knock foreigners without good cause. That leaves me free to insult Vladimir Putin, since he's a thug with pretensions to grandeur, and Muammar al-Gaddafi, who is sui generis as the Clown Prince of the Middle East. But that's about all, unless you count the United Nations, since that organization is full of blood-sucking parasites and weasels. The same goes for the European Parliament, which is basically the UN of Europe.

And don't get me started on the Chi-Coms. I'll just say that I will go to any expense or inconvenience to avoid buying any product made in the People's Republic of China. I 'look for the laogai label' when I am buying that coat, shirt, or anything else.

I will confess to having had unkind thoughts about @JaredCohen back when he was a government official. But today, @Jared has dried up as a source of parody fodder; he hasn't tweeted anything for five days now, whereas it used to be more like every five minutes. Evidently, he has less free time on his hands at Google than he did when he worked for the State Department.

So to recap my four rules of bureaucratic decorum:

1. It is never appropriate to write down disparaging statements about our elected representatives or their political appointees, with an occasional exception for a really conspicuous blowhard like @Jared.

2. It is rarely in good taste to express criticism of any member of the news media or of a news commentator.

3. Propriety requires the utmost restraint when making remarks about foreign personalities other than Putin and Gaddafi.

4. Feel free to say anything you like about the United Nations and the Chi-Coms.

By following these simple rules, I will have nothing to fear from any FOIA request.

Wiki-Warm Up (611 Down, 249,389 to Go)

Unredacted points out the depressing fact that:

It’s day five of the wikileaks cable dump and (as of this writing) 611 cables have been released (less than half of one percent of the total 250,000).

To be precise, 611 cables is only .00244 percent of the total. At that rate, it will take EIGHT YEARS to get to the end.

On the brighter side, Unredacted also asked the fascinating question:

Imagine if Prince William [a reference to 08 BISHKEK 1095] and Joe Biden were ever in a room together.

Surely, that fated meeting must have already happened somewhere. Two of the greatest blowhards on the world scene today simply have to have encountered each other at some reception or conference or other function. The poor note taker at that marathon gabfest probably came down with severe tendinitis in his or her pen hand. Would somebody please leak that cable? I'd love to read it the next time I have a free week.

In another post, Unredacted linked to the telephone conversation in which President Nixon was informed by Al Haig of the Pentagon Papers leak. Nixon's reaction was to fire people:

I’d just start right at the top and fire some people. I mean whoever – whatever department it came out of I’d fire the top guy.

Unredacted goes on to say that "In Obama’s case, it would be the top gal, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton." However, that is incorrect, since Hillary is not guilty in this mess. These cables, like the Pentagon Papers, were leaked out of the Defense Department.

Hillary said as much at her press conference yesterday in Manama:

Asked how such a huge leak could have occurred and why no alarm bells went off when a low-level intelligence analyst allegedly downloaded 250,000 classified diplomatic cables, Clinton replied: "The decision was made in the Bush administration to add the diplomatic cables to the Defense Department's special network that was created for that purpose."

While she defended the move as defensible at the time, she emphasized that these policies were being rolled back in the wake of the WikiLeaks crisis, perhaps for good.

"The process was undertaken in order to do a better job of what's called ‘connecting the dots,' because after 9/11, one of the principle criticisms of the government was that the information was stovepiped, that the Defense Department knew things that the State Department didn't know, that the White House didn't know," Clinton explained. "So it was understandable for the Bush administration to say, ‘We need to end the stovepiping and figure out how to have greater situational awareness and sharing of information.'"

Without identifying anyone by name, she then said that it was in the Defense Department, not the State Department, where the leak occurred.

I think firing some senior people would be an excellent response to this disaster, but let's aim before we fire.

Find of the Week: Peshawar Cable # 01030 (November 1994)

Unredacted, the blog of the National Security Archive, has a nice find this week - a 1994 reporting cable from U.S. Consulate General Peshawar, Pakistan, on the origin and formation of the Taliban.

Here's the cable, and here's how Unredacted describes it:

Today’s document is one from our growing Afghanistan collection and is an example of what happens to the “raw” wikileaks field reports after they are “digested” and melded into more comprehensive (and we hope) accurate reports. This 1994 cable is entitled “New Fighting and New Forces in Kandahar.” The “New Forces” are the Taliban. It’s a gripping read.

-- snip --

The cable reports that the Taliban, described as a “new phenomenon” which was “largely drawn from religious students that did not fight in the Jihad,” had captured the key border town of Spin Boldak and gained control of the highway to Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second most populous city. It also tried to explain the Taliban’s origins, motivations, and backers. The Taliban, according to the author, was a “new phenomenon” in the Afghan calculation.

-- snip --

Moreover, this “new phenomenon” was a formidable fighting force. After taking over the important border crossing at Spin Boldak (likely with the help of Pakistani mortar fire), the Taliban quickly “cleaned up” the strategically-critical Kandahar-Herat highway. And “cleaned up” meant summarily hanged persons operating “independent toll [bribery] stations.” Just a month after taking their first town, the Taliban was poised to capture Khandahar.

And who was funding this formidable force? Probably Pakistan. According to “some sources,” the Government of Pakistan provided the Taliban with weapons so new that “they were still in their grease.” It’s also likely that the Pakistani army provided rocket fire while the Taliban captured Spin Boldak. The Taliban, for its part, claimed it was acting independently. Other documents [here] confirm that the ISI was essential to the Taliban’s rise.

There is Something Even Worse Than the Vuvuzela

I get it that the quadrennial over-the-top World Cup soccer enthusiasm is an outlet for suppressed nationalism, but I just hope someone is keeping a eye on it so all that excitement doesn't boil over.

The Vuvuzela actually isn't the worst thing that can come out of the World Cup, even though it is plenty bad, and not only because it seems designed to "make a Neapolitan traffic jam sound like Mozart" but also due to the potential for hearing loss and the propagation of airborne diseases.

What could be worse than the Vuvuzela? How about the 1969 Football War between San Salvador and Honduras? That nasty little conflict caused thousands of deaths in about 100 hours of fighting, and it wasn't finally settled until 1980. It saw the last combat between propeller-driven warplanes in history, and also the incitement of thousands of civilians with machetes (not for the last time in history).

You can read declassified contemporary intelligence reporting about the Football War at Unredacted, the National Security Archive's blog, which posted this introduction:

While in South Africa to watch the World Cup, US Vice President Joe Biden extolled that football had the “power to bring communities and nations together.” It also contributed to a four-day war fought between El Salvador and Honduras in 1969. Declassified Central Intelligence Bulletins provide a pretty exciting day-by-day account of what is now know as “The Football War.”

-- snip --

After losing the first football match, El Salvadorian nationalist fervor erupted. The fans were so riled that when the Honduran team came to El Salvador to play the second match, the Salvadorian Security Service had to hide the Honduran team at an undisclosed location. As Honduran fans travelled home after losing the match, some Salvadorians threw rocks at their cars.

Due in large part to exaggerated media reports, unorganized mobs in Honduras retaliated against the Salvadorian immigrants living on Honduran territory. Salvadorian business were destroyed, refugees fled, people were killed. The Salvadorian government accused Honduras of genocide. After intermittent border clashes, the military of El Salvador invaded Honduras on 14 July. According to a CIA report, “a nationwide Honduran radio network…exhorted civilians in the western highway area to grab machetes or other weapons and move to the front to assist the army.” This was a nasty –albeit brief– war. The CIA cited more than 1,500 Hondurans deaths during the war, it did not estimate the number of Salvadorians killed.

-- snip --

The Football War is yet another example of the dangers of nationalism. It is also an example of international competition inflaming –not improving– political conflict. And be honest, after writing this, I’m quite relieved that North Korea and South Korea won’t be matched up in the World Cup final.

But back to the Vuvuzela. Why won't FIFA ban those things? Even Hitler hates them:

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