By JIM SCIUTTO and LEE FERRAN
Nov. 29, 2010
From unflattering, flippant remarks about foreign leaders to deadly serious security concerns, the massive publication of U.S. diplomatic correspondence by Wikileaks could have one collective and potentially disastrous effect, according to policy officials: the loss of trust in the U.S. government.
"I think the greatest harm ... is the loss of trust that other governments will have in dealing with the United States of America," Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., who sits on the House Intelligence Committee, told "Good Morning America" today. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange "is putting into danger our foreign policy and perhaps the lives of certain Americans around the world."
Officials in the Obama administration echoed Hoekstra's worries, citing one correspondence in particular that revealed what appeared to be an attempt by Yemeni leaders to mislead their own people -- potentially damaging U.S. relations with a country that has proved a dangerous front in the war on terror.
More than 250,000 documents, some of which were posted online by The New York Times, the U.K.'s Guardian and France's Le Monde Sunday, cover more than 40 years in American diplomacy and are expected to be posted online in full on the Wikileaks website over the next few days, Wikileaks said.
"Every American schoolchild is taught that George Washington could not tell a lie," Assange said today. "This document release reveals the contradictions between the U.S.'s public persona, and what it says behind closed doors."
Some of those behind-closed-doors comments were personal slights against foreign leaders. Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is mockingly referred to as the "alpha dog" and the Batman to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's Robin. French President Nicolas Sarkozy is called "the emperor with no clothes," and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il, a "flabby old chap."
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