By Candia Dames
Guardian News Editor
candia@nasguard.com
thenassauguardian
Nassau, The Bahamas
Bahamians now have full access to the entire batch of WikiLeaks diplomatic cables on The Bahamas that have been in The Nassau Guardian’s possession since earlier this year.
The WikiLeaks Bahamas cache includes 415 cables, many of which formed the basis of our ‘Decoding Diplomacy’ series, which ran for several weeks, beginning May 23.
But not all the cables were published by The Nassau Guardian for various reasons: Some provided information entirely already in the public domain or that was not particularly interesting, and others raised potentially troublesome legal issues.
As we previously pointed out, our libel laws pose some special burdens on newspaper publishers.
With the more than 250,000 cables obtained by WikiLeaks now being published, any interested person could now read the diplomatic documents from U.S. embassies around the world.
The documents have not been redacted and that has raised international criticism that the whistleblower organization has put at risk the lives of some informants and others mentioned in the cables.
WikiLeaks says on its website — WikiLeaks.org — the documents will give people around the world an unprecedented insight into US government foreign activities.
The cables, which date from 1966 up until the end of February 2010, contain confidential communications between 274 embassies in countries throughout the world and the State Department in Washington, DC. Nearly 16,000 of the cables are classified secret, the website says.
The subject matter of these cables is of such importance, and the geographical spread so broad, that to not release them in their entirety would not do this material justice.
The cables show the extent of U.S. spying on its allies and the United Nations; turning a blind eye to corruption and human rights abuse in "client states"; back room deals with supposedly neutral countries; lobbying for U.S. corporations; and the measures U.S. diplomats take to advance those who have access to them, WikiLeaks said.
While we did not produce an article based on each of the more than 400 Bahamas cables, The Nassau Guardian wrote extensively on many different matters addressed in the cables.
On deciding what to publish, we chose subject matters that we considered of public and national interest. In some cases, we redacted information as we did not publish anything that may have compromised national security or an individual’s safety.
As we previously noted, the focus on certain events, personalities and political issues were dictated simply by the dates of the Bahamas cables — 2003-2010.
All of the cables — those we made public and those we did not — are now available on WikiLeaks.org.
Sep 05, 2011
