Assange: Many Arab Officials Have Close CIA Links

In his second interview with AlJazeera, Assange, increasingly fearful of a US cabal against him and his organization, is threatening to unveil sensitive information that a careful editing of the cables would normally not unveil, naming Arab leaders with CIA links and Arab countries that operate torture prisons for the CIA.

I think Assange right now is entitled to any means at his disposal to protect himself and his organization. What our leaders do behind our back is our business especially when it contradicts what they say in public. Diplomacy certainly uses secrecy but it is not a tool for secrecy in democratic governance. Secrecy is merely a feature of the business but it is not a goal. And we are increasingly seeing great disparities between private and public political discourse as well as an unhealthy amount of secrecy as worrying tendencies in actual western democratic governance.

Moreover, I am not surprised by the revelations about Arab states. Any Arab with a critical mind knows this and without any doubt can list the countries with close CIA links and CIA torture chambers. Bin Laden was a close CIA ally and foreign Saudi policy in general is 100% aligned with the US.

However, I am concerned about what we as Arabs (the people, not the governments) can and will do with these revelations. I am mostly distressed by the amount of silence in the Arab press and especially in the Lebanese press surrounding Al-Akhbar's revelations about Lebanese officials' collaboration with Israel and the US* against legitimate Lebanese resistance to Israeli invasions while telling us a different story publicly (this reaction from a Lebanese blogger close to Saudi Arabia's lebanese allies is an example).

Palestinians have suffered from this irresponsible conduct by Arab governments and Politicians. Our standing in the world and estimation of ourselves as people and nations are the first victims of this autocratic attitude by Arab governments which is in contrast with the political sympathies and affinities of the people in Arab countries.

*Unfortunately I was not able to link to the original story in Al-Akhbar because their website was down for more than a week following the publication of the first Wikileaks cables which were very damaging to Saudi Arabia and its March 14th allies in Lebanon.