Learning from Wikileaks

By Col R Hariharan

To those weary of reading all about the Wikileaks -the publication of 92,000 secret military intelligence documents relating to the U.S. war against the Al Qaeda in Afghanistan on the net – I can assure this article is not to ‘advise’ Americans how to conduct the war. This is about what we in India can learn from the leaks relating two key areas – governance and intelligence operations.

Wikileaks has brought about the stark reality of modern environment of war and peace which coexist in nations fighting terrorism and insurgency. Compromise of military operational secrets also questions government policy decisions and applications as President Barack Obama is finding out now. In democracies it is elected members who critically analyse government actions in parliament. But Wikileaks has enlarged arena of debate to public domain where everyman will be questioning the government based on the information from Wikileaks. Such public debates are healthy no doubt; but they could also make governments overcautious to in taking timely decisions. At times it could drive them to the point of inaction.

Wikileaks’ insights on the relationship between governance and conduct of war are revealing. Governance relates to a whole gamut of issues extending from policy prescriptions, to logistics and inept decision making as much as poor generalship and conduct of operations of armed forces.

Wikileaks is not the first large scale leakage of classified papers. The ‘Pentagon Papers’ during the Vietnam War compromised by Daniel Ellsberg who worked for Rand Corporation was another classic case of similar proportions. But the scale and scope of Wikileaks is unprecedented. In fact Wikileaks will be releasing 12,000 more documents relating to Afghan war. Nor Wikileaks will be the last. The reason is simple: the era of right to information and whistle blowers is here to stay. As this is the era of copy cats, we can soon expect our own Indian edition of Wikileaks. So is the government gearing up for such possibility? I have my reservations as our lumbering style of governance has its own method of stymieing any new ideas. And if there is a ‘Delhileak’ of massive proportions there would not be enough fig leaves for the government to hide behind.

And suppressing such leaks is not going to be easy. It may also be politically not prudent to take action under the Official Secrets Act against a whistleblower. Whistleblowers have become modern day Davids fighting the Goliath of mindless governments. Ideally the only way make them inactive is for the rulers to clean up their acts. And that is not going to be easy as ultimately such dirty jobs fall on the laps of bureaucracy. So bureaucracy is likely to end up with this unviable job without supportive policy decisions. This could mean cosy days of bureaucracy taking a snooze and leave the decision making to committees (or in our case groups of ministers) are (hopefully) coming to a close.

Even before Wikileaks hit the headlines, New Delhi has been in a tizzy as our TV channels have frequently displayed documents ‘leaked to them’ on a number of inconvenient issues. Undoubtedly whistleblowers have been doing a splendid job to keep the public informed of the misdeeds of power brokers. The underground ‘political’ response to whistleblowers has resulted in the growing number of unnatural deaths among them. So far the long arm of law had been showing studied reluctance to act even in cases where the identity of the whistleblower was compromised at the highest level. There had been increasing public outrage at this.

Deferring to public opinion, the Union Cabinet has recently given the go ahead for the Public Interest Disclosure and Protection to Persons Making Disclosure Bill 2010 to be introduced in parliament. The Bill provides the Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) the powers of a civil court to enable it to penalise people revealing the identity of whistleblowers. The onus will be on the CVC to protect the identity of citizens who provide information about the misuse of governmental authority and funds. But can the CVC act boldly under the new enactment in the inner sanctums of South or North Block?

As an old MI hand, with the advent of electronic age I find age-old problems of intelligence have morphed into gigantic proportions. With the click of a mouse, Wikileaks has compromised a colossal number of secret documents. Traditionally the enemy eavesdrops on secrets of state by infiltrating an agent to access the secrets. The revolution in electronics and communication has made this job much easier. The agent or source need not be near the operational area any more to unravel the secrets. He could do the same job from another country where he can access the server or elsewhere if the work is farmed out offshore.

Ideally to overcome this problem, the vetting process of those employed on sensitive jobs will have to be constantly upgraded to keep pace with advances in technology. But these are unlikely to stop whistleblowers acting according to their conscience. The FBI has already arrested Bradley Manning, 22-year old IT professional who was horrified at the atrocities committed on Afghan war, for suspected involvement in the leaks. Regardless of merits of the issue, what can security administrator in war or peace do about such whistleblowers? Very little, as our democracy is more condescending to the perpetrator as long as he does not wear a uniform. With individual freedom gaining more space than national interest, and the media vying for exclusive news breaks plugging such leaks will not be easy. This is evident from the follow up on Wikileaks.

Wikileaks has also done a great disservice to intelligence community by giving out the particulars of agents and sources who had been working for law enforcing agencies, government, and armed forces. What will happen to them now as their cover is blown? Who will save them from terror threats to their lives and property? These are open ended questions that must be bothering the American intelligence agencies on the ground in Afghanistan. But it is time we also found answers to these questions as our security enforcement systems are loose and criminal nexus with extremism is rampant. The job of intelligence gatherers is going to be much more difficult. Probably a healthy mix of technology tools and human intelligence would emerge as the answer to problems of intelligence gathering.

At times intelligence agencies carry out double cross operations converting the agent caught in the act to work for them. At the height of Cold War, the British SIS and CIA successfully mounted - Berlin Tunnel - a major operation to tap the underground cable lines between East Berlin to Moscow by digging a tunnel. However, when the KGP came to know of it, it decided to turn it into its favour by deception. Soviets sent a lot of dummy traffic that kept the SIS-CIA sleuths in a wasteful exercise of translating thousands of transcripts, while KGB honchos were tickled to death. Such deception operations to reduce the compromise of sources and information through leaks of the Wikileaks could be the answer. But that is totally a different ball game.