Lebanese Newspaper Publishes U.S. Cables Not Found on WikiLeaks

[Catherina]

I found this on the Angry Arab News Service. Al-Akhbar is a left-leaning Lebanese daily.

Al-Akhbar and Wikileaks
This I can report to you because many of you have been asking me. Yes, those documents that are being released by Al-Akhbar are Wikileaks from a larger collection (and more, much more are to follow). Al-Akhbar has been acting very responsibly toward those documents: handling them with care and caution and showing concern for the lives of people (innocent people) involved. Al-Akhbar has decided to go over them all again to redact what potentially could pose danger to lives of innocent people. They will release them today at 3:00PM (Beirut Time). Al-Akhbar will post a note to readers on Monday to explain their policies on the documents. The political class of March 14 is stunned and very nervous: the release of the documents has been most embarrassing for them all, and for their masters in UAE and Saudi Arabia. There political chatter has suddenly softened on the part of Prince Muqrin puppets in Beirut (in one Wikileak document, Fu'ad Sanyurah interrupts a meeting with US officials to take a call from Prince Muqrin and then another one from Prince Bandar). In the handling of the newspaper, the paper is as independent as it has been since its founding.

http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2010/12/al-akhbar-and-wikileaks.html

Al-Akhbar in the New York Times
"Al Akhbar, a Lebanese newspaper that supports the Shiite militant and political group Hezbollah, has been posting documents from eight Arab countries..." I should not get defensive about this: I should expect only ignorance and errors in the New York Times whenever any aspect of the Middle East is brought up. But the distortion--I strongly believe--is deliberate. This Al-Akhbar newspaper is a leftist newspaper founded by the leftist Joseph Samahah and led by the leftists Khalid Saghieh and Ibrahim Amin (the latter is a long time communist since his youth). Its main publisher is a secular businessperson who resides in London (Hasan Khalil). I have been to the paper numerous times and know many of the reporters and editors and I can honestly say that I know of no Hizbullah member and supporter there. I know that American journalists find it hard to believe that there are leftists in the Middle East, but they exist and they can produce a newspaper. I have repeatedly mocked Khumayni, Sistani, and Ahmadinajad in the newspaper. The paper is on the record for being the only Arab paper to ever support gender and homosexual rights. You think that Hizbullah is that open minded?

...

http://angryarab.blogspot.com/2010/12/al-akhbar-in-new-york-times.html

Lebanese Newspaper Publishes U.S. Cables Not Found on WikiLeaks

Dec 3 2010, 8:45 AM ET

Nearly 200 previously unreported U.S. diplomatic cables were posted on Thursday to the website of Lebanese newspaper Al Akhbar. The cables, from eight U.S. embassies across the Middle East and North Africa, have not appeared on Wikileaks' official website or in the Western media outlets working with Wikileaks. Al Akhbar, which defines itself as an "opposition" newspaper, is published in Arabic. It has posted all 183 cables in their original English but promises readers a forthcoming Arabic translation.

It's unclear how Al Akhbar got the cables, which they say are "exclusive," and whether they posted them with the permission of Wikileaks, which has tightly controlled who publishes which of its cables and when. Wikileaks offered a handful of media outlets, such as The Guardian and Spain's El Pais, advance access to some cables on the condition that they coordinate release. But neither Wikileaks nor those media outlets have released the same cables posted by Al Akhbar. If Al Akhbar had coordinated their release with Wikileaks, it stands to reason that the Lebanese publication would have been granted sufficient advance time to translate the cables to Arabic.

The documents appear to be authentic as the cables from Tripoli match up with The Atlantic's background reporting for an earlier story on a 2009 Libyan nuclear crisis, some details of which The Atlantic did not publish but nonetheless appear in Al Akhbar's cables. The rest of the cables are from U.S. embassies in Iraq, Egypt, Lebanon, Algeria, Mauritania, Morocco, and Tunisia. They portray U.S. diplomats as struggling to understand and influence the region's oppressive and sometimes unpredictable regime.

One series of cables from Baghdad reports that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki replaced hundreds of his most experienced intelligence and security officials with under-qualified "political officers" in advance of the 2010 Iraq elections.

Another series from Beirut in 2008 shows Lebanese Defense Minister Elias al-Murr telling U.S. diplomats, in a message he implied they should pass on to Israeli officials, that the Lebanese military would not resist an Israeli invasion so long as the Israeli forces abided by certain conditions. Murr, apparently hoping that an Israeli invasion would destroy much of the Hezbollah insurgency and the communities in Lebanon's south that support it, promised an Israeli invasion would go unchallenged as long as it did not pass certain physical boundaries and did not bomb Christian communities. A U.S. embassy official wrote, "Murr is trying to ascertain how long an offensive would be required to clean out Hizballah in the Beka'a." Murr added that he had discussed the plan with then-Military Commandant Michel Sleiman, who has since become the President of Lebanon. The small but vibrant community of Middle East-based, English-language Arab bloggers have expressed outrage at Murr and Sleiman's apparent invitation, predicting it will bring political disaster and possibly worse.

...

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2010/12/lebanese-newspaper-publishes-us-cables-not-found-on-wikileaks/67430

Assanged!

[leftstreet]

1. K&R

Very interesting. Thanks for posting these links.

(Nice wikileaks graphic!)

[Catherina]

2. You're welcome. I think I'm going to be up all night reading them.

It seems Julian is speeding up the data dump. Good for him.

[snappyturtle]

3. All I can say is, "WOW"! The world is waking up...THANKS for posting. nt

[Catherina]

5. I feel a change coming. An angry rumbling of change that won't wait. n/t

[glinda]

4. Wow. This is incredibly interesting. Wonder where the info will come from next?

[Catherina]

6. I forgot. Link to Al Akhbar

http://www.al-akhbar.com/ar/node/216626


Click on the flags and you'll get the original Wikileaks documents about the individual countries represented.

[jberryhill]

7. All over the place

...and the authenticity of none of it will be questioned.

The pump is primed for some major prankage about now, since anything published as a "leak" will be credulously received.

[Catherina]

8. I seriously doubt that. the papers were carefully chosen

except for the New York Times, which obtained the cables another way. But if so, then let the government, in the words of Assange's critics, come forward and defend itself.

[starroute]

9. Did you read the OP fully?

"The documents appear to be authentic as the cables from Tripoli match up with The Atlantic's background reporting for an earlier story on a 2009 Libyan nuclear crisis, some details of which The Atlantic did not publish but nonetheless appear in Al Akhbar's cables."

The authenticity of the cables is being carefully scrutinized, and there's no credulity involved. It's offhand debunking that's the real threat at this point.