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QUESTION: In the WikiLeaks case, the judge in the Bradley Manning case this morning ordered the State Department, among other agencies, to turn over some of their documents to the defense in order to help the Manning team better prepare its case. Is the State Department going to turn over those documents? And my follow-up is: Does the U.S. still see a negative impact on its relations with other countries in diplomacy because of what happened in the alleged leaking of these documents?
MS. NULAND: Let me take the last part first. I think our view of the entire WikiLeaks incident has not changed at all in terms of the negative effects. With regard to what the court has ordered, Ros, I haven't seen it, so let me take it and see what we know about what's been requested of us and what our response is.
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QUESTION: -- to go back to the WikiLeaks question. When you said that your position had not changed as to whether this ' whether the release of these documents have done damage to the national security, what ' can you be more ' what does that mean? You say that it did damage?
MS. NULAND: Yes.
QUESTION: Can you be more explicit about how it did damage?
MS. NULAND: I think we were quite explicit at the time, and I'm not going to come back to it today.
QUESTION: Well, no, at ' well, at the time, you said that it had the potential ' well, not you personally; it was your predecessor ' but had the potential to do damage and that there was the concern in the ' in this building in particular that ambassadors or embassies would be less than forthcoming about what they wrote in cables coming back, knowing that they had been ' that it had been compromised.
Has there been any evidence? Is this building concerned or is there evidence that shows that this building is not getting full accounting, full reporting, honest, candid reporting from its embassies abroad in the wake of WikiLeaks?
MS. NULAND: Our embassies abroad continue to do a superb job of working with governments and societies where they are accredited and giving us a good, strong picture of what's going on. That doesn't change the fact that there was enormous turbulence in many of our bilateral relationships when this happened, and that there have been impacts on individuals. As you know, we've talked about that at the time.
QUESTION: Right. But when you say enormous turbulence in bilateral relationships, has ' what has ' what can you ' what is there that --
MS. NULAND: I don't think I'm going to go any further than we went at the time. We had concerns from many of our interlocutors.
QUESTION: Well, I know you had concerns --
MS. NULAND: Yeah.
QUESTION: -- but that ' but concern is ' that does not that mean that there's ' that something has been damaged?
MS. NULAND: I think we've got an ongoing lawsuit, and I'm not going to go any further right now.
QUESTION: Well, I'm just curious, though. If the ' do you see ' has the U.S. ability to conduct its foreign relations been compromised or damaged because of WikiLeaks? Can you point to one or two examples of how that ' of how this has done harm to the U.S. national security or U.S. --
MS. NULAND: Matt --
QUESTION: -- ability to conduct diplomacy?
MS. NULAND: -- given the fact that we have an ongoing legal case, I don't think I'm going to comment any further on this set of issues today.
QUESTION: Well, fair enough, but --
MS. NULAND: Michel, did you have something else?
QUESTION: -- you do understand this is exactly what you're being asked to produce in court.
MS. NULAND: I understand. And --
QUESTION: And if you're saying that, 'Yes, it did damage, but I'm sorry, I can't tell you what the damage is because it's a secret,' that's what ' is that what you're saying?
MS. NULAND: What I'm saying is there's ongoing legal work now, and if there are legal responsibilities of this building, we'll do it in a court of law, not here.
QUESTION: Well, but in terms of the one thing that you did answer, you ' there isn't any evidence that this has affected embassies' ability or ' to report back honestly and accurately about what's going on in their host countries. Is that correct?
MS. NULAND: I'm not going to give a grade to our embassies. We expressed our concern at the time. Those concerns were very clearly stated. I'm not going to get into evaluating, from this podium, what's come back, what hasn't come back. We've got an ongoing legal case.
Michel.
QUESTION: One clarification still on this, please.
MS. NULAND: Yeah.
QUESTION: I thought the concern was less that embassies would not report stuff back in cables but that their interlocutors would not tell them stuff in the first place because they no longer had faith that the U.S. Government could keep their conversations or communications private, given the vast leak of cables. So I think the question might be better posed as: Has the State Department discerned a diminution in the candor of its foreign interlocutors as a result of this gross breach of confidentiality?
MS. NULAND: Again, we said what we wanted to say at the time on this case. We now have this case in the courts, and I just don't think it's appropriate for me to be commenting any further. |
