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MR. CROWLEY: Good afternoon and welcome to the Department of State. Obviously, Im sure the Secretary of State answered all of your questions on that particular subject. Let me mention just briefly a couple of other things before coming back to the issue that Im sure youre focused on today.
The Secretary this morning had a very productive session with Turkish Foreign Minister Davutoglu. They did talk about the WikiLeaks issue, and the foreign minister appreciated the direct and candid comments that the Secretary provided.
[...]
With that
QUESTION: P.J., just a couple short things on the whole WikiLeaks fiasco. One, have you gotten any formal complaints or protests from foreign governments about this? I realize it wasnt you that released them, but are you aware of any formal (inaudible)?
MR. CROWLEY: I am confident that from embassies first and in succeeding days, we will hear reaction from various governments to bring you to the present point. The Secretary made a number of calls over the weekend to her counterparts. And from Deputy Secretary Jim Steinberg, Under Secretary Bill Burns, the assistant secretaries, ambassadors, we did everything we can to reach out to governments in advance of the anticipated release of these documents. We will be doing follow-up calls during the course of the week.
Were conscious of the fact that probably the stories that weve seen today are not the last ones to be reported on this subject, so we are going to continue this diplomatic outreach for as long as it takes. But I would expect that we will be having feedback from governments during the course of this process. Im just not aware of any particular feedback at this point. Obviously, the Secretary had a chance to talk to Foreign Minister Davutoglu, as she indicated when she met with you earlier. She will have a number of conversations this week with her counterparts and other leaders during the OSCE Summit. So well be getting some feedback.
QUESTION: Okay, and then the second thing is that do you there is a lot of stuff in these cables that talks about the what diplomats report back.
MR. CROWLEY: Thats a diplomatic term, 'stuff.'
QUESTION: Yeah. (Laughter.) Talks about what diplomats what American diplomats are expected to report back to Washington about their host government or foreign other foreign leaders. Theres been a lot of handwringing, at least in Europe, about this kind of about some of this kind of reporting in terms of the German political scene and the candid assessments of foreign leaders as well as this intelligence-gathering or gathering of biometric data at the UN. Will any of that change or are these going to continue to be kind of standard operating procedure for diplomats abroad? Or are you --
MR. CROWLEY: Well, and Ill just establish the principle up front that were not going to talk about any particular cable.
In our conversations with our counterparts around the world, I think there is, in diplomatic circles, an understanding that this is what diplomats do. We have our diplomats posted around the world, many in challenging circumstances. They are trying theyre interacting with government officials; theyre interacting with members of civil society; theyre trying to interpret events on the ground. These events are increasingly at a more rapid pace than perhaps might have occurred in the past. They report back what they see, what they hear to the State Department here in Washington and to other agencies across the government. Many of these reports are raw, unvarnished. They provide on-the-ground perspective. They inform policies. They inform actions.
But as the Secretary made clear, policies are set here in Washington. The information that is collected and provided is useful. In some cases its accurate. In some cases its not. In some cases it might be a vantage point from one foxhole that might may or may not necessarily represent a broader perspective.
But this is what diplomats do. Weve very proud of what our diplomats do. We will learn from this experience. As the Secretary has said, weve already made adjustments in how we the access that we provide to our reporting documents. But we will not change how we do diplomacy around the world.
QUESTION: So the answer the short answer to my question was no, its not going to change anything?
MR. CROWLEY: I liked my answer better.
QUESTION: Well, is that --
MR. CROWLEY: No. I mean we --
QUESTION: No. You --
MR. CROWLEY: Its a very valid point. As the Secretary said, in some cases people leak information because they think theres been wrongdoing. This is information that helps people understand how we conduct the foreign policy of the United States day in and day out in difficult assignments around the world. Were very proud of our diplomats. We do we think they do an excellent job of helping inform policy. Were not going to change what we do.
QUESTION: Okay. So their instructions from Washington wont change. And then the corollary to that is that are you concerned at all that some people might water-down or be less candid in their appraisals of people because of this?
MR. CROWLEY: Well, I think the Secretary last night sent a message to the troops, if you will. And well be making clear that we value the diplomatic work that is done at posts all over the world. Well we are going to we have already and we will continue to look to see how information is stored, who has access to that information, both within our department and across the government. But certainly, without getting into any specific cable, what you see here is information that is very, very important to the conduct of the foreign policy of the United States.
Jill.
QUESTION: P.J., specifically on that question of how this information is stored, the understanding that we seem to have is that post 9/11, in an effort to avoid stove-piping, they brought a lot of this information together under the DOD. Does the Secretary have a view at this point I know Jack Lew said each organization, agency, now has to study, put together a team. But does the Secretary believe that it is a good idea for State Department cables and other communication to be in a system along with DOD?
MR. CROWLEY: Well, we have stood here and weve talked about whole-of-government efforts on our policy. Theres a great deal of interaction between the State Department and the Defense Department and across other agencies of government. So you do have to share information to be able to have a common perspective on the development and execution of both a foreign policy that includes a military dimension and a civil dimension. So the sharing of information is vitally important to the coordination and conduct of our national security policies. That should not change.
I think the other phenomenon one phenomenon, of course, is the imperative after 9/11 of a need to share. And we will evaluate that imperative against the need to protect or the need to know. And so this will be something that we will be reviewing, and there is obviously tension between those two approaches.
I think the other thing weve learned here is that it is not just the greater coordination and interaction across agencies, but its also the digitization of the information that is comes into the State Department. If you go back probably 25 years, these were done by paper and teletypes and so on and so forth. We do have a digitized system that allows us to report in real time. That has great value and benefit.
But we have taken steps to review who has access to the networks and the databases on which our information and the information of other agencies is resident, and we will tighten up those access standards as we go forward. But we are have been for many months reviewing the implications of this expected release.
QUESTION: P.J. --
QUESTION: P.J. --
MR. CROWLEY: Yeah. Charlie.
QUESTION: With all respect, you didnt answer Matts question about whether the language whether you expect that the language from people reporting from the field to change or Ill use the word to soften, but thats my word or do you expect them to be as frank |
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Name(s:) |
Phillip J. Crowley |
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Title: |
Assistant Secretary |
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Agency(ies): |
Public Affairs, Department of State |
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Concerning: |
Cablegate, WikiLeaks 24/7 Task Force, Banking Blockade |
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Url: |
Url Link
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Archive: |
Archive Link
http://archive.is/KQi8j |
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Title: |
Daily Press Briefing - November 29, 2010 |
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