THE CABLES

AFRICA

U.S. Embassy officials cautioned the Kenyan government to restrain itself in the violence following the country's 2007 election.

AMERICAS

The U.S. State Department's energy envoy urged Canada in 2009 to improve its "messaging" on a proposed oil-sands pipeline to the United States, including promoting "more positive news stories."

U.S. officials accused the leader of a pro-Cuban government peace group of threatening to pull U.S. medical students' scholarships if they met with the U.S. mission on the island in 2007.

ASIA

The Malaysian government's crackdown on bloggers in 2007.

THE NEWS

Julian Assange's extradition appeal decision is deferred. After his hearing -- complete with another round of more-than-you-wanted-to-know details about Assange's sex life -- Swedish prosecutors blast the Assange legal team's "19th Century" view of sexual consent.

Assange also found time to throw a big 40th birthday bash, inviting Angelina Jolie, Brad Pitt, and Oprah. (They didn't go.)

Wired releases the long-sought-after Adrian Lamo-Bradley Manning chat logs. Commentary from Salon's Glenn Greenwald, who had crusaded for their release, here.

U.N. torture investigator Juan Mendez says the U.S. government is violating U.N. rules in refusing him access to Manning.

Anonymous hacks military contractor Booz Allen Hamilton. (And here's a helpful family tree of the hackers who've risen to prominence since the WikiLeaks saga began.)

Blocking WikiLeaks donations prompts a competition complaint against MasterCard and Visa in Europe.

THE CABLES

AFRICA

U.S. diplomats' relationship with Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi's government wasn't always so cold.

Is Chinese demand for ivory killing Kenyan elephants?

MIDDLE EAST

An Israeli settlement leader tells U.S. officials he's willing to move, for a price.

Bahrain's king is proud of intelligence ties to Israel, wants his government to drop references to the "Zionist enemy."

Israel and Egypt locked horns over smuggling on the Gaza strip.

Israel suspects that Turkey is helping Iran skirt international sanctions.

What the WikiLeaks cables tell us about the United States' relationship with embattled Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

THE NEWS

Ecuador kicks out U.S. Ambassador Heather Hodges (above) over a WikiLeaks cable.

The Pentagon won't let anyone -- including U.S. Rep. Dennis Kucinich and investigators from the United Nations and Amnesty International -- meet with Pfc. Bradley Manning in private. The British government is also raising concerns over Manning's treatment.

Julian Assange has another court date.

The U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee proposes new penalties for leakers.

The feds won't leave friend of WikiLeaks Jacob Applebaum alone.

Karl Rove is copping WikiLeaks' style.

Qaddafi's Ukrainian nurse tells all.

Pentagon contractor (and Anonymous nemesis) HBGary's ambitious scheme to catch the next WikiLeaker.

THE CABLES

AFRICA

Sierra Leonean military officials blew $1.9 million in British aid money on big-screen TVs and hunting rifles.

U.S. officials helped in a corruption case against Tanzanian banking executives.

Kenyan officials told U.S. diplomats that an investigation into the country's 2007-2008 election violence would risk provoking civil war.

Nigerian politician Joseph Ibori wanted to create a "trust fund" with his stolen wealth.

ASIA

The owner of Japan's currently imperiled Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant falsified inspection records for the facility.

U.S. diplomats allege that Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's party paid parliament members $2.2 million apiece for a 2008 vote. (Singh denies it.)

MIDDLE EAST

U.S. diplomats say British defense contractor BAE bribed a Saudi prince to secure a fighter jet deal.

THE NEWS

U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley is fired quits after calling the Defense Department's treatment of alleged WikiLeaks source Pfc. Bradley Manning "ridiculous and counterproductive and stupid."

The Pentagon says its own security weaknesses enabled the leaking of the WikiLeaks documents.

Mexican President Filipe Calderón is "barely on speaking terms" with the U.S. ambassador to Mexico over WikiLeaks disclosures.

A federal judge rules that Twitter must hand over its records in WikiLeaks case.

Gawker goes inside Anonymous's war room.

Jihadist cleric Anwar al-Awlaki praises WikiLeaks.

A Turkish newspaper says it has another trove of WikiLeaks cables on U.S.-Turkey relations. The Hindu in India also has a bunch.

The top lawmaker on the U.S. House of Representatives' intelligence committee says WikiLeaks have been "devastating" to diplomacy.

THE BIG PICTURE

Julian Assange: WikiLeaks sparked the Arab revolt.

How the WikiLeaks documents helped reporters covering Japan's nuclear woes.

WikiLeaks suffers the most damaging leak of them all: pictures of Julian Assange dancing.

THE CABLES

AFRICA

How Coca-Cola got embroiled in a fight between Muammar al-Qaddafi's sons.

An aide to Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki tells U.S. diplomats that Kibaki is soft on corruption.

The Kenyan president's mistress also has alleged links to mercenaries.

ASIA

U.S. diplomats are nervous about China's growing influence in the African telecom sector. Australia, meanwhile, is worried about Chinese encroachment on its own mining industries.

MIDDLE EAST

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is the "George Steinbrenner of Iran."

THE NEWS

Twenty-two new charges have been filed against Pfc. Bradley Manning, including capital offenses -- enough to send him to jail for life.

Manning's lawyer says Manning has been subjected to degrading and inhuman conditions in jail, including being forced to sleep naked.

The Department of Defense won't let Rep. Dennis Kucinich visit Manning in jail.

Did a WikiLeaks cable finally push the director of the London School of Economics to resign over the Saif al-Islam al-Qaddafi affair?

Mexican President Felipe Calderon says WikiLeaks disclosures have caused "severe damage" to U.S.-Mexico relationship.

Julian Assange appeals his extradition to Sweden on sex assault charges.

PayPal has a change of heart about letting people give Assange money.

Anonymous manages to force its nemesis HBGary Federal CEO Aaron Barr out of his job, moves on to bugging the Koch brothers.

Julian Assange wants to trademark his name.

Assange is, or maybe isn't, an anti-semite.

THE BIG PICTURE

What's at stake for American journalists if Assange is prosecuted.

Why Assange is ruining WikiLeaks.

Why the best way for the U.S. government to prevent the next WikiLeak is less secrecy.

As Libya spiraled further out of control today, WikiLeaks posted two new cables from the U.S. Embassy in Tripoli detailing the family squabbles of strongman Muammar al-Qaddafi's family. Both are from March 2009, and both are signed by U.S. Ambassador Gene Cretz, the United States' first ambassador in Libya since 1972, who lost his job last month following the release of the infamous "voluptuous blonde" cable (and/or other more serious dispatches) he had signed.

The cables date from an eventful period in the life of the Qaddafi family. The previous July, Hannibal al-Qaddafi, the Qaddafi son best known for getting in trouble in Europe on a semi-regular basis, had been arrested in Switzerland for beating his servants at a Geneva hotel. Meanwhile, Saif al-Islam, Muammar's heir-apparent and the best-regarded Qaddafi outside of Libya, was fuming over the growing closeness between his father and his brother Muatassim (above, with U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in April 2009), the elder Qaddafi's national security adviser and Saif's only real competition for the family business. According to the cable, "Saif reportedly bridled at the fact that Muatassim accompanied Muammar al-Qadhafi on the latter's visit to Moscow, Minsk and Kiev last year..., and played a key role in negotiating potential weapons contracts."

All of this, plus a verboten trip to Rome by Qaddafi son Saadi, prompted a family meeting in August, at which the siblings aired their grievances:

At the meeting, Saadi reportedly criticized his father for having ignored him, and specifically cited the fact that his (Saadi's) efforts to establish an Export Free Trade Zone near the western Libyan town of Zuwara had not enjoyed the kind of support that Muatassim's activities as National Security Adviser or Saif al-Islam's high-profile efforts under the Qadhafi Development Foundation and Libya Youth Forum. As reported ref C, Muammar al-Qadhafi subsequently made an unusual visit to Zuwara last September and significant work on the development project began within a few days of his visit.

The cable relates that Qaddafi assigned his daughter Aisha "the task of monitoring the activities of ne'er-do-wells" in the family: Saadi, Hannibal, and the less notorious Saif al-Arab. But interestingly, the cable suggests that Aisha may have been part of the problem in the case of Hannibal's arrest, which blew up into an international incident when the irate Qaddafi pere threw Swiss diplomats out of his country in retaliation. According to the cable:

XXXXXXXXXXXX have told us that Aisha played a strong role in urging a hardline Libyan position with respect to the Swiss-Libyan contretemps over Hannibal's arrest. Separately, the Swiss Ambassador told us that Aisha's less than accurate rendering to her father of the events surrounding Hannibal's arrest and treatment by Swiss authorities helped stoke Muammar al-Qadhafi's anger, limiting the extent to which Libyan and Swiss officials could maneuver to find an acceptable compromise. The Swiss have told us that in the most recent effort between the two sides to resolve the issue in Davos, Saif had approved an agreement that had the Swiss literally bending over backwards to assuage Libyan demands. After making a phone call (to either Aisha or the leader), Saif returned somewhat chastened after several minutes to rescind the aproval.

Meanwhile, back in the present, Saif seems to have embraced his family tradition of giving long, weird, paranoid speeches, and it seems clear that, whatever his Davos and LSE credentials, the Qaddafi apple doesn't fall far from the tree.

During the summer of 2008, Britain, France, and the United States discussed the possibility of delaying the Internatoinal Criminal Court (ICC) investigation into Sudanese President Omar Hussein al-Bashir -- if Bashir's government played ball in Darfur and Southern Sudan. According to a series of cables released by WikiLeaks on Tuesday, the three powers considered enticing Sudan's president with an Article 16 deferral of his indictment -- a U.N. Security Council resolution that could suspend the investigation for up to 12 months. According to an August 2008 cable, "If 'played right,' the UK [United Kingdom] assessed the leverage of an Article 16 deferral could provide an opportunity to ameliorate conditions in Darfur and possibly the [implementation of the] Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) [that ended conflict between northern and southern Sudan]."

Read on

Two months after Somali pirates made their debut in the international spotlight by hijacking the MV Faina, a ship filled to the brim with Ukranian tanks and weapons, the U.S. government sent a cable from London with alleged details about the piracy circuit, recounted during a debriefing with a Canadian captain who had recently escorted an aid ship ashore: "there is clear evidence of collusion between Somalia's Transitional Federal Government (TFG) and pirates in Somali waters and links between pirates and terrorist networks," a November 2008 cable claims.

These were the early day of Somali piracy, when some of the high-profile hijackings were just beginning to occur. No international task force montitored the waters those days; no one was yet sure just how to handle the threat -- or just how deep the treat really went.  The Canadian captain, Chris Dickison, believed that the hijackings were just the tip of the iceberg:  "Dickinson also said clear links between the pirates and established terrorist networks exist. In many cases, they are the same people, using the same routes. Most commercial maritime operators in the area are surprised that the international community does not do more to disrupt the linkages." (When pressed for more details, the embassy source apparently dubbed further information for "Canadian Eyes Only.")

The 2008 cable also goes on to provide a bit more insight into what happened to the MV Faina itself -- an international intrigue that in some ways is still unfolding. When the ship was first apprehended, it became clear that it was transporting weapons to Kenya -- on what appeared to be the behalf of the government of Southern Sudan. This was later confirmed in cables released by WikiLeaks earlier this year. But it's never been totally clear where all the weapons ended up after they were released by the pirates (in exchange for ransom.) The 2008 cable offers some insight: "Dickinson added that the weapons on board the MV Faina, still being held hostage when the cable was written, were all offloaded onto Somali shores."

One might imagine that such information -- if it was (and is) true -- would raise red flags, particulary when it comes to U.S. support for the Somali government. Maybe it did; just months later, the Somali government admitted to having information about who the pirates were and how they operated -- but Somali officials argued that they lacked the resources to tackle the problem (and requested international help to do so.) 

Either way, international help certainly came. A coalition of Navies -- everyone from the United States to China to Greece to India -- sent ships to the Gulf of Aden, where many remain today, patrolling the seas.  As another 2008 cable presciently puts it, piracy was a "growth industry." 

It's been a while since WikiLeaked checked in on Ali Abdullah Saleh, Yemen's newly embattled president and a reliably interesting character in the WikiLeaks oeuvre. Most of what we've seen from Saleh in the leaked U.S. State Department cables has followed a pattern in which U.S. diplomats try to coax more counterterrorism cooperation out of the veteran strongman, while Saleh -- whose government received $155 million in military aid from the United States in 2010, twice the previous year's amount -- tries to finagle more cash and materiel out of the Americans. A newly released December 2004 State Department cable recounting a meeting between Saleh and U.S. Ambassador Thomas C. Krajeski (pictured above with Saleh in a 2007 photo) is no exception.

The meeting takes place a little more than a month after U.S. President George W. Bush's reelection; Saleh badly wants to meet with Bush in Washington to congratulate him personally, he tells Krajeski, and also talk about "important new developments in the region 'that can only be discussed face to face,'" according to the cable. Krajeski hems and haws a bit about this, at which point, the cable notes, "True to form, Saleh launched into a list of what he believes the U.S. owes him. 'Where is the money for the Army, and what about my spare (F-5) parts?' Saleh demanded." (The cable notes, a little acidly, that there have been reported problems with getting the Yemeni Ministry of Defense "to follow through with the necessary paperwork on parts and equipment in order to spend the 17 million USD in Yemen's [foreign military financing] account.")

There's also the matter of smaller weapons, specifically the massive number of small arms being bought and sold in Yemen:

Pointing out that any meetings with senior U.S. officials would quickly turn to the subject of Yemen's huge grey market in SA/LW [small arms/light weapons], Ambassador told Saleh that Yemen needs to gain control over the huge flow of these weapons in and through the country. Washington is very concerned about this issue and ready to help the ROYG tackle it, added Ambassador. "I will do it!" Saleh exclaimed, insisting that he was insisting that he was already "cracking down" on the SA/LWs market.

The conversation soon turns, inevitably, to counterterrorism, in which Saleh has been a longstanding if not unproblematic partner to the United States. Pressed on the subject of Hadi Dulqum, an arms dealer with alleged links to Al Qaeda, the cable reports that "Saleh stuck to his line that Hadi Dulqum is just a 'simple arms dealer:'"

The Saudis want Dulqum, said the President, "they are crazy for him. What do you expect?" he asked, "if we arrest every arms dealer in the country, we will have hundreds of them in prison." The USG [U.S. government] agrees with the Saudis, said Ambassador, adding that Dulqum's connections with AQ are too extensive for him to be simply another Yemeni arms dealer.

Months later, Saleh does manage to swing a White House invite, prompting a June 2005 cable from the Sanaa embassy titled PRIORITIES FOR WASHINGTON VISIT: SALEH NEEDS TO BE PART OF THE SOLUTION. The cable characterizes relations with Saleh's government as "frustrating and difficult," noting that "Saleh has indicated to top advisors in the past that he believes he can pull the wool over the eyes of the [U.S. government.]" On the political front, "Saleh touts Yemen as a leader in regional reform and has committed to democratization," the cable says. "Domestically, however, he has run-out of reforms he can implement at no political cost to himself."

The cable proposes "a public show of support via a greater role in public fora such as the G-8" as a possible inducement to greater democratization, but it seems that half a decade later, the upheavals in Tunisia and Egypt may have done the job more effectively.

Cables from the U.S. Embassy in the Zimbabwean capital of Harare account for just 13 of the nearly 2,000 State Department documents that WikiLeaks has posted so far, but President Robert Mugabe's government has gotten a lot of mileage out of them -- in fact, he's probably made more enterprising use of the slow-rolling scandal than any other world leader. When an independent Zimbabwean newspaper reported on a cable alleging that members of Mugabe's circle -- including his wife, Grace Mugabe -- had profited extensively from the country's black -market diamond trade, the first lady sued the paper for $15 million (a move that has prompted reprisals from hackers). When WikiLeaks published a year-old cable detailing a meeting between Zimbabwean opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai and U.S. officials, Mugabe -- who had grudgingly acceded to a power-sharing arrangement with his old nemesis -- jumped at the opportunity.

Last week, Johannes Tomana, Zimbabwe's attorney general, announced that he would consider charging Tsvangirai with high treason over the contents of the cable, in which Tsvangirai suggests the possibility of working with U.S. and other foreign officials on the international sanctions regime imposed on Mugabe's government -- penalties that Tsvangirai publicly opposed but privately insisted "be kept in place," according to the cable. High treason carries the death penalty in Zimbabwe, and a number of writers -- Christopher Albon in the Atlantic, James Kirchick in the Wall Street Journal, and James Richardson in today's Guardian, among others -- have pre-emptively placed Tsvangirai's blood on Julian Assange's hands. Richardson's piece is a particularly good summary of the events thus far and builds to a withering conclusion:

And so, where Mugabe's strong-arming, torture and assassination attempts have failed to eliminate the leading figure of Zimbabwe's democratic opposition, WikiLeaks may yet succeed. Twenty years of sacrifice and suffering by Tsvangirai all for naught, as WikiLeaks risks "collateral murder" in the name of transparency.

Before more political carnage is wrought and more blood spilled -- in Africa and elsewhere, with special concern for those US-sympathising Afghans fingered in its last war document dump -- WikiLeaks ought to leave international relations to those who understand it -- at least to those who understand the value of a life.

It's certainly true that Assange has been maddeningly unwilling to examine the implications of his actions -- or, alternately, convinced that he can have it both ways, remaking the business of geopolitics while claiming no casualties. But I'm somewhat more persuaded by Albon's measured take from last week. After noting that a Tsvangirai conviction based on the cable alone is unlikely, he writes:

It's difficult to see this as anything but a major setback for democracy in Zimbabwe. Even if Tsvangirai is not charged with treason, the opponents to democratic reforms have won a significant victory. First, popular support for Tsvangirai and the MDC will suffer due to Mugabe's inevitable smear campaign, including the attorney general's "investigation." Second, the Prime Minister might be forced to take positions in opposition to the international community to avoid accusation of being a foreign collaborator. Third, Zimbabwe's fragile coalition government could collapse completely. Whatever happens, democratic reforms in Zimbabwe are far less likely now than before the leak. 

As Robert Rotberg wrote here last week, WikiLeaks may have provided Mugabe with a useful pretext for dispatching Tsvangirai from his government, but it's an open question whether he needed one. In reward for his decade-plus of political efforts, Tsvangirai has been variously arrested, beaten, tortured, thrown from a 10th-floor window, and involved in a suspicious collision with a truck that claimed his wife's life. WikiLeaks is useful to Mugabe, but it's hardly necessary.

The New York Times has taken a quality-over-quantity approach to the WikiLeaks cables so far, favoring occasional big-picture reports over the Guardian et al.'s zone-flooding approach. Most recent is an excellent piece by Ginger Thompson and Scott Shane on the picture the cables paint of the Drug Enforcement Agency's transformation "into a global intelligence organization with a reach that extends far beyond narcotics, and an eavesdropping operation so expansive it has to fend off foreign politicians who want to use it against their political enemies." The whole piece is worth a read.

Among the source cables, the documents from the U.S. embassy in Conakry, Guinea -- which caught the attention of the DEA as it emerged as cocaine trafficking hub -- are notable for their (occasionally ironic) narration of the country's drug-smuggling troubles. Best is a perceptive and elegantly written May 2008 cable, signed by Ambassador Phillip Carter III, recounting a meeting with Prime Minister Lansana Kouyate, whose relationship with President Lansana Conté (who died seven months later) was strained by, among other things, the fact that Conté's son Ousmane was suspected of being the country's preeminent drug kingpin:

[Kouyate] told the Ambassador that he then went to the First Lady, Henriette Conte, about Ousmane's complicity. Henriette reportedly described Ousmane as totally out of control, and directed the PM to take the matter up directly with the president. When Kouyate raised the incident, President Conte reportedly asked why his son would do such a thing. Kouyate told the president that it was a way for his son to get rich quickly and that it reflected poor character. Kouyate said that he reminded Conte that he had raised concerns about Ousmane years ago with the President but that nothing had been done. Kouyate then revealed a confidence from Conte to the Ambassador, mentioning that the President has had no contact or any communication with his son in over two years.

The elder Conté fired Kouyate two weeks later. As for the ailing strongman -- who would die in December 2008 of an unspecified illness believed to be diabetes -- the last we see of him in the cable is this arresting King Lear moment:

As the [prime minister] was leaving, the Ambassador asked him about Conte's health. Kouyate, slowly shaking his head said that "the president's health is up and down but he is not doing well." He admitted that "it is difficult to deal with that man", revealing that he is never sure what he is thinking. The Ambassador stated that he has been hearing much criticism of the president and that he is not well regarded in the countryside. Kouyate said that one does not need to leave Conakry to hear the same thing. He said that at a opening ceremony for a new stadium at the small university in Sonfonia, the crowds jeered every time Conte's name was mentioned. According to Kouyate, he had to admonish the crowds to be respectful, particularly given that the stadium is named after President Conte. "It was incredible" he said, shaking his head again with forlorn look on his face.

THE CABLES

AFRICA

Zimbabwe's first lady is suing a local newspaper over its reporting on a WikiLeaks cable detailing her involvement in the black-market diamond trade. (And apparently doesn't read FP.)

When FP wrote about Africa's failed states this summer, we didn't know the half of it.

Pretty much everyone involved in last week's cable about bribery in the Ugandan oil business denies bribing anyone in the Ugandan oil business.

Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir allegedly has $9 billion in oil money stashed in Britain.

AMERICAS

American diplomats at the United Nations don't like to talk much about human rights anymore.

The Cuban government misjudges the WikiLeaks cables, which show the U.S. government misjudging the Cuban government.

Joking about Hugo Chávez in Venezuela, or even above Venezuela, is ill-advised.

How Brazil got pharmaceutical companies to hand over cheap HIV/AIDS drugs.

Diverticulitis may have nearly done in the Castro regime, but Cuba's political dissidents probably can't.

ANTARCTICA

WikiLeaks is banned there.

ASIA

The Red Cross reported extensive torture of Kashmiris at Indian detention centers in Kashmir to the U.S. embassy in New Delhi in 2005.

Singapore's government owes an apology to basically every major country in Asia.

The Dalai Lama says fighting climate change is more important for Tibet than political independence.

The heir to the Gandhi family political dynasty thinks Hindu extremists are a bigger threat to India than Muslim ones.

Turkmen strongman Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov doesn't like people who are smarter than him.

A former Thai prime minister says Thailand's queen had a hand in the country's 2006 coup. The country's leaders also have their doubts about the crown prince.

Eric Clapton's weirdly persistent influence on North Korean politics.

EUROPE/CAUCASUS

Sweden told the State Department in 2008 that the country didn't have to worry about terrorism. They're probably not saying that now.

Silvio Berlusconi for the win?

The German government is still not digging L. Ron Hubbard.

The Stockholm embassy discusses Sweden's WikiLeaks-enabling Pirate Party in a particularly meta cable.

The Azeri first lady's plastic surgery creates confusion among U.S. diplomats in Baku.

Belarusian dictator Alexander Lukashenko is "bizarre" and "disturbed."

MIDDLE EAST

Do Arab leaders actually care about the Palestinians?

Hosni Mubarak thinks his son is a perfectionist.

Is the Egyptian military in "intellectual and social decline"?

The Arab League doesn't like Steven Spielberg.

THE NEWS

Julian Assange is released on bail after a media-circus-attracting hearing, but not before Michael Moore manages to get involved. Now that he's out of jail, Assange is pretty chatty -- as is Vaughan Smith, the journalist and WikiLeaks supporter who's hosting him until his next court date.

Things are not going nearly so well for alleged Assange document source Bradley Manning.

Australian police determine WikiLeaks hasn't broken any laws in the country, but Assange's lawyer says a grand jury in the United States is considering indicting him.

WikiLeaks is already inspiring imitators around the world, and counterfeit cables are turning up in Russia -- because, you know, that worked so well in Pakistan.

FP's WikiLeaked is too hot for the U.S. Air Force.

Someone posts a manifesto on behalf of Anonymous, the ad-hoc group of hackers that has cyber-attacked an array of targets in solidarity with WikiLeaks over the past two weeks. The manifesto quotes KISS bassist Gene Simmons. A Greek web designer is arrested for it.

Governments may be scared of WikiLeaks, but the Pakistani feminine hygiene industry isn't.

THE BIG PICTURE

A lot of people think Assange should have been Time's 2010 person of the year. Richard Stengel, the magazine's managing editor, isn't one of them. 

Portrait of the hacker as a young man: Julian Assange during his couch-surfing and email-stalking days. 

Would Henry David Thoreau join Anonymous?

Congress considers WikiLeaks.

Mark Prendergast, ombudsman for the U.S. military's official Stars and Stripes newspaper, argues that military personnel should be allowed to read the cables.

If WikiLeaks doesn't get things rolling a little faster, we'll be writing this blog for another 7.6 years.

Last week, you'll recall, WikiLeaks brought us the story of a meeting a year ago between Jerry Lanier, the U.S. ambassador to Uganda, and Tim O'Hanlon, an executive of Britain's Tullow Oil, which was trying to buy a stake in a pair of big Ugandan oil fields at the time. Lanier's cable paraphrases O'Hanlon as saying that two other companies had somehow swooped in and grabbed the deal out of Tullow's hands. The suggestion was that a Ugandan minister had been paid off.

Not so, say almost all of those mentioned in the Lanier cable. Last Friday, O'Hanlon wrote a letter to Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni, saying that Lanier got the story all wrong. He had heard the talk circulating of such backroom dealing, O'Hanlon wrote, but he never believed it. "I have no evidence implicating the honorable ministers in corruption and have no reason to believe that the rumors sweeping Kampala at the time were actually true," O'Hanlon wrote.

Amama Mbabazi (above), Uganda's security minister and the official named in Lanier's cable -- in which Lanier told his superiors that the United States might consider revoking Mbabazi's U.S. visa -- said he was equally perplexed by what the cable had to say about his relationship with Italy's Eni and Britain's Heritage Oil. He said:

These allegations are absolutely untrue. I have never received even an offer let alone payment from Heritage or ENI of that kind or for anything. However at that time there was report in The Times of London which did not name anyone but talked about corruption over the deal. What surprised me is that the embassy believes that the allegations are true and concluded that the deal showed signs of high level corruption in Uganda's oil sector. This is incredible. I am surprised they would make a statement like that without cross checking with me about my alleged involvement.

Eni also said that Lanier was far off the mark, and that it intended legal action against WikiLeaks. "ENI denies the serious allegations which are completely without foundation and has instructed its lawyers to initiate legal proceedings to compensate for any damage caused to the company's reputation," a spokesman told Agence France-Presse.

One of the latest WikiLeaks scoops is that Royal Dutch/Shell managed to infiltrate employees into every important Nigerian ministry, and obtain regular inside intelligence on government doings, as my colleague Beth Dickinson wrote late last night. My question is, if Shell is so capable and has Nigeria so well wired, why does it continue to be the main target of attack by local militants?

This is a company that three weeks ago yet again declared force majeure to protect itself against lawsuits for non-delivery of some 125,000 barrels a day of oil because of militant attacks on its pipeline network in the country. It could take until next month to repair the Escravos-Warri pipeline, the company says.

All in all, Shell produced 629,000 barrels of oil a day last year, which sounds like a lot until you consider that its facilities are capable of producing more than 1 million barrels a day. Much of that difference is accounted for by massive attacks on its installations. In 2008, Shell also had a bad year, with militants attacking and shutting down its flagship 200,000-barrel-a day Bonga oil platform. Two years before that, Shell threatened to pull out of the Niger Delta entirely after a spate of attacks on its installations resulted in numerous deaths and kidnappings.

This is not meant to be snarky. But is the Nigerian government all that important in this case? Given the stakes, one does wonder if Shell is putting as much effort into infiltrating the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, the group responsible for much of the mayhem. A five-year-old story by Michael Peel, the Financial Times' former Nigeria correspondent, reported that militants and others were stealing somewhere between 275,000 barrels a day and 685,000 barrels a day of oil from Shell and other pipelines, at the time worth between $1.5 billion and $4 billion a year. They were spending much of that money on weapons -- which in their business counts as reinvestment into future attacks.

If you want to make some enemies in Nigeria, just say you're from Shell -- especially after Wednesday's WikiLeaks release. Cables from 2009 and 2010 indicate that the oil company -- the firm with the longest history and the most tarnished reputation in Nigeria -- has infiltrated government ministries, speaks of its Nigerian colleagues as amateurs, and seems to have U.S. diplomatic help in pushing its agenda through the national assembly.

Shell has been operating in Nigeria since 1936, and over the decades, it has been the most prominent international oil company operating in the resource-rich Niger Delta. Its mishaps are almost as old, but things took a particular turn for the worse in the early 1990s, when Shell was allegedly complicit in the government assasination of local environmental activists who were protesting the oil pollution in their communities. Shell was kicked out of those communities and only recently let back in.

Yet in a series of cables discussing Nigeria's Petroleum Industry Bill (PIB), an effort at sector-wide reform that has been held up in the assembly since 2008, it becomes clear just how much influence Shell still wields.

Shell -- and, according to the cables, all international oil companies operating in Nigeria -- are adamantly opposed to the legislation, as it stands to "reduce the corporation's [Shell's] overall value in Nigeria." As such, Shell told the U.S. ambassador that the company and its peers would be reaching out to diplomats from the United States, Britain, and Denmark to "convey points on the bill to GON [government of Nigeria] policymakers," a Feb. 10, 2009 cable recounts. In a meeting in October 2009, the U.S. ambassador asks "what the Embassy could do to help" with the congressional committee working on the bill. The ambassador also reminds Shell Managing Director Ann Pickard "that the U.S., U.K., Dutch and French Embassies had already made a joint call on [Nigerian national oil company] NNPC General Managing Director Dr. Mohammed Barkindo" regarding the bill. (Nigeria is was the fourth-largest OPEC oil supplier to the United States in September, the most recent month for which data is available.)

But more disquieting is the influence Shell wields within the Nigerian government. Pickard recounts direct meetings with former Nigerian President Umaru Yar'Adua as well as other top oil officials. This isn't unexpected. But in a meeting between the U.S. ambassador, Pickard points out that Shell is able to keep tabs on the Nigerian government's dealings with other oil partners China and Russia in part because "Shell had seconded people to all the relevant ministries and that Shell consequently had access to everything that was being done in those ministries."

Of course, there are damning revelations about the government of Nigeria's role in the slippery oil business as well. Shell alleges in the February 10 meeting that illegal oil sales go all the way to the top of the govenment: "Oil buyers would pay NNPC GMD Yar'Adua, Chief Economic Advisor Yakubu and the First Lady Turai Yar'Adua large bribes to lift oil."

Still, the revelations about Shell will likely overshadow those pertaining to the Nigerian government -- at least in Nigeria, where corruption in the government is a well-recognized fact. There, the cables will hammer one more nail into Shell's coffin as far as public opinion is concerned. It doesn't help that the company refers to its local colleagues in incredibly demeaning terms.  A cable recounting a Feb. 23, 2010, conversation with the U.S. assistant secretary of state for African affairs, Johnny Carson, recalls: "Amateur technocrats run the oil and gas sector according to Shell’s Peter Robinson. They believe that they can control the industry via spreadsheets and pushing through the PIB."

For a population that has lived for decades with oil -- to little benefit -- Shell's political obituary writes itself.