THE CABLES

AMERICAS

Members of Haiti's elite complained to the U.S. Embassy in 2005 about eroding security in the country.

ASIA

A Taliban representative told U.S. officials in 1996 that the Taliban had shut down "Arab" training camps in Afghanistan, and had no idea where Osama bin Laden was. A U.S. embassy official met with a Taliban representative the following year to discuss the Afghan drug trade and the group's sheltering of bin Laden.

A 1999 State Department meeting with future Afghan President Hamid Karzai, identified here as the "son of an important Afghan tribal leader."

The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad sizing up the Taliban's Mullah Omar, circa 1997.

Beijing was unhappy about North Korean nuclear tests in 2006, but powerless to stop them.

The Japanese island of Okinawa, host to a longstanding U.S. military presence, is tilting toward China and away from the United States.

MIDDLE EAST

Bahrain's recent crackdown on its Shiite minority came out of Saudi Arabia's playbook.

THE NEWS

Julian Assange is reportedly backing off of plans to publish his memoirs.

WikiLeaks briefly manages to accept donations via Visa and MasterCard before the companies shut them down again. (WikiLeaks is threatening to sue them in response.)

A medic in Britain's Royal Navy has been sentenced to seven months' detention for refusing to train on account of WikiLeaks-inspired moral objections.

An excellent telling of the sad saga of Pfc. Bradley Manning from New York. (The online friend whose chats with Manning provide much of the new information in the piece has also made their correspondence available for download.)

THE CABLES

AFRICA

U.S. diplomats condemned the "appalling greed" of Moroccan King Mohammed VI's inner circle.

AMERICAS

The George W. Bush administration supported Catholic clergy in Venezuela who protested against Hugo Chávez (and defied the pope in so doing).

A 2008 survey found that half of Cubans couldn't identify any of the major dissidents on the island that receive U.S. backing.

ASIA

Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman was an influential player in Obama's China policy during his tenure as ambassador.

Andrew MacGregor Marshall, who quit Reuters over a WikiLeaks-related disagreement, is self-publishing his reporting based on his own trove of Thailand-related cables.

Gaming out the internal power dynamics of China's Politburo Standing Committee.

THE NEWS

Julian Assange revamps his legal team.

GOP presidential hopeful and former Arizona Gov. Gary Johnson is pretty much the only Republican willing to defend WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks thinks Bitcoin is too dodgy for donations.

Remember those cameras that Assange supporters claimed were being used to spy on him? They're actually there to monitor traffic.

THE BIG PICTURE

Has WikiLeaks ushered in an era of no government secrets?

THE CABLES

AMERICAS

More than 700 files on Guantánamo Bay detainees obtained by WikiLeaks are released. Extensive coverage is here, here, here, and here. The Huffington Post has the backstory on the release. Also check out FP's roundup of the coverage and roundtable discussion of the cables with Karen Greenberg, Robert Chesney, Morris Davis, and Matthew Alexander.

Someone should tell the U.S. Department of Defense that World Net Daily is a somewhat less-than-credible source of information.

The Guantánamo file on former detainee and Al Jazeera cameraman Sami al-Hajj suggests just how suspicious the U.S. government was of the network.

The file on detainee Adel Hamlily alleges he worked for MI6 (though Clive Stafford Smith, Hamlily's attorney, disputes the claim.)

Did the Ecuadorian government manipulate the country's bond market?

U.S. diplomats worry about Muammar al-Qaddafi's relationship with Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega.

Embassy officials don't think much of Panamanian President Ricardo Martinelli.

ASIA

The U.S. government apparently considers Pakistan's intelligence agency a terrorist (or at least terrorist-supporting) organization.

The arrest of Hmong guerrilla leader Vang Pao did wonders for the U.S.-Laos relationship.

THE NEWS

Jailed alleged WikiLeaks source Pfc. Bradley Manning is cleared to leave isolation, and has been determined fit to stand trial by the U.S. Army.

Guantánamo defense lawyers are prohibited from reading the WikiLeaks documents (though one of them is challenging the ban).

The U.S. Department of Justice's litigation over WikiLeaks is apparently progressing on a couple of fronts.

WikiLeaks received nearly $2 million in donations last year.

Most people in 24 countries surveyed by Ipsos don't think Julian Assange is a criminal (though a lot of Americans disagree).

London's Telegraph newspaper is in hot water for publishing the name of a 15-year-old rape victim contained in the Guantánamo papers.

WikiLeaks' document cache is now pretty solidly out of the organization's control.

THE BIG PICTURE

What the Guantánamo documents tell us about mission creep in the War on Terror.

The Guantánamo papers aren't likely to change much of anything for the detainees themselves.

The New York Times owes WikiLeaks big time.

WikiLeaks has claimed another WikiLoser: U.S. Ambassador Heather Hodges, who was kicked out of Ecuador today over a cable detailing alleged corruption in President Rafael Correa's government. "It is unfortunate that the published documents on WikiLeaks have made it impossible to continue collaborating with the current ambassador to Quito, but we hope to work with a new ambassador," Ecuador's Washington embassy said in a statement today, according to the Associated Press.

The offending cable, which was signed by Hodges (above, with Correa in happier times) in July 2009 and published on Monday by the Spanish newspaper El Pais, concerns Jaime Hurtado, the former commanding general of Ecuador's National Police. "The Embassy has multiple reports that indicate [Hurtado] used his positions to extort bribes, facilitate human trafficking, misappropriate public funds, obstruct investigations and prosecutions of corrupt colleagues, and engage in other corrupt acts for personal enrichment," Hodges wrote.

Hodges is the third U.S. ambassador to be forced out of an embassy post by an inconvenient cable; Carlos Pascual resigned from the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City last month, and Gene Cretz was called back from Tripoli in January (though he's back in action now that the U.S. government is somewhat less concerned about Col. Muammar al-Qaddafi's feelings). Of course, it's also worth noting that Correa -- like his regional allies -- drops U.S. diplomats like they're going out of style.

As you've probably heard, U.S. Ambassador Carlos Pascual stepped down from his post in Mexico City over the weekend following his WikiLeaks-based falling out with Mexican President Felipe Calderón. In noting his departure, we thought it would be worth looking back over the arc of the U.S. State Department's slow-rolling PR catastrophe -- now rounding out its fourth month -- and tallying the casualties. The results are here.

The WikiLeaks unfortunates are a pretty varied group -- the expected array of diplomatic officials and WikiLeaks associates, plus a few politicians, a CEO, a university administrator, and a dictator -- and it's hard to draw much of a trend line through the circumstances of their respective scandals. The first and last of them were both genuine scandals: A German party official passing documents to American embassy officials, the prime minister of India's party allegedly buying votes with chests full of rupees.

But what strikes me as most noteworthy is how un-noteworthy most of the cables that got a lot of these people in trouble really were. U.S. ambassadors were pulled from their posts for noting that Mexico's drug war was going badly and that Muammar al-Qaddafi was rather eccentric. The fact that Tunisia's Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali was a fantastically corrupt ruler was not exactly news to anyone in Tunisia. Europe's still-incomplete satellite system really is a boondoggle. There have been a few bombshells in the WikiLeaks cables -- some of them literal -- but these weren't them. They were significant only because they confirmed that the U.S. government knew what everyone else knew.

THE CABLES

AFRICA

Muammar al-Qaddafi's kids are a real piece of work.

Qaddafi worried about a U.S. military presence in Africa.

Bernie Madoff once discussed investment opportunities with Qaddafi.

AMERICAS

Colombian President Alvaro Uribe OK'd "clandestine operations" against FARC rebels across the border in Venezuela.

U.S. Ambassador to Colombia (and later Afghanistan) William Wood was not aware of the top Colombian military leader's dodgy résumé.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce tried to take down Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega.

ASIA

China used U.S. debt obligations to pressure the United States on arms sales to Taiwan.

For the first time since World War II, Japan is building a full-blown foreign intelligence agency.

EUROPE/CAUCASUS

U.S. diplomats pushed Norway to buy American-made fighter jets.

Britain blocked an arms sale to Swaziland over fears the weapons could end up in Iran.

MIDDLE EAST

Bahrain's crown prince is not a big fan of the whole democracy thing.

THE NEWS

A British judge rules in favor of Julian Assange's extradition to Sweden.

George W. Bush doesn't like the idea of sharing a stage with Assange.

Gaddafi's "voluptuous nurse" has had enough of Libya.

WikiLeaks cable revelations are factoring in Peru's 2011 elections.

PayPal freezes the account of a group raising defense funds for Pfc. Bradley Manning.

More on HBGary, the cybersecurity firm that tried to take down WikiLeaks' supporters.

WikiLeaks now has a gift shop.

Anonymous makes "The Colbert Report" (slightly NSFW)

THE BIG PICTURE

FP looks at WikiLeaks in our new March/April issue, including contributions from Fouad Ajami, Peter W. Galbraith, Margaret MacMillan, Maya Jasanoff, and Marjorie Garber.

Newly instated Egyptian Vice President Omar Suleiman has been a longtime favorite of Israel, according to new WikiLeaks cables released Monday.  The cables reveal snippets from a strategic partnership that is often fraught with differences, but mostly sharing of similar concerns, among them Gaza, Iran, and terrorism. The revelations seem particularly notable in the context of ongoing turmoil in Egypt, where protestors are calling for Mubarak to step down. The United States is now backing Suleiman as a leader of a transition government -- something that, according to the recently released cables, should  help quell Isreali anxiety.

In a cable dated August 29, 2008, David Hacham, a senior adviser to Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, told U.S. diplomats about Barak's visit to Egypt earlier that month, calling it a success. While Hacham said the Israelis were "shocked" by President Hosni Mubarak's "aged appearance and slurred speech," they had only nice things to say about Suleiman, then head of Egypt's foreign intelligence service. Israel and Suleiman were apparently quite close, a relationship built through the daily use of a hot line set up between the Israeli Ministry of Defense and Suleiman's office. And even as most of the world expected Mubarak's son, Gamal, to be his successor, the Israelis had different thoughts, according to the cable:

Hacham noted that the Israelis believe Soliman is likely to serve as at least an interim President if Mubarak dies or is incapacitated. (Note:  We defer to Embassy Cairo for analysis of Egyptian succession scenarios, but there is no question that Israel is most comfortable with the prospect of Omar Soliman.)

With Egypt eager to position itself as a leader in the Middle East, Suleiman also apparently took a keen interest in the Israel-Palestinian negotiations, according to a different 2008 cable. He told a U.S. Congressional delegation that he was optimistic about the situation between Egypt's neighbors, but stressed his concern over "continuing Israeli criticism of Egyptian anti-smuggling efforts."

According to the cable, the timing for Israeli-Palestinian progress was right, in 2008, for four reasons:

First, the PA leadership is moderate and willing to negotiate. Second, Hamas is isolated and politically cut off in Gaza. Third, the Israelis are ready for peace; Soliman assessed that the GOI coalition is broad and strong, and larger than Rabin's coalition of the mid-nineties. Fourth, Arab states are ready to see an end to "the struggle."

Suleiman said that Egypt wanted to help the United States continue the peace process, recommending steps to continue progress:

First , both the Israelis and Palestinians must be pressed hard to sign an agreement, which the U.S. and international community could endorse, to be implemented at the proper time. Second, the U.S. should insist that "phase one" of the Roadmap should be completed before the end of 2008.

Over the weekend, WikiLeaks decided to drop what (if memory serves) is its largest single release to date from its cache of U.S. State Department emails, almost all of them from the U.S. Embassy in London over the past few years. We'll be picking through the good bits here over the next few days, although at first glance they seem short on blockbusters, which may explain why they haven't commanded much attention in the media. (That, and the whole dumping-hundreds-of-cables-on-a-Friday-night thing.)

The London cables mostly concern foreign policy issues where Britain's interests are closely aligned with the United States', the war in Afghanistan among them; the effort to thread the needle between the British government's commitment to the war and waning support for it among the British public is a common theme. One cable offers a lengthy account of then British Foreign Secretary David Miliband's November 2008 meeting with Afghan President Hamid Karzai in Kabul, in which Karzai tells Miliband (in the cable's paraphrase) that "it would be difficult or impossible to hold a credible Presidential election" the following year in Afghanistan, ticking off five particularly problematic provinces. (On that much, he was right.)

Karzai also expresses optimism about the United States' new president-elect, Barack Obama, but in his conversation with Miliband you can see the seeds of the estrangement between the Afghan and American presidents that would characterize the years that followed. There's the issue of American-employed private contractors, who Karzai would order out of his country in August 2010:

Afghanistan wanted to end the way in which the Americans sub-contracted major parts of their aid program to "doubtful contractors." He was also concerned that many of the private security companies were little more than "criminal organizations." The same applied to some of the transport companies used by the U.S.; it had become apparent to Karzai that the transport companies were responsible for much of the insecurity on the highways, in order to extract higher fees and insurance payments from the Americans.

Karzai also tells Miliband that he's leery about the United States dispatching more soldiers to his country:

Karzai emphasized that more U.S. troops were not the answer. He hoped the Americans would consult the Afghan Government before sending more troops. Karzai said that the U.S. had failed to send the troops for which Karzai had asked in 2002, but now it might be too late.

Miliband brings up the inevitable question of how all of this ends, and according to the cable suggests that "reconciliation" -- presumably with the Taliban -- "subject to strict conditions, would obviously be part of that."

Karzai agreed, saying that he had consulted "the whole Afghan people," and they were all in favor of reconciliation. They wanted to "bring over the good guys, while excluding the bad guys." Karzai realizes that the U.S., Russia and Iran had doubts about reconciliation, but this was something that the Afghan people wanted, and which he was bound to press ahead.

The U.S. government has justifiably taken a lot of heat for its relative silence regarding -- and occasional complicity in -- the human rights abuses committed by Hosni Mubarak's regime in Egypt. But it's worth highlighting an exception in a recently WikiLeaked November 2008 cable from the U.S. Embassy in Cairo, signed by Amb. Margaret Scobey, in which American diplomats did the right thing -- while Silicon Valley played it safe.

The cable concerns an Egyptian blogger whose name is redacted in the document, but who CNET thinks is most likely Wael Abbas, a celebrated dissident journalist whose efforts to distribute videos of human rights abuses by Egyptian authorities have in one case led to convictions of the perpetrators (and who, incidentally, was arrested on Friday in Cairo, though according to his Twitter feed he's since been released):

Prominent Egyptian blogger XXXXXXXXXXXXX, contacted us November 17 to report that YouTube removed from his website two videos exposing police abuses -- one of Sinai bedouin allegedly shot by police and thrown in a garbage dump during the past week's violence (ref A), and the other of a woman being tortured in a police station.  XXXXXXXXXXXXX told us that YouTube is also preventing XXXXXXXXXXXX from posting new videos, and asked us for assistance in urging YouTube to re-post his removed videos and reinstate his access to uploading new material.  XXXXXXXXXXXXX said XXXXXXXXXXXXXX has tried to contact Google, but has not received a response.

The cable notes that the same thing happened to the blogger the previous year -- which again suggests that the blogger in question is Abbas, who had his YouTube access restored in December 2007 after getting kicked off for posting videos of Egyptian police brutality. At the time, YouTube explained in a statement that the company's general policy banned videos depicting graphic violence, but that "Having reviewed the case, we have restored the account of Egyptian blogger Wael Abbas -- and if he chooses to upload the video again with sufficient context so that users can understand his important message we will of course leave it on the site."

While the incident was widely reported at the time, there was no mention of any involvement of the State Department in YouTube's decision. But the 2008 cable notes:

In December 2007, DRL [State's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor] and Embassy Cairo worked to convince Google [which owns YouTube] to restore XXXXXXXXXXXXX' YouTube access after a similar incident. We believe that a similar Department intervention with Google representatives could help in restoring XXXXXXXXXXXXX' access again. XXXXXXXXXXXXis an influential blogger and human rights activist, and we want to do everything we can to assist him in exposing police abuse.

A YouTube spokeswoman wouldn't confirm or deny the cable's account of the two incidents, saying in an emailed statement that "In order to protect the privacy of our users, we do not comment on actions taken on individual videos or accounts."

As WikiLeaks' media partners (official and otherwise) have multiplied, it's gotten harder to follow what are and aren't new revelations in the U.S. State Department cables; even some of the media outlets seem confused. Take Britain's Daily Telegraph, which has a big headline today detailing a scoop from an ostensibly new batch of cables detailing the British government's behind-the-scenes discussions of the release of Pan Am Flight 103 bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. The Telegraph flags an October 2008 cable in which a British Foreign Office minister advises the Libyan government on how to request the compassionate release of Megrahi, who had recently been diagnosed with inoperable cancer.

Interesting stuff -- enough so that the Guardian published the cable and wrote about it early last month.

THE CABLES

AMERICAS

U.S. officials worried about the return to Haiti of Jean-Claude "Baby-Doc" Duvalier back in 2006. (Duvalier returned to the country this week.)

Guatemalan President Álvaro Colom doesn't think Rigoberta Menchú exists.

EUROPE/CAUCASUS

BP's top Russia executive has his doubts about the survival of the company's partnership with Russian oil firm Rosneft.

MIDDLE EAST

Turkey allowed the United States to use one of its airbases for rendition flights.

Condoleezza Rice wanted U.S. diplomats in the Middle East to gather intelligence on Israeli communications technology and Palestinian leaders.

American diplomats were ambivalent about deposed Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, and alarmed by the growing opposition to him.

U.S. diplomats in Turkey fretted about a military backlash after the arrest of several officers in an alleged coup plot last year.

THE NEWS

Julian Assange is planning to release details on 2,000 offshore bank accounts, which he says contain evidence of serious tax evasion and money laundering. Swiss authorities are now mulling filing related charges against his source, former Swiss Banker Rudolf Elmer, who was already found guilty on Wednesday of breaking other banking secrecy laws.

Alleged Assange source Pfc. Bradley Manning is placed on suicide watch; his lawyer says he's being mistreated at the Marine Corps jail.

The State Department has made a big deal about the havoc caused by WikiLeaks, but privately officials tell congressional staffers the leaks were "embarrassing but not damaging."

Assange still has a lot of supporters in his home country of Australia.

Assange is slated to get the Hollywood treatment. (The FP newsroom votes for this guy.)

The Pentagon wants U.S. military personnel to get rid of any WikiLeaks files they might have on their computers.

Russian WikiLeaks knockoff RuLeaks posts pictures of Vladimir Putin's Black Sea estate.

French lawyers are using WikiLeaks cables to argue for the acquittal of five Guantánamo detainees.

Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt says that Assange's extradition is a judicial matter, and that his government won't be involved in the decision.

An investigative firm alleges WikiLeaks skims documents off of file-sharing networks.

Zimbabwe's attorney general is considering pursuing treason charges against more government officials based on WikiLeaks cables.

WikiLeaks volunteer Jacob Applebaum is detained at an airport again.

A German CEO is out of a job after calling Europe's multi-billion-dollar Galileo satellite system (on which his company was working) a "stupid idea" in a WikiLeaked cable. (If you're keeping track, this is officially the first time WikiLeaks has caused trouble in space.)

Libya's Muammar al-Qaddafi is not a WikiLeaks fan, and blames the site for the fall of Tunisian strongman Ben Ali. (The State Department disagrees.)

THE BIG PICTURE

WikiLeaks was supposed to have extensive safeguards for its whistleblowers -- so why are so many of them ending up in jail?

What the WikiLeaks cables tell us about Iran's nuclear ambitions.

The Tunisian uprising wasn't a WikiLeaks revolution, but it does help us understand how technology can and can't help spread democracy.

At last, someone thought to ask Miss America what she thinks about WikiLeaks.

Has Cablegate claimed its first State Department scalp? McClatchy's Warren P. Strobel reports:

In what appears to be the first diplomatic casualty from the latest WikiLeaks revelations, the U.S. ambassador to Libya has returned to Washington and is likely to leave his post, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

Ambassador Gene Cretz (above), who had held the post since 2008, signed a handful of cables about the health and personal eccentricities of Muammar al-Gaddafi which were among the first and most high-profile State Department documents published by WikiLeaks. The most notorious among them (which was high-profile enough to make it into a Saturday Night Live skit) noted that Qaddafi "relies heavily" on a Ukrainian nurse, "who has been described as a ‘voluptuous blonde.'"

Strobel reports that even if Cretz's recall was not entirely WikiLeaks related, the scandal apparently had a lot to do with it:

A senior State Department official said that the WikiLeaks revelations were not the only reason for Cretz's return, noting the frustrations of U.S.-Libyan ties.

"It's a complicated relationship, and WikiLeaks just added to that complication," said the official, who requested anonymity because no announcement has been made on Cretz's status.

Cretz was the first U.S. ambassador dispatched to Libya since his predecessor was withdrawn in 1972, three years after Gaddafi took power in a coup. Where Cretz is headed next hasn't been announced.

THE CABLES

AFRICA

The last days of a Guinean strongman and his allegedly drug-trafficking son -- and a curious cocaine bust bait-and-switch.

Another day, another cable about alleged central-African multi-million-dollar embezzlement -- this time in Gabon.

AMERICAS

The Obama administration dispatches a Florida senator to urge Spanish judge Baltasar Garzon not to pursue a torture case against Bush administration officials.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency quietly evolves into an international intelligence agency.

How a Brazilian who once kidnapped a U.S. ambassador managed to get into the United States.

McDonald's tries to muck up a free trade agreement in El Salvador.

The Jamaican government warned U.S. officials that extraditing a local drug lord would lead to trouble.

ASIA/PACIFIC

Britain trains a "government death squad" in Bangladesh.

Did Britain try to cheat Mauritius out of an island chain?

EUROPE/CAUCASUS

Inside Russia's awful prisons.

Shell thinks that Ireland could become a booming offshore gas supplier -- or not.

MIDDLE EAST

More U.S. complaints about Egypt's lackluster military.

Behind the scenes of an assassination in Dubai.

THE NEWS

Julian Assange claims (dubiously) to have the names of CIA moles in Arab governments.

Assange signs a memoir deal worth an estimated $1.7 million -- but his estranged former spokesman Daniel Domscheit-Berg (who spoke at a hacker conference this week) will be on bookshelves first.

The FBI pays back "Operation Payback" over PayPal attack.

The Cuban government is translating and publishing the Cuba-related WikiLeaked cables -- will it translate all of them?

77 percent of Americans disapprove of WikiLeaks' cable release.

Did WikiLeaks dash Zimbabwe's hopes for democracy?

Hackers claim to have brought down Zimbabwean government websites in retaliation for a WikiLeaks-related lawsuit against a Harare newspaper.

Assange falls out with his longtime confidants at the Guardian. Bianca Jagger is somehow involved.

THE BIG PICTURE

Daniel Ellsberg lawyer Floyd Abrams says Assange is no Daniel Ellsberg.

Salon's Glenn Greenwald goes to war with Wired over chat logs from Assange source Bradley Manning. (More here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and basically everywhere else on the Internet.)

HaikuLeaks adds to the proliferating genre of WikiLeaks-related verse. (English poetry buffs: this domain is still available.)

On Thursday, Julian Assange told reporters that WikiLeaks would be releasing State Department cables concerning the assassination of Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai in January, and he has made good on the promise with a couple of short dispatches from the U.S. embassy in Abu Dhabi. They don't offer any more insight into the still-unsolved killing, but they do paint a picture of the diplomatic conundrum the incident posed for the United Emirates and the United States.

Mabhouh, a Hamas military commander who had orchestrated the kidnapping and killing of two Israeli soldiers and was suspected of smuggling arms into the Gaza Strip, died in his room at the Al Bustan Rotana hotel in Dubai on Jan. 19, after being injected with the muscle relaxant succinylcholine and then suffocated. Although Israel has denied it won't confirm or deny it, the list of people who don't believe that Mossad agents did the job is vanishingly short. The hit squad had deftly plotted and executed the assassination, using encrypted cell phones and passports from half a dozen countries, and quickly scattered themselves from Hong Kong to Paris once their work was done. Their one mistake, however, was a big one: failing to account for the hotel's CCTV cameras, which caught their faces on tape.

The story was first reported 10 days later by Reuters, and as it happened, U.S. Ambassador Richard Olson was at a social event with UAE Foreign Minister Abdullah bin Zayed when it broke, according to one of the two embassy cables, signed by Olson. An unnamed UAE media advisor, Olson reports in the Jan. 31 cable, "after making a few calls reported back that the UAE's public posture was being discussed between Dubai Ruler Mohammed bin Rashid and Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed. The two options discussed were to say nothing at all, or to reveal more or less the full extent of the UAE's investigations."

The UAE was no friend of Hamas -- the emirate's discontent with Hamas patron Iran is a recurring theme in the WikiLeaks corpus -- but its government was, of course, not exactly eager to be seen as enabling an Israeli incursion on the sovereignty of an Arab state, either. The cable describes the UAE officials' reasoning, and decision:

Saying nothing would have been perceived as protecting the Israelis and in the end, the UAE chose to tell all. The statement was carefully drafted not to point any fingers, but the reference in the document (see below) to a gang with western passports will be read locally as referring to the Mossad.

American officials had their own decision to make about where their loyalties were -- one documented in the second cable, signed by Olson deputy Doug Greene, several weeks later. Greene reports that UAE officials requested the embassy's help in acquiring account data for credit cards, issued by a bank in Iowa, that investigators had linked to suspects in the assassination. The request was apparently turned down, and as Haaretz reports, the State Department denied at the time that any requests had been made. "By not accepting the request," Haaretz's Yossi Melman writes, "the Obama administration harmed the Dubai investigation efforts and assisted Israel instead." The U.S. government did eventually assist in the investigation, however, identifying American companies that may have been used to finance the operation.