Wikileaks. Truth versus trust

I tried to access Wikileaks but wasn’t able to. So, I Googled it. I soon learned that according to Peter Svensson’s AP article, Wikileaks claims to be inaccessible due to massive denial of service attacks. I also learned that the website was a dot.org instead of a dot.com. Armed with this knowledge, I had no trouble accessing its website. However, I can’t access all of it, or its more recent pages.

Perhaps Wikileaks is under cyberattack, or perhaps there’s another reason why it can’t be accessed. You can’t believe everything you read on the internet, hence the name of this blog.

Espionage writer, Eric Ambler, discusses what might happen if an obscure, right-wing, weekly newsletter were to begin publishing classified information. In his novel, “The Intercom Conspiracy,” Ambler treats the topic humorously. He could not have envisioned that something like this could happen in real-life, or the extent to which classified information would be leaked.

Some the diplomatic cables that Wikileaks shared with the world contain a good bit of humor, but not for those world leaders who are butts of the jokes. As Ronald Neumann said on NPR this morning, if a man tells his wife something unflattering about her mother, and she passes it on, than he will be very uncomfortable the next time he faces his mother-in-law.

Truth is a good thing, but trust is even better. How will America fare in a world that perceives its diplomats can’t be trusted?