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Wikileaks has released the now declassified record of State Dept. dating from President Jimmy Carter’s first year in office, which were obtained through FOIA requests. The Carter Library had also released earlier this year a range of administration documents, but Wikileaks makes them searchable through its (much-improved) database. The cables cover 1977, including the January bread riots in Cairo and Alexandria. One early take on the protests sounds strikingly similar to the protests seen in 2011-2013:

3 - OUR IMPRESSION IS THAT VIOLENT ELEMENTS WHICH LAST EVENING THREW ROCKS IN TAHRIR SQUARE AND ROAMED IN SMALL GANGS THROUGHOUT CENTRAL CAIRO WERE ALMOST ENTIRELY COMPOSED OF YOUNG BOYS OF HIGH SCHOOL AGE. SIGNIFICANTLY, OLDER PEOPLE DID NOT CONTRIBUTE TO MOST OF VIOLENCE. WE UNDERSTAND, HOWEVER, THAT OLDER WORKERS CONTRIBUTED TO VIOLENCE WHICH ERUPTED IN WORKING CLASS SUBURBS, ESPECIALLY SHUBRA.

4 - SITUATION AT 1030 LOCAL (0830Z) JANUARY 19: WHILE TAHRIR SQUARE STILL CLEAR, THOUSANDS HAVE BEGUN DEMONSTRATE TO NORTH AND EAST, ESPECIALLY NEAR CENTRAL BANK. ROCK THROWING AND PROVOCA- TION OF POLICE ARE PRIMARILY BY MOST YOUTHFUL OF RIOTERS. POLICE CHARGING CROWDS USING TEAR GAS. MOST SHOPS ARE CLOSED AND PRIVATE CARS ARE BEING KEPT OFF STREETS. POLICE HAVE SEALED OFF MOST OF DOWNTOWN CAIRO. ALL UNIVERSITIES AND SCHOOLS ARE CLOSED. MOST BUSES AND TAXIS ARE OFF STREETS. FOR FIRST TIME SINCE DEMONSTRATIONS BEGAN, ARMY UNITS WITH RIFLES ARE SPOTTED THROUGHOUT METROPOLITAN CAIRO AND WE HAVE HEARD LOUD REPORTS WHICH MIGHT BE RIFLE SHOTS. WE HAVE NOT, HOWEVER, SO FAR SEEN CRACK SECURITY RESERVE FORCES.

There are also some amusingly laconic Cold War artifacts, such as the following:

1 - CAIRO PRESS REPORTS THAT KHALID MUHI AL-DIN, LEADER OF EGYPT'S NATIONAL PROGRESSIVE UNIONIST PARTY (MARXIST), HAS LEFT FOR MOSCOW TO ATTEND PEACE COUNCILS MEETING AS HEAD OF EGYPTIAN COUNCIL.

2 - AS NOTED PARA 2 REFTEL, KHALID HAS BEEN DOING WHAT HE CAN BOTH TO BURNISH SOVIET IMAGE HERE AND TO PRESS FOR IMPROVEMENT IN RELATIONS. AS EGYPT'S "RESPECTABLE" COMMUNIST HE HAS KEPT HIS COMMENTS IN CHARACTERISTICALLY LOW KEY. MATTHEWS

Probably worth digging through if you have a specific enquiry about events taking place in 1977. Of course I chose Egypt as a search term but the cables are worldwide. Can't wait till they get to 1979 and those on the Iranian revolution, hostage crisis and siege of Mecca are released.

✚ Trapwire: It's Not the Surveillance, It's the Sleaze | Danger Room

From Wired:

Ever since WikiLeaks began releasing a series of documents about the surveillance system Trapwire, there’s been a panicked outcry over this supposedly all-seeing, revolutionary spy network. In fact, there are any number of companies that say they comb through video feeds or suspicious activity reports in largely the same way that Trapwire claims to do. What’s truly extraordinary about Trapwire was how it was marketed by the private intelligence firm Stratfor, whose internal e-mails WikiLeaks exposed.

The documents show Stratfor being less than straight with its clients, using temporary jobs in government to set up Trapwire contracts, and calling it all a “wet dream.” In their e-mails, executives at Stratfor may have been hyping up a surveillance technology. But what they really did was provide reconnaissance on the $25 billion world of intelligence-for-hire that’s ordinarily hidden from public view. In this case, the sunlight isn’t particularly flattering.

. . .

On Aug. 17 of that year, Stratfor and Trapwire signed a contract (.pdf) giving Burton’s company an 8 percent referral fee for any business they send Trapwire’s way. The essay was partially a sales pitch — a fact that Burton neglected to mention.

When Wikileaks published the Stratfor files, I thought the whole thing was completely overblown and Wikileaks had acted criminally and irresponsibly. (Nuance here: Wikileaks almost always acts criminally, in a strict legal sense, but not always irresponsibly or immorally. I'm overall rather pleased with their release of the Iraq documents and videos, and while their handling of the State Dept. cables could have been better I think it had a net positive effect.) The release of private information was part of the damage here — a relative who subscribed (to the $99-a-year brief service, hardly an evil corporate behemoth) had his credit card details released out on the internet, which was predictably used for fraud. Not to mention the principle that a company like Stratfor, and its employees, have the right to confidentiality (and the duty to protect their data systems better.) But what really stank was the way Wikipedia tried to make an ordinary business and strategic intelligence service sound like SMERSH.

The hyping of Stratfor as an international spy service, which many fools on the web (and some in the media) ate up like candy, was utter bullshit. Stratfor is a publishing company that puts out a mixture of journalism, commentary and analysis within a strategic framework. I'm not at all sold on their intellectual model, which stresses geo-strategic principles rather over ground knowledge, but it's perfectly legitimate. So is using government contacts to get information; it's called cultivating sources.

The above story shows the worse thing Stratfor is guilty of: sleaze. It marketed a product to its customers on commission. I guess Wikileaks revealed that, but if it was a better journalistic enterprise it would have recognized that this was the story worth highlighting, not a fantasy about Stratfor's plans for world domination.

[Via Steve Hynd at the always excellent Agonist]

Update: Liberal Koshari dissents with my take on Wikileaks' criminality:

I fully disagree with an unusually simplistic and inaccurate statement he made in one of his recent posts: 

"Wikileaks almost always acts criminally, in a strict legal sense, but not always irresponsibly or immorally."

Many would disagree, and most conservatives would agree, with the statement above. The legality of Wikileaks activities is extremely complex and a matter of debate as some believe it is protected as a whistleblower intermediary and would argue, like in the Pentagon Papers, the Supreme Court established that the American constitution protects the re-publication of illegally gained information provided the publishers did not themselves break any laws in acquiring it. Back in 2010, publishing those leaked documents was not illegal which is why Senator Joe Lieberman has put forward his proposed SHIELD law (stands for Securing Human Intelligence and Enforcing Lawful Dissemination), which made it a crime to publish leaked classified information if doing so endangered U.S. agents or was otherwise not in the national interest.

Point taken about the ambiguous legality of disseminating documents, but what about the legality of obtaining them? Clearly the many US govt. documents were obtained either through sources that broke the law or military code (i.e. Bradley Manning case) or through hacking which was itself illegal. Ditto for the Syrian email trove — to obtain them, something had to be hacked, surely? Likewise in the Stratfor case, the hacking of the company's servers was criminal. 

Since Wikileaks decided to release all the cables that were inadvertently leaked (or whatever happened), more and more cables featuring yours truly (and friends) have appeared. I particularly like this one which conveniently showcases my analytical acumen and future-prediction abilities:

El-Amrani speculated that if the GOE continues to cut off avenues of legal, non-violent political participation for both the secular opposition and the Muslim Brotherhood, and remains unable to build real popular support for the ruling party, it faces potential crisis if and when an economic dislocation or other shock, including labor unrest, were to occur. El-Amrani noted that he and other independent analysts have increasingly begun to wonder if an event like the 1952 riots1, which precipitated the Free Officers coup d’etat, might be on the horizon. 

To be honest, it was an opinion many voiced at the time of the disastrously anti-democratic 2007 constitutional amendments, during which this cable was written. But it’s nice to see one being quoted for record.

---

1. The January 1952 Cairo riots presaged the Free Officers’ coup that came six months later.  ↩

A bunch of new Wikileaks State Dept. cables about the Middle East have been released in the last few days, and to my surprise several friends have informed me that I appear in at least two. I now feel like a minor historical character.

In one 2005 cable I appear in my capacity as one of the editors of the short-lived Cairo Magazine. I'm somewhat surprised that the difficulties that the magazine had with the authorities merited their own cable, but apparently in the context of the Bush administration push for reform in Egypt in 2005, it makes more sense.

The offending coverDespite its small circulation, Cairo Magazine tackles controversial issues in a professional manner that meets international standards. Cairo Magazine Managing Editor Issandr El Amrani told PA officer on June 4 that the June 2 edition of the magazine could not be distributed, since the Ministry of Information (MOI) had not granted it permission to do so. El Amrani reported that the MOI appeared to object to the edition's referendum coverage, which included photos of National Democratic Party (NDP) supporters assaulting opposition demonstrators.

The June 2 edition's cover, entitled "Amendment Approved," carries a photo of two men fighting. The article in question, "The Day the Gloves Came Off," leads with the subheading "The violence of the referendum is a bad omen for the upcoming elections" and blamed NDP supporters for the violence: "According to witnesses and journalists. the responsibility for the violence rested on the people carrying the pro-government banners. NDP counter- demonstrations formed up in front of the Kifaya demonstration and then, once security moved out of the way to let them through, attacked the Kifaya members."

The magazine was initially given to the MOI for approval on June 1, but on June 2 an MOI official said it would need to be sent to Information Minister Anas El Fekki for his clearance. No further explanation was offered. When approval to distribute was granted late in the evening on June 5, no explanation for the delay was given.  "It seems like it was their way of flexing some muscle with us," El Amrani told PA officer on June 6.

I have no recollection of that conversation but those were busy days. If you're interested in the way we dealt with censorship back then, read on. The magazine closed at the end of the year because of repeated similar problems and the pullout of the main funder. The staff did not want to continue the magazine by going into debt, a difficult experience we had at the Cairo Times previously. I've always felt that although Cairo was in many respects marginal in the Egyptian debate, since it was in English, its reporting on the watershed year of 2005 and the fact that it was created at the beginning of an opening and closed at its end was quite telling of the wider picture. Mubarak opened up under US pressure, and then quickly retreated when that pressure faltered. It's an open question whether the 2005 opening bought him time or, on the contrary, bought enough room to create the seeds of what would end up as the January 25 uprising. Probably the latter.

The second cable in which I (and this website) appear is more puzzling. It's a laundry list of democracy-promotion initiatives the Cairo Embassy is engaged in, among which:

The Ambassador and other Embassy officers regularly meet with leading civil society activists and liberal intellectuals such as Saad Eddin Ibrahim, Osama al Ghazali Harb, Tarek Heggy, Hisham Qassem, Ghada Shabandar, Hala Mustafa, and Bahia Al Din Ibrachy. We also meet leading activist bloggers; Issandr El-Amrani (arabist.net) has twice been a guest in the Ambassador's residence.

I can confirm: The ambassador's receptions are noted in society for their most exquisite taste that captivate his guests. In fact I did have conversations about US-Egypt relations and Egyptian politics with several ambassadors, as other bloggers have. Can't say it made a big difference, but then neither the Bush nor the Obama administration really ever had a coherent stragegy for democracy promotion in Egypt: they complained about abuses but never wanted to even threaten cutting military aid. The diplomats in Cairo were mostly trapped by the competing agendas and bureaucratic turf wars in Washington, since they had to reconcile the desire to maintain good relations with Egyptian officials and the much-fangled Freedom Agenda policy. By early 2006 the Freedom Agenda was an empty shell but there were still stakeholders in Washington who pretended otherwise, or for whom (like the neocons and pro-Israel congressmen) for whom it was a convenient stick to hit Cairo with when they had problems with its policy towards Gaza.

The irony here is that the "activist blogger" in question is not Egyptian — in fact he's an American quite angry with his own government. The list of other people (pretty much all center-right liberals) is also hardly representative of Egyptian civil society.

The website is also mentioned here and here in surveys of public reactions to events. It's nice to be appreciated, so do keep on reading, embassy staff. I look forward to reading your work too.

There sure are a lot of XXXs in this redacted Wikileaks cable, citing an Egyptian parliamentarian's speculation that Minister of Defense Hussein Tantawi and Director of Intelligence Omar Suleiman might thwart Gamal Mubarak from succeeding his father, back from 2007:

--------------------------------------- 

XXXXXXXXXXXX

--------------------------------------- 

 

¶6. (C) XXXXXXXXXXXX noted that hisXXXXXXXXXXXX (per ref B, a 

XXXXXXXXXXXX), is XXXXXXXXXXXX at the XXXXXXXXXXXX, due to what XXXXXXXXXXXX termed the continuing XXXXXXXXXXXX.  According to XXXXXXXXXXXX, MinDef Tantawi called him XXXXXXXXXXXX to ensure that XXXXXXXXXXXX was satisfied as to how XXXXXXXXXXXX was being XXXXXXXXXXXX.  XXXXXXXXXXXX said he engaged XXXXXXXXXXXX with XXXXXXXXXXXX, asking him to help get XXXXXXXXXXXX, as he has already XXXXXXXXXXXX and 

"XXXXXXXXXXXX"  XXXXXXXXXXXX allegedly checked with XXXXXXXXXXXX, 

then replied that XXXXXXXXXXXX cannot be XXXXXXXXXXXX before he XXXXXXXXXXXX, as, "we are under terrible foreign pressure to XXXXXXXXXXXX, so cannot XXXXXXXXXXXX, as they will 

then criticize us for not XXXXXXXXXXXX too."  XXXXXXXXXXXX subsequent suggestion to XXXXXXXXXXXX both XXXXXXXXXXXX and XXXXXXXXXXXX went unheeded.  However, XXXXXXXXXXXX allegedly told XXXXXXXXXXXX that he had instructed XXXXXXXXXXXX to not 

undertake any procedures to divest XXXXXXXXXXXX of his XXXXXXXXXXXX; XXXXXXXXXXXX

therefore believes XXXXXXXXXXXX will be able to re-assume XXXXXXXXXXXX 

 

¶7. (S) Comment: While XXXXXXXXXXXX is a useful interlocutor and a 

well-placed parliamentarian, we stress that he is the only 

Embassy contact to date who has raised with us the spectre of 

a post-Mubarak military coup.  While discussion of 

presidential succession is a favorite parlor game in Cairo 

salons, hypothesizing about the acutely sensitive topic of a 

coup is certainly not regularly undertaken in Egyptian 

circles.