WASHINGTON: The United States is planning a major reshuffle of diplomats, military officers and intelligence operatives who have been compromised by the WikiLeaks scandal, a report said Sunday.
US news website The Daily Beast wrote that the WikiLeaks disclosures may have made it “dangerous” if not impossible for those found to have been strongly critical of corrupt or incompetent governments to do their job.
“We’re going to have to pull out some of our best people… because they dared to report back the truth about the nations in which they serve,” a senior US national security official told the website.
Planning is in its infancy but the State Department, the Pentagon, and the CIA are working on the assumption they will be changing personnel at several US embassies and consulates in the coming months, the report said. Asked by AFP to comment on reports of a shake-up, State Department spokeswoman Leslie Phillips said: “We would if we needed to,” without elaborating further.
Senior Democratic Senator John Kerry also hinted at staffing changes as a result of the WikiLeaks disclosures. “I can’t tell you, but it’s possible that at some places, people are going to say they can’t work with them. And I’ll say that quietly and behind the scenes,” he told NBC’s Meet the Press.
WikiLeaks threw US diplomacy into chaos one week ago when it started releasing more than 250,000 classified State Department cables. On Sunday a former ambassador to Iraq and Afghanistan said the current US ambassador to Kabul Karl Eikenberry should be replaced, after cables detailed harsh assessments of President Hamid Karzai and other senior officials.
“He’s doing a good job… but I think he’s no longer an effective interlocutor due to the leaks,” Zalmay Khalilzad told ABC’s This Week. “If we want to deal with the issue of partnership with the government of Afghanistan, if we want to deal with the issue of domestic politics effectively, of capitalizing cooperation, we would need to have a new team.”
Deputies from one of Germany’s governing parties last week urged Washington to sack its ambassador over cables in which he and other diplomats deride top German officials, but the government did not ask for his recall. US lawmakers on other Sunday talk shows continued to go after WikiLeaks head Julian Assange, who top Senate Republican Mitch McConnell called a “high-tech terrorist.”
“He has done enormous damage to our country. And I think he needs to be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. And if that becomes a problem, we need to change the law,” McConnell told Meet the Press.
