President Trump has done not just his own country but the rest of the world’s democracies a favour by ensuring transparency in the working of USAID. – Dr. M.D. Nalapat
Where the release of confidential documents on the part of US citizen Corporal Bradley Manning (now Chelsea Manning) in 2010 was concerned, the act was a crime. Manning had sworn an oath to defend his country, including protecting secrets which passed through his hands on US operations in Iraq. Over time, he copied and compiled them and gave access to the trove to Julian Assange, who publicized much of it on WikiLeaks. Not US security systems but a computer hacker, Adrian Lamo, got informed of the data breach when Manning in a fit of candour confessed the same to him which he promptly reported to US authorities. We do not know if any reward was asked for or paid to the informant. Why a junior enlisted man was given access to so much sensitive data with security ramifications is an error of procedure by the confidentiality systems in the US armed forces. The trove illegally obtained by Manning contained over 250,000 diplomatic cables and over 90,000 armed forces messages about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Led by Julian Assange, WikiLeaks made much of the trove public, to shock and dismay across the world at the magnitude of the human cost of some of the operations of the US armed forces.
As a consequence of the leak of such information on military operations, Al Qaeda, ISIS and other ultra-Wahhabi groups committed to violence against those who disagreed with their destructive views attracted fresh recruits to their ignoble cause. Several Iraqis and Afghans were outed as working for the US military, and several of them and their families paid with their lives as a consequence. Assange was not a US but an Australian national who had no obligation to protect US military secrets in the way Manning had. He reported the facts, the way a journalist was expected to do. Rewind back to the leak of the McNamara-ordered Pentagon Papers despite an oath of secrecy by Daniel Ellsberg in 1971. He was charged in January 1973, but because of reasons unrelated to his case that pertained to the misdeeds of some in the Nixon administration, Ellsberg was released from all charges in July 1973 itself by Judge William Byerns. The Washington Post and later The New York Times carried excerpts of the Pentagon Papers, but were treated lightly by the Nixon Administration. Ellsberg by his action became a hero of the liberals because he had the good fortune of the US having a Republican administration at the time. Assange was unlucky. The US President was “Civil Libertarian” and Nobel Peace Prizeman Barack Obama, who hounded Assange mercilessly, essentially for repeating with the Manning leaks what The Washington Post and The New York Times had earlier done with the Ellsberg leaks.
Judging by coverage of the Assange case by the same outlets that had published the Pentagon Papers, it would appear that what was wrong for a Republican administration in 1971 was fine for a Democratic administration. The punishment meted out to Assange was incomparably worse than the merest slap that was sought to be administered on the wrist to newspapers carrying excerpts from the Pentagon Papers by the Nixon administration in earlier days.
In 2013, while the Obama administration was still in office, Edward Snowden released information that he had made an official oath to keep secret. The leaked documents contained details of illegal wiretapping of data from US citizens, illegal because such intrusion into the privacy of a US citizen absent a special court permission was not legal. In the process of ensuring through his leaks that the National Security Agency was prevented from breaking US law, Snowden also released information that potentially had a crippling effect on several US covert operations abroad., Not to mention putting at risk the identities of informants whose names got revealed, as had happened during the Manning leaks of secret cables as well. Unlike Assange, who had remained in his home country, Snowden escaped to Hong Kong and from there to Moscow so as to avoid what he knew was likely to be the same hell in detention as Manning had undergone before his pardon by, of all people, President Obama. Subsequently, he formally switched his allegiance to a foreign power by becoming a Russian citizen. By his actions, Snowden damaged the national security interests of the US. Civil libertarians called for his pardon, a benefit of which would be that once back in the US, the extent of the information leak could be ascertained, besides input on what is taking place in China and Russia. Edward Snowden was disloyal to his country, but arguably not to any other country, including India.
This columnist had always felt that a pardon for Snowden would have been valuable for the reasons enumerated earlier, but that became complicated once he changed loyalties through acceptance of Russian citizenship in 2022. Although she braved hostile questioning not only from Democratic but Republican Senators about Snowden, Tulsi Gabbard was correct in her stand that only the courts could determine whether he was a traitor or not. In effect, she agreed with that description by saying that Snowden broke US law. The law, if broken, renders a US national guilty of the charge of betraying the national security interests of his country, interests that he was particularly bound to protect through his oath of secrecy.
Trump 2.0 has opened through the powers of the presidency several secrets that are less than flattering to the US Governments of the relevant periods. It is clear that USAID was not an instrument of assistance, as much as it was a weapon of war wielded not against enemy but friendly countries. The role of the Biden administration in replacing the Sheikh Hasina government with a dictatorship under the notional leadership of Nobel Prize winner Yunus who has ensured free reign to genocidal extremists who butcher Hindus, is shameful. Such a crime mirrors what was done in some North African and West Asian countries from 2011 onwards for a few years to non-Wahhabis. Not to forget Ukraine, where pogroms took place against Russian-speaking citizens in 2014, a common link between both crises being Hillary Clinton. This writer stands by his 2017 view that Hillary Clinton should not be prosecuted and sent to prison, for that would make her a hero. Instead, what is called for is to bring to light details about the activities of Hillary Clinton, especially when she was Secretary of State under a pliant President Obama. Naming and shaming the Clintons through releasing a laundry list of their dealings with foreign interests would in effect be a life sentence. Her parents have made it impossible for Chelsea Clinton to succeed in politics, numerous though her qualities for the same appear to be many.
Even as President Biden was smiling away at Prime Minister Modi, elements in his administration were seeking to topple Modi, a task in which they almost succeeded in 2024. Regime change brings misery and chaos, and it is to the discredit of USAID that it was so focused on regime change in democracies. Two-thirds of its funds went towards conducting covert war against the same regimes that the CCP covertly targets. USAID offers assistance to anti-government elements in several democracies. President Trump has done not just his own country but the rest of the democracies a favour by ensuring transparency in the working of USAID. A transparency that self-anointed liberals talked about but never practised while in office. – The Sunday Guardian, 16 February 2025
› Prof. Dr. Madhav Das Nalapat is the UNESCO Peace Chair at Manipal University, and Director of the Department of Geopolitics & International Relations. He writes a regular column for The Sunday Guardian.
Filed under: india, USA | Tagged: donald trump, julian assange, NGOs, politics of aid, USAID | 1 Comment »
