U.S. position on past Philippine corruption

Hundreds of thousands of confidential U.S. State Department documents, containing embarrassing secrets about policy issues or compromising portraits of various dignitaries, in full view of a worldwide audience ― that, in the proverbial nutshell, is the latest and biggest WikiLeaks scandal.

All told, over 250,000 diplomatic cables were downloaded from computers linked to a secure (but not top-level) network, and were acquired by the whistle-blowing WikiLeaks website. The first of a series of releases, beginning this week and coordinated with a handful of leading Western newspapers, including the New York Times and the Guardian, has thrown the international diplomatic community into turmoil.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, under whose watch many of the cables, at least those already released, were written, has condemned the leak and warned about the consequences to U.S. diplomatic initiatives. American senators were among the first to call for a shutdown of WikiLeaks, while some of the feedback coursed online called the release unpatriotic or downright treasonous.

Others have been much more welcoming or even indifferent. Italy's idiosyncratic Silvio Berlusconi laughed off the unflattering reports about him. Editors and columnists involved in the decision to accept the data and vet the information for several months have taken pains not only to defend the releases but to justify them as in keeping with journalism's highest standards. Not least, online feedback seems to be overwhelmingly positive.

Perhaps the most balanced perspective on the controversy thus far was offered by Timothy Garton Ash, the celebrated political journalist who had the opportunity to make several "dives into a vast ocean" of information: "There is a public interest in understanding how the world works and what is done in our name. There is a public interest in the confidential conduct of foreign policy. The two public interests conflict."

In the Philippines' case, however, it seems clear that it is in the highest interest of both the general public and the new administration to discover exactly what U.S. diplomats in the last few years have reported about the country. About 1 percent of the total number of diplomatic cables (quite literally downloaded by a lone U.S. soldier from what was thought to be a secure military network, if the ongoing investigation being conducted by the United States is any guide) pertains to the Philippines. None is available for viewing yet (although data about the cables have already been collated).

Would these cables reveal the Philippine equivalent of Singapore Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew's astute description of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il as a "flabby old chap"? Or the Manila version of the estimate of Israel's Ehud Barak that the window for a military assault on Iran's nuclear facilities was down to six to 18 months? The United States, after all, is still a major presence in the Philippines, not only commercially but militarily. Its soldiers, ostensibly only temporary visitors, have been based in certain parts of the country for several years already.

It would be vital to the Aquino administration to learn, for instance, exactly what the popular U.S. ambassador Kristie Kenney may have reported back to the State Department a couple of years ago, at the height of the corruption scandals that plagued the Arroyo administration. Now that the Visiting Forces Agreement between Manila and Washington is under review, it would be crucial to the Aquino administration to find out whether special arrangements had been entered into, either in the forward deployment of American troops, or the handling of the suspect in the Subic rape case.

But it would also be of great interest to the Filipino people if the cables reveal either insight or information into legal cases involving former president Joseph Estrada, fugitive senator Panfilo Lacson, former president Gloria Arroyo associate Jocelyn Bolante and many others. We may not necessarily find an instance where Philippine sovereignty is brusquely set aside, as easily as a vice president of the republic is insulted by a member of the U.S. Secret Service. But we may hear, for the first time, the real American position on such divisive issues as corruption under the Arroyos or presidential intrigue in the time of Estrada.

If so, it will be worth the wait.

(Philippine Daily Inquirer, Dec. 2)