Tsvangirai cable. Thursday, 24 December 2009, 08:26C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 02 HARARE 001004 SIPDIS DEPT FOR ASSISTANT SECRETARY CARSON, DAS PAGE, AND AF/S NSC FOR SENIOR AFRICA DIRECTOR MICHELLE GAVIN EO 12958 DECL: 12/24/2019 TAGS PREL, PGOV, PHUM, ASEC, ZI SUBJECT: TSVANGIRAI ASKS THE WEST FOR HELP ON CHANGING THE STATUS QUOREF: HARARE 987Classified By: AMBASSADOR CHARLES A. RAY FOR REASONS 1.4 B,D 1. (SBU) This cable includes an ACTION REQUEST, please see paragraph 8. 2. (C) SUMMARY: Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai said that while there was tremendous progress in 2009 as compared to 2008, Zimbabwe and its coalition government still faces challenges.
Reforms must be implemented quickly, and there has been some progress, though none that affects the ZANU-PF power structure. Implementation of the Global Political Agreement (GPA) has been slow and Mugabe has been using delay to maintain control. 3. 4. 5. 2010, using a multilateral approach involving all parties here and SADC. 6. 7. 8. Tsvangirai faces possible treason charge. Zimbabwe is to investigate bringing treason charges against the prime minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, and other individuals over confidential talks with US diplomats revealed by WikiLeaks.
Johannes Tomana, the attorney general, said he would appoint a commission of five lawyers to examine whether recent disclosures in leaked US embassy cables amount to a breach of the constitution. A cable dated 24 December 2009 suggested Tsvangirai privately insisted sanctions "must be kept in place". High treason in Zimbabwe can result in the death penalty. Tomana told the state-owned Herald newspaper: "With immediate effect, I am going to instruct a team of practising lawyers to look into the issues that arise from the WikiLeaks.
"The WikiLeaks appear to show a treasonous collusion between local Zimbabweans and the aggressive international world, particularly the United States. " Defenders of Tsvangirai might note that, in the same US cable, he is described as asking for some "flexibility" in sanctions. WikiLeaks' collateral damage. When WikiLeaks whistleblowers began circulating in April footage of a 2007 Iraq war incursion in which US military personnel unwittingly killed two war correspondents and several civilians, the international community was aghast at the apparent murder. With sobering questions on the material's full context largely falling on deaf ears, the group was free to editorialise the scene as it pleased: "collateral murder". But now, with the recent release of sensitive diplomatic cables, WikiLeaks may have committed its own collateral murder, upending the precarious balance of power in a fragile African state and signing the death warrant of its pro-western premier [see also: Wikileaks, Morgan Tsvangerai and the Guardian].
Zimbabwe's Morgan Tsvangirai's call to public service has been a tortured one, punctuated by death and indignity. His numerous arrests and brushes with death began in 1997, when he emerged as the unlikely face of opposition to President Robert Mugabe. Richardson's Collateral Damage. Submitted by x7o on Tue, 04/01/2011 - 02:57 Today, James Richardson had an opinion and analysis piece published in The Guardian about the fallout in Zimbabwe from the publication of the 09HARARE1004 cable. Information about Morgan Tzvangirai's meetings with US embassy officials was disclosed in the Harare cable, and this will likely be the subject of a politically motivated high treason trial brought against Tzvangirai by Mugabe, the ultimate penalty for which is a death sentence.
It shouldn't be downplayed how serious it is that Tsvangirai might be facing the death penalty. But there are problems with the conclusions that Richardson draws, and they derive from a worrying looseness with the facts. It would surely be unreasonable to claim that merely expressing approval of the sanctions in private meetings with US officials warrants a treason trial. But it is in the apportioning of blame that Richardson reveals a troubling lack of balance in his attitude to Wikileaks. 7. How propaganda poisons. Last week, on January 3, The Guardian published a scathing Op-Ed by James Richardson blaming WikiLeaks for endangering the life of Morgan Tsvangirai, the leader of the democratic opposition in Zimbabwe.
Richardson — a GOP operative, contributor to RedState.com, and a for-hire corporate spokesman — pointed to a cable published by WikiLeaks in which American diplomats revealed that Tsvangirai, while publicly opposing American sanctions on his country, had privately urged their continuation as a means of weakening the Mugabe regime: an act likely to be deemed to be treasonous in that country, for obvious reasons. By publishing this cable, “WikiLeaks may have committed its own collateral murder,” Richardson wrote. He added: ”WikiLeaks ought to leave international relations to those who understand it – at least to those who understand the value of a life.” This accusation against WikiLeaks was repeated far and wide. There was just one small problem with all of this: it was totally false. Confusion over WL Timestamp. In response to Glenn Greenwald's coverage of the Wikileaks-Guardian-Tsvangirai controversy and the Guardian's recent retraction, The Atlantic's Max Fisher tweeted an interesting point, which throws into confusion the issue of exactly what time Wikileaks released the 09HARARE1004 cable: Max Fisher:@ggreenwald Not trying to start a fight, but WL time stamp looks to be older than Guardian's?
Jan 12th 2011 and: Max Fisher:@ggreenwald Correct me if I'm wrong, but from these, it looks like WikiLeaks published 21 minutes before the Guardian.4:40PM Jan 12th 2011 Fisher is pointing out that the timestamp in the header of the 09HARARE1004 cable released on the Wikileaks website reads "2010-12-08 21:09" The publication date of The Guardian's version of the cable reads "Wednesday 8 December 2010 21.30 GMT. " This would appear to indicate that Wikileaks published the cable on their website 21 minutes before The Guardian did.
This is, obviously, strange. Is Guardian writing book?? This is a self-congratulatory book by two Guardian journalists about the biggest leak of confidential government information in history brought about by two oddballs, an Australian called Julian Assange and an American serviceman called Bradley Manning. These two characters managed to exploit the incompetence or complacency of the US military establishment by downloading hundreds of thousands of "secret" diplomatic messages onto pen drives and then publishing them on Assange's Wikileaks site and, in edited form, in some of the world's most famous publications, including the Guardian, NYT, Le Monde, Spiegel etc. It certainly was an amazing feat and caused not only lots of problems for the American government but also for the journalists who found themselves confronted with the scoop of scoops. There was so much information available that were they were not only unable to check its veracity but they did not have the resources to filter through it all and make sense of it for readers.
Nick Davies on Sweden. Documents seen by the Guardian reveal for the first time the full details of the allegations of rape and sexual assault that have led to extradition hearings against the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange. The case against Assange, which has been the subject of intense speculation and dispute in mainstream media and on the internet, is laid out in police material held in Stockholm to which the Guardian received unauthorised access. Assange, who was released on bail on Thursday, denies the Swedish allegations and has not formally been charged with any offence. The two Swedish women behind the charges have been accused by his supporters of making malicious complaints or being "honeytraps" in a wider conspiracy to discredit him. Assange's UK lawyer, Mark Stephens, attributed the allegations to "dark forces", saying: "The honeytrap has been sprung ...
The allegations centre on a 10-day period after Assange flew into Stockholm on Wednesday 11 August. Assange left the lunch with Miss W. Reply Bianca Jagger. What was missing in "10 days in Sweden: the full allegations against Julian Assange"(The Guardian, Nick Davies, 17 December 2010): I was surprised to read the article, "10 days in Sweden: the full allegations against Julian Assange" because I hold the Guardian in high esteem and I cannot fathom why such a credible publication would publish a prejudiced and unfair article. I object to the Guardian's decision to publish selective passages from the Swedish police report, whilst omitting exculpatory evidence contained in the document. Julian Assange has the right to a fair and impartial trial in a court of justice; instead, in denial of due process, he is being subjected to a 'trial by newspapers,' in an effort to discredit him. This tactic is not new. As Justice Felix Frankfurter said in 1961, 'inflammatory' news stories that prejudice justice are 'too often' published.
It is deplorable the Swedish police files have been given unlawfully to the Guardian and other newspapers. Mr. Rebuttal Nick Davies. Bianca Jagger last week launched a fierce attack on the Guardian for carrying my story about the evidence collected by Swedish police who have been investigating the claims of sexual assault by the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange. At the heart of her attack is a repeated claim that we failed to publish exculpatory evidence contained in the police file. Those who have read her piece will have noticed that she does not cite one single example of this missing information. There are two reasons for this. First, she does not know what is in that police file, because she has not read it. Second, if she had, she would know that her claim is simply not true. The Guardian went out of their way to include exculpatory material, not just from the police file but also from previous comments made by Assange and his lawyers.
I am not going to serve up that source's identity to satisfy Jagger's temper. Assange's UK lawyer tried very hard to persuade us to suppress the file. Jagger: Response to N. Davies. In 'Trial by Newspaper,' which I wrote in response to Nick Davies' article, '10 Days in Sweden: the full allegations against Julian Assange' (Guardian, 17 December, 2010) I objected to the Guardian's decision to publish selective passages from the Swedish police report, whilst omitting exculpatory evidence contained in the document. I am concerned that Julian Assange was subjected to a 'trial by newspaper,' in Davies' article, jeopardizing his chance for a fair and impartial trial in a court of justice, in violation of due process.
The Guardian refused to publish my piece, without heavy editing, so I chose to publish it in the Huffington Post. In Davies' response, 'Lets Clear the Air of Misinformation,' he defended the Guardian's decision to publish his biased article, arguing that they were justified in publishing the selected excerpts of the leaked police report, in the same way WikiLeaks was justified in publishing the Afghan and Iraqi war logs, and the leaked diplomatic cables. Reply from WLCentral. Today, Huffington Post published an article by Nick Davies, from the Guardian, in response to Bianca Jagger's Huffpost article.
Jagger had been critical of Davies' role in the publication in The Guardian of the details from the police investigation report on the allegations against Julian Assange. In his article today, Davies states that the publication of the details from the police report served the purpose of balancing out baseless speculation about the Swedish investigation. He claims it was necessary in particular to counterbalance a campaign of misinformation on the part of Wikileaks, and Julian Assange. This is very misleading. The substance of the claim is laid out below. From Nick Davies: The Julian Assange Investigation -- Let's Clear the Air of Misinformation: Jagger calls this 'trial by media'. And by publishing our story, we achieved something: Julian Assange was forced to admit, in interviews with the London Times and with the BBC, that there is no evidence of a honeytrap.
J.A's Deal With Devil (I. Shamir) In Part One of my report last weekend here on the CounterPunch site I showed that the US was secretly funnelling money into Belarus to fund the unelected opposition. Previously, the claim had been routinely denied. Now we have sterling proof. It is engraved in a confidential cable from a US Embassy to the State Department. It is undeniable. That is, if you found the cable and were able to understand it. And you happened to understand the political background of the cable. The cables are raw data. The main job of a newspaper or news website is to process raw data and transmit it to a reader. That is why Julian Assange chose to partner with a few important Western liberal newspapers of the mainstream media. For instance, if they plan to attack Afghanistan, the hardline Fox News would simply demand a high-profile strike against the sand rats, while the liberal Guardian would publish a Polly Toynbee piece bewailing the bitter fate of Afghani women.
This will be done in two ways. Comment from WLCentral. Israel Shamir, the subject of some controversy in a recent Guardian piece has published an interesting article at Counterpunch, which not only tries to address many of the concerns raised in the Guardian, but takes the battle to the Guardian, and takes up the cause of Wikileaks quite forcefully. The piece is very interesting, for a number of reasons. It provides new developments in the Shamir-Wikileaks story. Shamir claims to have no official or professional relationship with Wikileaks. He also points out a pre-publication page on Amazon that may or may not indicate that the Guardian is preparing a book on Wikileaks called "The Rise and Fall of Wikileaks. " Shamir alleges that the Guardian is engaged in a smear campaign against Assange in anticipation of this "fall. " Certainly, over the last week, we at WL Central have had the opportunity to catch The Guardian falling short of what one might expect of an exemplary journalistic publication.
One of Shamir's final comments is timely. WikiLeaks and Israel Shamir (Brown) WikiLeaks's spokesperson and conduit in Russia has been exposed in the Swedish media as an anti-semite and Holocaust denier; his son, who represents the organisation in Sweden and is handing out stories to selected papers there, has been involved in an earlier scandal where a story he wrote about the supposed Israeli control of Swedish media was withdrawn after several of the people in it complained of being misquoted.
While this does not affect the credibility of the WikiLeaks revelations, it does raise uncomfortable questions for the whistleblowers' organisation.The two men involved are Israel Shamir, a Jew who has converted to Orthodox Christianity and passionate antisemitism, and his son Johannes Wahlström. Shamir was listed as a co-author of a story in Counterpunch, which suggested that the woman who brought a complaint of rape against Julian Assange was a CIA plant. But he has a longer and stranger past than this would suggest. There, for the moment, the story rests.