Six Months in a Leaky Blog

 Here's a thing. Let me quote it:

SCOOP: I reviewed an internal State Dept memo, parts of which was classified, that included the most extensive and serious to date warnings to Secretary Blinken over Israel’s possible non-compliance with international humanitarian law.

Just so we're clear on this - Hümeyra Pamuk is saying that a source leaked classified information to her. The actual contents of the leak are completely unsurprising. I mean - "NEWSFLASH - Israel is committing war crimes in Gaza" would be considered a joke.

The actual story here - well there's three levels to it, IMO. First - "US Government Analysis is that Israel has committed war crimes". Secondly - "someone with access to very high level State Department docs is leaking them". Lastly, but most importantly - "thus far, the Biden Administration is not rolling out an investigation and massive crackdown on leakers".

First level - Israel is obviously committing war crimes. This is evident to even the stupidest morons. But for many months, the official US position on it was like "nuh-uh, no way!" Which has truly damaged them in some very serious ways. There are just so very many things even specifically related to Gaza that the US has expressed no opinion on but that did not happen with the suggestion that Israel is violating interntaional law. Maybe ignoring it was their intention here - the statement was usually "we have no evidence of Israeli war crimes". But the infinite levels of condescension and smugness coming off the likes of Kirby, Miller, and Blinken meant that this came across as the mere suggestion of blatantly obvious fact was some sort of insult or affront to justice or whatever. That just pointing out things which are obvious to any rational observer was anti-semitism. The assholes on the podium really did pushback on this question  way harder than "we're looking into it" - they just flatly denied easily observable reality.

So the fact that four US bureaus and USAID all recognize that Israel is doing war crimes and violating both international and US laws is not surprising. The news part of it is that they have written these assessments down and delivered those reports to Blinken. They have not been stuck in a "we're looking into it" loop where the reports get delayed so there's nothing in writing. These bureaus have basically said "fuck your plausible deniability - here's evidence of your complicity in writing. Do something about it."

Level two. It's my impression that the Biden Administration has been pretty good at containing leaks. Now this view might be coloured by the last guy where government was so dysfunctional, leaks were commonplace. Just a constant stream of leaked information. Now, Biden did have the weird case of the weirdo who leaked secret military analysis for Minecraft clout, but this is a substantially different kind of leak. Also too, there's the never-ending "leaks" of how Biden is really mad at Netanyahu this time around. Those are different too.

This time - a multi-bureau memo and the USAID assessment. Plus a couple weeks ago, the leak that Blinken was sitting on Leahy Law reports and the leaked cables showing the US lobbying other countries to vote against Palestinian membership to the UN. These are leaks aimed at changing US policy. They are leaked due to disagreement with what the US is doing. It seems to me that this is new. The only other times the US had inconvenient information about their genocide complicity that I remember are the reports of Biden using emergency measures to bypass Congress in sending Israel more bombs. But those weren't leaked - they had to be reported and documented and the press just found those reports. IOW, Blinken had, up until mid-April, been running a tight ship with very few loose lips. And that's now no longer true. That's why I think the leaks happening are actually significant news.

The real kicker though - where's the crackdown? At a minimum, these leaks are highly embarrassing and damaging to Blinken - and they could run all the way up to being evidence of the US knowingly enabling genocide. But no one is out there saying that they need to crackdown on leakers. Investigating the leaks is the reflexive response, and we're not seeing that - at least not yet. And that has really got me wondering why. I want to believe that the bureaucrats have finally had enough and won't participate in genocide anymore and are now actively working to prevent it. I recognize that this is pretty fucking naive, but I'm having trouble thinking of an alternate explanation. So, I'm hopeful that we're finally at the point where staff discontent at senior leadership using them to support genocide is strong enough that the podium shitbags have to stop doing it. That the assholes have to just take these leaks proving them liars and war criminals because acting against it would result in them going to war with their own staff.

It's one thing when the Israeli Foreign Minister accuses the US State Department of being Hamas, but it would be quite another if Anthony Blinken were to do it - even though that's almost certainly what he wants to do right now.