Diplomats still talking smack in the post-WikiLeaks world

When the WikiLeaks CableGate story originally broke, many wondered if it would change the way ambassadors communicated with their home offices. If the case of Fergus Cochrane-Dye, Britain’s high commissioner to Malawi, is indicative, the answer seems to be no.  Malawi is now threatening to expel Cochrane-Dye over comments in a March, 2011 cable were ...

By , a former associate editor at Foreign Policy.

When the WikiLeaks CableGate story originally broke, many wondered if it would change the way ambassadors communicated with their home offices. If the case of Fergus Cochrane-Dye, Britain's high commissioner to Malawi, is indicative, the answer seems to be no. 

When the WikiLeaks CableGate story originally broke, many wondered if it would change the way ambassadors communicated with their home offices. If the case of Fergus Cochrane-Dye, Britain’s high commissioner to Malawi, is indicative, the answer seems to be no. 

Malawi is now threatening to expel Cochrane-Dye over comments in a March, 2011 cable were leaked to the country’s Nation newspaper. The type of remarks in the offending cable should be familiar to WikiLeaked readers:

In the leaked memo to the foreign secretary, William Hague, Cochrane-Dyet said that in Malawi the "governance situation continues to deteriorate in terms of media freedom, freedom of speech and minority rights".

According to the Nation newspaper, which published the correspondence, he said rights activists had reported a campaign of intimidation through threatening anonymous phone calls.

"They seem genuinely afraid," Cochrane-Dyet wrote. "The office of one high-profile activist has allegedly been raided and his house broken into. There are unsubstantiated rumours that the ruling party is forming a youth wing modeled on the Young Pioneers used as a tool of repression during the country’s three-decade dictatorship."

The Foreign Office seems to be sticking by their man: 

"Sir Geoffrey added that if the government of Malawi pursued such action there were likely to be consequences affecting the full range of issues in the bilateral relationship. He urged the Malawian authorities, through the charge d’affaires, not to proceed down such a road."

It’s certainly seems that in the post-WikiLeaks era, diplomats shouldn’t take the confidentiality of cables for granted — even when WikiLeaks itself has nothing to do with it. I can’t imagine that this won’t change the tone and bluntness of these communications going forward.  

Joshua Keating was an associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating

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