Wikileaks Greatest Hits: The Venezuelan ambassador's emails [View all]

[struggle4progress]

As millions of fans worldwide cheer the amazing accomplishments of Julian Assange, who recently set a world record sprinting from house arrest in London, it is worthwhile to pause briefly to remember Wikileaks selfless efforts for a better world

And so, today, we bring you yet another delightful historical vignette: the Venezuelan ambassador's emails

But first -- a bit of background!

Our story begins in early August 2007, when a federal customs official (Maria del Lujan Telpuk) at Aeroparque Jorge Newberry in Buenos Aires asked a wealthy Venezuelan ex-pat (Guido Alejandro Antonini Wilson, then living in Miami) to open his suitcase. Wilson had just arrived from Caracas in a Cessna chartered by an Argentine state agency. Opened, the suitcase revealed about $800000 in cash. Wilson forfeited his cash and returned to Florida. An Argentinian official resigned. And the beautiful customs official was featured in Playboy!

And now -- still more background!

The matter largely died down in Latin America. The Bush Justice Department, however, found the matter fascinating. Efforts were made to encourage Wilson to say that he had been transporting cash from Venezuela’s Chavez to support Kirchner’s election in Argentina. This produced counter-efforts to discourage Wilson from saying that. Then Bush’s Justice Department boys sprang their trap and charged several people with being unregistered agents of Venezuela. Wilson rather quickly agreed to cooperate. In January 2008, Moises Maionica pleaded guilty, and Carlos Kauffman did so in March. The odd Miami trial of Frank Duran began in early September 2008, with rightwing media cheering it along as definitively proving the corruption of Chavez and Kirchner -- though various leftwingers suspected the affair might actually prove something completely different.

And here’s even more background!

The relation between Argentina and Venezuela was a very very hot sexy subject in September 2008, as Duran’s trial put the suitcase scandal back into news. So, naturally, somebody hacked a server, got thousands of emails from the account of Freddy Balzan (who had been Venezuela’s ambassador to Argentina), and handed them over to Wikileaks!

Which finally brings us to the decisive light that Wikileaks shed on this fascinating subject!

Wikileaks promptly attempted to auction off the rights to a first peek at the emails. Sadly, that didn’t get much of a response. So Wikileaks sent an email warning to everybody who’d corresponded with Ambassador Balzan by email, politely notifying them, that all the email recipients might want to be prepared for exposure. But because the Venezuelan ambassador’s email were in Spanish, Wikileaks used Google to translate their email warning into something non-Spanish-speakers might think resembled Spanish! Anyway, it obviously wasn't a blackmail attempt -- it was a victory for open government!

Some people have enjoyed the two old Borev links on this

Cash-Stuffed Suitcase Splits Venezuela and Argentina
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/world/americas/14argentina.html?_r=1

'Suitcase Scandal' Goes On In Argentina
http://www.forbes.com/2008/01/17/argentina-chavez-kirchner-cx_0118oxford.html

She found her 15 minutes inside a suitcase scandal
http://articles.latimes.com/2008/feb/17/world/fg-suitcase17

Fotos de María Lujan Telpuk en Playboy – La chica de la valija
http://www.blogerin.com/fotos-de-maria-lujan-telpuk-en-playboy-la-chica-de-la-valija/

Chávez and the Cash-Filled Suitcase
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1838145,00.html

Suitcase full of cash adds to Chavez corruption claims
http://www.guardian.co.uk/theobserver/2008/sep/21/usa.venezuela

Breaking News: The WikiLeaks People Are Funny Morons
... Of course, just about everybody on the "courtesy" list is a Spanish speaker, and nobody at WikiLeaks speaks Spanish, so they ran their stupid courtesy message through an online translation service, with predictable results ...
http://www.borev.net/2008/09/breaking_news_the_wikileaks_pe.html

Great Moments in Transparency
So a reader got one of those "courtesy" letters from Wikileaks explaining that his name and personal information were about to be made public because he had gotten a group Email once from this Freddy Balzan person. Only he'd never heard of any Freddy Balzan so he wrote them back an Email saying, "WTF?" and "Don't." And then Wikileaks Director Julian Assange wrote him back an ugly note calling him, quote, "insane" ...
http://www.borev.net/2008/09/great_moments_in_transparency_1.html

LA INFORMACION SECRETA NO PUBLICADA DE WIKILEAKS
... The existence of information like this, hosted on the servers of wikileaks but not published, should lead to the question: what does wikileaks do with this information? How did wikileaks acquire this information and why does it have it, if it does not publish it online? ...
http://cmpopulares.bligoo.com.co/content/view/1145059/LA-INFORMACION-SECRETA-NO-PUBLICADA-DE-WIKILEAKS.html#.UDMiPtD--ko