Headscratcher (8)

The wonder is that the Wikileaks affair came as a surprise to anyone.

Nearly forty one years ago, your correspondent went to work as an assistant to a former very senior advisor to the President of the United States. He taught me two things, which I have never forgotten, on my first day at work:

• Lesson 1: there are no secrets so act accordingly, and
• Lesson 2: never put anything in writing that you would be embarrassed to see on the front page of the Washington Post.

While much of what has been disclosed is merely the day to day communications of the lower levels of the diplomatic corps and the military, the first lesson applies. No one, therefore, should be surprised when all is revealed.

The frequently gratuitous, and insulting, remarks about foreign leaders may indeed be accurate - and are certainly entertaining to the casual onlooker - but they have added some complications to the conduct of American foreign policy. Those complications could have been avoided had the authors of the diplomatic cables paid even the slightest attention to the second lesson.

It is definitely a headscratcher that so many supposedly intelligent and knowledgeable people should fail to understand one of the very basics of the 'Washington system'.