Wikileaks revelations irritate Ensign

Sen. John Ensign, R-Nev., is angry about the whistle-blower website Wikileaks.org posting 90,000 documents about the war in Afghanistan last month, and he made sure the Obama administration knew about it.

Ensign blocked the confirmation of Luis Arreaga to become the U.S. ambassador to Iceland, and relented only after Arreaga met with him Thursday.

Why Iceland? Turns out the Nordic nation is a haven for Wikileaks and its director, Julian Assange. Ensign wants the Obama administration to pressure Iceland to crack down on the network, which posts troves of classified or otherwise unobtainable material gathered by whistle-blowers or through leakers.

Time magazine has said Wikileaks "could become as important a journalistic tool as the Freedom of Information Act." The government is not so thrilled. The material on Afghanistan has caused a furor at the Pentagon and among hawks on Capitol Hill.

Ensign argued the Afghanistan leaks, which Wikileaks shared first with the New York Times, the Guardian newspaper in London and Der Spiegel in Germany, have damaged U.S. and NATO prosecution of the war.

"We need Iceland's cooperation," Ensign said. "This is a NATO country that has this Wikileaks organization operating through it with the Iceland government looking the other way. We can't have one of our NATO allies empowering the giving away of our national security secrets."

Defense Department officials say the leaked documents contain names of Afghan collaborators whose lives now are in danger. Ensign and others say it now will become more difficult for U.S. soldiers to cultivate contacts in the war zones.

"We will have less cooperation with the Afghanis," Ensign said. "That means less security for our folks if the Afghanis know they can't count on us because we are going to be giving out their names. We are very concerned about this.

Assange "has threatened the national security and safety of our country and the safety of our troops," Ensign said. "He should be prosecuted, and everybody associated with him should be prosecuted."

The State Department wanted Arreaga to be confirmed before the Senate recessed Thursday for its August break. When Ensign let it be known he had placed a hold on the nominee, the meeting was set up within hours.

Ensign emerged happy. According to the Nevadan, Arreaga said the Obama administration shared Ensign's concern, and he would get to work on it once he arrived in Reykjavik.

"He sounded like he was coming from the same place I was and that this is a top priority," Ensign said.

The hold was removed, and Arreaga was confirmed several hours later.

-- Steve Tetreault

Nevada's honest public officials don't have much to look forward to in the next couple of years, considering the state is staring down the barrel of a potential $3 billion general fund shortfall for 2011-13.

The crooked ones? Well, that's a different story.

An annual report by the Nevada Commission on Ethics suggests dishonest public officials could find cover if budget cuts take another bite out of the state's official ethics watchdog.

"The commission has the second-smallest budget in state government, and, with the closure of the Las Vegas office, operates with a staff of five full-time employees," according to the report distributed Friday afternoon. "Any further reductions in the agency budget will render the agency unable to deliver its statutory functions."

In practical terms, it means less money going to the Ethics Commission could mean more money being drained from taxpayers by crooked officials.

Caren Jenkins, executive director for the commission and author of the report, said the cuts would show up in the form of longer turnaround times on investigations.

"It just means there is going to be a significant delay, and if there is wrongful conduct taking place out there, that person may remain in position to continue that wrongful conduct for a longer period of time," Jenkins said. "The more time that passes between the incident and the time we react to it, the more harm that is done."

According to the report, the commission's fiscal year 2009-10 budget was $680,139, down from $740,499 the prior fiscal year. Mandated furlough days represented a reduction of another $45,156, the report said.

What's more, Jenkins said that because local governments provide 65 percent of funding for the commission, only 35 percent of the total reductions actually return to the state general fund.

Although the recession has taken a big bite out of everything from real estate sales to the volume of gambling, it hasn't slowed the flow of concern about potential public corruption.

According to the report, the commission handled 109 requests for opinions in 2009-10.

That is compared with 94, 70 and 82 in each of the previous three years.

-- Benjamin Spillman

Contact Stephens Washington Bureau chief Steve Tetreault at stetreault@stephensmedia.com or 202-783-1760. Contact reporter Benjamin Spillman at bspillman@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3861.