Right now, many world leaders are wondering what else U.S. diplomats may be saying behind their backs after the embarrassing leak of thousands of diplomatic cables including the documents released by with WikiLeaks. The Saudi King Abdullah, for example, urged the U.S. to attack Iran to halt its nuclear program. United States keeps (ph) bombers are ready to strike al Qaeda targets in Yemen.
The state department directed U.S. diplomats to engage in intelligence gathering at the U.N. and elsewhere. A claim that the Saudi king also proposed implanting electronic tracking chip in Guantanamo detainees, and an account about the Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, relies on what was described as a voluptuous blond nurse.
Some news reports are also suggesting that the French president, Nicholas Sarkozy is called in some of these documents an emperor with no clothes and that the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, is described as risk averse and rarely creative.
Let's bring in our senior political analyst, David Gergen. David, just a little bit of what's in some of these documents. You've worked in the government. You've worked for four presidents. When a foreign leader meets with the Secretary of State or U.S. Ambassador now, why should that leader not be worried that whatever he or she says is going to wind up on the front pages of "The New York Times" or "The Guardian" and their speaker (ph)?
DAVID GERGEN, SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: He won't be worried, and he won't tell us as much. You know, as a journalist, Wolf, if you got an anonymous source who's fin (ph) your reach information, and then you burn that source, you expose who that person is, you'll never hear from him again. He'll never tell you anything again. Well, that's the situation that American diplomats are now calling you because some outrageous person has leaked all this stuff out there.
And WikiLeaks has engaged in this contemptible behavior, and it will put a chill on conversations with U.S. diplomats especially in the gulf region where this is so sensitive. You know, they have the Saudi king quoted, you know, cut off the head of that snake telling the United States to go after Iran. To have the Yemenis quoted in this way, to have others, Abu Dhabi quoted in this way is going to make them very, very reluctant to have straight conversations with any sort of ambassador.
They're going to want to go just to the top and make it -- it's going be much, much harder for our diplomats to do their wok.
BLITZER: It makes some of these Arab countries seem to be even more concerned, if you will, that the Israelis about Iran's nuclear program which will be very embarrassing to some of these Arab countries. But here's another question that sort of jumped out at me.
The Security of U.S. Documents, doesn't this make the United States government look ridiculous when these hundreds of thousands of documents can simply be pilfered or stolen or copied into some sort of small CD or thumb driver by a young private first class? That's the allegation.
GERGEN: Yes, that's the most embarrassing part of this. A great power, the world's greatest power has somehow erected a system that a young private first class, setting 40 miles outside Baghdad, can crack into it and get all this stuff and dump it out in the world and cause this enormous problem. How can we possibly let this happen? It is a question of there has been a big effort on the part of the state department and the defense department to have their computer systems much more sophisticated and talk to each other, share much more information.
But it allows as allowed this individuals as this very anti- patriotic person to get in and do this. I have to say, one of the things, Wolf, on the positive side, having looked at all these documents, you know what's really striking also, though, is there's no scandal here. There's nothing here in which we find that the U.S. government has been lying to us as a people. They've been telling one thing publicly but saying having a very different conversation privately.
You look at the private stuff. It's pretty consistent to what they've been saying publicly. And I thin that part of it is reassuring as well as the fact that our diplomats look like they're pretty darn smart, and they've been doing some good things especially in the Iranian front. You have to give the state department more credit. From what's revealed in this, they've done a pretty good job.
BLITZER: Well, their mission is about to become a whole lot more difficult now as a result of this leak. A lot of foreign government is simply not going to share that kind of information if they're afraid it's going to be made public.
All right. David, thanks very much. You make excellent points, as usual.
GERGEN: Thank you.
Transcript from The Situation Room Aired November 29, 2010