Decoding the message in America's humdrum cables

The recent release of nearly 1,000 cable dispatches from the US consulate in Hong Kong by WikiLeaks is quite an eye-opener. They covered topics and events both big and small.

Going through some of these cables, the information is on the whole not any more revealing than most reports in any newspaper. Surely the hundreds of employees in what is purportedly one of the largest American overseas consular outposts must have more worthwhile endeavours than writing such humdrum dispatches.

Unsurprisingly, most of the classified cables are marked 'confidential', the lowest level of classification. Several were classified 'secret', and one of them relates to Democratic lawmaker James To Kun-sun. According to the cable, To sought help from the Americans to stop communist infiltration in the Democratic Party. His information apparently earned him a 'strictly protect' description in the cable. He probably named some names, although none was mentioned in the cable.

I wonder just what kind of protection the US consulate in Hong Kong had in mind. And, protection from what? Expulsion from the Democratic Party? Perhaps, and that is why I am very curious about the party's official reaction to what would appear to be such an obvious betrayal of its fellow members to a foreign government.