The use­ful­ness of dip­lo­mats has long been a mys­tery to me. Former Brit­ish dip­lo­mat Carne Ross has an anec­dote that should ring alarm bells with any­one who wants to know how valid “offi­cial” gov­ern­ment sources really are:

I will here admit one shame­ful epis­ode from my own career: when I was pos­ted to Kabul, I was tele­phoned by the depart­ment in Lon­don and asked for a report on the car bomb in Jalalabad. I acknow­ledged the request and put down the phone. I had no idea what they were talk­ing about.

I duly went to the BBC web­site on the inter­net (whence pre­sum­ably Lon­don had heard about it too), and took down a few details of the attack. Thus informed, I com­posed a short tele­gram back to Lon­don, clas­si­fied it “restric­ted” and sent it.