{"id":817,"date":"2008-02-17T16:45:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-17T22:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/?p=817"},"modified":"2008-02-17T16:45:00","modified_gmt":"2008-02-17T22:45:00","slug":"how-well-informed-are-%e2%80%9cofficial%e2%80%9d-sources","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/2008\/02\/how-well-informed-are-%e2%80%9cofficial%e2%80%9d-sources\/","title":{"rendered":"How well informed are \u201cofficial\u201d sources?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span class=\"dropcaps\">T<\/span>he usefulness of diplomats has long been a mystery to me. Former British diplomat <a style=\"font-weight: bold;\" target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Carne_Ross\">Carne Ross<\/a> <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/Independent-Diplomat-Dispatches-Unaccountable-Politics\/dp\/1850658439\">has<\/a> an anecdote that should ring alarm bells with anyone who wants to know how valid \u201cofficial\u201d government sources really are: <span id=\"fullpost\"><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>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.<\/p>\n<p>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 \u201crestricted\u201d and sent it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 \u201cofficial\u201d government sources really are: I will here admit one shameful episode from my own career: when I was posted to Kabul, I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[15,466],"class_list":["post-817","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-bbc","tag-public-info"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=817"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adrianmonck.com\/about\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}