I wanted to briefly highlight a recent post by Emptywheel called "
How Many of the Protests Have Gotten Diplomatic Documents?" that pulls together a number of news sources suggesting that in the recent protests diplomatic documents were seized from the U.S. Consulate in Benghazi, the U.S. Embassy in Yemen (including a forecast that there may be a Wikileaks-style release of seized material in Yemen), and a
report that the the U.S. Embassy in Beirut had begun pre-emptively destroying classified material.
We'll see whether any diplomatic document seizures rise anywhere to the level of
Tehran 1979.
For more on State Department procedures for either emergency destruction or "safe haven" of the records of a diplomatic post, see the Foreign Affairs handbook
here.
