The investigative website WikiLeaks — it’s really more like a news organization — has again caused uproar over the release of U.S. diplomatic documents. The last time they released confidential information about Afghanistan and the U.S. wars, I never did hear a followup whether those leaks caused any damage to the U.S. war effort or whether it was all stuff that was already known by the inside players.

In the latest round of Department of State cables we found out a lot about the gossip and assessment by U.S. diplomats of world leaders and policies. My friend Teresa Buoza of EFE, the largest Spanish language news agency, out of Spain, and the world’s fourth largest news agency, asked me to comment on whether WikiLeaks is basically something good or something bad.

My response was that as with all big things in life there is a good side and a bad side. It’s a double-edged sword at best.

When governments operate in complete secrecy, they often make poor judgments and, in some cases, catastrophic decisions. Transparency is supposed to be the characteristic of democracies. Accountability is the most important benefit of democratic governments where the voters, the people, can kick out governments and bring in better leaders — or arrest and prosecute corrupt or criminal leaders if necessary. In that sense WikiLeaks is good, and providing lots of information and putting leaders around the world — not just in the U.S. — on notice makes democracy work better.

However, in the conduct of diplomacy and war, confidentiality is often vitally important because diplomacy is a lot like making chorizo sausages — it is not something you really want to see because it is messy and smelly. If WikiLeaks causes death or destroys the lives of people who are engaged in espionage, war or diplomacy and compromises security and aids rogue governments or terrorists, then that would clearly be bad.

In the next round of releases that are promised, if WikiLeaks reveals information about the workings of the banking industry and those revelations show fraud, abuse and criminal conduct, then WikiLeaks is doing the job that the government regulators and prosecutors should be doing, and that would be good and could bring about much-needed reforms of the banking system.

On the other hand if a lot of personal and confidential information is revealed, it could cause identity theft and terrible consequences for individuals, and it could cause a meltdown of some banks and destabilize an already-fragile world financial system — that would be bad.

She also asked me if WikiLeaks should be called a terrorist organization or “traitors”? My answer was that Fox News, CNN and the New York Times also often do investigative reporting, get tips and leaks from people and publish information that politicians and leaders want kept secret. Are they terrorist organizations? Are they traitors?

I grew up in Latin American where governments are constantly shutting down newspapers, radio and TV stations, calling them enemies of the people or terrorist. Just take a look at Venezuela and Cuba and you will find no investigative reporting and no leaks of any kind because the media have been pretty much shut down. Look at what happens in Mexico or Colombia when newspapers or TV report on drug cartels and drug bosses. They are kidnapped, tortured and killed, or the newspaper building is simply blown up with a car bomb.

Governments, politicians, corporations or drug lords have a lot to hide. The difficult issue here is what is legitimate confidentiality and what the public should have the right to know. Until recently the U.S. government stamped “Top Secret” on even the most mundane documents to keep them from the media. Over the past years we pried open some of that, especially with the Freedom of Information Act. Recently the stamp of secrecy has grown in the name of the war on terrorism and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

I remember when the Abu Ghraib prison scandal in Iraq broke and the pictures of Iraqis being humiliated and interrogated made the news. There was outrage on some quarters that this would undermine the U.S. forces and war effort in Iraq. Yet stopping those types of abuses in the long run was right away deemed by the U.S. military itself as essential to winning the war and the hearts and minds of the people of Iraq. Showing photographs of American war casualties returning in flag-draped coffins was prohibited by the Bush administration. Was that a necessary secrecy?

At what point WikiLeaks oversteps the bounds of reasonable media rights to inform and violate necessary secrecy is a judgment I cannot make. You decide.