VILNIUS—In a new Facebook post today, Lithuania’s official chief rabbi, Rabbi Chaim Burshtein, mentioned a Wikileaks-published cable sent by the United Stated ambassador to Lithuania to Washington in 2009. The cable references the need to supply a $100,000 payment to the London-based CPJCE (Committee for the Protection of Jewish Cemeteries in Europe) for “supervision” of “beautification” and “exploratory digging” at the old cemetery. It notes the rabbis’ request for secrecy about their doings. In the chronology, the cable postdates the unknown arrangements by which the two buildings started in 2005 were allowed to stand, and it predates public mention of future plans for a congress and convention center. Observers have been struck, however, by the disparity between one of the secret agreements reached and the impression given in 2009 to the outside world by press releases that in effect, in return for no further “fuss” over the two buildings on the old cemetery’s land, no more would ever be built on the remainder. It was a “compromise” many could “live with.”

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