Graham, who was heading a congressional delegation on a Mideast tour and visit to NATO headquarters in Brussels, said that he and Gen. Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, the head of Egypt's ruling military council, told their governments' diplomatic aides Thursday to stop taking notes at the meeting because of the WikiLeaks controversy.

"It's changed the way all of us think and interact," Graham said. "We're more cautious."

Graham said Thursday that he was following a tradition of South Carolina politicians who've been deeply engaged in international affairs, among them the late Reps. Mendel Rivers and Floyd Spence and the late Sen. Strom Thurmond.

"We live in dangerous times," Graham said. "There are people out there trying to hurt our country. Personal relationships matter. The relationships I have established with the leaders of these countries help me be a more effective leader."

On Dec. 6, 2008, Graham delivered a polite but stern message to Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani.

Their closed-door meeting in Islamabad, with McCain and Lieberman, came 10 days after suspected Pakistani terrorists killed 164 people in coordinated attacks on hotels and restaurants in Mumbai, India.

Graham informed Gilani that his government had to move quickly against those responsible for the massacre to forestall possible war between the two longtime hostile neighbors. On a return visit a month later, Graham expressed impatience with Pakistan's failure to prosecute the masterminds of the attacks.

The senator pointedly reminded the prime minister: Six Americans had been murdered in Mumbai.

The senators were freshly arrived from neighboring India, where Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had thanked them for helping to shepherd a controversial U.S.-Indian nuclear cooperation treaty through the Senate.

Pakistan viewed that accord's potential to bolster India's nuclear weapons program as a threat to its national security.

In New Delhi, Singh had told the senators on Dec. 2, 2008, that he was under enormous political pressure to retaliate with force against Pakistan for the Mumbai attacks. He asked them to convey to Pakistan the urgent need to crack down on the perpetuators.

A Dec. 8, 2008, cable to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice from the U.S. Embassy in Islamabad describes Graham, McCain and Lieberman pressing Gilani on his government's response to the horrific Mumbai slaughter.

Gilani made an astonishing admission, one that the proud Pakistanis would never make in public.

"We want to combat terrorism, but we don't have the capacity," Gilani said.

The prime minister said his government needed more U.S. aid — beyond the $11 billion it already had received since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks — in order to defeat radical Muslims in the South Asian country.

"If we fight our own war (against terrorism), it won't give rise to anti-Americanism," Gilani said.

His argument left Graham, newly elected to his second Senate term, unimpressed.

The South Carolina Republican — using careful diplomatic terms instead of the folksy banter he favors back home — told the prime minister that such new aid, if it were delivered at all, would come with strings attached.

It would have to be earned, Graham said, by concrete Pakistani actions.