It begins here: (link)
(CNN) -- The online whistle-blower site WikiLeaks began publishing more than 250,000 diplomatic cables from U.S. embassies around the world Sunday, spawning sharp condemnation from the White House and congressional leaders.
WikiLeaks, which said its servers were under electronic attacks Sunday afternoon, said the documents represent the largest-ever disclosure of confidential information and give the world "an unprecedented insight into the U.S. government's foreign activities."
"The cables show the U.S. spying on its allies and the U.N.; turning a blind eye to corruption and human rights abuse in 'client states'; backroom deals with supposedly neutral countries; and lobbying for U.S. corporations," the site's editor-in-chief and spokesman, Julian Assange, said in a statement released Sunday evening.
"This document release reveals the contradictions between the U.S.'s public persona and what it says behind closed doors -- and shows that if citizens in a democracy want their governments to reflect their wishes, they should ask to see what's going on behind the scenes."
But White House spokesman Robert Gibbs condemned the release, warning that publishing the documents would jeopardize "our diplomats, intelligence professionals and people around the world who come to the United States for assistance in promoting democracy and open government."
"By releasing stolen and classified documents, WikiLeaks has put at risk not only the cause of human rights but also the lives and work of these individuals," Gibbs said. "We condemn in the strongest terms the unauthorized disclosure of classified documents and sensitive national security information."
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reached out to leaders of eight countries over the weekend about the leaks, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said Sunday. Those countries included Germany, Saudi Arabia, Britain, France, Afghanistan and the United Arab Emirates, Crowley said.
The New York Times and four European newspapers that had received the documents in advance began publishing excerpts earlier Sunday. Many of them detail conversations on sensitive issues between American officials and leaders in the Middle East, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
The major topics in the documents include:
-- Pressure from U.S. allies in the Middle East for decisive action to neutralize Iran's nuclear program. According to one cable, King Hamad bin Isa al Khalifah of Bahrain told Gen. David Petraeus, then the top U.S. commander in the region, that the United States must curb Iran's nuclear program by whatever means necessary. "The danger of letting it go on is greater than the danger of stopping it," the king is quoted as saying. Similarly, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia implored Washington to "cut off the head of the snake" while there was still time, according to a cable cited by the British newspaper The Guardian.
-- Conversations between Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and Petraeus about military action against al Qaeda militants in Yemen. A cable about their January meeting reports Saleh as saying: "We'll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours." At that point, according to a cable sent by the then-U.S. ambassador in Yemen, the deputy prime minister joked "that he had just 'lied' by telling Parliament" that Yemeni forces had carried out the strikes.
-- Washington's efforts to have highly enriched uranium removed from a Pakistani research reactor. In a cable sent in May 2009, the U.S. ambassador in Islamabad said Pakistan was refusing to schedule a visit by American technical experts. The ambassador said that a Pakistani official had told her: "If the local media got word of the fuel removal, 'they certainly would portray it as the United States taking Pakistan's nuclear weapons.' "
-- Negotiations with governments over the transfer of prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay. According to The New York Times, "Slovenia was told to take a prisoner if it wanted to meet with President (Barack) Obama, while the island nation of Kiribati was offered incentives worth millions of dollars to take in a group of detainees."
-- Concern that the Chinese government was involved in global computer hacking. One cable cited by The New York Times said a Chinese contact had told the U.S. Embassy in Beijing that the Politburo had directed "the intrusion into Google's computer system" earlier this year.
WikiLeaks said the full set included 251,288 cables sent by American diplomats between the end of 1966 and February 2010. Of those, 8,017 originated from the office of the secretary of state, and more than 15,600 are classified as secret, it said in a statement announcing the release.
WikiLeaks said the documents will be released in stages "over the next few months" to allow readers to digest them.
"The subject matter of these cables is of such importance, and the geographical spread so broad, that to do otherwise would not do this material justice," it said. "We owe it to the people who entrusted us with the documents to ensure that there is time for them to be written about, commented on and discussed widely in public, something that is impossible if hundreds of thousands of documents are released at once."
Sen. John Kerry, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, called the disclosure "reckless."
"This is not an academic exercise about freedom of information and it is not akin to the release of the Pentagon Papers, which involved an analysis aimed at saving American lives and exposing government deception," Kerry, D-Massachusetts, said in a written statement.
"Instead, these sensitive cables contain candid assessments and analysis of ongoing matters and they should remain confidential to protect the ability of the government to conduct lawful business with the private candor that's vital to effective diplomacy," the statement said.
The documents posted include often-unfavorable commentaries on a variety of international leaders, as well as coverage of almost every major issue of recent years. The United States had warned Assangethat publishing the papers would be illegal and could endanger peoples' lives.
Rep. Peter King, the ranking Republican on the House Homeland Security Committee, on Sunday called on the Obama administration to prosecute Assange. In a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder, King said WikiLeakshas provided "material support to terrorist organizations" by releasing the documents.
"There should be no misconception that Mr. Assange passively operates a forum for others to exploit their misappropriation of classified information," King wrote. "He actively encourages and solicits the leaking of national defense information. He pursues a malicious agenda, for which he remains totally immune to the consequences of his actions."
The site said it was already under fire Sunday afternoon. In a statement posted on Twitter, WikiLeakssaid it was experiencing a distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack. That's an effort to make a website unavailable to users, normally by flooding it with requests for data.
But WikiLeaks posted information on the new documents Sunday afternoon on a site with a different web address.
The cables being detailed Sunday follow two similar releases by WikiLeaks earlier this year. In July, the site released more than 70,000 U.S. military reports from the war in Afghanistan, and nearly 400,000 more reports about operations in Iraq in October.
The site indicated last week that a new batch was coming, telling followers on Twitter that the new release would be seven times the size of the Iraq documents.
"Intense pressure over it for months," the group stated. "Keep us strong."
In addition to the Times, four European newspapers -- Britain's The Guardian, Le Monde in France, Der Spiegel in Germany and El Pais in Spain -- had prior access to WikiLeaks documents. CNN has not had advance access to the documents because it declined to sign a confidentiality agreement with the site.
Retired Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the former U.S. military spokesman in Iraq, said the documents reveal sensitive U.S. government positions and put diplomats at risk "for their candidness and their reporting."
"I think it's important for WikiLeaks and its ilk to recognize the damage that they're doing by releasing this information and be held responsible for the damage that occurs from releasing this information," said Kimmitt, who served in the State Department and as the U.S. military spokesman in Iraq during the Bush administration.
But Scott Shane, one of the authors of the Times report, said the disclosures are most notable for their "behind-the-scenes stories -- how we speak to other countries and how they speak to us."
Shane told CNN the newspaper does not believe its reporting will result in drastic consequences, and that the Times redacted some names and information in the cables after discussions with State Department.
"Our judgment was that while there certainly would be repercussions, there would be strained relations perhaps with certain countries or certain leaders, we did not think that there would be lives at stake," he said. "We did not think that there would be important intelligence operations that would be compromised by the material we're actually publishes.
The U.S. State Department's legal adviser, Harold Hongju Koh, said Saturday that his agency had had spoken with representatives from the Times, the Guardian and Der Spiegel about 250,000 documents that WikiLeaks had provided to them. Kohdescribed the distribution as the "illegal dissemination of classified documents."
Some interesting things about this include the claim that US diplomats had been ordered to spy on people.
Of course, the State Department was quick to deny this: (link)
Washington (CNN) -- U.S. officials came to the defense of the secretary of state Tuesday, insisting that Hillary Clinton did not order State Department staff to spy on United Nations diplomats, as suggested by a diplomatic cable published by WikiLeaks.
The defense came as WikiLeaks found Julian Assange told Time magazine, a sister publication of CNN, that the she should quit.
"She should resign, if it can be shown that she was responsible for ordering U.S. diplomatic figures to engage in espionage in the United Nations, in violation of the international covenants to which the U.S. has signed up," Assange said.
U.S. officials insisted Tuesday that American diplomats are not being transformed into intelligence officers or doing anything out of the ordinary, and State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley pointedly responded to Assange's statement.
"This is ridiculous and ill-informed," Crowley said. "The leak of these documents is something we have strongly condemned, but what these documents demonstrate is the tremendous work being done by diplomats around the world, led by Secretary Clinton."
The leaked papers include an purported order from "SECSTATE WASHDC" signed "CLINTON" to American diplomats to engage in intelligence gathering.
In the July 2009 document, Clinton directs her envoys at the United Nations and embassies around the world to collect information ranging from basic biographical data on foreign diplomats to their frequent flyer and credit card numbers and even "biometric information on ranking North Korean diplomats." Typical biometric information can include fingerprints, signatures and iris recognition data.
The State Department said its officers are not spies.
"Diplomats are diplomats. And their job is to interact with people, gather information, gain perspective on events around the world and report those findings in a way that helps inform our policies and form out actions. They are not intelligence assets," spokesman Crowley told reporters Tuesday.
Crowley called the directive a "wish list" from "outside" agencies that did not require diplomats to do anything.
"Nothing in any document that allegedly is in the tranche or WikiLeaks or in possession of WikiLeaks changed the role of any diplomat, anywhere in the world," Crowley said at his daily briefing.
A U.S. official familiar with diplomatic reporting said, "This kind of cable is routine and is not unique to the United Nations. It's a list of priorities that are of interest to the American government," said the official.
A senior administration official said the intelligence community does communicate to the State Department and other agencies what it is interested in finding out about foreign officials.
"The intelligence community managers communicate to us what they are interested in," this official said. "That message did not change or require diplomats to do anything."
When asked whether U.S. diplomats are carrying out those directives, this official said, "It's one thing for someone to say, 'Hey, if you come across this kind of thing, we'd be interested.' It's another thing to say, 'Go out and do it.'"
The official added, "I'm not even sure how many people even saw that message. Diplomats are free to ignore that kind of message, and I'm told virtually all of them do."
A former senior intelligence official who was not directly familiar with the Clinton cables agreed such a request is basically a wish list which most diplomats don't carry out.
When the intelligence community is pursuing information needed by the policymakers, it decides on what has to be collected and how best to do it.
"It's a detailed matrix of what is needed to go forward," said the former official. That could include obtaining phone numbers, providing talking points to diplomats and seeking other information.
In a case like this, an office such as Intelligence and Research at the State Department would put together a message which would be sent under the secretary's name, asking diplomats to pursue certain information "if they have an opportunity to do so, if they get access to a particular foreign official," said the official who quickly added, "diplomats don't usually do it."
The former intelligence official noted that diplomatic reporting is considered the baseline for the intelligence community.
"Diplomatic reporting has an intelligence dimension. The process starts with what the diplomats tell us and we move from there," said the official, "but the down in the weeds, clandestine work is done by intelligence collection officers."
Here's a list of some of the tidbits: (link)
Updated at 9:12 p.m.] After posting thousands of secret government documents, WikiLeaks came under an electronic attack designed to make it unavailable to users, the website said Tuesday.
It was the second attack since the site began publishing the first of what it says are 250,000 secret U.S. diplomatic cables from U.S. embassies around the world, documents that the website said represented the largest-ever disclosure of confidential information. Those documents give the world "an unprecedented insight into the U.S. government's foreign activities," the site said.
WikiLeaks drew widespread condemnation for publishing the confidential cables that, in some instances, detailed with unusual frankness Washington's diplomatic interactions with other countries. Former President George Bush called the leaks "damaging," saying WikiLeaks will hurt U.S. relations with the rest of the world.
So far, the leaks have provided us with a look at tensions between China and North Korea – a topic of discussion these days given concern over clashes between North and South Korea. Apparently, cables reveal China was weary of North Korea behaving like a "spoiled child."
We've also learned a little bit more about China's role in other global affairs - including Iran - and how China has been talking to the United States about containing Iran's nuclear program. But the cables also reveal the role of Chinese enterprises in Iran's strategy to obtain materials for its missile programs and the U.S. State Department's efforts to counter that strategy.
And with widespread concern about nuclear capabilities of Iran and North Korea, it makes sense that WikiLeaks documents show there was a focus on the health of leaders in both countries.
Speaking of North Korea's weaponry, the country apparently had Mongolia pass a message to the United States in 2009 about possible disarmament talks, which North Korea suggested that Mongolia could host.
Weaponry - and nuclear capabilities - naturally are of concern to countries around the world. Which may be why there are stacks of documents discussing the must-have weapons and the countries that want them.
Regarding Iran, one 2009 cable said that the predominantly Shiite Islamic nation was facing increased unrest in a largely Sunni province, Sistan-Balochistan, and that Iranian security forces were losing effective control over parts of the province, citing Iranian contacts.
We've also learned other tidbits from the documents, including that Brazil tried to distance itself from U.S. war on terror. Elsewhere in Latin America, the U.S. Embassy in Honduras unequivocally found that the forced removal of that nation's president last year was a coup that ushered in an illegitimate government, despite Washington's more measured tone in public. And U.S. State Department analysts asked the U.S. Embassy in Argentina for information on the mental state and health of Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, according to a December 2009 cable.
Diplomatic cables about Pakistan reveal U.S. anxiety about Pakistan's uranium stockpile, its role in the stuggle against Islamic militants and its economic crisis, according to a New York Times review of the documents.
Some of the cables address how certain countries felt about taking in Guantanamo Bay prisoners that the United States wanted to move. When the United States wanted Kuwait to accept four Kuwaiti prisoners, Kuwait's minister of the interior responded that the country couldn't successfully hold them, and suggested instead that America drop them off in the middle of a battlefield in Afghanistan – where they were picked up - so they would die there, according to one released cable. Another document praised a former Guantanamo detainee, Moazzam Begg of Britain, for "barnstorming throughout Europe pushing governments to accept" Guantanamo detainees for resettlement."
One of the documents says Saudi Arabia expressed concern over the fact that Saudis were temporarily on a U.S. list of nationalities that warranted additional screening at airports after a failed December 25 airplane bombing attempt.
Several cables paint an unflattering and somewhat unexpected portrait of Ahmed Wali Karzai, the half-brother of Afghan President Hamid Karzai. British Prince Andrew was called rude following some blunt words with U.S. officials, and there's also some intel on how some world leaders and other operatives view other royals.
A lot of it is stuff we already suspect:
Russia is an utterly corrupt mafia state, who knew?
Or stuff which reads like an excerpt from the Daily Sun or something like it:
Less than flattering look at world leaders
Italian leader's partying left him a complete mess
The main issue I think is that there is just so much that it's hard to digest it all at once.
What is more interesting is that behind the scenes, some of these countries are actually urging the USA on in its tough guy act. That's unexpected.
I'm not sure how much of this is cherry picked by the mainstream media - probably a fair bit, so alternative interpretations welcome.
