United States diplomatic cables leak

This article is about the release of leaked U.S. diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks. For the contents of those cables, see Contents of the United States diplomatic cables leak.

The United States diplomatic cables leak (also known as Cablegate) began on 28 November 2010 when WikiLeaks — an international new media non-profit organization that publishes submissions of private, secret and classified information from anonymous news sources, government whistleblowers, and news leaks — started to publish classified documents of detailed correspondence between the U.S. State Department and its diplomatic missions around the world, releasing further documents every day. WikiLeaks forwarded diplomatic cables to five major newspapers around the world, which have been publishing articles by agreement with Wikileaks.

The publication of the U.S. embassy cables is the third in a series of U.S. classified document "mega-leaks" distributed by WikiLeaks in 2010, following the Afghan War documents leak in July, and the Iraq War documents leak in October. The contents of the cables describe international affairs from 300 embassies dated from 1966–2010, containing diplomatic analysis of world leaders, an assessment of host countries, and a discussion about international and domestic issues.

The first 220 of the 251,287 documents were published on 28 November, with simultaneous press coverage from El País (Spain), Le Monde (France), Der Spiegel (Germany), The Guardian (United Kingdom), and The New York Times (United States). Over 130,000 of the documents are unclassified, some 100,000 are labeled "confidential", about 15,000 documents have the higher classification "secret", and none are classified as "top secret" on the classification scale. As of 3 Jan 2011, 1,997 individual cables had been released. WikiLeaks plans to release all the cables in phases over several months at a pace of about 80 cables per day; however, should the pace of eighty cables a day be strictly upheld, it would take ten years for all of the cables to be released.

Reactions to the leak varied widely. Some western government officials expressed strong disapproval and condemnation, and criticized WikiLeaks for potentially jeopardizing international relations and global security. The leak also generated intense interest from the public, journalists, and media analysts. WikiLeaks received support from some commentators who questioned the necessity of government secrecy in a democracy that serves the interests of its people and depends on an informed electorate. Some political leaders referred to Julian Assange, editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, as a criminal, but also blamed the U.S. Department of Defense for security lapses that led to the leak. Supporters of Assange have referred to him as a heroic defender of free speech and freedom of the press. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said that an "open and transparent government is something that the President believes is truly important. But the stealing of classified information and its dissemination is a crime". In response to some of the negative reaction, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights has expressed her concern over the 'cyber war' against WikiLeaks, and in a joint statement with the Organization of American States its Special Rapporteur has called on states and other actors to keep international legal principles in mind.

Background

In June 2010, the magazine Wired reported that the U.S. State Department and embassy personnel were concerned that Bradley Manning, a U.S. Army soldier who had been charged with the unauthorized download of classified material while he was stationed in Iraq, had leaked diplomatic cables. WikiLeaks rejected the report as inaccurate: "Allegations in Wired that we have been sent 260,000 classified U.S. embassy cables are, as far as we can tell, incorrect". Manning was suspected to have uploaded all of what he obtained to WikiLeaks, which chose to release the material in stages so as to have the greatest possible impact.

According to The Guardian, all the diplomatic cables were marked "Sipdis", denoting "secret internet protocol distribution", which means they had been distributed via the closed U.S. SIPRNet, the U.S. Department of Defense’s classified version of the civilian internet. Although more than three million U.S. government personnel and soldiers have access to this network, "top secret" documents are not included in the system. Such a large quantity of secret information was available to a wide audience because, as The Guardian alleged, after the 11 September attacks an increased focus had been placed on sharing information since gaps in intra-governmental information sharing had been exposed. More specifically the diplomatic, military, law enforcement and intelligence communities would be able to do their jobs better with this easy access to analytic and operative information. A spokesman said that in the previous weeks and months additional measures had been taken to improve the security of the system and prevent leaks.

On 22 November, an announcement was made via WikiLeaks's Twitter feed that the next release would be "7× the size of the Iraq War Logs". U.S. authorities and the media had speculated, at the time, that they could contain diplomatic cables. Prior to the expected leak, the government of the United Kingdom (U.K.) sent a DA-Notice to U.K. newspapers, which requested advance notice from newspapers regarding the expected publication. According to the Index on Censorship, "there is no obligation on [the] media to comply". Under the terms of a DA-Notice, "[n]ewspaper editors would speak to [the] Defence, Press and Broadcasting Advisory Committee prior to publication". The Guardian was revealed to have been the source of the copy of the documents given to The New York Times in order to prevent the British government from obtaining any injunction against its publication. The Pakistani newspaper Dawn stated that the U.S. newspapers The New York Times and The Washington Post were expected to publish parts of the diplomatic cables on 28 November, including 94 Pakistan-related documents.

On 26 November, Assange sent a letter to the U.S. Department of State, via his lawyer Jennifer Robinson, inviting them to "privately nominate any specific instances (record numbers or names) where it considers the publication of information would put individual persons at significant risk of harm that has not already been addressed". Harold Koh, the Legal Adviser of the Department of State, rejected the proposal, stating: "We will not engage in a negotiation regarding the further release or dissemination of illegally obtained U.S. Government classified materials". Assange responded in turn by writing back to the U.S. State Department that "you have chosen to respond in a manner which leads me to conclude that the supposed risks are entirely fanciful and you are instead concerned to suppress evidence of human rights abuse and other criminal behaviour".

Ahead of the leak of the documents, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton contacted officials in Afghanistan, France, Germany, the People's Republic of China, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom about the impending release, while other diplomats apparently spoke with the leaders in Australia, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, Finland, Iceland, India, Iraq, Israel, Italy, New Zealand, the Netherlands. Norway, Pakistan, Russia, Sweden and Turkey.

Release

The five newspapers that had obtained an advance copy of all leaked cables began releasing the cables on 28 November 2010, and Wikileaks made the cables selected by these newspapers and redacted by their journalists available on its website. "They are releasing the documents we selected," Le Monde's managing editor, Sylvie Kauffmann, said in an interview.

Wikileaks aims to release the cables in phases over several months due to their global scope and significance. The first batch of leaks released comprised 220 cables. Further cables were subsequently made available on the WikiLeaks website. The full set of cables published so far can be browsed at cablesearch.org.

There has been some media confusion about the number of cables published. That number is still only a tiny fraction of the total of a quarter of a million. A small table with counts follows.

Leaks release timetable

Available	Deleted	Timestamp
220	0	23:16 GMT, 28 November
243	≥ 0	13:48 GMT, 29 November
291	≥ 4	0:23 GMT, 1 December
486	≥ 2	17:00 GMT, 1 December
...
1,897	≥ 9	21:42 GMT, 23 December
1,942	≥ 4	19:37 GMT, 27 December
1,947	≥ 8	22:28 GMT, 28 December
1,997	≥ 4	19:15 GMT, 2 Jan 2011
1,999	≥ 6	09:49 GMT, 4 Jan 2011

The 'available' column gives the number of cables contained in the torrent file with the given timestamp. The 'deleted' column gives the number of cables that occurred in earlier releases but are absent in that release. Usually these cables come back later, sometimes redacted or unredacted. A few more cables have been published by various newspapers but not yet by Wikileaks. Sources:

Contents

Contents of the announced leak (251,287 cables)

Subject	Documents
External political relations	145,451
Internal government affairs	122,896
Human rights	55,211
Economic conditions	49,044
Terrorists and terrorism	28,801
UN Security Council	6,532

Main article: Contents of the United States diplomatic cables leak

The contents of the U.S. diplomatic cables leak describe in detail events and incidents surrounding international affairs from 274 embassies dating from 28 December 1966 to 28 February 2010. The diplomatic cables revealed numerous unguarded comments and revelations: critiques and praises about the host countries of various U.S. embassies, discussion and resolutions towards ending ongoing tension in the Middle East, efforts for and resistance against nuclear disarmament, actions in the War on Terror, assessments of other threats around the world, dealings between various countries, U.S. intelligence and counterintelligence efforts, U.S. support of dictatorship and other diplomatic actions.

The leaked cables expose that British official revealed that diplomats of the U.S. and Britain eavesdropped on Secretary General Kofi Annan in the weeks before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, even though international treaties prohibit spying at the UN. Further, they reveal that U.S. diplomats told an Afghan government official to keep quiet after they learned that a major U.S. government contractor firm was pimping little boys to be auctioned off to be raped by Afghan policemen in parties organized by the contractor.

Print media coverage

The Guardian released its coverage of the leaked cables in numerous articles, including an interactive database, starting on 28 November. Der Spiegel also released its preliminary report, with extended coverage promised for the next day. Its cover for 29 November was also leaked with the initial report. The New York Times covered the story in a nine-part series spanning nine days, with the first story published simultaneously with the other outlets. The New York Times was not originally intended to receive the leak, allegedly due to its unflattering portrayal of the site's founder, but The Guardian decided to share coverage, citing earlier cooperation while covering the Afghan and Iraqi war logs. The Washington Post reported that it also requested permission to see the documents, but was rejected for undisclosed reasons. El País released its report saying there was an agreement between the newspapers for simultaneous publication of the "internationally relevant" documents, but that each newspaper was free to select and treat those documents that primarily relate to its own country.

CNN was originally supposed to receive an advance copy of the documents as well, but did not after it refused to sign a confidentiality agreement with WikiLeaks. The Wall Street Journal also refused advance access, apparently for similar reasons as CNN.

Australian-based Fairfax Media obtained access to the cables under a separate arrangement. Fairfax newspapers began releasing their own stories based on the leaked cables on 7 December. Unlike other newspapers given access, Fairfax originally had not posted any of the original cables online, citing the need to maintain its competitive advantage over other Australian newspapers. However, on 16 December Fairfax reversed its position, and began publishing the cables used in its stories.

Aftenposten, a Norwegian daily newspaper, reported on 17 December that it had gained access to the full cable set of 251,287 documents. While it is unclear how they received the documents, they were apparently not obtained directly from Wikileaks.

The Cuban government-run website Razones de Cuba started publishing Spanish translations of Wikileaks documents on 23 December 2010.

The Russian newspaper Novaya Gazeta announced on December 23 that they had been granted access to a wide range of materials from the Wikileaks database. The newspaper will begin releasing these materials in January 2011, with an eye toward exposing corruption in the Russian government.

Reactions to the releases

Denial-of-service attack

About an hour prior to the planned release of the initial documents, WikiLeaks announced it was experiencing a massive distributed denial-of-service attack, but vowed to still release the cables and documents via pre-agreed prominent media outlets El País, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, The Guardian, and The New York Times.

According to Arbor Networks, an internet analyst group, the DDoS attack accounted for between two and four gigabits per second (Gbit/s) of additional traffic to the WikiLeaks host network, compared to an average traffic of between twelve and fifteen Gbit/s under ordinary conditions. The attack was slightly more powerful than ordinary DDoS attacks, though well below the maximum of 60 to 100 Gbit/s of other major attacks during 2010. The attack was claimed to have been carried out by a person by the name of "Jester", who describes himself as a "hacktivist". Jester took credit for the attack on Twitter, stating that WikiLeaks "threaten[ed] the lives of our troops and 'other assets.'"

On 2 December 2010, EveryDNS, a domain name registrar, dropped WikiLeaks from its entries, citing denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) that "threatened the stability of its infrastructure", but the site was still reachable at http://46.59.1.2 and http://213.251.145.96, as well as several other addresses.

John Perry Barlow, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, wrote a tweet saying: "The first serious infowar is now engaged. The field of battle is WikiLeaks. You are the troops."

Dropping of hosting, finance services, and accessibility

Amazon.com removed WikiLeaks from its servers on 1 December 2010 at 19:30 GMT, and the latter website was unreachable until 20:17 GMT when the site had defaulted to its Swedish servers, hosted by Bahnhof. U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman, among the members of the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee who had questioned Amazon in private communication on the company's hosting of WikiLeaks and the illegally obtained documents, commended Amazon for the action; WikiLeaks, however, responded by stating on its official Twitter page that "WikiLeaks servers at Amazon ousted. Free speech the land of the free—fine our $ are now spent to employ people in Europe", and later that "If Amazon are so uncomfortable with the first amendment, they should get out of the business of selling books".

On 4 December, Paypal cut off the account used by WikiLeaks to collect donations.

On 6 December, the Swiss bank PostFinance announced that it had frozen the assets of Assange; on the same day, MasterCard stopped payments to WikiLeaks, with Visa following them on 7 December.

Official efforts by the U.S. government to limit access to, conversation about, and general spread of the cables leaked by WikiLeaks were revealed by leading media organizations. A 4 December 2010 article by MSNBC, reported that the Obama administration has warned federal government employees and students in educational institutions studying towards careers in public service that they must refrain from downloading or linking to any WikiLeaks documents. However, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley denied ordering students, stating, "We do not control private networks. We have issued no authoritative instructions to people who are not employees of the Department of State." He said the warning was from an "overzealous employee." According to a 3 December 2010 article in The Guardian, access to WikiLeaks has been blocked for federal workers. The U.S. Library of Congress, the U.S. Commerce Department and other government agencies have confirmed that the ban is already in place.

A spokesman for Columbia University confirmed on 4 December that its Office of Career Services sent an e-mail warning students at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs to refrain from accessing WikiLeaks cables and discussing this subject on the grounds that "discourse about the documents would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information". However, this was quickly retracted on the following day. SIPA Dean John Henry Coatsworth wrote that "Freedom of information and expression is a core value of our institution, [...] thus, SIPA’s position is that students have a right to discuss and debate any information in the public arena that they deem relevant to their studies or to their roles as global citizens, and to do so without fear of adverse consequences."

The New York Times reported on 14 December that the U.S. Air Force bars its personnel from access to news sites (such as those of The New York Times and The Guardian) that publish leaked cables.

On 18 December, the Bank of America stopped handling payments for WikiLeaks.

Anonymous and Operation Payback

Main article: Operation Payback

In response to perceived federal and corporate censorship of the cable leaks, internet group Anonymous attacked several websites using DDoS. So far, the websites of the Swedish prosecutor, PostFinance, the Swiss post-office banking company, MasterCard and Visa have all been targeted.

Forged cables from Pakistan

On 9 December 2010, major Pakistani newspapers (such as The News International, The Express Tribune and the Daily Jang) and television channels carried stories that claimed to detail U.S. diplomats' assessments of senior Indian generals as "vain, egotistical and genocidal", also saying "India's government is secretly allied with Hindu fundamentalists", and that "Indian spies are covertly supporting Islamist militants in Pakistan's tribal belt and Balochistan.". The claims were credited to an Islamabad-based news service agency that has frequently run pro-Pakistan Army stories in the past.

Later, The News International admitted the story "was dubious and may have been planted", and The Express Tribune offered "profuse" apologies to readers. Urdu-language papers such as the Daily Jang, however, declined to retract the story.

Political and media responses

Main article: Reactions to the United States diplomatic cables leak

Many governments said the leaks could damage diplomatic relationships between countries and put people at risk. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned the leak as an attack not just on the United States, but on all governments:

Let's be clear: This disclosure is not just an attack on America's foreign policy interests. It is an attack on the international community, the alliances and partnerships, the conversations and negotiations that safeguard global security and advance economic prosperity. Now, I'm aware that some may mistakenly applaud those responsible, so I want to set the record straight. There is nothing laudable about endangering innocent people, and there is nothing brave about sabotaging the peaceful relations between nations.

Clinton's credibility was questioned by several mainstream American and British periodicals, as some journalists, as well as Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez, have called for Clinton to resign or asked whether she will resign, amid allegations that Clinton has broken international law or other laws by allegedly trying to steal credit card numbers, passwords, and biometric data from the Secretary-General of the United Nations Ban Ki-Moon and other leaders, and as future cable leaks or the current ones may bring investigations against Clinton.

Javier Moreno, editor-in-chief of El País, said that the release of the documents does not put lives at risk and that the attacks on such a release of information to the general public amount to the same reaction seen in other leaks, such as the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Moreno said that the only thing at risk is the career of officials and diplomats within the compromised governments.

The publishing of a U.S. State Department cable sent in February 2009, titled the Critical Foreign Dependencies Initiative, listed foreign installations and infrastructure considered critical to U.S. interests; before its release, WikiLeaks removed the names and locations. The list includes key facilities that if attacked could disrupt the global supply chain and global communications, as well as goods and services important to the U.S. and its economy. U.S. State Department spokesman Philip J. Crowley said the disclosure of this list "gives a group like al-Qaeda a targeting list." British prime minister David Cameron said the list was damaging to the national security of both his country and the U.S., "and elsewhere". WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson said with reference to the cable: "This further undermines claims made by the US Government that its embassy officials do not play an intelligence-gathering role. In terms of security issues, while this cable details the strategic importance of assets across the world, it does not give any information as to their exact locations, security measures, vulnerabilities or any similar factors, though it does reveal the US asked its diplomats to report back on these matters."

In the wake of the leak of classified materials, politicians called for action. U.S. Congressman Peter T. King proposed designating WikiLeaks as a terrorist organization, and Assange became a target of repeated attacks and incitements to violence. According to Assange:

I have been accused of treason, even though I am an Australian, not a US, citizen. There have been dozens of serious calls in the US for me to be "taken out" by US special forces. Sarah Palin says I should be "hunted down like Osama bin Laden", a Republican bill sits before the US Senate seeking to have me declared a "transnational threat" and disposed of accordingly. An adviser to the Canadian Prime Minister's office has called on national television for me to be assassinated. An American blogger has called for my 20-year-old son, here in Australia, to be kidnapped and harmed for no other reason than to get at me.

Reporters Without Borders (RWB) raised concerns over the extreme comments made by American authorities concerning WikiLeaks and its founder Assange. It said: "This is the first time we have seen an attempt at the international community level to censor a website dedicated to the principle of transparency. We are shocked to find countries such as France and the United States suddenly bringing their policies on freedom of expression into line with those of China." The group also condemned the subsequent blocking and the massive distributed denial-of-service attack on the WikiLeaks website. Later. RWB decided to host a mirror site of WikiLeaks on the address wikileaks.rsf.org as a "gesture of support for WikiLeaks’ right to publish information without being obstructed".

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) criticized the overclassification of information that should otherwise be available to the public for discussion. The ACLU called on President Obama to "recommit to the ideals of transparency he invoked at the beginning of his presidency. The American public should not have to depend on leaks to the news media and on whistleblowers to know what the government is up to." Ben Wizner, Litigation Director of the ACLU National Security Project, issued a statement about the Khalid El-Masri cable leak revelations, calling for public accountability and the strengthening of the rule of law and democracy in the U.S.

Henry Porter, writing in The Observer on 11 December, established a parallel with events in 1771. At that time British law prohibited reporting of U.K. Parliamentary debates and speeches because those in power argued that the information was too sensitive and would be disruptive if published. John Wilkes and others illegally published debates, with the eventual support of the London mob, shopkeepers and members of the gentry. Porter said: "From that moment, the freedom of the press was born ... and the kingdom did not fall."

As of 8 December 2010, the Office of the Vice President of Bolivia had created a portal website (at [2]) for leaked cables related to Bolivia. The site acts as both a mirror for these cables as they are released, and a host of translations and quantitative analysis of the cables.

WikiLeaks Task Force (WTF)

Upon the release of the classified materials, the CIA launched a task force to assess its impact on diplomatic relations of United States. Officially, the panel is called the WikiLeaks Task Force. However, The Washington Post reported that at CIA headquarters it is identified by its "all-too-apt acronym" W.T.F. which refers to the popular internet slang, "What the fuck?". The main focus of the task force is the immediate impact of the most recently released files. One issue is whether the agency's ability to recruit informants could be damaged by declining confidence in the U.S. government's ability to keep secrets.

See also

• Classified information in the United States
• New York Times Co. v. United States

External links

• Secret US Embassy Cables website by WikiLeaks
• The US embassy cables by The Guardian
• State's Secrets by The New York Times
• WikiLeaks Diplomatic Cables by Der Spiegel
• Dedicated News Website
• The Arrest of Julian Assange and the U.S. "War on WikiLeaks" – video report by Democracy Now!
• Dutch Wikileaks Mirror by WikiLeaks
• All Cables on Google Fusion Tables
• Cablesearch.org Full text search of released cables.
• "Wikileaked — Inside the State Department's Secret Cables". A journal run by Foreign Policy devoted to contents of Wikileaks's U.S. diplomatic cables release (retrieved 10 December 2010)
• "Support organization of Wikileaks and Julian Assange"
• Official Wikileaks YouTube-Channel by WikiLeaks