WikiLeaks faced a worldwide backlash yesterday over its release of secret US diplomatic cables, with some countries saying the revelations undermined diplomacy while others dismissed them as worthless.
Japan echoed its key ally the US in describing the leaks as “criminal” and said governments alone had the right to decide on the release of sensitive documents.
But WikiLeaks’ founder Julian Assange, who defended the decision to reveal some 250,000 diplomatic cables, found support from leftist governments in South America.
Top US diplomat Hillary Clinton left for the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe summit in Kazakhstan yesterday which has taken on the appearance of a diplomatic damage limitation exercise. Ms Clinton, who earlier accused WikiLeaks of an “attack” on the US and the world, vowed to reassure dozens of allies that Washington remains a credible partner despite the massive leak of secret diplomatic cables.
“Obviously this is a matter of great concern because we don’t want anyone in any of the countries that could be affected by these alleged leaks to have any doubts about our intentions, and about our commitments,” she told reporters.
Her Japanese counterpart Seiji Maehara told a news conference: “It’s just outrageous. It’s a criminal act.”
US officials insisted they would pursue WikiLeaks creator Assange, an Australian believed to be living in Europe, if he is found to have violated US law.
Mr Assange described the mass of documentation in an interview with Forbes magazine as a “diplomatic history of the US” covering “every major issue”.
Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez, a long-time US critic, praised Assange while Ecuador even offered the 39-year-old sanctuary.
“We are going to invite him to come to Ecuador so he can freely present the information he possesses and all the documentation, not just over the internet but in a variety of public forums,” Kintto Lucas, Ecuador’s deputy foreign minister, told the internet site Ecuadorinmediato.
Whistleblowing website top releases
The 250,000 diplomatic cables that WikiLeaks began releasing at the weekend are but one of many spotlight-grabbing document dumps in the whistleblowing website’s short history.
And it is not the last: WikiLeaks’ founder and frontman Julian Assange told Forbes magazine on Monday the website next planned to leak tens of thousands of documents relating to a major US bank, saying the new “magaleak” could “take down a bank or two”.
November 28, 2010: In a new release dubbed “Cablegate,” WikiLeaks starts publishing some 251,287 cables – 15,652 of which are classified – from 274 US embassies around the world. The New York Times, Britain’s The Guardian, Germany’s Der Spiegel, France’s Le Monde and published revelations from the documents on November 28, saying more would keep coming. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs described those behind the leaks as “criminals, first and foremost” who had committed a “serious” offence.
October 22, 2010: WikiLeaks publishes the so-called “Iraq war logs”, described as one of the biggest military leaks of all time. The 391,832 “SIGACT” (Significant Action) reports, written by US soldiers during the war in Iraq, date from January 2004 to the end of 2009. The logs detail cases of abuse and torture and 66,081 civilian deaths of which WikiLeaks claimed 15,000 were previously unknown. WikiLeaks made the files available several weeks ahead of time to The New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel and pan-Arab television network Al-Jazeera and invited other journalists for a three-hour lock-in preview in London hours before the documents went online.
July 25, 2010: WikiLeaks releases nearly 77,000 classified US military documents – Pentagon files and field reports spanning from 2004 to 2010 – on the war in Afghanistan and said it would soon publish another 15,000. The documents reveal details of civilian victims and supposed links between Pakistan and the Taliban insurgents, infuriating the Pentagon and shining the spotlight on WikiLeaks. The documents were released to The New York Times, Britain’s Guardian newspaper and Germany’s Der Spiegel news weekly.
April 5, 2010: WikiLeaks releases a video of a US military Apache helicopter strike in Baghdad three years ago which killed two Reuters employees and a number of other people. The gun camera footage included audio conversations between Apache pilots and ground controllers in which they identify the men in a Baghdad street as armed insurgents and ask for permission to open fire. WikiLeaks said it obtained and decrypted the video “from a number of military whistleblowers” but did not provide any further information about how it got hold of the footage.
2009: WikiLeaks is among the websites to publish controversial documents and email exchanges between researchers at the Climate Research Unit at Britain’s University of East Anglia, one of the world’s leading climate centres. The leak was seized upon by climate change sceptics who said the emails supported their cause, sparking a global row later dubbed “climategate.” An inquiry later cleared the researchers of any wrongdoing.
2009: In November, the site begins publishing what it says are hundreds of thousands of pager messages from the day of the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington. WikiLeaks does not reveal how it obtained the pager messages purportedly from telecommunications companies, but technology blogs said at the time they appeared to be genuine.
2008: WikiLeaks posts on its website a list of more than 10,000 names – including addresses, telephone numbers and occupations – of members of Britain’s British National Party (BNP). At least one police officer was fired as a result of the leak, as British police and prison officers were banned from joining the BNP in 2004. The party threatened legal action against whoever had published the list.
2008: In September, during the 2008 US Presidential campaign, the content of Sarah Palin’s personal email account is hacked and some email screenshots posted on WikiLeaks. The manager of the McCain-Palin campaign, Rick Davis, called the leak “a shocking invasion of the governor’s privacy and a violation of law” in a statement.
2007: The site publishes “Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedures”, a 238-page US Army instruction manual from 2003 for the prison at Guantanamo Bay. The detailed manual, which states rolls of toilet paper, among other things, could be given to detainees as rewards, was criticised by rights groups.
2007: WikiLeaks officially launches after being founded the year before.