Leaked classified documents lift curtain on U.S. foreign policy
By the CNN Wire Staff
November 28, 2010

CNN) -- Tens of thousands of confidential U.S. government communications spanning several years were published Sunday after being leaked by the whistle-blower website Wikileaks.

Reports on the documents' contents, and in some cases the documents themselves, were posted on the websites of five newspapers around the world -- The New York Times, The Guardian in England, Le Monde in France, Der Spiegel in Germany and El Pais in Spain -- that had prior access to them.

However, WikiLeaks had not posted the documents after saying earlier in the day it was under cyber attack. CNN has not had advanced access to the documents because the company declined to sign a confidentiality agreement with WikiLeaks.

The documents posted include candid and often unfavorable commentaries on foreign leaders, as well as coverage of almost every major issue of recent years. The United States had warned WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange that publishing the papers would be illegal and endanger peoples' lives.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs condemned the release of secret documents, including diplomatic material.

In a statement Sunday, Gibbs said, in part, that "such disclosures put at risk 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' statement said. "We condemn in the strongest terms the unauthorized disclosure of classified documents and sensitive national security information."

In its statement on Twitter, Wikileaks said 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.

The issue of how to handle Iran was the subject of many documents in the leak, which also involved Pakistan's nuclear program, reports of China's involvement in cyber-espionage, and efforts to persuade foreign governments to take prisoners from Guantanamo Bay.

Some of the major topics included:

-- Pressure from U.S. allies in the Middle East for decisive action to neutralize Iran's nuclear program. According to one cable, King Hamad of Bahrain told the Commander of the U.S. Central Command, Gen. David Petraeus, 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 Guardian newspaper.

-- 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.

The U.S. State Department's legal adviser, Harold Hongju Koh, said Saturday that if any materials in the posting of documents by the site were provided by government officials without proper authorization, "they were provided in violation of U.S. law and without regard for the grave consequences of this action." Koh told Assange he was responding to a letter about the newest leak.

Koh wrote that the department had spoken with representatives from The New York Times and The Guardian newspapers, and the German magazine Der Spiegel about 250,000 documents the whistle-blower organization provided to them for publication.

Koh described the distribution as the "illegal dissemination of classified documents" and said it would "place at risk the lives of countless individuals" -- criticisms that have been repeated by U.S. officials after past postings on the site.

The information blitz from WikiLeaks offered a glimpse into the worldwide communications of the State Department and its 297 embassies, consulates and missions through what are commonly referred to as "cables."

Koh wrote that releasing such documents could jeopardize relationships with allies, military actions and anti-terrorism operations.

In October, WikiLeaks released nearly 400,000 U.S. military reports about operations in Iraq. In July, it released more than 70,000 reports from the war in Afghanistan.

WikiLeaks indicated last week that it was preparing to release a new batch of previously classified U.S. military documents.

On Monday, WikiLeaks stated via Twitter that its new release would be seven times the size of the Iraq War release.

"Intense pressure over it for months," the group stated via Twitters. "Keep us strong."

http://edition.cnn.com/2010/US/11/28...nts.published/