Monday, November 29, 2010

Panic at the top as latest WikiLeaks release begins

Hacking of whistleblower site fails to stop leak of hugely embarrassing diplomatic cables

LAST UPDATED 6:35 PM, NOVEMBER 28, 2010

Despite a sophisticated computer hacking operation designed to cripple WikiLeaks, the great leak has begun. The cover of Der Spiegel, one of the newspapers and magazines working in tandem with the whistle-blowing site, has been leaked online this afternoon, and it is already apparent why US and British authorities have been so sensitive about the latest leak of diplomatic cables.

In the cables, the Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is referred to as 'Hitler' while Nicolas Sarkozy, President of France, is called "the emperor with no clothes". Another cable describes Afghan President Hamid Karzai as being "driven by paranoia".

Der Spiegel is one of several publications preparing to go online tonight with details culled from the latest WikiLeaks dump of secret US documents. The others are the New York Times, the London Guardian, Le Monde in Paris and El Pais in Madrid.

Whether WikiLeaks itself will manage to beat the cyber-attack currently in place remains to be seen. This afternoon, the site was saying via its Twitter feed: "We are currently under a mass distributed denial of service attack."

It has been apparent for 48 hours that British and American diplomats and officials are badly rattled by tonight's planned leak of 2.7m documents.

Among the revelations expected are said to be some that could severely test the 'special relationship' between Britain and America. These are frank or even scathing - assessments of British politicians including Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg. Brown is said to be described as "weak" and "unpredictable" in the cables.

But the big fear is that candid British views on key Muslim figures, quoted in the documents, may be interpreted as anti-Islamic.

A Whitehall source told the Sunday Times that "certain phrases" used in diplomatic cables might portray Britain "as being hand in glove with the Great Satan to attack Islam... There is a nervousness that that might inflame the hotheads."

Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, a former ambassador to Afghanistan, told the same paper that he was aware that US diplomats had said some "extremely embarrassing things" about President Hamid Karzai. Cowper-Coles added: "I sent plenty of cables in my time that were quite frank. I hope they have not [been leaked]."
Air Vice Marshal Andrew Vallance, secretary of the D notice committee which makes official requests to the British media not to publish material it considers a security risk, has written to newspapers.

He warned of "the potential consequential effects of disclosing information which would put at risk the safety and security of Britons working or living in volatile regions where such publicity might trigger local reactions - for example, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan".

The US state department said the leaks could have dire consequences: “We condemn what WikiLeaks is doing. Its actions are gratuitous, harm relations among countries and erode ... trust.”

The Foreign Office, meanwhile, said: “We would condemn any unauthorised release of this classified information, just as we condemn leaks of classified material in the UK. They can damage national security, are not in the national interest and, as the US have said, may put lives at risk.”

The US has also taken the unusual step of making public a letter written in reply to Assange after he asked for help identifying parts of the documents which might endanger individuals, in order to redact them.
Refusing to co-operate with Assange (above), the Obama administration told Wikileaks that its actions have "endangered the lives of countless individuals".

Neither government has, however, made any reference to the other revelations the documents are rumoured to contain, including details of secret talks with Libya about the repatriation of Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi.