WikiLeaks US embassy cables: live updates
The first batch of leaked US embassy cables reveal a desire by Saudi Arabia and other Arab states to attack Iran, and US espionage against the UN. Follow all the reaction and diplomatic fallout
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3.52pm: The media commentator Roy Greenslade rounds-up the British press reaction to the disclosure.
None of the UK front pages are quite as succinct as the New York post (left). It is one of the Washington-based Newseum's top ten front pages today.
3.50pm: More tough-talking from the US authorities, this time from attorney general Eric Holder. He said there is an "active and ongoing criminal investigation" into the leaks.
3.42pm: John Kornblum, former US ambassador in Berlin, tells Der Spiegel that the leaks will lead to less information sharing with the US.
Other governments will at first be cautious about sharing too much information with the United States. But perhaps reading the released telegrams will also help us all better to understand how difficult and frustrating diplomacy can be, why secrecy is necessary. Diplomats, like politicians and journalists, are also human. They too love to exchange gossip.
Richar Haass, president of Council on Foreign Relations makes a similar point.
The longer term damage may be more real. Foreign governments may think twice before sharing their secrets or even their candid judgments with American counterparts lest they read about them on the Internet. And American diplomats may be less less willing to commit their thoughts to paper. Such reticence will deprive policymakers of an important source of information and make decision making more ad hoc and less systematic that it needs to be.
But don't belief the US rhetoric about the risk of endangering lives, writes Nancy Youssef for McClatchy Newspapers.
Despite similar warnings ahead of the previous two massive releases of classified US intelligence reports by the website, US officials concede that they have no evidence to date that the documents led to anyone's death.
3.16pm: Max Boot, senior fellow at the US foreign affairs thinktank the Council on Foreign Relations is appalled.
The WikiLeaks files only fill in details about what has generally already been known. Those details have the potential to cause acute embarrassment — or even end the lives of — those who have communicated with American soldiers or officials, but they do little to help the general public to understand what's going on...
This is journalism as pure vandalism. If I were responsible, I would feel shame and embarrassment. But apparently, those healthy emotions are in short supply these days.
3.09pm: The state department has just postponed a press conference with secretary of state Hillary Clinton. It was due to begin nowish, but it has been delayed until 6pm, our time.
2.47pm: The respected Middle East analyst Juan Cole says one of the cables is particularly revealing about fears in Israel of Jewish emigration if Iran gets a nuclear weapon.
The cable shed light on the thinking of high Israeli officials about why Israel cannot, as many US analysts have suggested, just live with an Iranian bomb if one is achieved. They believe that such a development would create a psychological nervousness in the Israeli public that would likely doom it as a Jewish state.
What is being implicitly referred to is the expectation that if the Middle East turns even more dangerous for Israelis, such that they lose their status as the sole nuclear regional superpower, then Israeli Jews may well simply emigrate in large numbers. Over time, this development would ensure that Palestinian-Israelis, now over 20% of the population, become a plurality and even a majority.
2.27pm: The White House has just ordered all US agencies to review safeguards on classified information, according to AP.
A security review is already underway at the US state department, it's spokesman told the Guardian.
2.15pm: The cables portray the US in a positive light on Iran, according to the BBC's world affairs correspondent Paul Reynolds.
What the documents show in fact is not that the US secretly wants to go to war with Iran but that it has resisted pressure to do so from Israel and Arab leaders acting out of a coincidental common interest.But the spying disclosure are much more problematic for the Americans, he argues:
This is very much in line with President Barack Obama's public diplomacy, which is to engage with Iran and, if necessary, to impose sanctions to try to get it to stop its nuclear activities. This it has done and the documents agree.
The damage in this case is that the US has not protected the Gulf Arab leaders from having their opinion that Iran should be attacked made public. Yet for the rest of the world this is actually very important information. It might even give Iran pause for reflection.
On the evidence so far there is really only one secret operation that appears to have been blown. That is an effort by US diplomats at the UN to get personal details (passwords and even frequent flyer numbers) about senior UN staff and permanent representatives on the Security Council.
That indeed might come as something of a shock to the British ambassador there. He might have felt that his country's claimed "special relationship" with the US protected him. Not so, it appears.
1.51pm: The Guardian got hold of the cables from WikiLeaks and then deliberately shared them with the New York Times, according to a blogpost on the US news site the Cutline.
David Leigh, the Guardian's investigations executive editor, told The Cutline in an email that "we got the cables from WL" – meaning WikiLeaks – and "we gave a copy to the NYT".
It's not everyday that a newspaper gives valuable source material to a competitor. But Leigh explained in a second email that British law "might have stopped us through injunctions [gag orders] if we were on our own."
1.38pm: In Iran it is not just Ahmadinejad who is claiming that leaks about Iran were a deliberate ploy by the Americans, writes Saeed Kamali Dehghan.
In a blogpost written before the president's press conference, Amin Alef, a prominent opposition blogger in Iran, wrote: "It is possible that this leak of information is deliberate, so that the decision makers inside Iran can see that they are not only confronted by the US. The cables show that the US has played a role in holding back those who want to see a military strike against Iran."
1.30pm: The French government described the leaks as an attack on democracy.
Government spokesman and budget minister François Baroin said France was made aware of the cables before their release and pledged to support the United States, a Nato ally, in defending diplomatic secrecy. Speaking to Europe 1 Radio he said:
"We are very supportive of the American administration in its efforts to avoid what not only damages countries' authority and the quality of their services, but also endangers men and women working to defend their country."
"Authority and democratic sovereignty are threatened by such practices ... If there was such a thing as a French WikiLeaks, we would have to be inflexible (in dealing with it)," he added.
1.22pm: Craig Murray, the political activist and former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan, claims the British also tried to spy on the UN.
In a longer version of an article he posted on the Guardian's Comment is free website, he writes:
It is no surprise that US diplomats are complicit in spying on senior UN staff. The British do it too, and a very brave woman, Katherine Gunn, was sacked for trying to stop it. While the cables released so far contain nothing that will shock informed observers, one real impact will be the information available to the Arab peoples on how far they are betrayed by their US puppet leaders.
12.59pm: State-controlled Press TV has more from Ahmadinejad's press conference, where he claimed the cables about Iran were deliberately leaked by the US.
In response to a question by Press TV over the whistleblower website's "leaks", President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said, "Let me first correct you. The material was not leaked, but rather released in an organised way."
"The US administration released them and based on them they pass judgment … [The documents] have no legal value and will not have the political effect they seek," the Iranian chief executive added at the press briefing in Tehran.
Ahmadinejad stressed that the WikiLeaks "game" is "not worth commenting upon and that no one would waste their time reviewing them".
12.54pm: Here's more from Ahmadinejad:
Regional countries are all friends with each other. Such mischief will have no impact on the relations of countries.The state news agency IRNA quoted Ahmadinejad as saying that the cables were not credible.
Some part of the American government produced these documents. We don't think this information was leaked. We think it was organised to be released on a regular basis and they are pursuing political goals.
12.47pm: Breaking news from Tehran: The Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has dismissed the cables as US mischief making. He said the disclosure that Arab states wanted to attack Iran was not a genuine leak, but part of a US campaign of psychological warfare.
More follows soon...12.03pm: There's been lots of reaction all over the world so it's high time for a summary.
• Senior US politicians have launched a series of scathing attacks against WikiLeaks. US Republican senator Peter King, chair of the House homeland security committee said Wikileaks should be treated as a terrorist organisation (7.15am). Senator Joseph Lieberman, chair of the Senate homeland security committee, said the leaks had put lives at risk.• Washington's new ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron Munter, offered a semi-apology for the cables in a newspaper article (7.15am). "Of course, even a solid relationship will have its ups and downs," he wrote.
• The UN pointedly reminded the US that the UN is supposed to be treated as inviolable, after the cables showed diplomats had been ordered to spy on the UN leadership (7.23am). Britain's former ambassador to the US, Sir Christopher Meyer, said it was wrong to interpret the cables as an order to spy, a point challenged by Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger (8.30am).
• Governments across the world have been taking action to contain the damage. Australia has launched an investigation on WikiLeaks, China has ordered local media not to report the revelations, and Downing Street says the leaks have damaged national security.
• The Iranian media has glossed over the disclosure that several Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, wanted to attack Tehran. It has focused instead on the suggestion of a US role in the post-election unrest last year. Saudi Arabia has stayed quiet.
• Silvio Berlusconi laughed when he was told about the cables (9.09am).
11.39am: Downing Street has condemned WikiLeaks in a briefing with lobby journalists. It also said it expects several more days of disclosures, according to a tweet from the BBC's Laura Kuenssberg.
Downing Street said the leaks had been damaging to national security, she told BBC News.11.34am: The Chinese media has been banned from reporting the revelations, according to Al Jazeera English's correspondent in China, Melissa Chan.
11.28am: Der Speigel, one of the five media organisations including the Guardian to have had access to the cables, has a new roundup of the reaction.
It says one of the few countries which may stand to benefit from the revelations appears to be Israel. "These (disclosures) don't hurt Israel at all -- perhaps the opposite," Giora Eiland, a former national security adviser to ex-prime ministers Ariel Sharon and Ehud Olmert, told Israeli radio. "If there is something on the Iranian issue that, in my opinion, happens to help Israel, it is that these leaks show that Arab countries like Saudi Arabia are far more interested in Iran than they are in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."It also quotes US senator Joseph Lieberman, chair of the Senate homeland security committee, calling for WikiLeaks to be shut down.
By disseminating these materials, WikiLeaks is putting at risk the lives and the freedom of countless Americans and non-Americans around the world. It is an outrageous, reckless and despicable action.
11.04am: Former Pakistani spy chief Hameed Gul has seized on the cables indicating a US desire to block Pakistan's nuclear programme, writes Saeed Shah.
Gul condemned as a fraud the first batch of WikiLeaks documents earlier this year, which reported that he remained active in directing the Afghan insurgency.
But speaking to the Guardian about the latest leak, he said: "This confirms that the Americans haven't given up their pursuit, to try to snatch Pakistan's nuclear capability."
Many in Pakistan sincerely believe that Washington's real plan for Pakistan is to somehow take away its nuclear weapons. The WikiLeaks cable from the then US ambassador in Islamabad, sent only last year, played directly to those fears.
"If the local media got word of the fuel removal, they certainly would portray it as the United States taking Pakistan's nuclear weapons," US ambassador Anne Patterson said in one cable, according to the New York Times.
10.46am: So far the media in Iran has glossed over Arab aggression towards Tehran and focused instead on what the cables suggest about America's role in the post-election unrest last year, writes Saeed Kamali Dehghan.
The source says opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi gained 26 million votes, 61% of the total, against "a maximum of 4 to 5 million" for Ahmadinejad.Alef.ir, a website affiliated to the Revolutionary Guards, said the cables showed "America does not trust its agents in Iran".In another article Alef.ir talks of "America's post-election co-operation with Iranian post election rioters"."The interesting parts of this documents are those which show that the rioters in the aftermath of the election are linked to the American diplomatic service and they have been consulted by them. For example an American contact in Ashghabad said: "If they are mobilised and if the protesters 'shut down the country' and don't go to work then the regime is forced to think again."
10.28am: The Saudi Gazette reports the leaks without mentioning Saudi Arabia's desire to attack Iran.
There has been no word from Saudi officials on the disclosures.
10.18am: Like the Saudis, Tony Blair is also keen to use force to end Iran's nuclear ambitions. Blair's former spin doctor, Alastair Campbell, says the cables could open the way for a tougher stance against Tehran. In a new blogpost he writes:
I was left with the impression that anyone in the US system pushing for a hardening of the policy position vis a vis Iran would be able to build a lot of support for such a move.Fascinating too the view of Israeli defence minister Ehud Barak last year that if Iran's nuclear ambitions were not checked soon, they would be developed to such an extent that a military response would be impossible because of collateral damage. Part of me thought that was just the Israelis doing their usual thing of trying to push the US harder than they want to go. Another part of me thought 'holy shit!'
10.01am: The leak of the cables has divided newspaper commentators in the UK.
Writing in the Times Libby Purves says she is on the side "horrified Washington diplomats" [paywall].
The loose-lipped internet has done the world many favours, but there is a strong possibility that this latest release will do it none at all. If diplomats no longer dare to send undiplomatic, unvarnished truths to their governments on encrypted cables, the world's peace will be in more danger. Not less.
The Telegraph devotes lots of space to the revelations, but its deputy editor Benedict Brogan says they contain no surprises.
Effective diplomacy involves all the transgressions Wikileaks is exposing. Embarrassment is just the consequence of exposure. Perhaps the more sophisticated response is to stand firm, to assume a degree of worldiness from those involved in the world of diplomacy (who will for example enjoy seeing the US Secretary of State squirming about her UN spying operation, but only because theirs hasn't been exposed as well), and to accept that occasional embarrassment is an occupational hazard in a 21st century marked by vast quantities of information circulating in all too accessible digital form.
But John Kampfner, chief executive of the Index on Censorship, provides a stout defence of free speech and WikiLeaks in the Independent.
The mainstream media in the UK are serial offenders. Newspapers that have no compunction about invasions of privacy or about shrill comment devote precious little time or energy to challenging authority through rigorous investigative journalism. Most political "scoops" are merely stories planted by politicians on pliant lobby hacks. Editors and senior journalists are habitually invited into MI5 and MI6 for briefings. These are affable occasions, often over lunch. There is no harm in that. What tends to happen, however, is that journalists are tickled pink by the attention. They love being invited to the "D-notice" committee to discuss how they can all behave "responsibly". It makes them feel important. Many suspend their critical faculties as a result.
Far from being "feral beasts", to use Tony Blair's phrase, the British media are overly respectful of authority. Newspapers and broadcasters tend to be suspicious of those who do not play the game, people like Mr Assange who are awkward outsiders. Some editors are quite happy to help the authorities in their denunciations of him, partly out of revenge for not being in his inner circle.
Rather than throwing stones, newspapers should be asking themselves why they did not have the wherewithal to hold truth to power.
9.31am: Don't confuse WikiLeaks and Wikipedia. Larry Sanger, the co-founder of Wikipedia, strongly condemned the whistle-blowing site for releasing the cables.
In a tweet yesterday he wrote: "@wikileaks Speaking as Wikipedia's co-founder, I consider you enemies of the U.S.--not just the government, but the people."9.21am: Establishment scorn for the leaks is summed up in a post on the Economist's Diplomacy in America blog. It dismisses them as gossip.
At this point, what WikiLeaks is doing seems like tattling: telling Sally what Billy said to Jane. It's sometimes possible that Sally really ought to know what Billy said to Jane, if Billy were engaged in some morally culpable deception. But in general, we frown on gossips. If there's something particularly damning in the diplomatic cables WikiLeaks has gotten a hold of, the organisation should bring together a board of experienced people with different perspectives to review the merits of releasing that particular cable. But simply grabbing as many diplomatic cables as you can get your hands on and making them public is not a socially worthy activity.
9.09am: Silvio Berlusconi laughed when told the content of the cables, according to Italian newspaper reports this morning, doubtless based
on a briefing by senior government officials, writes our Rome correspondent John Hooper.
on a briefing by senior government officials, writes our Rome correspondent John Hooper.
The cables include a a senior US diplomat's assessment of the billionaire politician as "feckless, vain and ineffective as a modern European leader".
Even if Berlusconi did not take the leak seriously, others in Italy did. The prosecution service in Rome said it would be looking at the documents to see if their publication violated Italian official secrecy legislation.
The announcement followed a suggestion from Berlusconi's foreign minister, Franco Frattini, that the judiciary should take action.
Italy was perhaps the country in which the impending release of the cables was viewed with greatest – or, at least, most obvious – alarm by the government. Frattini described the leaks as "the 9/11 of world diplomacy". The head of his party in the lower house of parliament, Fabrizio Cicchitto, said the documents were representative of a new
form of "media terrorism".
8.59am: "It's a bombshell," says the historian Timothy Garton-Ash in a Guardian video on the released of the cables. "It's the most extraordinary window into how American diplomacy works."
If you are new to the story the video provides an excellent primer on how the cables were leaked, how the Guardian handled them, and what the first batch of leaks contain.
8.43am: In another teaser of what's to come the New York Times said the cables reveal a "dangerous standoff with Pakistan over nuclear fuel".
It reports:Since 2007, the United States has mounted a highly secret effort, so far unsuccessful, to remove from a Pakistani research reactor highly enriched uranium that American officials fear could be diverted for use in an illicit nuclear device. In May 2009, Ambassador Anne W. Patterson reported that Pakistan was refusing to schedule a visit by American technical experts because, as a Pakistani official said, "if the local media got word of the fuel removal, 'they certainly would portray it as the United States taking Pakistan's nuclear weapons,' he argued".Pakistan has criticised the release of the cables. "We condemn the irresponsible disclosure of sensitive official documents," its foreign ministry spokesman, Abdul Basit, said today.
8.30am: Britain's former ambassador to the United States, Sir Christopher Meyer, says it wrong to interpret the cables as a US instruction to spy on the UN.
"I think you have overwritten the story," Meyer told Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger in an exchange on the Today programme."The story of Hillary Clinton ordering US diplomats to spy on members of the UN like Ban Ki-moon, is a serious misinterpretation," he said.
Rusbridger responded: "We have different notions of what constitutes spying. If you go for the biometrical details, credit card numbers and passwords to private emails addresses, I call that spying."
Rusbridger added: "The diplomats that I have spoken to are astonished that this material was shared on a system which could be accessed by 2.5 million users."
Meyer also played down the leaks and said they wouldn't make any difference to the way diplomats behaved. "So far on policy I don't see any revelations. What I do see is more embarrassment than damage. I'm slightly underwhelmed by the content so far, although the fact and the size of the leak does raise very big issues about how you keep things confidential."
But Meyer admitted that he didn't know that Saudi Arabia wanted to attack Iran.
8.09am: Iran's state-funded broadcaster Press TV has an interesting take on the revelations that Arab states want to attack Iran to thwart its nuclear programme.
The cables revealed that Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah was recorded as having "frequently exhorted the US to attack Iran to put an end to its nuclear weapons programme", one cable stated. "He told you [Americans] to cut off the head of the snake," the cables state.
Press TV's headline asks: "Saudi king playing into US hands?"
It adds: "Analysts believe the recent document release is a scenario carefully orchestrated by US intelligence agencies to deflect attention from the United States' domestic problems, upset the situation in the region and lay the groundwork for military action against Iran."8.00am: The Australian government has launched a "whole-of-government" investigation into WikiLeaks, whose founder Julian Assange, is an Australian citizen.
Asked if Assange's passport would be removed, Australia's attorney general Robert McClelland said: "We're waiting for advice from the agencies as to appropriate course of actions that may be taken in response."7.51am: Iraq's foreign minister Hoshyar Zebari, has joined in the international condemnation of the leaks, according to AP.
He refused to discuss specifics, but called the leaks "unhelpful and untimely".7.38am: Cables to be released in the coming days are expected to further strain US relations with Hamid Karzai's government in Afghanistan. In a teaser of what's to come, the New York Times says it will detail more US suspicions of corruption in the regime.
The US ambassador to Afghanistan, Karl Eikenberry, issued this statement in an attempt to placate Karzai and his government ahead of the leaks.The owners of the WikiLeaks website claim to possess some 250,000 classified documents, many of which have been released to the media. These documents were purportedly downloaded from US Defence Department computers and appear to contain US diplomatic personnel's assessments of policies, negotiations, and leaders from countries around the world, including Afghanistan, as well as reports of private conversations with people inside and outside other governments.
Whatever WikiLeaks' motives are in publishing these documents, releasing them poses real risks to real people. We deeply regret the disclosure of information that was intended to be confidential. And we condemn it. For our part, the United States Government is committed to maintaining the security of our diplomatic communications and is taking steps to make sure they are kept in confidence. We are moving aggressively to make sure this kind of breach does not happen again.
It is important to be clear that diplomatic personnel's internal reports do not represent a government's final determination of official foreign policy. In the United States, they are just one of many elements that shape our policies, which are ultimately set by the President and the Secretary of State.
When it comes to Afghanistan, our policy has been made clear by President Obama in his speech on December 1, 2009 at West Point and again at the NATO Lisbon Summit just a few days ago. The United States is absolutely committed to building and strengthening a long-term partnership with the Afghan people and the Afghan Government. Our shared goals do not change based on the release of purported diplomatic reporting from the past.
Secretary Clinton and I have spoken with President Karzai and we are all committed, along with President Obama, to looking forward and focusing on those issues that are key to the success of the Afghan people and the security of the American people.
7.23am: The UN has responded to evidence in cables that the US instructed its diplomats to spy on the UN leadership, including secretary general Ban Ki-Moon.
In a carefully-worded three-point statement sent to the Guardian, spokesman Farhan Haq refused to address specifics, but he pointedly reminded the US that the UN is supposed to be treated as inviolable.Haq said:
1. The UN is not in a position to comment on the authenticity of the document purporting to request information-gathering activities on UN officials and activities.
2. The UN is by its very nature a transparent organisation that makes a great deal of information about its activities available to the public and member states. UN officials regularly meet representatives of member states to brief them on UN activities.
3. The UN Charter, the Headquarters Agreement and the 1946 Convention contain provisions relating to the privileges and immunities of the Organization. The UN relies on the adherence by member states to these various undertakings.
7.15am:
Hillary Clinton and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format, to the public ... Everywhere there's a US post, there's a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed ... It's beautiful, and horrifying.
So wrote Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old former intelligence analyst, suspected of being behind the leak of more than 250,000 dispatches from US embassies around the world.
The first batch of those cables were released last night, so this is the morning for diplomatic heart attacks. And there will be more to come over the coming days.
The focus of today's cables are the revelations of Saudi Arabia's desire to attack Iran; and details of US diplomats being ordered to spy on the United Nations leadership.
Later today the Guardian will publish more details about what the cables say on North Korea. The Guardian's editor, Alan Rusbridger, will be online at 4pm to take questions on the paper's decision to cover this story. Meanwhile, David Leigh tells the story of how the 250,000 cables were leaked, and an editor's note explains the Guardian's decisions on which cables to publish, which to redact and which to keep secret.
Four other international media organisations which have also been working with Wikileaks on the disclosures, the New York Times, Le Monde, El País and Der Spiegel, have been explaining their own approaches to the cables.
There has been a hostile response to the leaks from politicians around the world. You can follow the initial reaction in last night's live blog.
US Republican senator Peter King, chair of the House homeland security committee said Wikileaks should be treated as a terrorist organisation. Republican senator Lindsey Graham warned that "WikiLeaks could have blood on their hands".
Italy's foreign minister Franco Frattini described the leaks as the 9/11 of world diplomacy.
US diplomats have been frantically trying to contain the damage. Washington's new ambassador to Pakistan, Cameron Munter, published an article today in a Pakistan's English-language paper, the News, which aims to pre-empt unflattering references to the Pakistani government and its military.
Declan Walsh, our correspondent in Pakistan, writes:
Munter offers a coded half-apology for the content of the Pakistan files. "Of course, even a solid relationship will have its ups and downs," he says, adding later that: "Honest dialogue – within governments and between them – is part of the basic bargain of international relations; we couldn't maintain peace, security, and international stability without it. I'm sure that Pakistan's ambassadors to the United States would say the same thing."
The cables likely to trouble Munter, which include allegations that the military is colluding with militant groups and unflattering pen portraits of leading politicians, were written by his predecessor Anne Patterson, a sharp, well-regarded diplomat who left Islamabad a few months ago. The Pakistan files are due to be published in the coming days.
