WikiLeaks has released its full catalog of 251,000 unredacted U.S. diplomatic cables, exposing the names of sources and potentially placing those individuals in harm’s way.
The organization’s five former publishing partners, the U.K.'s the Guardian, Germany's Der Spiegel, France's Le Monde, Spain's El Pais, and the New York Times have released a joint statement condemning WikiLeaks’s move.
“We deplore the decision of WikiLeaks to publish the unredacted State Department cables, which may put sources at risk,” it reads. “Our previous dealings with WikiLeaks were on the clear basis that we would only publish cables which had been subjected to a thorough editing and clearance process. We will continue to defend our collaborative publishing endeavor."
In the past, these media organizations would cull through documents and publish files deemed newsworthy in small pieces. The names of sources, some of which had communicated confidentially with U.S. diplomats, were omitted as their identities had been labeled “strictly protect” in the files. The Guardian says more than 1,000 of the documents exposed on Friday had been given this designation, and at least 150 whistleblowers are named specifically.
"We cannot defend the needless publication of the complete data – indeed, we are united in condemning it," the statement continues. "Today’s decision to publish by Julian Assange was his, and his alone.”
WikiLeaks published the entire cache after polling its readers on Twitter. It did not disclose how many of its more than one million followers had voted in favor of releasing the unredacted documents and how many had voted against.
Reporters Without Borders, an NGO that advocates for freedom of the press, has yanked support for the WikiLeaks mirror it launched in December.
“Some of the new cables have reportedly not been redacted and show the names of informants in various countries, including Israel, Jordan, Iran and Afghanistan,” the organization said in a statement. “While it has not been demonstrated that lives have so far been put in danger by these revelations, the repercussions they could have for informants, such as dismissal, physical attacks and other reprisals, cannot be neglected.”
The U.S. State Department has also condemned WikiLeaks’s decision, the AP says.
An odd series of events led to the publishing of these documents. At the beginning of the week, German papers Der Spiegel and Der Freitag alleged that the password to unredacted cables had been exposed. At the time, WikiLeaks vehemently denied that any names of sources had been revealed and asserted that none would be in the future. WikiLeaks on Thursday flipped its position, confirmed that it had known for months that the password to the unedited cables had been divulged, and pointed the finger at Guardian journalist David Leigh for publishing it in a WikiLeaks book.
WikiLeaks has not accepted any culpability in the breach, but many blame the organization’s head Julian Assange, who allegedly gave the password to an outside source several months ago. Supporters of the site also posted the cables in a BitTorrent file at the beginning of the year.
Late Thursday evening, WikiLeaks itself broadcasted the password on Twitter and encouraged its followers to create mirrors.
WikiLeaks, an organization that has made its name by publishing leaked documents, has failed to acknowledge the undeniable irony in suffering a leak itself. Perhaps WikiLeaks is trying to deflect the blame from itself for the breach, or perhaps, as posts on its Twitter feed suggest, the site truly felt it had no choice but to publish the entire library of documents.