Wikileaks WASHINGTON: The WikiLeaks release of more than 250,000 diplomatic cables on Sunday has infuriated Washington, where officials said it could put lives in danger and threaten national security.
At least one US lawmaker called for the prosecution of the founder of the whistle-blower website, which had previously released nearly a half million classified military reports on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The White House called Sunday's release a "reckless and dangerous action" in a statement released after the first batch of cables was published by The New York Times and European newspapers.
"To be clear -- 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," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said.
Democratic Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, called the release a "reckless action which jeopardizes lives" and rejected Assange's claims to be acting in the public interest.
"This is not an academic exercise about freedom of information and it is not akin to the release of the Pentagon Papers, which involved an analysis aimed at saving American lives and exposing government deception," he added, referring to a secret history of the Vietnam War leaked in 1971.
US Republican congressman Peter King, the ranking member of the House of Representatives' Homeland Security Committee, urged the attorney general to prosecute WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange for espionage.
The latest release "manifests Mr Assange's purposeful intent to damage not only our national interests in fighting the war on terror, but also undermines the very safety of coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan."
He went on to urge the State Department to designate WikiLeaks a "Foreign Terrorist Organization," saying it "posed a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States," in a statement from his office.
A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment on whether the United States was mulling criminal charges against Assange, saying only that it was assisting the Pentagon in its "ongoing investigation" into the disclosure.
The top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee said the release was "an embarrassment to the (Barack) Obama administration and represents a critical failure by the Pentagon and intelligence community."
Representative Pete Hoekstra called on the intelligence community to "move quickly to assess the failures in this case" and said Congress should also take up the matter.
The Pentagon, which also strongly condemned the release, said it had taken new steps to "prevent further compromise of sensitive data."
The steps were taken after Pentagon reviews launched in August that followed the disclosure of tens of thousands of US military intelligence files on the war in Afghanistan.
The measures included disabling all write-capability for flash drives or removable media on classified computers, restricting transfers of information from classified to unclassified systems and better monitoring of suspicious computer activity using similar tactics employed by credit card companies.
"Bottom line: It is now much more difficult for a determined actor to get access to and move information outside of authorized channels," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said.
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Obama admin seeks reliable Pak partners against Al-Qaeda
Wikileaks WASHINGTON: The whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks released thousands of sensitive documents covering governments from around the world.
The cables show that nearly a decade after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the dark shadow of terrorism still dominates the United States' relations with the world. They depict the Obama administration struggling to sort out which Pakistanis are trustworthy partners against Al Qaeda, adding Australians who have disappeared in the Middle East to terrorist watch lists, and assessing whether a lurking rickshaw driver in Lahore, Pakistan, was awaiting fares or conducting surveillance of the road to the American Consulate.
The cables also disclose frank comments behind closed doors. Dispatches from early this year, for instance, quote the aging monarch of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah, as speaking scathingly about the leaders of Iraq and Pakistan.
Speaking to another Iraqi official about Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, King Abdullah said, "You and Iraq are in my heart, but that man is not." The king called President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan the greatest obstacle to that country's progress. "When the head is rotten," he said, "it affects the whole body."
Saudi King Abdullah has repeatedly urged the United States to attack Iran's nuclear program and China directed cyberattacks on the United States, according to a vast cache of diplomatic cables released on Sunday in an embarrassing leak that undermines U.S. diplomacy.
The more than 250,000 documents, given to five media groups by the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, provide candid and at times critical views of foreign leaders as well as sensitive information on terrorism and nuclear proliferation filed by U.S. diplomats, according to The New York Times.
The White House condemned the release by WikiLeaks and said the disclosures may endanger U.S. informants abroad. WikiLeaks said its website was under attack and none of the underlying cables was visible there Sunday night, though some were posted by news organizations.
Among the revelations in Britain's Guardian newspaper, which also received an advance look at the documents along with France's Le Monde, Germany's Der Spiegel and Spain's El Pais, King Abdullah is reported to have "frequently exhorted the U.S. to attack Iran to put an end to its nuclear weapons program."
"Cut off the head of the snake," the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Adel al-Jubeir, quotes the king as saying during a meeting with General David Petraeus in April 2008.
The leaked documents, the majority of which are from 2007 or later, also disclose U.S. allegations that China's Politburo directed an intrusion into Google's computer systems, part of a broader coordinated campaign of computer sabotage carried out by Chinese government operatives, private security experts and Internet outlaws, the Times reported.
As described by German news weekly Der Spiegel, the cables contain tart comments such as a U.S. diplomat's description of German Chancellor Angela Merkel as someone who "avoids risk and is seldom creative."
Another document described by The New York Times cites a U.S. embassy cable raising the possibility that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi may have had a romantic relationship with his Ukranian nurse, who is described as a "voluptuous blonde."
The newspaper said many of the cables name diplomats' confidential sources, from foreign lawmakers and military officers to human rights activists and journalists, often with a warning: "Please protect" or "Strictly protect."
Comments such a description of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's head of state, as playing "Robin to (Prime Minister Vladimir) Putin's Batman," are sure to embarrass the Obama administration and to complicate its diplomacy.
The White House said the release of the documents could endanger the lives of people who live under "oppressive regimes" and "deeply impact" the foreign policy interests of the United States, its allies and partners around the world.
"To be clear -- 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," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
"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," he said.
Security analysts tended to agree that the release of the documents was a severe blow to U.S. diplomacy, undermining the confidentiality that is vital for foreign leaders and activists to talk candidly to U.S. officials.
"This is pretty devastating," Roger Cressey, a partner at Goodharbor Consulting and a former U.S. cyber security and counter-terrorism official, said in an e-mailed comment.
The U.S. government, which was informed in advance of the leaked cables' contents, contacted governments including Russia, and in Europe and the Middle East, to try to limit damage.
The White House also warned readers that the field reporting in the documents is often incomplete and does not necessarily reflect, or even shape, U.S. policy decisions.
Emile Hokayem, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said the dramatic revelation that Saudi King Abdullah counseled a U.S. strike on Iran may have been exaggerated for diplomatic effect.
"It's very possible that the Gulf states have in private adopted very aggressive rhetoric just to stress the urgency of the issue," Hokayem said. "But I personally doubt that there is an appetite for war as such."
Among the disclosures reported by The New York Times were:
-- suspicions Iran has obtained sophisticated missiles from North Korea capable of hitting western Europe, and the United States is concerned Iran is using those rockets as "building blocks" to build longer-range missiles;
-- allegations that Chinese operatives have broken into American government computers and those of Western allies, the Dalai Lama and American businesses since 2002;
-- talks between U.S. and South Korean officials about the prospects for a unified Korea should the North's economic troubles and a political transition lead the state to implode;
-- the South Koreans considered commercial inducements to China to "help salve" Chinese concerns about living with a reunified Korea that is in a "benign alliance" with Washington, according to the American ambassador to Seoul;
-- reporting that Saudi donors remain chief financiers of Sunni militant groups like al Qaeda, and the tiny Persian Gulf state of Qatar, a generous host to the American military for years, was the "worst in the region" in counterterrorism efforts, according to a State Department cable last December;
-- Since 2007, the United States has mounted a secret and so far unsuccessful effort to remove highly enriched uranium from a Pakistani research reactor out of fear it could be diverted for use in an illicit nuclear device.
Commenting on the leaked information, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi declined to comment, saying, he would comment only after reading the documents.
Giving his reaction on the same, Presidential spokesman Farhatullah Babar said the US had already informed about these reports, and if needed, government of Pakistan will register its reaction.
The cables show that nearly a decade after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the dark shadow of terrorism still dominates the United States' relations with the world. They depict the Obama administration struggling to sort out which Pakistanis are trustworthy partners against Al Qaeda, adding Australians who have disappeared in the Middle East to terrorist watch lists, and assessing whether a lurking rickshaw driver in Lahore, Pakistan, was awaiting fares or conducting surveillance of the road to the American Consulate.
The cables also disclose frank comments behind closed doors. Dispatches from early this year, for instance, quote the aging monarch of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah, as speaking scathingly about the leaders of Iraq and Pakistan.
Speaking to another Iraqi official about Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, King Abdullah said, "You and Iraq are in my heart, but that man is not." The king called President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan the greatest obstacle to that country's progress. "When the head is rotten," he said, "it affects the whole body."
Saudi King Abdullah has repeatedly urged the United States to attack Iran's nuclear program and China directed cyberattacks on the United States, according to a vast cache of diplomatic cables released on Sunday in an embarrassing leak that undermines U.S. diplomacy.
The more than 250,000 documents, given to five media groups by the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks, provide candid and at times critical views of foreign leaders as well as sensitive information on terrorism and nuclear proliferation filed by U.S. diplomats, according to The New York Times.
The White House condemned the release by WikiLeaks and said the disclosures may endanger U.S. informants abroad. WikiLeaks said its website was under attack and none of the underlying cables was visible there Sunday night, though some were posted by news organizations.
Among the revelations in Britain's Guardian newspaper, which also received an advance look at the documents along with France's Le Monde, Germany's Der Spiegel and Spain's El Pais, King Abdullah is reported to have "frequently exhorted the U.S. to attack Iran to put an end to its nuclear weapons program."
"Cut off the head of the snake," the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Adel al-Jubeir, quotes the king as saying during a meeting with General David Petraeus in April 2008.
The leaked documents, the majority of which are from 2007 or later, also disclose U.S. allegations that China's Politburo directed an intrusion into Google's computer systems, part of a broader coordinated campaign of computer sabotage carried out by Chinese government operatives, private security experts and Internet outlaws, the Times reported.
As described by German news weekly Der Spiegel, the cables contain tart comments such as a U.S. diplomat's description of German Chancellor Angela Merkel as someone who "avoids risk and is seldom creative."
Another document described by The New York Times cites a U.S. embassy cable raising the possibility that Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi may have had a romantic relationship with his Ukranian nurse, who is described as a "voluptuous blonde."
The newspaper said many of the cables name diplomats' confidential sources, from foreign lawmakers and military officers to human rights activists and journalists, often with a warning: "Please protect" or "Strictly protect."
Comments such a description of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Russia's head of state, as playing "Robin to (Prime Minister Vladimir) Putin's Batman," are sure to embarrass the Obama administration and to complicate its diplomacy.
The White House said the release of the documents could endanger the lives of people who live under "oppressive regimes" and "deeply impact" the foreign policy interests of the United States, its allies and partners around the world.
"To be clear -- 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," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
"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," he said.
Security analysts tended to agree that the release of the documents was a severe blow to U.S. diplomacy, undermining the confidentiality that is vital for foreign leaders and activists to talk candidly to U.S. officials.
"This is pretty devastating," Roger Cressey, a partner at Goodharbor Consulting and a former U.S. cyber security and counter-terrorism official, said in an e-mailed comment.
The U.S. government, which was informed in advance of the leaked cables' contents, contacted governments including Russia, and in Europe and the Middle East, to try to limit damage.
The White House also warned readers that the field reporting in the documents is often incomplete and does not necessarily reflect, or even shape, U.S. policy decisions.
Emile Hokayem, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said the dramatic revelation that Saudi King Abdullah counseled a U.S. strike on Iran may have been exaggerated for diplomatic effect.
"It's very possible that the Gulf states have in private adopted very aggressive rhetoric just to stress the urgency of the issue," Hokayem said. "But I personally doubt that there is an appetite for war as such."
Among the disclosures reported by The New York Times were:
-- suspicions Iran has obtained sophisticated missiles from North Korea capable of hitting western Europe, and the United States is concerned Iran is using those rockets as "building blocks" to build longer-range missiles;
-- allegations that Chinese operatives have broken into American government computers and those of Western allies, the Dalai Lama and American businesses since 2002;
-- talks between U.S. and South Korean officials about the prospects for a unified Korea should the North's economic troubles and a political transition lead the state to implode;
-- the South Koreans considered commercial inducements to China to "help salve" Chinese concerns about living with a reunified Korea that is in a "benign alliance" with Washington, according to the American ambassador to Seoul;
-- reporting that Saudi donors remain chief financiers of Sunni militant groups like al Qaeda, and the tiny Persian Gulf state of Qatar, a generous host to the American military for years, was the "worst in the region" in counterterrorism efforts, according to a State Department cable last December;
-- Since 2007, the United States has mounted a secret and so far unsuccessful effort to remove highly enriched uranium from a Pakistani research reactor out of fear it could be diverted for use in an illicit nuclear device.
Commenting on the leaked information, Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi declined to comment, saying, he would comment only after reading the documents.
Giving his reaction on the same, Presidential spokesman Farhatullah Babar said the US had already informed about these reports, and if needed, government of Pakistan will register its reaction.
Saudi King called Zardari greatest obstacle to Pak progress: report
Wikileaks NEW YORK: Saudi King Abdullah called President Asif Ali Zardari the greatest obstacle to Pakistan’s progress, according to an online report of New York Times that quoted Wikileaks as saying.
The report further quoted King Abdullah as saying: “When the head is rotten, it affects the whole body.”
The cables released by Wikileaks, the whistle-blower, disclose that aging monarch of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah, as speaking scathingly about the leaders of Iraq and Pakistan.
Speaking to another Iraqi official about Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, King Abdullah said, “You and Iraq are in my heart, but that man is not.” The king called President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan the greatest obstacle to that country’s progress. “When the head is rotten,” he said, “it affects the whole body.”
AFP quoting US documents leaked by WikiLeaks and published by Britain's Guardian newspaper, said King Abdullah urged the United States to attack Iran to destroy its nuclear programme.
Leaked memos from US embassies across the Middle East recorded the king's "frequent exhortations to the US to attack Iran and so put an end to its nuclear weapons program."
The memo showed that the king told the United States to "cut off the head of the snake," and said that working with Washington to roll back Iranian influence in Iraq was "a strategic priority for the king and his government."
The report further quoted King Abdullah as saying: “When the head is rotten, it affects the whole body.”
The cables released by Wikileaks, the whistle-blower, disclose that aging monarch of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah, as speaking scathingly about the leaders of Iraq and Pakistan.
Speaking to another Iraqi official about Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, King Abdullah said, “You and Iraq are in my heart, but that man is not.” The king called President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan the greatest obstacle to that country’s progress. “When the head is rotten,” he said, “it affects the whole body.”
AFP quoting US documents leaked by WikiLeaks and published by Britain's Guardian newspaper, said King Abdullah urged the United States to attack Iran to destroy its nuclear programme.
Leaked memos from US embassies across the Middle East recorded the king's "frequent exhortations to the US to attack Iran and so put an end to its nuclear weapons program."
The memo showed that the king told the United States to "cut off the head of the snake," and said that working with Washington to roll back Iranian influence in Iraq was "a strategic priority for the king and his government."
US tried to remove enriched uranium from Pak facility: report
Wikileaks WASHINGTON: A cache of a quarter-million confidential American diplomatic cables, most of them from the past three years, provides an unprecedented look at backroom bargaining by embassies around the world, brutally candid views of foreign leaders and frank assessments of nuclear and terrorist threats, said The New York Times on its website on Sunday.
It said some of the cables, made available to NY Times and several other news organizations, were written as recently as late February, revealing the Obama administration's exchanges over crises and conflicts. The material was originally obtained by WikiLeaks, an organization devoted to revealing secret documents. WikiLeaks intends to make the archive public on its Web site in batches, beginning Sunday.
The anticipated disclosure of the cables is already sending shudders through the diplomatic establishment, and could conceivably strain relations with some countries, influencing international affairs in ways that are impossible to predict.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and American ambassadors around the world have been contacting foreign officials in recent days to alert them to the expected disclosures. A statement from the White House on Sunday said: "We condemn in the strongest terms the unauthorized disclosure of classified documents and sensitive national security information."
"President Obama supports responsible, accountable, and open government at home and around the world, but this reckless and dangerous action runs counter to that goal," the statement said. "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."
The cables, a huge sampling of the daily traffic between the State Department and some 270 embassies and consulates, amount to a secret chronicle of the United States' relations with the world in an age of war and terrorism. Among their revelations, to be detailed in The Times in coming days:
A dangerous standoff with Pakistan over nuclear fuel: 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."
Gaming out an eventual collapse of North Korea: American and South Korean officials have discussed the prospects for a unified Korea, should the North's economic troubles and political transition lead the state to implode. The South Koreans even considered commercial inducements to China, according to the American ambassador to Seoul. She told Washington in February that South Korean officials believe that the right business deals would "help salve" China's "concerns about living with a reunified Korea" that is in a "benign alliance" with the United States.
Bargaining to empty the Guantánamo Bay prison: When American diplomats pressed other countries to resettle detainees, they became reluctant players in a State Department version of "Let's Make a Deal." Slovenia was told to take a prisoner if it wanted to meet with President Obama, while the island nation of Kiribati was offered incentives worth millions of dollars to take in Chinese Muslim detainees, cables from diplomats recounted. The Americans, meanwhile, suggested that accepting more prisoners would be "a low-cost way for Belgium to attain prominence in Europe."
Suspicions of corruption in the Afghan government: When Afghanistan's vice president visited the United Arab Emirates last year, local authorities working with the Drug Enforcement Administration discovered that he was carrying $52 million in cash. With wry understatement, a cable from the American Embassy in Kabul called the money "a significant amount" that the official, Ahmed Zia Massoud, "was ultimately allowed to keep without revealing the money's origin or destination." (Mr. Massoud denies taking any money out of Afghanistan.)
A global computer hacking effort: China's Politburo directed the intrusion into Google's computer systems in that country, a Chinese contact told the American Embassy in Beijing in January, one cable reported. The Google hacking was part of a coordinated campaign of computer sabotage carried out by government operatives, private security experts and Internet outlaws recruited by the Chinese government. They have broken into American government computers and those of Western allies, the Dalai Lama and American businesses since 2002, cables said.
Mixed records against terrorism: Saudi donors remain the chief financiers of Sunni militant groups like Al Qaeda, and the tiny Persian Gulf state of Qatar, a generous host to the American military for years, was the "worst in the region" in counterterrorism efforts, according to a State Department cable last December. Qatar's security service was "hesitant to act against known terrorists out of concern for appearing to be aligned with the U.S. and provoking reprisals," the cable said.
An intriguing alliance: American diplomats in Rome reported in 2009 on what their Italian contacts described as an extraordinarily close relationship between Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian prime minister, and Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister and business magnate, including "lavish gifts," lucrative energy contracts and a "shadowy" Russian-speaking Italian go-between. They wrote that Mr. Berlusconi "appears increasingly to be the mouthpiece of Putin" in Europe. The diplomats also noted that while Mr. Putin enjoys supremacy over all other public figures in Russia, he is undermined by an unmanageable bureaucracy that often ignores his edicts.
Arms deliveries to militants: Cables describe the United States' failing struggle to prevent Syria from supplying arms to Hezbollah in Lebanon, which has amassed a huge stockpile since its 2006 war with Israel. One week after President Bashar al-Assad promised a top State Department official that he would not send "new" arms to Hezbollah, the United States complained that it had information that Syria was providing increasingly sophisticated weapons to the group.
Clashes with Europe over human rights: American officials sharply warned Germany in 2007 not to enforce arrest warrants for Central Intelligence Agency officers involved in a bungled operation in which an innocent German citizen with the same name as a suspected militant was mistakenly kidnapped and held for months in Afghanistan. A senior American diplomat told a German official "that our intention was not to threaten Germany, but rather to urge that the German government weigh carefully at every step of the way the implications for relations with the U.S."
The 251,287 cables, first acquired by WikiLeaks, were provided to The Times by an intermediary on the condition of anonymity. Many are unclassified, and none are marked "top secret," the government's most secure communications status. But some 11,000 are classified "secret," 9,000 are labeled "noforn," shorthand for material considered too delicate to be shared with any foreign government, and 4,000 are designated both secret and noforn.
Many more cables name diplomats' confidential sources, from foreign legislators and military officers to human rights activists and journalists, often with a warning to Washington: "Please protect" or "Strictly protect."
The Times has withheld from articles and removed from documents it is posting online the names of some people who spoke privately to diplomats and might be at risk if they were publicly identified. The Times is also withholding some passages or entire cables whose disclosure could compromise American intelligence efforts.
Terrorism's Shadow
The cables show that nearly a decade after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the dark shadow of terrorism still dominates the United States' relations with the world. They depict the Obama administration struggling to sort out which Pakistanis are trustworthy partners against Al Qaeda, adding Australians who have disappeared in the Middle East to terrorist watch lists, and assessing whether a lurking rickshaw driver in Lahore, Pakistan, was awaiting fares or conducting surveillance of the road to the American Consulate.
They show American officials managing relations with a China on the rise and a Russia retreating from democracy. They document years of painstaking effort to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon - and of worry about a possible Israeli strike on Iran with the same goal.
Even when they recount events that are already known, the cables offer remarkable details.
For instance, it has been previously reported that the Yemeni government has sought to cover up the American role in missile strikes against the local branch of Al Qaeda. But a cable's fly-on-the-wall account of a January meeting between the Yemeni president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, and Gen. David H. Petraeus, then the American commander in the Middle East, is nonetheless breathtaking.
"We'll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours," Mr. Saleh said, according to the cable sent by the American ambassador, prompting Yemen's deputy prime minister to "joke that he had just 'lied' by telling Parliament" that Yemeni forces had carried out the strikes.
Mr. Saleh, who at other times resisted American counterterrorism requests, was in a lighthearted mood. The authoritarian ruler of a conservative Muslim country, Mr. Saleh complains of smuggling from nearby Djibouti, but tells General Petraeus that his concerns are drugs and weapons, not whiskey, "provided it's good whiskey."
Likewise, press reports detailed the unhappiness of the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, when he was not permitted to set up his tent in Manhattan or to visit ground zero during a United Nations session last year.
But the cables add to the tale a touch of scandal and alarm. They describe the volatile Libyan leader as rarely without the companionship of "his senior Ukrainian nurse," described as "a voluptuous blonde." They reveal that Colonel Qaddafi was so upset by his reception in New York that he balked at carrying out a promise to return dangerous enriched uranium to Russia. The American ambassador to Libya told Colonel Qaddafi's son "that the Libyan government had chosen a very dangerous venue to express its pique," a cable reported to Washington.
The cables also disclose frank comments behind closed doors. Dispatches from early this year, for instance, quote the aging monarch of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah, as speaking scathingly about the leaders of Iraq and Pakistan.
Speaking to another Iraqi official about Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, King Abdullah said, "You and Iraq are in my heart, but that man is not." The king called President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan the greatest obstacle to that country's progress. "When the head is rotten," he said, "it affects the whole body."
The American ambassador to Eritrea reported last year that "Eritrean officials are ignorant or lying" in denying that they were supporting the Shabab, a militant Islamist group in Somalia. The cable then mused about which seemed more likely.
As he left Zimbabwe in 2007 after three years as ambassador, Christopher W. Dell wrote a sardonic account of Robert Mugabe, that country's aging and erratic leader. The cable called Mr. Mugabe "a brilliant tactician" but mocked "his deep ignorance on economic issues (coupled with the belief that his 18 doctorates give him the authority to suspend the laws of economics)."
The possibility that a large number of diplomatic cables might become public has been discussed in government and media circles since May. That was when, in an online chat, an Army intelligence analyst, Pfc. Bradley Manning, described having downloaded from a military computer system many classified documents, including "260,000 State Department cables from embassies and consulates all over the world." In an online discussion with Adrian Lamo, a computer hacker, Private Manning said he had delivered the cables and other documents to WikiLeaks.
Mr. Lamo reported Private Manning's disclosures to federal authorities, and Private Manning was arrested. He has been charged with illegally leaking classified information and faces a possible court-martial and, if convicted, a lengthy prison term.
In July and October, The Times, the British newspaper The Guardian and the German magazine Der Spiegel published articles based on documents about Afghanistan and Iraq. Those collections of dispatches were placed online by WikiLeaks, with selective redactions of the Afghan documents and much heavier redactions of the Iraq reports. The group has said it intends to post the documents in the current trove as well, after editing to remove the names of confidential sources and other details.
Fodder for Historians
Traditionally, most diplomatic cables remain secret for decades, providing fodder for historians only when the participants are long retired or dead. The State Department's unclassified history series, entitled "Foreign Relations of the United States," has reached only the year 1972.
While an overwhelming majority of the quarter-million cables provided to The Times are from the post-9/11 era, several hundred date from 1966 to the 1990s. Some show diplomats struggling to make sense of major events whose future course they could not guess.
In a 1979 cable to Washington, Bruce Laingen, an American diplomat in Teheran, mused with a knowing tone about the Iranian revolution that had just occurred: "Perhaps the single dominant aspect of the Persian psyche is an overriding egoism," Mr. Laingen wrote, offering tips on exploiting this psyche in negotiations with the new government. Less than three months later, Mr. Laingen and his colleagues would be taken hostage by radical Iranian students, hurling the Carter administration into crisis and, perhaps, demonstrating the hazards of diplomatic hubris.
In 1989, an American diplomat in Panama City mulled over the options open to Gen. Manuel Noriega, the Panamanian leader, who was facing narcotics charges in the United States and intense domestic and international political pressure to step down. The cable called General Noriega "a master of survival"; its author appeared to have no inkling that one week later, the United States would invade Panama to unseat General Noriega and arrest him.
In 1990, an American diplomat sent an excited dispatch from Cape Town: he had just learned from a lawyer for Nelson Mandela that Mr. Mandela's 27-year imprisonment was to end. The cable conveys the momentous changes about to begin for South Africa, even as it discusses preparations for an impending visit from the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson.
The voluminous traffic of more recent years - well over half of the quarter-million cables date from 2007 or later - show American officials struggling with events whose outcomes are far from sure. To read through them is to become a global voyeur, immersed in the jawboning, inducements and penalties the United States wields in trying to have its way with a recalcitrant world.
In an era of satellites and fiber-optic links, the diplomatic cable retains the archaic name of an earlier technological era. It has long been the tool for the secretary of state to dispatch orders to the field and for ambassadors and political officers to send their analyses back to Washington.
The cables come with their own lexicon: "codel," for a visiting Congressional delegation; "visas viper," for a report on a person considered dangerous; "démarche," an official message to a foreign government, often a protest or warning.
Diplomatic Drama
But the drama in the cables often comes from diplomats' narratives of meetings with foreign figures, games of diplomatic poker in which each side is sizing up the other and neither is showing all its cards.
Among the most fascinating examples recount American officials' meetings in September 2009 and February 2010 with Ahmed Wali Karzai, the half brother of the Afghan president and a power broker in the Taliban's home turf of Kandahar.
They describe Mr. Karzai, "dressed in a crisp white shalwar kameez," the traditional dress of loose tunic and trousers, appearing "nervous, though eager to express his views on the international presence in Kandahar," and trying to win over the Americans with nostalgic tales about his years running a Chicago restaurant near Wrigley Field.
But in midnarrative there is a stark alert for anyone reading the cable in Washington: "Note: While we must deal with AWK as the head of the Provincial Council, he is widely understood to be corrupt and a narcotics trafficker." (Mr. Karzai has repeatedly denied such charges.) And the cables note statements by Mr. Karzai that the Americans, informed by a steady flow of eavesdropping and agents' reports, believe to be false.
A cable written after the February meeting coolly took note of the deceit on both sides.
Mr. Karzai "demonstrated that he will dissemble when it suits his needs," the cable said. "He appears not to understand the level of our knowledge of his activities. We will need to monitor his activity closely, and deliver a recurring, transparent message to him" about the limits of American tolerance.
Not all Business
Even in places far from war zones and international crises, where the stakes for the United States are not as high, curious diplomats can turn out to be accomplished reporters, sending vivid dispatches to deepen the government's understanding of exotic places.
In a 2006 account, a wide-eyed American diplomat describes the lavish wedding of a well-connected couple in Dagestan, in Russia's Caucasus, where one guest is the strongman who runs the war-ravaged Russian republic of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov.
The diplomat tells of drunken guests throwing $100 bills at child dancers, and nighttime water-scooter jaunts on the Caspian Sea.
"The dancers probably picked upwards of USD 5000 off the cobblestones," the diplomat wrote. The host later tells him that Ramzan Kadyrov "had brought the happy couple 'a five-kilo lump of gold' as his wedding present."
"After the dancing and a quick tour of the premises, Ramzan and his army drove off back to Chechnya," the diplomat reported to Washington. "We asked why Ramzan did not spend the night in Makhachkala, and were told, 'Ramzan never spends the night anywhere.'
It said some of the cables, made available to NY Times and several other news organizations, were written as recently as late February, revealing the Obama administration's exchanges over crises and conflicts. The material was originally obtained by WikiLeaks, an organization devoted to revealing secret documents. WikiLeaks intends to make the archive public on its Web site in batches, beginning Sunday.
The anticipated disclosure of the cables is already sending shudders through the diplomatic establishment, and could conceivably strain relations with some countries, influencing international affairs in ways that are impossible to predict.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and American ambassadors around the world have been contacting foreign officials in recent days to alert them to the expected disclosures. A statement from the White House on Sunday said: "We condemn in the strongest terms the unauthorized disclosure of classified documents and sensitive national security information."
"President Obama supports responsible, accountable, and open government at home and around the world, but this reckless and dangerous action runs counter to that goal," the statement said. "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."
The cables, a huge sampling of the daily traffic between the State Department and some 270 embassies and consulates, amount to a secret chronicle of the United States' relations with the world in an age of war and terrorism. Among their revelations, to be detailed in The Times in coming days:
A dangerous standoff with Pakistan over nuclear fuel: 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."
Gaming out an eventual collapse of North Korea: American and South Korean officials have discussed the prospects for a unified Korea, should the North's economic troubles and political transition lead the state to implode. The South Koreans even considered commercial inducements to China, according to the American ambassador to Seoul. She told Washington in February that South Korean officials believe that the right business deals would "help salve" China's "concerns about living with a reunified Korea" that is in a "benign alliance" with the United States.
Bargaining to empty the Guantánamo Bay prison: When American diplomats pressed other countries to resettle detainees, they became reluctant players in a State Department version of "Let's Make a Deal." Slovenia was told to take a prisoner if it wanted to meet with President Obama, while the island nation of Kiribati was offered incentives worth millions of dollars to take in Chinese Muslim detainees, cables from diplomats recounted. The Americans, meanwhile, suggested that accepting more prisoners would be "a low-cost way for Belgium to attain prominence in Europe."
Suspicions of corruption in the Afghan government: When Afghanistan's vice president visited the United Arab Emirates last year, local authorities working with the Drug Enforcement Administration discovered that he was carrying $52 million in cash. With wry understatement, a cable from the American Embassy in Kabul called the money "a significant amount" that the official, Ahmed Zia Massoud, "was ultimately allowed to keep without revealing the money's origin or destination." (Mr. Massoud denies taking any money out of Afghanistan.)
A global computer hacking effort: China's Politburo directed the intrusion into Google's computer systems in that country, a Chinese contact told the American Embassy in Beijing in January, one cable reported. The Google hacking was part of a coordinated campaign of computer sabotage carried out by government operatives, private security experts and Internet outlaws recruited by the Chinese government. They have broken into American government computers and those of Western allies, the Dalai Lama and American businesses since 2002, cables said.
Mixed records against terrorism: Saudi donors remain the chief financiers of Sunni militant groups like Al Qaeda, and the tiny Persian Gulf state of Qatar, a generous host to the American military for years, was the "worst in the region" in counterterrorism efforts, according to a State Department cable last December. Qatar's security service was "hesitant to act against known terrorists out of concern for appearing to be aligned with the U.S. and provoking reprisals," the cable said.
An intriguing alliance: American diplomats in Rome reported in 2009 on what their Italian contacts described as an extraordinarily close relationship between Vladimir V. Putin, the Russian prime minister, and Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister and business magnate, including "lavish gifts," lucrative energy contracts and a "shadowy" Russian-speaking Italian go-between. They wrote that Mr. Berlusconi "appears increasingly to be the mouthpiece of Putin" in Europe. The diplomats also noted that while Mr. Putin enjoys supremacy over all other public figures in Russia, he is undermined by an unmanageable bureaucracy that often ignores his edicts.
Arms deliveries to militants: Cables describe the United States' failing struggle to prevent Syria from supplying arms to Hezbollah in Lebanon, which has amassed a huge stockpile since its 2006 war with Israel. One week after President Bashar al-Assad promised a top State Department official that he would not send "new" arms to Hezbollah, the United States complained that it had information that Syria was providing increasingly sophisticated weapons to the group.
Clashes with Europe over human rights: American officials sharply warned Germany in 2007 not to enforce arrest warrants for Central Intelligence Agency officers involved in a bungled operation in which an innocent German citizen with the same name as a suspected militant was mistakenly kidnapped and held for months in Afghanistan. A senior American diplomat told a German official "that our intention was not to threaten Germany, but rather to urge that the German government weigh carefully at every step of the way the implications for relations with the U.S."
The 251,287 cables, first acquired by WikiLeaks, were provided to The Times by an intermediary on the condition of anonymity. Many are unclassified, and none are marked "top secret," the government's most secure communications status. But some 11,000 are classified "secret," 9,000 are labeled "noforn," shorthand for material considered too delicate to be shared with any foreign government, and 4,000 are designated both secret and noforn.
Many more cables name diplomats' confidential sources, from foreign legislators and military officers to human rights activists and journalists, often with a warning to Washington: "Please protect" or "Strictly protect."
The Times has withheld from articles and removed from documents it is posting online the names of some people who spoke privately to diplomats and might be at risk if they were publicly identified. The Times is also withholding some passages or entire cables whose disclosure could compromise American intelligence efforts.
Terrorism's Shadow
The cables show that nearly a decade after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, the dark shadow of terrorism still dominates the United States' relations with the world. They depict the Obama administration struggling to sort out which Pakistanis are trustworthy partners against Al Qaeda, adding Australians who have disappeared in the Middle East to terrorist watch lists, and assessing whether a lurking rickshaw driver in Lahore, Pakistan, was awaiting fares or conducting surveillance of the road to the American Consulate.
They show American officials managing relations with a China on the rise and a Russia retreating from democracy. They document years of painstaking effort to prevent Iran from building a nuclear weapon - and of worry about a possible Israeli strike on Iran with the same goal.
Even when they recount events that are already known, the cables offer remarkable details.
For instance, it has been previously reported that the Yemeni government has sought to cover up the American role in missile strikes against the local branch of Al Qaeda. But a cable's fly-on-the-wall account of a January meeting between the Yemeni president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, and Gen. David H. Petraeus, then the American commander in the Middle East, is nonetheless breathtaking.
"We'll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours," Mr. Saleh said, according to the cable sent by the American ambassador, prompting Yemen's deputy prime minister to "joke that he had just 'lied' by telling Parliament" that Yemeni forces had carried out the strikes.
Mr. Saleh, who at other times resisted American counterterrorism requests, was in a lighthearted mood. The authoritarian ruler of a conservative Muslim country, Mr. Saleh complains of smuggling from nearby Djibouti, but tells General Petraeus that his concerns are drugs and weapons, not whiskey, "provided it's good whiskey."
Likewise, press reports detailed the unhappiness of the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, when he was not permitted to set up his tent in Manhattan or to visit ground zero during a United Nations session last year.
But the cables add to the tale a touch of scandal and alarm. They describe the volatile Libyan leader as rarely without the companionship of "his senior Ukrainian nurse," described as "a voluptuous blonde." They reveal that Colonel Qaddafi was so upset by his reception in New York that he balked at carrying out a promise to return dangerous enriched uranium to Russia. The American ambassador to Libya told Colonel Qaddafi's son "that the Libyan government had chosen a very dangerous venue to express its pique," a cable reported to Washington.
The cables also disclose frank comments behind closed doors. Dispatches from early this year, for instance, quote the aging monarch of Saudi Arabia, King Abdullah, as speaking scathingly about the leaders of Iraq and Pakistan.
Speaking to another Iraqi official about Nuri Kamal al-Maliki, the Iraqi prime minister, King Abdullah said, "You and Iraq are in my heart, but that man is not." The king called President Asif Ali Zardari of Pakistan the greatest obstacle to that country's progress. "When the head is rotten," he said, "it affects the whole body."
The American ambassador to Eritrea reported last year that "Eritrean officials are ignorant or lying" in denying that they were supporting the Shabab, a militant Islamist group in Somalia. The cable then mused about which seemed more likely.
As he left Zimbabwe in 2007 after three years as ambassador, Christopher W. Dell wrote a sardonic account of Robert Mugabe, that country's aging and erratic leader. The cable called Mr. Mugabe "a brilliant tactician" but mocked "his deep ignorance on economic issues (coupled with the belief that his 18 doctorates give him the authority to suspend the laws of economics)."
The possibility that a large number of diplomatic cables might become public has been discussed in government and media circles since May. That was when, in an online chat, an Army intelligence analyst, Pfc. Bradley Manning, described having downloaded from a military computer system many classified documents, including "260,000 State Department cables from embassies and consulates all over the world." In an online discussion with Adrian Lamo, a computer hacker, Private Manning said he had delivered the cables and other documents to WikiLeaks.
Mr. Lamo reported Private Manning's disclosures to federal authorities, and Private Manning was arrested. He has been charged with illegally leaking classified information and faces a possible court-martial and, if convicted, a lengthy prison term.
In July and October, The Times, the British newspaper The Guardian and the German magazine Der Spiegel published articles based on documents about Afghanistan and Iraq. Those collections of dispatches were placed online by WikiLeaks, with selective redactions of the Afghan documents and much heavier redactions of the Iraq reports. The group has said it intends to post the documents in the current trove as well, after editing to remove the names of confidential sources and other details.
Fodder for Historians
Traditionally, most diplomatic cables remain secret for decades, providing fodder for historians only when the participants are long retired or dead. The State Department's unclassified history series, entitled "Foreign Relations of the United States," has reached only the year 1972.
While an overwhelming majority of the quarter-million cables provided to The Times are from the post-9/11 era, several hundred date from 1966 to the 1990s. Some show diplomats struggling to make sense of major events whose future course they could not guess.
In a 1979 cable to Washington, Bruce Laingen, an American diplomat in Teheran, mused with a knowing tone about the Iranian revolution that had just occurred: "Perhaps the single dominant aspect of the Persian psyche is an overriding egoism," Mr. Laingen wrote, offering tips on exploiting this psyche in negotiations with the new government. Less than three months later, Mr. Laingen and his colleagues would be taken hostage by radical Iranian students, hurling the Carter administration into crisis and, perhaps, demonstrating the hazards of diplomatic hubris.
In 1989, an American diplomat in Panama City mulled over the options open to Gen. Manuel Noriega, the Panamanian leader, who was facing narcotics charges in the United States and intense domestic and international political pressure to step down. The cable called General Noriega "a master of survival"; its author appeared to have no inkling that one week later, the United States would invade Panama to unseat General Noriega and arrest him.
In 1990, an American diplomat sent an excited dispatch from Cape Town: he had just learned from a lawyer for Nelson Mandela that Mr. Mandela's 27-year imprisonment was to end. The cable conveys the momentous changes about to begin for South Africa, even as it discusses preparations for an impending visit from the Rev. Jesse L. Jackson.
The voluminous traffic of more recent years - well over half of the quarter-million cables date from 2007 or later - show American officials struggling with events whose outcomes are far from sure. To read through them is to become a global voyeur, immersed in the jawboning, inducements and penalties the United States wields in trying to have its way with a recalcitrant world.
In an era of satellites and fiber-optic links, the diplomatic cable retains the archaic name of an earlier technological era. It has long been the tool for the secretary of state to dispatch orders to the field and for ambassadors and political officers to send their analyses back to Washington.
The cables come with their own lexicon: "codel," for a visiting Congressional delegation; "visas viper," for a report on a person considered dangerous; "démarche," an official message to a foreign government, often a protest or warning.
Diplomatic Drama
But the drama in the cables often comes from diplomats' narratives of meetings with foreign figures, games of diplomatic poker in which each side is sizing up the other and neither is showing all its cards.
Among the most fascinating examples recount American officials' meetings in September 2009 and February 2010 with Ahmed Wali Karzai, the half brother of the Afghan president and a power broker in the Taliban's home turf of Kandahar.
They describe Mr. Karzai, "dressed in a crisp white shalwar kameez," the traditional dress of loose tunic and trousers, appearing "nervous, though eager to express his views on the international presence in Kandahar," and trying to win over the Americans with nostalgic tales about his years running a Chicago restaurant near Wrigley Field.
But in midnarrative there is a stark alert for anyone reading the cable in Washington: "Note: While we must deal with AWK as the head of the Provincial Council, he is widely understood to be corrupt and a narcotics trafficker." (Mr. Karzai has repeatedly denied such charges.) And the cables note statements by Mr. Karzai that the Americans, informed by a steady flow of eavesdropping and agents' reports, believe to be false.
A cable written after the February meeting coolly took note of the deceit on both sides.
Mr. Karzai "demonstrated that he will dissemble when it suits his needs," the cable said. "He appears not to understand the level of our knowledge of his activities. We will need to monitor his activity closely, and deliver a recurring, transparent message to him" about the limits of American tolerance.
Not all Business
Even in places far from war zones and international crises, where the stakes for the United States are not as high, curious diplomats can turn out to be accomplished reporters, sending vivid dispatches to deepen the government's understanding of exotic places.
In a 2006 account, a wide-eyed American diplomat describes the lavish wedding of a well-connected couple in Dagestan, in Russia's Caucasus, where one guest is the strongman who runs the war-ravaged Russian republic of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov.
The diplomat tells of drunken guests throwing $100 bills at child dancers, and nighttime water-scooter jaunts on the Caspian Sea.
"The dancers probably picked upwards of USD 5000 off the cobblestones," the diplomat wrote. The host later tells him that Ramzan Kadyrov "had brought the happy couple 'a five-kilo lump of gold' as his wedding present."
"After the dancing and a quick tour of the premises, Ramzan and his army drove off back to Chechnya," the diplomat reported to Washington. "We asked why Ramzan did not spend the night in Makhachkala, and were told, 'Ramzan never spends the night anywhere.'
Pupils raise funds for Pak flood in UK
Wikileaks LONDON: Students, parents and staff from Tauheedul Islam Girls High School and Tauheedul Islam Mosque in Blackburn, north west England have raised an outstanding 46,000 pounds towards the Pakistan Flood Relief Appeal.
The cheque has been presented by school officials to a Bolton-based international relief and development charity Ummah Welfare Trust. Students and worshippers have worked over the past few months, organising activities and collecting donations to rebuild lives devastated by the floods.
In a statement to the media Friday, Tauheedul Islam Mosque President, Lord Adam Patel, said: Everyone in the community, young and old, felt great shock and compassion for millions of our brothers and sisters in Pakistan. We wanted to come together as one community to express our solidarity with those affected.
WikiLeaks let loose flood of US diplomatic cables
Wikileaks WASHINGTON: WikiLeaks on Sunday unleashed a torrent of US cables detailing a wide array of potentially explosive diplomatic episodes, from a tense nuclear standoff with Pakistan to Saudi Arabia's king repeatedly suggesting bombing Iran, the New York Times reported.
The cables describe the bazaar-like bargaining over the repatriation of Guantanamo Bay detainees, a Chinese government bid to hack into Google, and quote Saudi King Abdullah as saying the United States should strike Iran to halt its nuclear program, telling it to "cut off the head of the snake."
They also detail plans to reunite the Korean peninsula after the North's eventual collapse, according to The New York Times, one of a handful of international media outlets that gained early access to the documents.
The cables also detail fresh suspicions about Afghan corruption, Saudi donors financing Al-Qaeda, and the US failure to prevent Syria from providing a massive stockpile of weapons to the Lebanese Hezbollah militia since 2006.
They include closed-door remarks that could stoke scandal, including Yemen's president telling a top US general: "We'll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours" when discussing secretive US strikes on Al-Qaeda in his country, and a description of Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi as always being attended by a "voluptuous blonde" Ukrainian nurse.
Most of the 251,287 cables -- many of which are marked "classified" but none "top secret" -- date back to 2007, but the release also includes cables going back as far as 1966, The New York Times said.
The whistle-blower website's chief Julian Assange had earlier described the release as a "diplomatic history of the United States" that would cover "every major issue" as governments braced for damaging revelations.
"We can see already in the past week or so that the United States has made movements to try to disarm the effect that this could have," he said.
The cables describe the bazaar-like bargaining over the repatriation of Guantanamo Bay detainees, a Chinese government bid to hack into Google, and quote Saudi King Abdullah as saying the United States should strike Iran to halt its nuclear program, telling it to "cut off the head of the snake."
They also detail plans to reunite the Korean peninsula after the North's eventual collapse, according to The New York Times, one of a handful of international media outlets that gained early access to the documents.
The cables also detail fresh suspicions about Afghan corruption, Saudi donors financing Al-Qaeda, and the US failure to prevent Syria from providing a massive stockpile of weapons to the Lebanese Hezbollah militia since 2006.
They include closed-door remarks that could stoke scandal, including Yemen's president telling a top US general: "We'll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours" when discussing secretive US strikes on Al-Qaeda in his country, and a description of Libyan leader Moamer Kadhafi as always being attended by a "voluptuous blonde" Ukrainian nurse.
Most of the 251,287 cables -- many of which are marked "classified" but none "top secret" -- date back to 2007, but the release also includes cables going back as far as 1966, The New York Times said.
The whistle-blower website's chief Julian Assange had earlier described the release as a "diplomatic history of the United States" that would cover "every major issue" as governments braced for damaging revelations.
"We can see already in the past week or so that the United States has made movements to try to disarm the effect that this could have," he said.
Privacy Policy
The following Privacy Statement discloses the information gathering and dissemination practices for Awaz Apni Network of Web sites (which we collectively refer to below as the Site).
Our Site, like most other sites, uses cookies to provide you with a more personalized and user-friendly experience. A cookie is a message that is sent to a browser from a Web server and stored on your computer?s hard drive. Cookies help us keep track of the size of our audience, the frequency of visits to our Site and the areas that are most popular. If a guest makes a purchase, cookies are used to keep the shopping cart active during the shopping process. We may also use cookies to help us deliver content or advertising specific to your interests, and to save your preferences or passwords so you don`t have to re-enter them each time you visit our Site. Most browsers allow you to reject all cookies, but then your preferences, passwords and other information will not be saved, and you may have to re-enter information to use certain features of our Site.
We may use an outside ad company to display ads on our Site. These ads may contain cookies. While we use cookies in other parts of our Web site, cookies delivered through banner ads are collected by our ad company, and we do not have access to this information. Wikileaks may also serve banner ads that contain cookies. We will only share such information with our advertisers and sponsors on an aggregate basis to determine the success of any given banner, logo or advertisement.
The Site contains links and advertisements to other sites. If you click-through a banner ad or link and submit your information to that advertiser or site, you will be subject to their own privacy practices. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such other sites.
We may also log IP addresses for the purposes of systems administration or to report information in aggregate form to our advertisers (e.g., how many visitors logged in to our Web site). In some cases your IP address stays the same from browser session to browser session; but if you use a consumer Internet access provider such as AOL or Earthlink or Satyam, chances are that your IP address varies each session?thus making it effectively impossible for us to use your IP address (by itself) to determine who you are.
In general, we will not disclose your personal information to third parties except to the extent necessary to provide you with a requested service, or under circumstances required by law. We will disclose your personal information when we believe in good faith that any applicable law, regulation, or legal process requires it, or where we believe disclosure is necessary to protect or enforce our rights or the rights of another user. We also disclose aggregated user statistics in order to describe our services and reach to prospective partners, advertisers, and other third parties. However, aggregate data is not traceable to you specifically. We may use contractors to help us with our operations. Some or all of these contractors may access our databases of user information. These contractors will enter into an agreement with us that places restrictive provisions on their use and disclosure of all information they obtain through the relationship.
Third Party Advertising
We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here.
Third Party Cookies
In the course of serving advertisements to this site, our third-party advertiser may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser.
Our Site, like most other sites, uses cookies to provide you with a more personalized and user-friendly experience. A cookie is a message that is sent to a browser from a Web server and stored on your computer?s hard drive. Cookies help us keep track of the size of our audience, the frequency of visits to our Site and the areas that are most popular. If a guest makes a purchase, cookies are used to keep the shopping cart active during the shopping process. We may also use cookies to help us deliver content or advertising specific to your interests, and to save your preferences or passwords so you don`t have to re-enter them each time you visit our Site. Most browsers allow you to reject all cookies, but then your preferences, passwords and other information will not be saved, and you may have to re-enter information to use certain features of our Site.
We may use an outside ad company to display ads on our Site. These ads may contain cookies. While we use cookies in other parts of our Web site, cookies delivered through banner ads are collected by our ad company, and we do not have access to this information. Wikileaks may also serve banner ads that contain cookies. We will only share such information with our advertisers and sponsors on an aggregate basis to determine the success of any given banner, logo or advertisement.
The Site contains links and advertisements to other sites. If you click-through a banner ad or link and submit your information to that advertiser or site, you will be subject to their own privacy practices. We are not responsible for the privacy practices or the content of such other sites.
We may also log IP addresses for the purposes of systems administration or to report information in aggregate form to our advertisers (e.g., how many visitors logged in to our Web site). In some cases your IP address stays the same from browser session to browser session; but if you use a consumer Internet access provider such as AOL or Earthlink or Satyam, chances are that your IP address varies each session?thus making it effectively impossible for us to use your IP address (by itself) to determine who you are.
In general, we will not disclose your personal information to third parties except to the extent necessary to provide you with a requested service, or under circumstances required by law. We will disclose your personal information when we believe in good faith that any applicable law, regulation, or legal process requires it, or where we believe disclosure is necessary to protect or enforce our rights or the rights of another user. We also disclose aggregated user statistics in order to describe our services and reach to prospective partners, advertisers, and other third parties. However, aggregate data is not traceable to you specifically. We may use contractors to help us with our operations. Some or all of these contractors may access our databases of user information. These contractors will enter into an agreement with us that places restrictive provisions on their use and disclosure of all information they obtain through the relationship.
Third Party Advertising
We use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our website. These companies may use information (not including your name, address, email address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other websites in order to provide advertisements about goods and services of interest to you. If you would like more information about this practice and to know your choices about not having this information used by these companies, click here.
Third Party Cookies
In the course of serving advertisements to this site, our third-party advertiser may place or recognize a unique cookie on your browser.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)