Unedited memos

Whistleblower website WikiLeaks said Wednesday that its main site was back online after falling victim to a cyber-attack on Tuesday.

The organization said it had come under attack after releasing about 134,000 US diplomatic cables last week.

"For the first time, the diplomatic cables are available from every country that has US diplomatic representation," WikiLeaks said in a statement on Monday. "The decision to publish 133,877 cables was taken in accordance with WikiLeaks' commitment to maximizing impact, and making information available to all."

Some of the diplomats' reports are still classified and contain unedited names of sources who had asked US diplomats not to be identified.

Among those named are a United Nations official in West Africa and a human rights activist in Cambodia. The New York Times reports that both people had spoken candidly to American Embassy officials on the condition their identities would not be made public.

WikiLeaks: No sources exposed

While not confirming the documents' authenticity, US State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the United States condemned any illegal disclosure of classified information.

"We continue to carefully monitor what becomes public and to take steps to mitigate the damage to national security and to assist those who may be harmed by these illegal disclosures to the extent that we can," she told reporters on Tuesday.

Australia's Attorney-General Robert McClelland said that contrary to previous efforts to redact identifying features, it had "not occurred" in the case of the latest release. US embassy cables from Australia were prominent among those made available.

WikiLeaks countered in a Twitter message saying it was "totally false that any WikiLeaks sources have been exposed or will be exposed."

But after examining six cables written between 2003 and 2009 where the author had written "protect source" the AFP news agency said that only one of them had had the name of the source removed.

"They deserve it"

According to a book published by the Guardian, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange had told editors working on the initial batch of cables that names did not need to be protected.

"'They're informants,' he said, according to the Guardian book WikiLeaks. "'So, if they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it.'"

The cables released last week are thought to stem from a trove of 251,000 memos the whistleblower website began publishing in November in association with about 90 media partners around the world.

News organizations, including the Guardian, The New York Times and Reuters, have had copies of the cables but have only used them in the reporting of events they deemed newsworthy.

The Reuters news agency says the latest release has come because the media has lost interest in unreported diplomatic revelations. It reports that a source has described WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as "frustrated" at the lack of media interest.

Rather than turn to news organizations to vet the cables, as it has in the past, WikiLeaks has called on the public to look for revelations in the latest batch.

Uncensored and online

German press reported last week that a file containing all 251,000 US diplomatic cables, as well as the code needed to decrypt them, was freely available on the Internet.

Der Freitag reported last week that it had gained access to the entire unredacted archive of so-called Cablegate messages. The paper said the documents include the names of suspected agents in Israel, Jordan, Iran and Afghanistan.

German news magazine Der Spiegel later reported it had found the entire archive online, saying the cables were in an encrypted file stored on a WikiLeaks server that wasn't searchable from the Internet by anyone unaware of its location.

The data had been available online for up to eight months, but only came to light when members of OpenLeaks, a WikiLeaks rival run by former WikiLeaks spokesman Daniel Domscheit-Berg, drew attention to the files, Spiegel reported.

WikiLeaks denied responsibility for the leak of its own files. Instead it placed the blame on a "grossly negligent mainstream media error."

Assange is currently on bail in the UK, pending judgment in a hearing that could see him extradited to Sweden over allegations of sexual offences. Assange maintains that he is innocent. A ruling in the case is expected within weeks.

A US grand jury is also hearing evidence in a criminal investigation of WikiLeaks for disclosing classified information.

Author: Sean Sinico (AFP, Reuters, dpa)
Editor: Zulfikar Abbany