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WikiLeaks releases 2.5 lakh classified US documents

Washington, November 28
Some 250,000 classified US documents procured by WikiLeaks detail a wide variety of secret diplomatic episodes and incidences of backroom bargaining like a standoff with Pakistan over nuclear fuel and the hacking of Google systems by the Chinese government, the New York Times reported today.

The confidential cache of US cables released to the paper by the whistleblower website, were described by the Times as the one that unlocks the secrets of the US diplomacy.

The newspaper made public the details contained in the documents today, sometime after WikiLeaks said its website was under a cyber attack. “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,” The Times said.

More eminent newspapers across the globe are expected to follow suit, even as WikiLeaks on its Twitter account said it was under a mass distributed denial of service attack. It added that even if its website goes down a number of newspapers will go ahead and publish the documents.

These documents, according to the NYT, reveal a dangerous standoff with Pakistan over nuclear fuel. Since 2007, the US 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 will portray it as the US taking Pakistan's nuclear weapons.”

Besides, they also provide an insight into a global computer-hacking effort initiated by the Chinese government. China's Politburo directed the intrusion into Google's computer systems, a Chinese contact told the American Embassy in Beijing in January, according to one cable.

The Google hacking was part of a coordinated campaign of computer sabotage carried out by the government operatives, private security experts and the Internet outlaws recruited by the Chinese government.

They have broken into the US government computers and those of Western allies, the Dalai Lama and American businesses since 2002, the cables said.

The White House immediately condemned the release strongly, saying it risked the lives of thousands of diplomats and officials and endangered its relationship with friends and allies.