US regrets leaks, says it will tighten security

People read US newspapers’ front pages outside the Newseum in Washington. Sunday’s release of documents obtained by the whistleblower website WikiLeaks exposed the inner workings of US diplomacy in recent years. The US government said on Monday it deeply regretted the release of any classified information.


The US government said on Monday it deeply regretted the release of any classified information and would tighten security to prevent leaks such as WikiLeaks’ disclosure of a trove of State Department cables.

More than 250,000 cables were obtained by the whistle-blower website and given to the New York Times and other media groups, which published stories on Sunday exposing the inner workings of US diplomacy, including candid and embarrassing assessments of world leaders.

Before Sunday, WikiLeaks had made public nearly 500,000 classified US files on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The US Justice Department said it was conducting a criminal investigation of the leaks and the White House, State Department and Pentagon all said they were taking steps to prevent such disclosures in future.

While Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said she would not comment directly on the cables or their substance, she said the government would take aggressive steps to hold responsible those who “stole” them. “The United States deeply regrets the disclosure of any information that was intended to be confidential, including private discussions between counterparts or our diplomats’ personal assessments and observations,” she told reporters.

Echoing earlier US condemnations of the leak, Clinton said “it puts people’s lives in danger, threatens our national security, and undermines our efforts to work with other countries to solve shared problems.” Among the revelations initially made public by the Guardian and the New York Times was that Saudi King Abdullah repeatedly urged the United States to attack Iran’s nuclear program. A 2008 cable posted on the WikiLeaks website quotes Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, saying of King Abdullah: “He told you to cut off the head of the snake.”

In one cable by the US ambassador to Seoul, a top South Korean official is described as saying in February that some Chinese officials would not intervene if North Korea collapsed. US Ambassador Kathleen Stephens wrote that Chun Yung-woo, then the vice foreign minister for South Korea, said the younger generation of Communist leaders in China did not regard North Korea as a useful or reliable ally and would not risk a renewal of armed conflict on the Korean Peninsula, The Guardian reported.

The New York Times also reported impolitic comments about foreign leaders, including a description of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s head of state, as playing “Robin to (Prime Minister Vladimir) Putin’s Batman.”

While the newspaper said it had obtained the full cache of 251,287 documents from an anonymous source, WikiLeaks itself had posted only 246 of them on its website as of late Monday. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange plans to release tens of thousands of internal documents from a major US bank early next year, Forbes Magazine reported on Monday. Assange declined to identify the bank in an interview with Forbes.

The White House ordered government agencies to tighten up policies on handling classified information and the State Department said it was reviewing who has access to its networks and databases and would make those standards more stringent. A directive from the White House Office of Management and Budget released on Monday said the government’s new procedures would ensure “that users do not have broader access than is necessary to do their jobs effectively.”

Document disclosures

The leaked documents, the majority of which are from 2007 or later, disclose US 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.

Among other disclosures in the newspaper were suspicions Iran has obtained sophisticated missiles from North Korea capable of hitting western Europe and US concerns Iran is using those as “building blocks” for longer-range missiles.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Monday that Tehran’s relations with its neighbors would not be harmed by the WikiLeaks revelations of deep Arab suspicions of Iranian motives, saying Washington organized the leak to pursue political objectives.

The United States suspects Iran is using its civil nuclear program as a cover to develop nuclear weapons. Iran denies this, saying its atomic program is solely to generate power.

US Attorney General Eric Holder said there is an active criminal investigation into the leaks and that anyone found responsible will be prosecuted.

‘China knows less about N. Korea than thought’

China knows less about and has less influence over its close ally North Korea than is usually presumed and is likely to eventually accept a reunified peninsula under South Korean rule, according to US diplomatic files leaked to the WikiLeaks website.

The memos -- called cables, though they were mostly encrypted e-mails -- paint a picture of three countries struggling to understand an isolated, hard-line regime in the face of a dearth of information and indicate American and South Korean diplomats’ reliance on China’s analysis and interpretation.

The release of the documents, which included discussions of contingency plans for the regime’s collapse and speculation about when that might come, follows new tensions in the region. North Korea unleashed a fiery artillery barrage on a South Korean island that killed four people a week ago and has since warned that joint US-South Korean naval drills this week are pushing the peninsula to the “brink of war.”

The shelling comes on the heels of a slew of other provocative acts: An illegal nuclear test and several missile tests, the torpedoing of a South Korean warship and, most recently, an announcement that in addition to its plutonium program, it may also be pursuing the uranium path to a nuclear bomb.

The memos give a window into a period prior to the latest tensions, but they paint a picture of three countries struggling to understand isolated and unpredictable North Korea.

In the cables, China sometimes seems unaware of or uncertain about issues ranging from who will succeed North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to the regime’s uranium enrichment plans and its nuclear test, suggesting that the North plays its cards close to its chest even with its most important ally. Washington. Beijing AP

WikiLeaks founder files appeal against detention order

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has filed another appeal against a court order to detain him in a rape investigation, Swedish officials said on Tuesday. The appeal was received by the Supreme Court in Stockholm, court spokeswoman Tove Levelind said. Earlier this month, an appeals court rejected Assange’s first appeal, upholding a district court decision to detain him for questioning.

Assange, whose whereabouts are unknown, is wanted by Sweden internationally concerning allegations against him that include rape and sexual molestation. They stem from his encounters with two Swedish women during a visit to the Nordic country in August. He has denied the allegations, calling them part of a smear campaign. He has not been formally charged. WikiLeaks made another disclosure of classified documents over the weekend, including diplomatic cables and sensitive US State Department documents.

The 39-year-old Australian has angered the US and other governments with such disclosures, including secret documents about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

During his August visit to Sweden, Assange applied for a residency permit in the country, where the WikiLeaks site has some of its servers and laws offer strong protection for whistle-blowers. Sweden rejected the request. On Monday, Ecuador’s deputy foreign minister, Kintto Lucas, praised Assange for his work and offered him residency in the leftist-run Andean nation “without any kind of trouble and without any kind of conditions.” Stockholm AP