95-406: The United States diplomatic cables leak , widely known as Cablegate , began on Sunday, 28 November 2010 when WikiLeaks began releasing classified cables that had been sent to the U.S. State Department by 274 of its consulates , embassies, and diplomatic missions around the world. Dated between December 1966 and February 2010, the cables contain diplomatic analysis from world leaders, and
190-721: A Pulitzer Prize . The source of the disclosure of this NSA program was investigated by the United States Justice Department . The NSA program itself was reviewed by the Senate Judiciary Committee as to whether it sidesteps the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act , and after The Times articles, the Administration changed its procedures, allowing for more safeguards and more Congressional and judicial oversight. Keller discussed
285-409: A libfix and is used to embellish a noun or name to suggest the existence of a far-reaching scandal , particularly in politics and government . As a CBC News column noted in 2001, the term may "suggest unethical behaviour and a cover-up ". Such usage has been criticized by some commentators as clichéd and misleading. James Stanyer comments that "revelations are given the 'gate' suffix to add
380-457: A Norwegian daily newspaper, reported on 17 December 2010 that it had gained access to the full cable set of 251,287 documents. While it is unclear how it received the documents, they were apparently not obtained directly from WikiLeaks. Aftenposten started releasing cables that were not available in the official WikiLeaks distribution. As of 5 January 2011, it had released just over one hundred cables unpublished by WikiLeaks, with about
475-614: A company in Panama. In Pakistan , the Panama Papers case , or Panamagate case , resulted in the disqualification of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif from holding public office for 10 years. These conspiracy theories have been given the -gate suffix by both supporters and critics of them. The suffix has also been commonly used in the context of popular media, including satirical usage by television pundits and viewers of reality shows. Bill Keller Bill Keller (born January 18, 1949)
570-689: A compressed BitTorrent of the entire site, including the hidden sub-folder. On 25 August 2011, the German magazine Der Freitag published an article about it, and while it left out the crucial details, there was enough to allow others to begin piecing the information together. The story was also published in the Danish newspaper Dagbladet Information and the US Embassy in London and the US State Department were notified
665-550: A free DNS hosting service , dropped WikiLeaks from its entries, citing DDoS attacks that "threatened the stability of its infrastructure", but the site was copied and made available at many other addresses, an example of the Streisand effect . Amazon.com removed WikiLeaks from its servers on 1 December 2010 at 19:30 GMT , and the latter website was unreachable until 20:17 GMT when the site had defaulted to its Swedish servers, hosted by Bahnhof . U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman , among
760-568: A grim equivalent of deathbed selfies? Why am I so obsessed?" The article was subsequently retracted by the editor, in part due to complaints by Adams and her family that the article "completely misrepresented the nature of her illness and her reasons for tweeting, was riddled with inaccuracies, and quoted from a private direct message to Keller through Twitter published without permission." A week later, Bill Keller published his own article about Lisa Adams called "Heroic Measures," this time questioning whether Lisa's efforts to prolong her life were worth
855-611: A large number of cables, both in English and in Russian translation. Some of their reporting was criticised for being inaccurate and posting misleading translations of cables. Russky Reporter denied misleading readers, and said they had early access to WikiLeaks cables through Israel Shamir . Yulia Latynina , writing in The Moscow Times , alleged that Shamir concocted a cable which allegedly quoted European Union diplomats' plans to walk out of
950-533: A letter to the U.S. Department of State, via his lawyer Jennifer Robinson , inviting them to "privately nominate any specific instances (record numbers or names) where it considers the publication of information would put individual persons at significant risk of harm that has not already been addressed". Harold Koh , the Legal Adviser of the Department of State , rejected the proposal, stating: "We will not engage in
1045-417: A million military dispatches from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq. There might be more after that, including an immense bundle of confidential diplomatic cables", and Alan Rusbridger , the editor of The Guardian had contacted Bill Keller , editor of The New York Times , to see if he would be interested in sharing the dissemination of the information. Manning was suspected to have uploaded all that
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#17328487021731140-551: A negotiation regarding the further release or dissemination of illegally obtained U.S. Government classified materials". Koh added that the material was acquired illegally and "as long as WikiLeaks holds such material, the violation of the law is ongoing". Assange responded by writing back to the U.S. State Department that "you have chosen to respond in a manner which leads me to conclude that the supposed risks are entirely fanciful and you are instead concerned to suppress evidence of human rights abuse and other criminal behaviour". Ahead of
1235-651: A proposed pardon of the Watergate criminals and Vietnam War draft dodgers . Subsequently, he coined numerous -gate terms, including Billygate , Briefingate, Contragate , Deavergate, Debategate , Doublebillingsgate (of which he later said "My best [ -gate coinage] was the encapsulation of a minor ... scandal as doublebillingsgate"), Frankiegate, Franklingate, Genschergate, Housegate, Iraqgate , Koreagate , Lancegate , Maggiegate, Nannygate , Raidergate, Scalpgate, Travelgate, Troopergate , and Whitewatergate . The New York magazine suggested that his aim in doing so
1330-649: A reporter for a campus newspaper called The Collegian . From July 1970 to March 1979, he was a reporter in Portland with The Oregonian , followed by stints with the Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report and the Dallas Times Herald . He is married to Emma Gilbey Keller and has three children. Keller joined The New York Times in April 1984, and served in the following capacities: He won
1425-424: A system known as Tangentopoli . The term derives from tangente , which means ' kickback ' (e.g., bribery given for public works contracts), and -(o)poli , meaning 'city'. Examples of snowclone-like use of -opoli include Bancopoli (a financial scandal) and Calciopoli (a 2006 Italian football scandal). These scandals have been given the -gate suffix. The controversy
1520-599: A tag used by the US to mark sources it believes could be placed in danger; and more than 150 specifically mentioning whistleblowers ". On 2 September 2011, Australia's attorney general , Robert McClelland released a statement that the unredacted cables identified at least one ASIO officer, and that it was a crime in Australia to publish information which could identify an intelligence officer. McClelland said that "On occasions before this week, WikiLeaks redacted identifying features where
1615-483: A thin veil of credibility, following 'Watergate', but most bear no resemblance to the painstaking investigation of that particular piece of presidential corruption ". Stanyer links the widespread use of -gate to what the sociologist John Thompson calls "scandal syndrome": [A] self-reproducing and self-reinforcing process, driven on by competitive and combative struggles in the media and political fields and giving rise to more and more scandals which increasingly become
1710-426: A third of these related to Sri Lanka , and many related to Norway. Politiken , a Danish daily newspaper, announced on 8 January 2011 that it had obtained access to the full set of cables. NRC , a Dutch daily newspaper, and RTL Nieuws , a Dutch television news service, announced on 14 January 2011 that they had gained access to the about 3,000 cables sent from The Hague, via Aftenposten . NOS announced on
1805-470: A time of war. In an attempt to respond to criticism stemming from the disclosure of the classified Terrorist Finance Tracking Program , the NSA program's official name, Keller stated in a published letter that President Bush himself had acknowledged as early as September 2001 that efforts were underway "to identify and investigate the financial infrastructure of the international terrorist networks" and "to follow
1900-521: A tweet saying: "The first serious infowar is now engaged. The field of battle is WikiLeaks. You are the troops." About an hour prior to the planned release of the initial documents, WikiLeaks announced it was experiencing a massive distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS), but vowed to still release the cables and documents via pre-agreed prominent media outlets El País , Le Monde , Der Spiegel , The Guardian , and The New York Times . According to Arbor Networks , an Internet-analyst group,
1995-510: A variety of websites. The contents of the U.S. diplomatic cables leak describe in detail events and incidents surrounding international affairs from 274 embassies dating from 28 December 1966 to 28 February 2010. The diplomatic cables revealed numerous unguarded comments and revelations: US diplomats gathering personal information about Ban Ki-moon , Secretary-General of the United Nations, and other top UN officials; critiques and praises about
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#17328487021732090-474: Is 1.73 gigabytes in size. ... The password for this file is plain to see and identifiable for someone familiar with the material. Steffen Kraft On 29 August, WikiLeaks published over 130,000 unredacted cables. On 31 August, WikiLeaks tweeted a link to a torrent of the encrypted data. On 1 September 2011, WikiLeaks announced that an encrypted version of the un-redacted US State Department cables had been available for months. WikiLeaks said that it would publish
2185-510: Is a vast difference between stating general intentions to track terrorist finances and the exact means employed to achieve those goals. But, as Keller wrote, this was the same Secretary Snow who invited a group of reporters to a 6-day trip on a military aircraft "to show off the department's efforts to track terrorist financing." Keller was a leading supporter of the 2003 invasion of Iraq , explaining his backing for military action in his article 'The I-Can't-Believe-I'm-A-Hawk Club'. Two days after
2280-530: Is an American journalist. He was the founding editor-in-chief of The Marshall Project , a nonprofit that reports on criminal justice in the United States . Previously, he was a columnist for The New York Times , and served as the paper's executive editor from July 2003 until September 2011. On June 2, 2011, he announced that he would step down from the position to become a full-time writer. Jill Abramson replaced him as executive editor. Keller worked in
2375-569: Is that the current turmoil in the Roman Catholic Church is not just a sad footnote to the life of a beloved figure. This is a crisis of the pope's making." Keller wrote a 128-page juvenile biography of Nelson Mandela published by Kingfisher Books in 2008, Tree Shaker: The Story of Nelson Mandela . He had served as the Times bureau chief in Johannesburg from April 1992 to May 1995 —spanning
2470-562: The Brussels, Belgium -based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (SWIFT) on June 23, 2006. Many commentators, as well as some elected officials such as U.S. Congressman Peter T. King , called for the U.S. Justice Department to prosecute The New York Times and the confidential sources who leaked the existence of this counter-terrorism program despite relevant statutes that forbid revealing classified information that could threaten national security , especially in
2565-576: The Durban II speech by Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad , for publication in the pro-Putin Russky Reporter in December 2010. Shamir has denied this accusation. The Lebanese daily newspaper Al-Akhbar published about 183 cables on 2 December 2010. Australian-based Fairfax Media obtained access to the cables under a separate arrangement. Fairfax newspapers began releasing their own stories based on
2660-607: The Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting for his "resourceful and detailed coverage of events in the U.S.S.R." during 1988. That is, in the Soviet Union during the year it established its Congress of People's Deputies , the last year before the revolutions of 1989 in Central and Eastern Europe. Keller and The Times also published a story on another classified program to monitor terrorist-related financial transactions through
2755-860: The Times Moscow bureau from 1986 to 1991, eventually as bureau chief, spanning the final years of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union . For his reporting during 1988 he won a Pulitzer Prize . Keller is the son of former chairman and chief executive of the Chevron Corporation , George M. Keller . He attended the Roman Catholic schools St. Matthews and Junípero Serra High School in San Mateo, California , and graduated in 1970 from Pomona College , where he began his journalistic career as
2850-492: The Valerie Plame case. Keller was reported to have refused to answer questions from The Times public editor , Byron Calame , on the timing of the December 16, 2005 article on the classified National Security Agency (NSA) Terrorist Surveillance Program . Keller's delay of the paper's reporting about NSA overreach until after Bush's close reelection was controversial. The Times's series of articles on this topic won
2945-617: The Watergate scandal in the United States in the early 1970s, which resulted in the resignation of US President Richard Nixon . The scandal was named after the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. , where the burglary giving rise to the scandal took place; the complex itself was named after the "Water Gate" area where symphony orchestra concerts were staged on the Potomac River between 1935 and 1965. The suffix has become productive as
United States diplomatic cables leak - Misplaced Pages Continue
3040-461: The first amendment , they should get out of the business of selling books". On 2 December 2010, Tableau Software withdrew its visualizations from the contents of the leak, stating that it was directly due to political pressure from Joe Lieberman. On 4 December, PayPal cut off the account used by WikiLeaks to collect donations. On 6 December, the Swiss bank PostFinance announced that it had frozen
3135-557: The Afghan and Iraqi war logs. The Washington Post reported that it also requested permission to see the documents, but was rejected for undisclosed reasons. CNN was originally supposed to receive an advance copy of the documents as well, but did not after it refused to sign a confidentiality agreement with WikiLeaks. The Wall Street Journal also refused advance access, apparently for similar reasons as CNN. The Russian weekly newspaper Russky Reporter ( Русский Репортёр ) has published
3230-527: The BBC called it "one of the most sensitive" leaks. WikiLeaks removed only a minority of the details of names and locations, and left the rest uncensored; details of the exact location of the assets were not included in the list. The list included critical facilities for the global supply chain, global communications, and economically important goods and services. An investigation into two senior Zimbabwe army commanders who communicated with US Ambassador Charles A. Ray
3325-531: The DDoS attack accounted for between two and four gigabits per second (Gbit/s) of additional traffic to the WikiLeaks host network, compared to an average traffic of between twelve and fifteen Gbit/s under ordinary conditions. The attack was slightly more powerful than ordinary DDoS attacks, though well below the maximum of 60 to 100 Gbit/s of other major attacks during 2010. On 2 December 2010, EveryDNS , who provide
3420-507: The Department of State." He said the warning was from an "overzealous employee." According to a December 2010 article in The Guardian , access to WikiLeaks was blocked on government computers because the information was still classified. List of scandals with %22-gate%22 suffix This is a list of scandals or controversies whose names include a -gate suffix, by analogy with the Watergate scandal , as well as other incidents to which
3515-586: The Ecuadorian government and institutions on 6 April 2011. The publication was done the day after the Spanish newspaper El País published a cable in which the ambassador Heather Hodges showed concerns regarding corruption in the Ecuadorian National Police, especially of Gral. Jaime Hurtado Vaca, former Police commander. The ambassador was later declared persona non grata and was requested to leave
3610-679: The U.S. and Britain eavesdropped on Secretary General Kofi Annan in the weeks before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 , in apparent violation of international treaties prohibiting spying at the UN. The intelligence information the diplomats were ordered to gather included biometric information, passwords, and personal encryption keys used in private and commercial networks for official communications. It also included Internet and intranet usernames, e-mail addresses, web site URLs useful for identification, credit card numbers, frequent flier account numbers, and work schedules. The targeted human intelligence
3705-557: The US and the agents were not extradited to Germany. The Guardian released its coverage of the leaked cables in numerous articles, including an interactive database, starting on 28 November. El País released its report saying there was an agreement between the newspapers for simultaneous publication of the "internationally relevant" documents, but that each newspaper was free to select and treat those documents that primarily relate to its own country. Der Spiegel also released its preliminary report, with extended coverage promised for
3800-481: The alliances and partnerships, the conventions and negotiations that safeguard global security and advance economic prosperity." Julian Assange is quoted as saying, "Of course, abusive, Titanic organizations, when exposed, grasp at all sorts of ridiculous straws to try and distract the public from the true nature of the abuse." John Perry Barlow , co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation , wrote
3895-464: The argument that WikiLeaks' publications put lives at risk. According to IRTF reports, "the lives of cooperating Afghans, Iraqis, and other foreign interlocutors have been placed at increased risk" because of the leaks. The reports said that the leaks could also cause "serious damage" to "intelligence sources, informants and the Afghan population". A damage assessment by the IRTF, 111,000 IED-related documents in
United States diplomatic cables leak - Misplaced Pages Continue
3990-834: The assets of Assange; on the same day, MasterCard stopped payments to WikiLeaks, with Visa following them on 7 December. Official efforts by the U.S. government to limit access to, conversation about, and general spread of the cables leaked by WikiLeaks were revealed by leading media organizations. A 4 December 2010 article by MSNBC reported that the Obama administration had warned federal government employees and students in educational institutions studying towards careers in public service that they must refrain from downloading or linking to any WikiLeaks documents. However, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley denied ordering students, stating, "We do not control private networks. We have issued no authoritative instructions to people who are not employees of
4085-487: The cables on their website. According to Glenn Greenwald , WikiLeaks decided that the "safest course was to release all the cables in full, so that not only the world's intelligence agencies but everyone had them, so that steps could be taken to protect the sources and so that the information in them was equally available." According to The Guardian, "the newly published archive" contained "more than 1,000 cables identifying individual activists ; several thousand labelled with
4180-676: The column. Sullivan wrote that it is not her practice to comment on whether she agrees with columnists, but did cite "issues here of tone and sensitivity." She also pointed out factual inaccuracies which were subsequently corrected. The Marshall Project is a nonprofit nonpartisan online journalism organization covering criminal justice in the United States . The project was originally conceived by former hedge fund manager, filmmaker and journalist Neil Barsky , who announced it in his byline in an unrelated New York Times article in November 2013. In February 2014, The New York Times reported that Keller
4275-506: The corpses were shot in the head and handcuffed". The US said their troops had been fired on when they approached the house and the people were killed by a support air raid. A US inquiry three months later determined that the soldiers had acted according to the rules of engagement in taking down a safe house. The Iraqi government then said they would open an inquiry. In September 2011, the Iraqi government said they would reopen their investigation into
4370-517: The country as soon as possible. Several of the newspapers coordinating with WikiLeaks have published some of the cables on their own websites. In August 2010, Assange gave Guardian journalist David Leigh an encryption key and a URL where he could locate the full Cablegate file. In February 2011, shortly before Domscheit-Berg 's book appeared, Leigh and Luke Harding , another Guardian journalist, published WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy via Guardian Books. In it, Leigh revealed
4465-552: The damage caused was limited. One of the leaked documents included comments sent to the US State Department by Philip Alston , United Nations special rapporteur on Extrajudicial, Summary, or Arbitrary Executions regarding the Ishaqi incident . Alston stated that US forces handcuffed and executed the residents of a house on 15 March 2006. The residents included five children under 5 years of age. Autopsies later confirmed that "all
4560-499: The deliberations behind the Times' decision to publish the story in a July 5, 2006 PBS interview with Jeffrey Brown that included a discussion of the issues involved with former National Security Agency Director Admiral Bobby Ray Inman. Keller widely reported on the Catholic sex abuse cases and flatly put the blame on John Paul II himself : "The uncomfortable and largely unspoken truth
4655-491: The diplomats' assessment of host countries and their officials. On 30 July 2013, Chelsea Manning was convicted for theft of the cables and violations of the Espionage Act in a court martial proceeding and sentenced to thirty-five years imprisonment. She was released on 17 May 2017, after seven years total confinement, after her sentence had been commuted by President Barack Obama earlier that year. The first document,
4750-429: The documents we selected", Le Monde ' s managing editor, Sylvie Kauffmann , said in an interview. WikiLeaks aimed to release the cables in phases over several months due to their global scope and significance. The first batch of leaks released comprised 220 cables. Further cables were subsequently made available on the WikiLeaks website. The full set of cables published by WikiLeaks can be browsed and searched by
4845-516: The effort and cost, and suggesting those who "accept their inevitable fate with grace and courage" should be worthy of equal praise. The article ignited a backlash in many media channels. Articles appeared in The Nation ("Bill Keller Bullies Cancer Patient"), and The New Yorker among dozens of others. The Times' public editor, Margaret Sullivan , responded to the criticism in a public column. The response included Keller's responses defending
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#17328487021734940-465: The encryption key Assange had given him. The key to the document is: ACollectionOfDiplomaticHistorySince_1966_ToThe_PresentDay# . The encrypted file was placed in a hidden sub-folder on the WikiLeaks web server on which it had been placed to aid in transferring the file from WikiLeaks to Leigh and not removed due to an oversight. When the WikiLeaks website experienced denial-of-service attacks , mirror sites were setup and supporters created and shared
5035-488: The end of apartheid in South Africa and election of Mandela's African National Congress as the governing party in 1994. Keller's wife since 1999, Emma Gilbey , wrote a full biography of Winnie Mandela published in 1993, The Lady: The Life and Times of Winnie Mandela (Jonathan Cape). In January 2014, two articles by Keller and his wife about cancer blogger Lisa Bonchek Adams generated substantial controversy about
5130-399: The entire, unredacted archive in searchable form on its website the next day. The unredacted cables were published by Cryptome a day before WikiLeaks. Cryptome's owner, John Young, testified in 2020 that Cryptome has never been asked by US law enforcement to remove the unredacted cables and that they remain online. On 2 September, WikiLeaks published searchable, unredacted copies of all of
5225-503: The evidence against him. The U.S. established an Information Review Task Force (IRTF) to investigate the impact of WikiLeaks' publications. In 2013, Brigadier general Robert Carr, who headed the IRTF, testified at Chelsea Manning's sentencing hearing that the task force had found no specific examples of anyone who had lost his or her life in reprisals due WikiLeaks' publication of material provided by Manning. Ed Pilkington wrote in The Guardian that Carr's testimony significantly undermined
5320-478: The first 220 cables were published under this agreement by El País (Spain), Der Spiegel (Germany), Le Monde (France), The Guardian (United Kingdom), and The New York Times (United States). WikiLeaks had planned to release the rest over several months, and as of 11 January 2011, 2017 had been published. The remaining cables were published in September 2011 after a series of events compromised
5415-436: The focus of mediated forms of public debate, marginalizing or displacing other issues and producing on occasion a climate of political crisis which can debilitate or even paralyse a government. The adoption of -gate to suggest the existence of a scandal was promoted by William Safire , the conservative New York Times columnist and former Nixon administration speechwriter. As early as September 1974, he wrote of "Vietgate",
5510-493: The former Yugoslavia . The term is also used in Mandarin Chinese with the suffix -mén ( simplified Chinese : 门 ; traditional Chinese : 門 ; lit. 'door', 'gate'). Some commentators have characterized this use of the -gate suffix as a snowclone . But Geoffrey Pullum , the coiner of the term snowclone , considers that it is only a "lexical word-formation analog". Martha Brockenbrough ,
5605-495: The founder of The Society for the Promotion of Good Grammar, said that no one should aspire to write with cliches and that although they do help to get a lot of complicated things across in few words, they are not a good way to get people to keep reading what you're writing. The use of a suffix in this way is not new. -mandering has long been used as a suffix by a politician's name in analogy with gerrymandering ( "Henry-mandering"
5700-473: The government of the United Kingdom (UK) sent a DA-Notice to UK newspapers, which requested advance notice from newspapers regarding the expected publication. Index on Censorship pointed out that "there is no obligation on [the] media to comply". Under the terms of a DA-Notice, "[n]ewspaper editors would speak to [the] Defence, Press and Broadcasting Advisory Committee prior to publication". The Guardian
5795-556: The host countries of various U.S. embassies, discussion and resolutions towards ending ongoing tension in the Middle East, efforts for and resistance against nuclear disarmament , actions in the War on Terror , assessments of other threats around the world, dealings between various countries, U.S. intelligence and counterintelligence efforts, U.S. support of dictatorship and other diplomatic actions. The leaked cables revealed that diplomats of
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#17328487021735890-480: The incident as a result of the publication of the cable. Iraqi officials said that the cable was sufficient cause to deny the Americans any bases and demand that all troops leave. In December 2010, Der Spiegel reported that one of the cables showed that the US had placed pressure on Germany not to pursue the 13 suspected CIA agents involved in the 2003 abduction of Khalid El-Masri , a German citizen. The abduction
5985-450: The individuals supposedly involved. -ghazi may be seen as carrying an ironic or self-effacing connotation in its usage, implying that the event described has the appearance and media coverage of a scandal, but does not actually amount to much in a grander sense. Like the -gate suffix, the Italian -opoli suffix emerged in Italian media from investigations in the 1990s that uncovered
6080-477: The invasion, Keller wrote the column 'Why Colin Powell Should Go', arguing for US Secretary of State's resignation because his strategy of diplomacy at the UN had failed. In contrast, Keller was much more sympathetic to Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz , describing him as the 'Sunshine Warrior'. On July 6, 2005, Keller spoke in defense of Judith Miller and her refusal to give up documents relating to
6175-425: The leak, United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and other American officials contacted governments in several countries about the impending release. The five newspapers that had obtained an advance copy of all leaked cables began releasing the cables on 28 November 2010, and WikiLeaks made the cables selected by these newspapers and redacted by their journalists available on its website. "They are releasing
6270-504: The leaked cables on 7 December 2010. The Cuban government-run website Razones de Cuba started publishing Spanish translations of WikiLeaks documents on 23 December 2010. The Swedish newspapers Svenska Dagbladet and Aftonbladet started reporting on the leaks in early December 2010. In Norway Verdens Gang ( VG ) brought the first leaks concerning the United States and the Norwegian government on 7 December. Aftenposten ,
6365-415: The leaks "may lead to the compromise of Counter IED tactics, techniques and procedures used by Coalition Forces conducting exploitation of IED events". In 2020, a lawyer for the US said that "sources, whose redacted names and other identifying information was contained in classified documents published by Wikileaks, who subsequently disappeared, although the US can't prove at this point that their disappearance
6460-619: The magazine Wired reported that the U.S. State Department and embassy personnel were concerned that Chelsea Manning , a United States Army soldier charged with the unauthorized download of classified material while stationed in Iraq, had leaked diplomatic cables. WikiLeaks rejected the report as inaccurate: "Allegations in Wired that we have been sent 260,000 classified U.S. embassy cables are, as far as we can tell, incorrect". However, during that same month (June 2010), The Guardian had been offered "half
6555-545: The members of the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee who had questioned Amazon in private communication on the company's hosting of WikiLeaks and the illegally obtained documents, commended Amazon for the action; WikiLeaks, however, responded by stating on its official Twitter page that "WikiLeaks servers at Amazon ousted. Free speech the land of the free—fine our $ are now spent to employ people in Europe", and later that "If Amazon are so uncomfortable with
6650-521: The money as a trail to the terrorists." In an Op-ed column in The Times , Keller, together with Los Angeles Times editor Dean Baquet wrote that "Our job, especially in times like these, is to bring our readers information that will enable them to judge how well their elected leaders are fighting on their behalf and at what price." Keller's critics, including U.S. Treasury Secretary John W. Snow , responded to Keller's letter by pointing out that there
6745-422: The nature of social media, digital journalism and terminal illness. The incident came to be known in social media as KellerGate. On January 8, 2014, Keller's wife Emma had written an article about Lisa Adams in The Guardian about whether people with terminal illness should be so public on social media. She wrote, "Should there be boundaries in this kind of experience? Is there such a thing as TMI? Are her tweets
6840-468: The next day. Its cover for 29 November was also leaked with the initial report. The New York Times initially covered the story in a nine-part series spanning nine days, with the first story published simultaneously with the other outlets. The New York Times was not originally intended to receive the leak, allegedly due to its unflattering portrayal of the site's founder, but The Guardian decided to share coverage, citing earlier cooperation while covering
6935-451: The passphrase was a temporary one, unique to that file. In August 2011, German weekly Der Freitag published some of these details, enabling others to piece the information together and decrypt the Cablegate files. The cables were then available online, fully unredacted. In response, WikiLeaks decided on 1 September 2011 to publish all 251,287 unedited documents. The publication of the cables
7030-408: The press. Reaction to the release in September 2011 of the unredacted cables attracted stronger criticism, and was condemned by the five newspapers that had first published the cables in redacted form in November 2010. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton responded to the leaks saying, "This disclosure is not just an attack on America's foreign policy; it is an attack on the international community,
7125-456: The previous weeks and months additional measures had been taken to improve the security of the system and prevent leaks. On 22 November, an announcement was made via WikiLeaks' Twitter feed that the next release would be "7× the size of the Iraq War Logs ". U.S. authorities and the media had speculated, at the time, that they could contain diplomatic cables. Prior to the expected leak,
7220-485: The safety of individuals or national security could be put at risk. It appears this hasn't occurred with documents that have been distributed across the internet this week." According to The Guardian at the time, this meant "Julian Assange could face prosecution in Australia." After WikiLeaks published the unredacted cables, some journalists and contacts of the US government allegedly faced retaliation. For example according to media reports, Ethiopian journalist Argaw Ashine
7315-639: The same day that it had obtained these same cables from WikiLeaks. Die Welt , a German daily newspaper, announced on 17 January 2011 that they had gained access to the full set of cables, via Aftenposten . The Costa Rican newspaper La Nación announced on 1 March 2011 it had received 827 cables from WikiLeaks which it started publishing the next day. 764 of these were sent from the U.S. Embassy in San José while 63 were sent from other embassies and deal with Costa Rican affairs. The Ecuadorian newspaper El Universo started releasing 343 cables related to
7410-419: The same day. Denn der Freitag hat eine Datei, die auch unredigierte US-Botschaftsdepeschen enthält. ... Die Datei mit dem Namen "cables.csv" ist 1,73 Gigabyte groß. ... Das Passwort zu dieser Datei liegt offen zutage und ist für Kenner der Materie zu identifizieren. Because der Freitag have discovered a file on the internet which includes the unredacted embassy files. ... The file is called "cables.csv" and
7505-469: The security of a WikiLeaks file containing the cables. This included WikiLeaks volunteers placing an encrypted file containing all WikiLeaks data online as "insurance" in July 2010, in case something happened to the organization. In February 2011 David Leigh of The Guardian published the encryption passphrase in a book; he had received it from Assange so he could access a copy of the Cablegate file, and believed
7600-510: The so-called Reykjavik 13 cable , was released by WikiLeaks on 18 February 2010, and was followed by the release of State Department profiles of Icelandic politicians a month later. Later that year, Julian Assange , WikiLeaks' editor-in-chief, reached an agreement with media partners in Europe and the United States to publish the rest of the cables in redacted form, removing the names of sources and others in vulnerable positions. On 28 November,
7695-463: The suffix has (often facetiously) been applied. This list also includes controversies that are widely referred to with a -gate suffix, but may be referred to by another more common name (such as the New Orleans Saints bounty scandal , known as "Bountygate"). Use of the -gate suffix has spread beyond American English to many other countries and languages. The suffix -gate derives from
7790-501: The system. Such a large quantity of secret information was available to a wide audience because, as The Guardian alleged, after the 11 September attacks an increased focus had been placed on sharing information since gaps in intra-governmental information sharing had been exposed. More specifically, the diplomatic, military, law enforcement, and intelligence communities would be able to do their jobs better with this easy access to analytic and operative information. A spokesman said that in
7885-532: Was "rehabilitating Nixon by relentlessly tarring his successors with the same rhetorical brush – diminished guilt by association ". Safire himself later said to author Eric Alterman that he "may have been seeking to minimize the relative importance of the crimes committed by his former boss with this silliness". The usage has spread into languages other than English; examples of -gate being used to refer to local political scandals have been reported from Argentina , Germany , South Korea , Hungary , Greece and
7980-695: Was a major point of discussion and contention during the 2016 presidential election , in which Clinton was the Democratic nominee. In July, FBI director James Comey announced that the FBI investigation had concluded that Clinton had been "extremely careless" but recommended that no charges be filed because Clinton did not act with criminal intent , the historical standard for pursuing prosecution. Clinton claimed that her use complied with federal laws and State Department regulations, and that former secretaries of state had also maintained personal email accounts (however Clinton
8075-480: Was arrested on "entirely unproven corruption charges", subjected to a " kangaroo court ", and given a 25-year prison sentence . Marquardt said Marafa's only real crime was having told him that he "might be interested" in the presidency one day. When the cable was released, it became frontpage news in Cameroon and led directly to Marafa's arrest. The Ambassador at the time, Robert Jackson, said Marafa's trial did not specify
8170-473: Was interrogated several times about a reference to him in a cable talking to a government source. The source told him about plans to arrest the editors of the critical Ethiopian weekly Addis Neger . The editors for Addis Neger fled the country the next month. Ashine was subjected to government harassment and intimidation, and was forced to flee the country. According to the former US Ambassador to Cameroon from 2004 to 2007, Niels Marquardt , Marafa Hamidou Yaya
8265-714: Was launched, with the two facing a possible court martial. On 14 September the Committee to Protect Journalists said that an Ethiopian journalist named in the cables was forced to flee the country but WikiLeaks accused the CPJ of distorting the situation "for marketing purposes". Al Jazeera replaced its news director, Wadah Khanfar , on 20 September after he was identified in the cables. The naming of mainland China residents reportedly "sparked an online witch-hunt by Chinese nationalist groups, with some advocating violence against those now known to have met with U.S. Embassy staff." US officials said
8360-534: Was obtained to WikiLeaks, which chose to release the material in stages so as to have the greatest possible impact. According to The Guardian , all the diplomatic cables were marked "Sipdis", denoting "secret internet protocol distribution", which means they had been distributed via the closed U.S. SIPRNet , the U.S. Department of Defense's classified version of the civilian internet. More than three million U.S. government personnel and soldiers have access to this network. Documents marked "top secret" are not included in
8455-465: Was probably carried out through "extraordinary rendition". German prosecutors in Munich had issued arrest warrants for the 13 suspected CIA operatives involved in the abduction. The cables released by Wikileaks showed that after contact from the then-Deputy US Ambassador John M. Koenig and US diplomats the Munich public prosecutor's office and Germany's Justice Ministry and Foreign Ministry all cooperated with
8550-496: Was requested in a process known as the National Humint Collection Directive , and was aimed at foreign diplomats of US allies as well. WikiLeaks released the cable on 28 November 2010. The Critical Foreign Dependencies Initiative was contained in a February 2009 diplomatic cable to the U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton , which was leaked, redacted and released by WikiLeaks in 2010. On 6 December 2010,
8645-501: Was revealed to have been the source of the copy of the documents given to The New York Times in order to prevent the British government from obtaining any injunction against its publication. The Pakistani newspaper Dawn stated that the U.S. newspapers The New York Times and The Washington Post were expected to publish parts of the diplomatic cables on 28 November, including 94 Pakistan-related documents. On 26 November, Assange sent
8740-527: Was the only secretary of state to use a private server ). Unlike the official system, which was hacked by the Russians, her private system was never hacked. The event was coined 'fridgegate' with a number of memes being created and the tag '#fridgegate' trending on Twitter. In Malta, Panamagate refers to a March 2016 scandal surrounding Energy Minister Konrad Mizzi with an undeclared trust in New Zealand and
8835-442: Was the result of being outed by Wikileaks." Reactions to the leak in 2010 varied. Western governments expressed strong disapproval, while the material generated intense interest from the public and journalists. Some political leaders referred to Assange as a criminal, while blaming the U.S. Department of Defense for security lapses. Supporters of Assange referred to him in November 2010 as a key defender of free speech and freedom of
8930-570: Was the third in a series of U.S. classified document leaks distributed by WikiLeaks in 2010, following the Afghan War documents leak in July, and the Iraq War documents leak in October. Over 130,000 of the cables are unclassified, some 100,000 are labeled "confidential", around 15,000 have the higher classification "secret", and none are classified as "top secret" on the classification scale . In June 2010,
9025-468: Was used in 1852 ). In recent years, the -gate suffix as a catch-all signifier for scandal has seen some competition from -ghazi , as in "Ballghazi" instead of " Deflategate ", or "Bridgeghazi" instead of " Bridgegate ". The use of -ghazi is a play on the investigation into the 2012 Benghazi attack , which, despite numerous official investigations into the possibility of government cover-ups, has resulted in no criminal charges or major repercussions for
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