Wikileaks – Two Years of Cablegate as Bradley Manning Testifies for the First Time

Dear Friend of WikiLeaks

We recently celebrated the two-year anniversary of Cablegate on the same day as
Bradley Manning testified for the first time about the torture he has received at
the hands of the U.S. government.   

To mark this occasion Julian Assange wrote a piece for the Huffington Post showing
some of the effects of Cablegate across the globe, including helping to end the Iraq
War and playing a crucial part in the Arab Spring.   

When WikiLeaks started to publish Cablegate, the largest diplomatic leak in history,
the U.S. government retaliated with unprecedented attacks on Julian Assange and
WikiLeaks, including threats to assassinate Assange and establishing an
extra-judicial banking blockade against WikiLeaks and Assange.   

Despite these attempts to close down WikiLeaks we continued in 2012 with even more
publications: the GI Files, Syria Files and the Detainee Policies. Along with our
supporters we shall continue to fight through next year as well. 

Read Julian Assange's full article here: 
English [en]:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/julian-assange/wikileaks-bradley-manning-testifies-cablegate_b_2215387.html

Spanish [es]:
http://www.huffingtonpost.es/julian-assange/dos-anos-de-cablegate-bra_b_2216375.html

French [fr]:
http://www.huffingtonpost.fr/julian-assange/bradley-manning-wikileaks-assange_b_2216565.html

Italian [it]:
http://www.huffingtonpost.it/julian-assange/contro-il-blocco-finanzia_b_2218367.html

http://shop.wikileaks.org/donate 
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http://www.swedenversusassange.com/
http://www.bradleymanning.org/
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--------------------------------

Two Years of Cablegate as Bradley Manning Testifies for the First Time by Julian
Assange in The Huffington Post

Thursday, November 29th, Bradley Manning testified for the first time since his
arrest two and a half years ago in Baghdad. Today also marks the two-year
anniversary of the first front pages around the world from Cablegate, an archive of
251,287 U.S. State Department diplomatic cables -- messages sent between the State
Department and its embassies, consulates and diplomatic missions around the world.
In collaboration with a network of more than 100 press outlets we revealed the full
spectrum of techniques used by the United States to exert itself around the world.
The young intelligence analyst Bradley Manning was detained as an alleged source.

WikiLeaks came under attack, with American politicians and right-wing pundits
calling for all of us to be designated as terrorists, some even calling for my
assassination and the kidnapping of our staff. Speaking on Meet The Press, Vice
President Joe Biden referred to me as a "high-tech terrorist," while Senator Joe
Lieberman demanded that we be prosecuted under the U.S. Espionage Act. The
Department of Justice spokesperson Dean Boyd admitted as recently as July 2012 that
the Department of Justice investigation into WikiLeaks is ongoing, and the Pentagon
renewed its threats against us on September 28th, declaring our work an "ongoing
crime." As a result, I have been granted political asylum and now live in the
Ecuadorian embassy in London, surrounded by armed police while the FBI portion of
the "whole of government" investigation against us, according to court testimony,
had reached 42,135 pages as of December last year.

Earlier this week, WikiLeaks released European Commission documents showing that
Senator Lieberman and Congressman Peter T. King directly influenced decisions by
PayPal, Visa and MasterCard to block donations to WikiLeaks, which has blocked 95
percent of our donors since December of 2010. Last week the European Parliament
expressed its will that the Commission should prevent the arbitrary blockade of
WikiLeaks.

Bradley Manning, who is alleged to be a source of the cables, started testifying on
Thursday about his pre-trial treatment, which UN Special Rapporteur Juan Mendez said
was "at a minimum cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment in violation of Article 16
of the Convention against Torture." Captain William Hoctor, the government
psychiatrist with 24 years of experience who evaluated Manning at Quantico base in
Virginia, testified that brig commanders had ignored his recommendations for
Manning's detention, something he had not even experienced in his work at Guantánamo
bay prison.

Bradley Manning has been detained without trial for 921 days. This is the longest
pre-trial detention of a U.S. military soldier since at least the Vietnam War. U.S.
military law says the maximum is 120 days.

The material that Bradley Manning is alleged to have leaked has highlighted
astonishing examples of U.S. subversion of the democratic process around the world,
systematic evasion of accountability for atrocities and killings, and many other
abuses. Our archive of State Department cables have appeared in tens of thousands of
articles, books and scholarly works, illustrating the nature of U.S. foreign policy
and the instruments of U.S. national power. On the two-year anniversary of the start
of Cablegate, I want to highlight some of the stories that have emerged.

A War of Terror

The United States' War on Terror has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives,
inflamed sectarian violence, and made a mockery of international law. Victims and
their families struggle to have their stories acknowledged, and the U.S.' systematic
avoidance of accountability for war crimes implicitly denies their right to be
considered human beings. Moreover, as the U.S. increasingly relies on clandestine
military operations conducted outside the scrutiny of government oversight, the
execution of this expanding War on Terror becomes increasingly uncoupled from the
democratic process. While President Obama had promised the American people in 2008
that he would end the Iraq War, U.S. troops were only withdrawn when information
from a cable revived international scrutiny of abuse occurring in Iraq, resulting in
a refusal to grant continued immunity to U.S. troops in 2012 or beyond.

In 2007 the U.S. embassy in Baghdad obtained a copy of the Iraqi government's final
investigation report on the massacre of 17 civilians on September 16th, 2007 in
Nisour Square. The report concluded that the incident was an unprovoked attack on
unarmed civilians, asked for $8 million in compensation for each death and $4
million for each injury, and demanded that the private security firm Blackwater be
replaced within six months. Blackwater continued to operate in Iraq for two years
afterwards, and the U.S. Embassy compensated victims with $10,000 for each death and
$5,000 for each injury. Five years later, the offending Blackwater mercenaries have
escaped from accountability to Iraq, and attempts to bring them to justice in the
U.S. have resulted in a long chain of dismissed cases and one undisclosed
settlement. WikiLeaks' Iraq War Logs release of 391,832 U.S. Army field reports
uncovered 14 additional cases where Blackwater opened fire on civilians, along with
numerous oth
 er incidents of abuse. The Iraq War Logs also showed how the United States handed
over prisoners to be tortured in gruesome detail -- stories of electrocution,
mutilation and of victims being attacked with drills.

The fact that, five years on, the victims of the Nisour Square Massacre have seen no
meaningful accountability is an atrocity. But it is unfortunately no surprise that
the U.S. claims immunity for its forces in other countries, then fails to administer
justice at home.

These events -- and in particular one cable detailing the summary execution of 10
Iraqi civilians, including four women and five children -- by U.S. soldiers and a
subsequent airstrike to cover up the evidence, forced the U.S. withdrawal from Iraq
in 2011. The story of handcuffed execution and cover-up sparked outrage around the
world in the midst of negotiations to extend U.S. troop presence into 2012 and, in
response to international coverage, Iraq revived its investigation into the
incident. Iraq ultimately refused to grant immunity to U.S. troops in 2012, forcing
the U.S. to withdraw in December 2011.

This systemic violence and cover-up extends to the war in Afghanistan. When news
emerged that a midnight bombing campaign on the Afghan village of Granai in 2009 had
possibly resulted in the death of up to 100 civilians, U.S. officials publicly
asserted that most of the dead had been Taliban fighters. A State Department cable
written shortly after the event summarizes a meeting between the Red Cross'
Afghanistan chief Reto Stocker and U.S. Ambassador Carl Eikenberry in which they
discussed findings from an investigation of the event. In the cable, Stocker is
referred to as "one of the most credible sources for unbiased and objective
information in Afghanistan." The Red Cross report estimated that 89 of the dead and
13 injured were in fact civilians. Neither the U.S. government nor the Red Cross
publicly revealed these figures.

WikiLeaks and the Arab Spring

The Tunisian cables describe the extreme corruption and lack of transparency of the
Ben Ali regime. The Ben Ali extended family are described as the worst offenders,
their lavish life accompanied by "a wide-range of corrupt schemes," including
"property expropriation and extortion of bribes." We also learned that Ben Ali
family assets included an airline, several hotels and a radio station. One cable
describes state censorship of Tunisia's only private broadcast satellite TV station,
and a surprise tax judgment against the station of almost $1.5 million.

In its 2011 annual report, Amnesty International praised WikiLeaks and its media
partners for catalyzing the revolution in Tunisia:

    "While the 'Jasmine Revolution' in Tunisia would not have happened without the
long struggle of brave human rights defenders over the last two decades, support
for activists from outside the country may have been strengthened as people
scrutinized the WikiLeaks documents on Tunisia and understood the roots of the
anger. In particular, some of the documents made clear that countries around the
world were aware of both the political repression and the lack of economic
opportunity, but for the most part were not taking action to urge change."

When Tunisia's president Moncef Marzouki spoke with me on The World Tomorrow, he
thanked WikiLeaks for its work, saying, "I am very grateful for all that you have
done for promoting human rights, truth, and I admire and support your efforts."

Shortly following Tunisia's revolution, protests erupted in Libya, and a new batch
of cables revealed the strategic calculations behind U.S. support of the Gaddafi
regime. In Egypt, cables revealed that Mubarak would rather die in office than step
down and that his son would likely succeed him. Then, just as evidence emerged that
Vice President Suleiman was tipped to replace Mubarak, cables were released
detailing his former role as intelligence chief, as well as his close ties to
Israel. Such elements became a crucial part of the ongoing Egyptian uprising.

A Global Death Squad Consulting Firm?

For years, WikiLeaks faced a chorus of accusations by U.S. officials and right-wing
pundits of making the world a less-safe place, and of having potentially caused harm
through publication of embarrassing secrets. In reality, the cables show that
torture and killing are not isolated events, but the violent manifestations of an
aggressive policy of coercion used by the United States in the pursuit of its
strategic commercial and political goals around the world.

While U.S. law bans the training of military units with a history of human rights
violations, in practice the law is easily and often circumvented. The Indonesian
army's elite special forces unit KOPASSUS has brutally repressed the West Papuans'
freedom movement (West Papua has been occupied by Indonesia since 1963), as has been
extensively documented by Human Rights Watch. Despite this, U.S. diplomats in
Jakarta judged in 2007 that the time had come to resume collaboration with KOPASSUS,
for the sake of "commercial interest" and "the protection of U.S. officials."

A diplomatic cable from November 2009 mentions as a side note that right-wing
paramilitaries in Colombia were responsible for the death of 257,089 victims, a
figure well above the estimations of local human rights activists. The U.S. has
nonetheless offered generous support to the Colombian military; Amnesty
International, which has called for a complete cut-off of U.S. military aid to
Colombia, has estimated that total U.S. aid in 2006 amounted to $728 million, of
which 80 percent was given to military and police assistance. As of 2012, U.S.
military support to Colombia is ongoing.

Such examples illustrate the United States' liberal interpretation of the laws
banning the training of military units with a history of human rights violations. In
another cable from August 2008, U.S. officials acknowledge that the Bangladeshi
death squad, the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), has been involved in obvious human
rights violations, making support for the RAB difficult -- U.S. officials hoped,
however, to improve the RAB's record and polish its public image. U.S. officials
praised the RAB for having "succeeded in reducing crime and fighting terrorism,
making it in many ways Bangladesh's most respected police unit." In a diplomatic
cable from 2009, it was also revealed that the UK had been training the RAB for the
previous 18 months "in areas such as investigative interviewing techniques and rules
of engagement."

Foreign Service Spies

In 2009, Hillary Clinton sent an intelligence gathering directive to 33 embassies
and consulates around the world. The directive asked diplomats to gather
intelligence on UN officials, including credit card numbers and online handles. A
similar cable requested intelligence on officials from the Democratic Republic of
Congo, Burundy, Rwanda and Uganda, and specifically mentioned the collection of DNA
samples, iris scans and computer passwords.

Another state department cable revealed that a mole within the German government was
spying for the U.S. Embassy in Berlin, frequently updating U.S. officials on
negotiations between Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats and Westerwelle's FDP
on the formation of a new coalition government in 2009. Helmut Metzner, formerly
chief of staff to Germany's foreign minister, admitted to being the mole mentioned
in these cables when this story broke in the press, and was subsequently fired.

Lobbying for Unaccountability -- Manipulation of Judicial Process in Other Countries

Abuse that occurs in war, as it did in Iraq, is often dismissed by its perpetrators
as exceptional, and we are often assured that when abuse has occurred, the
accountability mechanisms in place will bring justice. The diplomatic cables have
given us numerous concrete examples of the coercion used by the U.S. to manipulate
and undermine judicial processes in other countries, and they establish a clear
policy for the evasion of accountability in any form.

During the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq, two journalists -- including the Spanish
journalist José Couso -- were killed and three others were wounded when a U.S. tank
fired on the Palestine Hotel in Baghdad. An investigation into the event was
subsequently launched in Spain, and an international arrest warrant was issued for
three U.S. soldiers involved. Cables showed that the U.S. aggressively fought to
have Spanish officials drop the case. Writing about the case in one cable, U.S.
Ambassador Eduardo Aguirre emphasizes: "While we are careful to show our respect for
the tragic death of Couso and for the independence of the Spanish judicial system,
behind the scenes we have fought tooth and nail to make the charges disappear."
Shamefully, this quote was redacted in the original reporting on the subject from El
Pais and Le Monde.

In another example from 2003, a German citizen of Lebanese origins, Kalid el-Masri,
was kidnapped while on vacation in Macedonia, renditioned to Afghanistan by the CIA,
and tortured for four months. When his captors finally decided he was innocent, he
was flown to Albania and dumped on a country road without so much as an apology. In
a cable from 2007, we learn that when a German prosecutor issued arrest warrants for
agents involved in el-Masri's kidnapping, the U.S. ambassador in Berlin warned
German officials that there would be repercussions. No arrests have yet been made
and el-Masri is still seeking justice.

The U.S.' manipulation extended to the UK, where a cable shows that during a British
public inquiry led by Sir John Chilcot into the UK role in the Iraq War, the
Ministry of Defence had "put measures in place" to protect U.S. interests.

Global Powers Work to Break Environmental Solidarity, and to Exploit "Opportunities"
of Climate Change

On environmental issues, cables show that the U.S. routinely makes symbolic gestures
rather than initiating substantial practices to combat climate change, and works
aggressively to tailor international agreements to its own commercial interests.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asked embassies to gather intelligence on the
preparations for the Copenhagen UN Convention on Climate Change Meeting in December
2009, asking for biographical details of representatives from China, France, Japan,
Mexico, Russia and the European Union. Cables show that in Copenhagen the U.S.
manipulated the accord talks by offering "gifts" to poorer countries to derail
opposition to the accord proposed by first world powers. Another cable from the
Secretary of State revealed that in 2010, a Maldives ambassador designate had
stressed the importance of "tangible assistance" from larger economies to smaller
ones. As a consequence of this meeting, the accord offered financial compensation to
poor countries suffering from the effects of global warming.

In a visit to Canada in 2009 David Goldwyn, the State Department's Coordinator for
International Energy Affairs discussed public relations assistance to be offered to
the oil sands industry. Goldwyn proposed consulting experts, scholars and think
tanks to "increase visibility and accessibility of more positive news stories." The
cable was later used by environmentalists in their battle against the Keystone XL
pipeline, which ships crude oil across the U.S.-Canada border. In early 2012,
President Obama rejected the Keystone XL pipeline proposal, but recently publicly
announced support for another proposal. It also turns out that Goldwyn eventually
went on to work for Sutherland, a lobbying group in favor of Keystone XL.

The cables also reveal that the U.S. is carefully positioning itself to take
advantage of new opportunities for harvesting hydrocarbons and minerals from the
Arctic as climate change melts polar ice. U.S. diplomats were hoping to offer
Greenland support for its independence from Denmark in exchange for access by
American gas and oil companies to exploit the country's resources. The U.S. has been
closely watching Russia, America's main competitor for Arctic resources, but
American officials also showed concern over Canada's potential territorial claim to
the Arctic's Northwest passage.

Secret Agreements -- Circumvention of the Democratic Process

The State Department cables revealed that the United States and its allies
systematically make secret arrangements with various governments, hiding details not
only from the country's public, but sometimes even from the country's
representatives, ministers and oversight bodies.

In 2009, Jeremy Scahill and Seymour Hersh broke a story in The Nation on secret U.S.
special operations forces combat missions and drone strikes in Pakistan. When
questioned about the story, Department of Defense spokesperson Geoff Morrell
dismissed the claims as "conspiratorial theories." Only one year later, cables
released by WikiLeaks confirmed their story. In addition, cables quoted Pakistan's
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani telling U.S. officials: "I don't care if they do
it as long as they get the right people -- we'll protest about it in the National
Assembly and then ignore it." Stories based on State Department cables also revealed
agreements between the U.S. and Yemen in which the Yemeni government would claim
responsibility for attacks launched by the U.S. on local militia groups. The release
of State Department cables resulted in total transparency with respect to certain
aspects of the War on Terror.

State Department cables also revealed that the U.S. worked with Australia to weaken
the text of an international agreement banning the use of cluster munitions -- bombs
which spray thousands of smaller bomblets over a large area. Out of more than 13,000
casualties of cluster munitions registered by Handicap International, over 98
percent are civilian and one-third of those are children. Despite this, cables also
revealed that the UK's then-Foreign Minister David Miliband secretly approved the
use of a legal loophole to allow the United States to store cluster munitions on UK
territory, despite the fact that the UK is a signatory to a convention banning them.
The United States is not a signatory to the Convention on Cluster Munitions, and
even attempted in 2011 to have the ban lifted by the UN.

In 2007, former Canadian Deputy Prime Minister John Manley asked U.S. officials for
predator drones to help shore up liberal support for a sustained Canadian presence
in the war in Afghanistan. At the time, Manley was leading a government-appointed
panel charged with investigating Canada's interests in a future role in Afghanistan.
In August 2012, the Ottawa Citizen reported that the Canadian government is seeking
to spend up to $1 billion on a state-of-the-art armed drone fleet.

The cables also revealed that Canada's conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper
secretly promised NATO in January 2010 that Canada would remain in Afghanistan to
conduct army training even after the end of its mission in 2011. The Canadian public
was shocked when the government announced that it would be extending its mission in
November of that year. Harper expressed concern to U.S. diplomats that an early
departure of Canadian troops from Aghanistan would seem like a "withdrawal,"
reflecting the low public support for Canada's mission in Afghanistan.

In 2008, the U.S. proposed an "informal agreement" to Swedish government officials
for the exchange of information on terrorism watch-lists. U.S. officials explained
that they feared scrutiny by the Swedish parliament would jeopardize "law
enforcement and anti-terrorism cooperation." Cables also revealed that in 2009, the
U.S. resumed full intelligence-sharing with New Zealand after it had been restricted
in retaliation for the country's ban against nuclear-powered or armed vessels in its
ports. Both governments agreed that the newly resumed cooperation should be kept
hidden from the public.

The Realpolitik of Commercial Lobbying

State Department cables illustrate that U.S. officials and their commercial partners
take a default position of having an intrinsic right to resources and market
dominance around the world.

In a 2007 cable to the U.S. Trade Representative, U.S. Ambassador Craig Stapleton
suggested taking a hard-line approach towards the European Union over its resistance
to American genetically modified products and foods. France's refusal to embrace
GMOs and agricultural biotechnology, according to Ambassador Stapleton, would lead
to a general European rejection of GMOs, and he suggested retaliation to help the
French see things differently:

    "Country team Paris recommends that we calibrate a target retaliation list that
causes some pain across the EU since this is a collective responsibility, but
that also focuses in part on the worst culprits. The list should be measured
rather than vicious and must be sustainable over the long term, since we should
not expect an early victory." 

The cables also showed that the U.S. revoked visas of then-Ecuadoran presidential
candidate Xavier Neira and seven others due to their involvement in a legal case
against the American pharmaceutical company Pfizer for unfair competition. The
timing of the decision to revoke their visas coincided with the upcoming
presidential elections and an impending court decision on the case. In its
explanation of the revocation, officials cite "corruption" and the case against
Pfizer.

The U.S.-based Shell Oil company has a long and sordid history in Nigeria, and its
representatives spoke openly about activities in the country. In a 2009 meeting,
Shell representatives told U.S. officials that they would be able to influence the
Nigerian government's 2009 Petroleum Industry Bill to suit their interests.

Cables from 2005 highlight U.S. determination to "improve the investment climate"
for mining companies in Peru. Representatives from Canada, UK, Australia,
Switzerland and South Africa met to strategize ways of circumventing anti-mining
protests coming from a diverse group of NGOs, the Catholic Church and indigenous
Peruvians. Once protests had turned violent, the U.S. used this as an excuse for
monitoring NGO groups such as Oxfam and Friends of the Earth, and asked the Peruvian
government to enhance security by taking control of roadways and transit areas.

In other cases, officials in the U.S. Embassy assisted in lobbying for or against
particular pieces of legislation according to U.S. commercial interests. U.S.
officials lobbied on behalf of Visa and MasterCard against a bill in Russia which
would have created a national card payment system, taking away Visa and MasterCard's
market share.

Strategic Duplicity on Human Rights and Press Freedom

A cable summarizing a meeting with a director of Al Jazeera shows that U.S.
officials expected a special report with graphic images of injured Iraqis to be
changed and its images removed. In another cable, the director is asked to explain
Al Jazeera's lack of coverage of the Iran elections and protests as opposed to their
"heavy" coverage of Gaza.

The U.S. Navy's Fifth Fleet is based in the kingdom of Bahrain, and the U.S. has
maintained a mutually beneficial relationship with the country's leaders over the
past years. In one cable, the U.S. ambassador to Bahrain praised the country and its
king, pointing out that U.S. companies had won major contracts there. This same
regime brutally cracked down on protesters during the Arab Spring, and Bahraini
authorities shut down dissident websites and publications. While the U.S. State
Department harshly condemned the crackdown on protests after Iran's 2009 elections,
it remained silent on the killings in Bahrain.

Thailand's Monarchy Exposed

Thailand's lèse majesté law prevents anyone in the country from speaking openly
about the monarchy without risk of severe punishment. As such, any reports about
political developments in the country are censored, and there is a huge gap in
public knowledge about the country's political environment. WikiLeaks' release of
State Department cables gives an unprecedented view of not only the monarchy's deep
impact on the politics of the country, but also the close relationship that Thailand
had with the U.S. Journalist Andrew MacGregor Marshall quit his job at Reuters to
write his book Thailand's Moment of Truth, using the Thai cables exposing obscured
and taboo aspects of Thailand's politics, history and international relations for
the first time.

U.S. Aims to Reshape Global Views and Law on Intellectual Property and Copyright

U.S.-based lobbying groups work hand in hand with U.S. State Department officials
around the world to aggressively lobby for legislation and trade agreements that
favor American companies such as Google, Facebook, Apple and Microsoft, or large
film studios such as Disney, Paramount, Sony and Warner.

A 2006 cable from Japan describes the first draft proposals for a "gold standard" in
intellectual property rights enforcement, called ACTA. This standard was meant to
give intellectual property owners much stronger powers, even at the expense of
citizen privacy and due process. ACTA was subsequently negotiated in secret, unknown
to the general public, until WikiLeaks leaked the first draft in 2008. In the film
industry, the lobbyist group for motion picture studios conspired with their
Australian counterpart to establish a legal precedent for holding an Internet
service provider accountable for copyright infringement in Australia. What is the
effect of this push and pull? It is a global environment where legislation and legal
precedents are set to benefit intellectual property owners who are rich, powerful
and influential -- even at the expense of public good.

Breaking the Monopoly on Influence

The examples I present above represent only a small fraction of what has been
revealed by WikiLeaks material. Since 2010, Western governments have tried to
portray WikiLeaks as a terrorist organization, enabling a disproportionate response
from both political figures and private institutions. It is the case that WikiLeaks'
publications can and have changed the world, but that change has clearly been for
the better. Two years on, no claim of individual harm has been presented, and the
examples above clearly show precisely who has blood on their hands.

In large Western democracies, the political discourse has been so highly controlled
for so long, that it is no longer shocking when Western experts fill in to speak for
third world victims, or when an American president stands up at a podium to accept
his Nobel Peace Prize, and makes the case for war. It is, in fact, no longer safe to
presume that a media outlet such as The New York Times would perform the same act
today as they did in 1971 when Daniel Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers.

In a panel discussion with Daniel Ellsberg and New York Times editor Jill Abramson
discussing the Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg voiced his dissent over the Times'
acquiescence to the Bush administration's request to delay James Risen's story on
warrantless NSA wiretapping until after the 2004 elections. Abramson equivocated:

    "The thing is when the government says -- you know -- by publishing a story
you're harming the national security, you're helping the terrorists. I mean,
there are still people today who argue that the NSA program was the crown jewel,
the most valuable anti-terrorism program that the Bush administration had going,
and that it was terribly wrong of the Times to publish." 

On the same panel, Daniel Ellsberg said of the Pentagon Papers:

    "The secrecy of these documents has so far condemned over 30,000 Americans to
death and several million Vietnamese. And the continued secrecy of them will
undoubtedly contribute to the death of tens of thousands more Americans, and so
forth. I think that's true. But that comes up in the WikiLeaks case, right now."

Since the release of the diplomatic cables, WikiLeaks has continued its operations
despite the financial blockade, publishing leaked documents from companies selling
mass interception units to state spy agencies around the world; detainee profiles
for almost all of the people detained at Guantánamo Bay prison; U.S. policy manuals
for detention of military prisoners in the War on Terror; intelligence databases
from the private intelligence firm Stratfor; and millions of documents from inside
the Syrian government. The information we've disclosed frustrates the controlled
political discourse that is trumpeted by establishment media and Western governments
to shape public perception.

We will continue our fight against the financial blockade, and we will continue to
publish. The Pentagon's threats against us do the United States a disservice and
will not be heeded.

With thanks to WikiLeaks Press for research.