On 28 November 2010, WikiLeaks began publishing classified U.S. diplomatic cables dated from December 1966 through February 2010. One February 2009 State Department cable, the Critical Foreign Dependencies Initiative, instructed diplomats to identify foreign infrastructure and officials considered strategically important to U.S. interests. The disclosures also fueled scrutiny of directives reportedly seeking credit-card numbers, passwords, and biometric information on United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and other leaders. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned the release as an attack on international diplomacy, while WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson argued that the material showed embassy officials performing intelligence-gathering functions.
The CIA created a WikiLeaks Task Force to assess whether the disclosures had damaged diplomatic relationships and the agency’s ability to recruit informants by weakening confidence in U.S. secrecy. Officials including Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs Chairman Michael Mullen warned that publication might endanger people, although The New York Times’ Nancy Youssef reported that U.S. officials had acknowledged no evidence that the releases had caused anyone’s death. The backlash included calls from Representative Peter King and others to prosecute Julian Assange under espionage laws or designate WikiLeaks a foreign terrorist organization; legal scholars and civil-liberties advocates disputed that publishing documents constituted terrorism. The episode intensified the conflict between state secrecy, intelligence collection, and First Amendment protections, without establishing a final finding that the publication itself caused physical deaths.
