Wikileaks ‘accidentally’ releases thousands of cables which name top secret sources

Lives of activists, academics and journalists 'at risk'

'Series of lapses' after feud between Julian Assange and former employee



Highly sensitive government documents have been published by Wikileaks putting hundreds of lives at risk.

The anti-secrecy organisation posted 134,000 memos online over the past few days which included the names of journalists, human rights activists and academics who spoke to American diplomats and whose identities were marked with the warning 'strictly protect'.



The details of informants were never supposed to be revealed but were made public accidentally after a feud between founder Julian Assange and former Wikileaks spokesman Daniel Domscheit-Berg.



Secret's out: Wikilieaks, founded by Julian Assange, has published highly sensitive U.S. state documents

When Domscheit-Berg left Wikileaks at the end of last year, he took a collection of material, including the sensitive memos, with him. He eventually returned the information including the classified material.

However in an apparent mix-up, Assange released all the documents online including the uncensored cables.

Assange is currently under house arrest in Norfolk as he awaits a verdict from the High Court next month. He is facing extradition to Sweden to face accusations of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion.



More than 250,000 U.S. State department documents have been obtained by Wikileaks since last year.

Many have appeared in the news but with the names blacked out of those thought to be vulnerable to retaliation in foreign countries.



Among those named were a United Nations official in West Africa and a foreign human rights activist working in Cambodia. They had spoken candidly to American Embassy officials on the understanding that they would not be publicly identified.



Wanted: A page from the Interpol website showing the appeal for the arrest of the editor-in-chief of the Wikileaks whistleblowing website, Julian Assange

According to German newspaper Der Freitag, the uncensored cables are in a password-protected file circulating on the internet.



The paper reported that the file was easy to find along with the password to unlock it.



The cables contain the names of informants to the U.S. government in Israel, Jordan, Iran and Afghanistan.

There is deep concern from U.S. officials that hostile countries could have already discovered and decrypted the file to uncover the names.

Sources revealed: Informants of the U.S. government in Iran, Israel, Jordan and Afghanistan have had their names put online

Former Wikileaks employee Herbert Snorrason , who left the organisation as part of a staff revolt last year, and is now part of the competing site OpenLeaks, told Wired: 'T he story is that a series of lapses, as far as I can see on behalf of WikiLeaks and its affiliates, has led to the possibility a file becoming generally available which it never should have been available.'

The cables were contained in an encrypted file that Assange had stored on a sub-directory of the organisation’s server last year, which wasn’t searchable on the internet by anyone who didn’t already know its location.

WHAT WIKILEAKS PUT OUT ON THE WEB

December 2007 - Guantanamo Bay operating procedures including 'rewards' like toilet paper for prisoners' good behaviour September 2008 - Sarah Palin's email account November 2008 - BNP membership list which included several senior police officers, doctors and military personnel October 2009 - The Minton Report into the health effects of dumping toxic waste in Africa November 2009 - Emails from the Climate Research Unit which appeared to show scientists 'tricks' to convince people about global warming

November 2009 - Pager messages sent during the terrorist attacks on September 11 in New York April 2010 - Video footage of Apache helicopter attack in Iraq in which two Reuters journalists were shot dead

July 2010 - Iraq war files which raised questions about crimes by coalition troops



Assange had reportedly given the password for the file to an 'external contact'. Both the file and the password are now available online.

Mr Snorrason said the password leak was done 'completely inadvertently' but refused to name the source that it had come from.



After nine months of slowly releasing information, WikiLeaks abruptly published around 130,000 documents this week - more than half its database.

WikiLeaks responded to the leak on Twitter by stating: 'There has been no ''leak at WikiLeaks''. The issue relates to a mainstream media partner and a malicious individual.'



The American soldier Private Bradley Manning faces spending the rest of his life in prison after he was accused of passing on highly-sensitive material to Assange in 2009.



He was charged with transferring classified data onto his own personal computer and passing it to WikiLeaks.

He is believed to have passed on material including 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables and footage of a July 2007 Baghdad airstrike, later published by Assange.



Private Manning was initially held at the maximum-security military prison Quantico in Virginia.

Despite since being transferred to what has been described as a ‘more humane’ environment, he faces a life sentence.

