WikiLeaks is pointing the finger at Guardian journalist David Leigh for leaking the password to its unredacted cables, allowing the names of informants to be exposed.

The whistle-blowing site that it’s “totally false” that sources of the leaked U.S. embassay cables had been exposed or will be in exposed in the future, but WikiLeaks is now backpedaling, accusing the Guardian of “gross negligence or malice” by publishing this password in a book.

“A Guardian journalist has negligently disclosed top secret WikiLeaks’ decryption passwords to hundreds of thousands of unredacted unpublished U.S. diplomatic cables,” WikiLeaks wrote in a statement. “Knowledge of the Guardian disclosure has spread privately over several months but reached critical mass last week. The unpublished WikiLeaks’ material includes over 100,000 classified unredacted cables that were being analyzed, in parts, by over 50 media and human rights organizations from around the world.”

WikiLeaks explained that it has known that the password had been leaked for quite a while, but is only speaking out now because the public got wind of the breach. It’s a curious accusation, too, considering until December, the Guardian was one of WikiLeaks main publishing partners.

In short, WikiLeaks is confirming what has already been assumed true by the media: the identities of sources and informants , and it could put the lives of these individuals in danger.

“More #Assange rubbish/lies? #Guardian has nothing to do with #WikiLeaks lack of security,” Leigh tweeted.

What WikiLeaks has failed to mention is that its own minions are culpable, too. WikiLeaks supporters uploaded the full catalog of U.S. cables online in a BitTorrent file at the beginning of the year as a “public archive of the documents that WikiLeaks had previously published,” the New York Times said this week.

Is WikiLeaks just trying to deflect blame from itself? And this password has been exposed for so long, why is WikiLeaks just now addressing the situation? Or is the site looking for a way to make itself relevant again after several months out of the spotlight?

Leigh alleged from his Twitter feed that WikiLeaks is trying to drag the Guardian into the fight between Assange and former WikiLeaks spokesperson Daniel Domschiet-Berg, who broke off from WikiLeaks last fall to start rival site OpenLeaks. The Guardian has denied culpability in leaking the password.

“It’s nonsense to suggest the Guardian’s WikiLeaks book has compromised security in any way,” the paper said in a statement. “Our book about WikiLeaks was published last February. It contained a password, but no details of location of the files, and we were told it was a temporary password which would expire and be deleted in a matter of hours. It was a meaningless piece of information to anyone except the person(s) who created the datatbase. No concerns were expressed with the book was published and if anyone at WikiLeaks had thought this compromised security they have had seven months to remove the files. That they didn’t do so clearly shows the problem was not caused by the Guardian’s book.”

There’s a lot of finger-pointing going, accompanied by a number of accusatory, paranoid posts on WikiLeaks Twitter feed. Aside from the glaring irony that WikiLeaks itself has suffered a leak and regardless of the blame game going on, it’s likely that a number of slip-ups led to this point.