Update at 2:15 p.m. -- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton condemned the WikiLeaks release of once-classified diplomatic documents as nothing less than an attack on the United States and its allies.

"This disclosure is not just an attack on America's foreign policy interests," Clinton said, "it is an attack on the international community: the alliances and partnerships, the conversations and negotiations that safeguard global security and advance economic prosperity."

Clinton added: "It puts people's lives in danger, threatens our national security and undermines our efforts to work with other countries to solve shared problems."

Update at 12:20 p.m. -- Attorney General Eric Holder also had harsh words for WikiLeaks today, and said the government has launched a criminal investigation of the matter, USA TODAY's Kevin Johnson reports:.

Holder said Monday that release of the documents "risked'' the security of diplomats and other U.S. officials. Let me be clear, this is not saber-rattling,'' Holder said of the government investigation. The attorney general declined, however, to elaborate on whether the website was engaged in criminal wrongdoing.

Update at 10 a.m. -- The Obama administration has ordered agencies to review the way they handle secret, sensitive information.

"Any unauthorized disclosure of classified information is a violation of our law and compromises our national security," says a memo from Jack Lew, director of the White House Office of Management and Budget.

Referring to new disclosures by WikiLeaks, Lew wrote: "Our national defense requires that sensitive information be maintained in confidence to protect our citizens, our democratic institutions, and our homeland. Protecting information critical to our nation's security is the responsibility of each individual who is granted access to classified information."

Earlier post: Not a good day to be a U.S. diplomat.

President Obama and his aides are going to have to work overtime to limit the damage from the latest document dump by WikiLeaks, touching on such sensitive topics as the threat of military action against Iran, the specter of nuclear terrorism, and the Afghanistan war.

More than 25,000 once-classified documents detail once-secret U.S. diplomatic initiatives and critical opinions of other world leaders ranging from German Chancellor Angela Merkel to Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai.

In and of themselves, the revelations aren't that surprising, and many have been reported before -- but seeing them in black and white threaten a rolling series of diplomatic crises.

The WikiLeaks release is the "Sept. 11 of world diplomacy," said Italy's Foreign Minister Franco Frattini.

Among the revelations:

-- Arab leaders have urged the United States to take military action against Iran over its nuclear program.

-- The U.S. has offered Obama visits and other enticements to other governments if they took detainees from the terrorist prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba (which remains open).

-- The U.S. has tried -- unsuccessfully -- to remove enriched uranium from Pakistan, lest it fall into the hands of terrorists seeking nuclear weapons.

-- Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and her predecessor, Condoleezza Rice, have asked aides to do low-level spying on delegates to the United Nations.

There are also potentially damaging comments about other world leaders in various diplomatic cables:

-- Karzai has "demonstrated that he will dissemble when it suits his needs" and "appears not to understand the level of our knowledge of his activities."

-- Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is compared to Hitler.

-- The president of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, agreed to say that U.S. missile strikes on local al Qaeda operatives came from within Yemen.

-- German Chancellor Merkel -- who is slated to receive a Presidential Medal of Freedom from Obama next year -- is "risk averse and rarely creative," says one diplomat.

-- Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has become a mouthpiece for Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, following "lavish gifts" given to Berlusconi.

-- Russian President Dmitry Medvedev -- with whom Obama signed an arms cut deal now pending in the U.S. Senate -- "plays Robin to Putin's Batman."

-- French President Nicolas Sarkozy is "an emperor with no clothes."

In a statement, White House press secretary Robert Gibbs condemned the WikiLeaks release, and sought to put the diplomatic cables into context.

"By its very nature, field reporting to Washington is candid and often incomplete information," Gibbs said. "It is not an expression of policy, nor does it always shape final policy decisions."

Gibbs also noted it is not a good thing for candid private discussions with world leaders to be published in the newspapers: "It can deeply impact not only U.S. foreign policy interests, but those of our allies and friends around the world."

Gibbs added:

"To be clear -- such disclosures put at risk our diplomats, intelligence professionals, and people around the world who come to the United States for assistance in promoting democracy and open government. These documents also may include named individuals who in many cases live and work under oppressive regimes and who are trying to create more open and free societies."

(Posted by David Jackson)