Shamir describes himself as “a freelance writer accredited with WikiLeaks”; the organization came under fire for his past anti-Semitic writings in December 2010. In one infamous statement, Shamir accused Jews “of being a virus in human form.”

The cables were posted to CounterPunch by Israel Shamir , a WikiLeaks associate who has served as the organization’s informal Russian liaison. Shamir has also posted reprinted material from Holocaust denial websites on his personal webpage and come under public fire for a series of anti-Jewish statements .

A controversial associate of WikiLeaks has begun posting unredacted versions of U.S. State Department cables on a left-wing magazine’s website. These cables contain the names of specific corporations accused of corruption and of individuals implied to be involved in bribery on behalf of western companies in Kazakhstan and Uzbekstan. In one case, they also give highly suggestive clues to the identity of an American informant on organized crime activities.

Shamir’s

article on CounterPunch accuses British newspaper The

Guardian of censoring WikiLeaks

cables and states that he is merely reprinting WikiLeaks cables in

full that were originally censored by them:

Although

we are treated to daily accounts of how the net tightens around

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, the contents of the US embassy

cables have been doled out to us in spoonfuls. To add insult to

injury, it is now clear that The Guardian edits and distorts the

cables in order to protect their readers from unflattering remarks

about how their corporations behave overseas. The Guardian has

deliberately excised portions of published cables to hide evidence of

corruption.

However, Shamir was not being completely accurate. These cables were also censored by the primary WikiLeaks website and all of its mirrors.

One of the uncensored WikiLeaks cables he

posted to CounterPunch, ASTANA

72, also appears in censored form on the WikiLeaks website

itself. Two other cables posted by Shamir, TASHKENT 465 and TASHKENT

902, do not appear

on the WikiLeaks website as of January 12, 2011. 902 was

published as an extremely limited

excerpt on The Guardian‘s

website and 465 is not even labeled by its number. In all three

cases, it appears Shamir violated an internal WikiLeaks decision to

censor a cable in one case and embarked on a rogue cable release in

two others.

TASHKENT

465 implies links between high-level Uzbekstan officials and

organized crime, while TASHKENT 902 discusses the role of organized

crime in helping businessmen secure government tenders and jobs on

the government payroll inside Uzbekstan. The second cable also gives

highly suggestive clues to the identity of an American informant who

gave highly sensitive information on organized crime.

The

fact that Shamir was doing an end-run around WikiLeaks was noted in a

post on the British blog Hurry Up Harry by author “Joseph W”:

WikiLeaks’

Israel Shamir, who has in his possession all of WikiLeaks’

unredacted cables, has written a polemic in CounterPunch against The

Guardian’s editorial policy. He claims that The Guardian is

redacting WikiLeaks cables for political reasons. Yet The Guardian’s

redacted cables match the cables you can already read on

Wikileaks.ch.”

As in

all things WikiLeaks, the details of the story remain murky. Shamir

has close

ties to the Belarus government and recently

visited Belarus, which has an infamously repressive

government. Given that detail,

it is seems extremely interesting that all the unredacted cables he leaked

had to do with former Soviet states.