Another tsunami of United States government documents is up on Wikileaks. We're talking confidential cables between the US State Department and 274 embassies around the world. 15,652 of them are classified "secret," according to the site.

The big story circulating around the globe is that Arab nations have been urging the US to bear down on Iran.

"King Hamad pointed to Iran as the source of much of the trouble in both Iraq and Afghanistan," one November 2009 cable discloses.

According to the memo, Bahrain's Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa was speaking to General David Petraeus. "He argued forcefully for taking action to terminate their nuclear program, by whatever means necessary. 'That program must be stopped,' he said. 'The danger of letting it go on is greater than the danger of stopping it.'"

But the cables are also chock full of intelligence-gathering bombshells.

Reporting and collection

A number of State Department memos ask embassies to engage in pretty extensive data collection on various governments. In the case of the nations of Africa's Great Lakes area, the intelligence must-have lists included requests for:

Biographic and biometric data, including health, opinions toward the US, training history, ethnicity (tribal and/or clan), and language skills of key and emerging political, military, intelligence, opposition, ethnic, religious, and business leaders. Data should include email addresses, telephone and fax numbers, fingerprints, facial images, DNA, and iris scans.

The top target countries in this instance were Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Rwanda. Another memo focuses on gathering intel on United Nations personnel:

Reporting officers should include as much of the following information as possible when they have information relating to persons linked to: [office and STATE 00080163 002 OF 024] organizational titles; names, position titles and other information on business cards; numbers of telephones, cell phones, pagers and faxes; compendia of contact information, such as telephone directories (in compact disc or electronic format if available) and e-mail listings; internet and intranet "handles", internet e-mail addresses, web site identification-URLs; credit card account numbers; frequent flyer account numbers; work schedules, and other relevant biographical information.

And in 2008, then Secretary of State Condeleezza Rice instructed Paraguay's embassy to glean every detail possible about that country's telecommunications and information infrastructure, plus:

Information on communications practices of Paraguayan government and military leaders, key foreign officials in country (e.g., Cuban, Venezuelan, Bolivian, Iranian, or Chinese diplomats), and criminal entities or their surrogates, to include telephone and fax numbers and e-mail addresses, call activity (date, time, caller numbers, recipient numbers), phone books, cell phone numbers, telephone and fax user listings, internet protocol (IP) addresses, user accounts, and passwords.

Meanwhile, the New York Times reports that some cables indicate that China's politburo directed the invasion of Google's computer network in that country.

"The Google hacking was part of a coordinated campaign of computer sabotage carried out by government operatives, private security experts and Internet outlaws recruited by the Chinese government," The Times says. We searched for this communique in Wikileaks but couldn't find it. The document may have been made separately available to the newspaper.

Cyberspace standoff in Iran

The documents also reveal that the battle between Iran and its dissidents has devolved into a stalemate, but shows no sign of cooling off on the 'Net. "The regime and GPO [Green Path Opposition] clash not just in the streets but also in cyberspace," a January cable concludes.

...and the GPO can be expected to expand its efforts to create a virtual space in which it can disseminate information to Iranians inside Iran. It continues to spend significant energies on circumventing Iranian attempts to monitor, control and block Internet access in Iran, and is exploring the possibility of providing satellite high-speed internet access, although funding is the main barrier. In conventional media, expatriate GPO activists have told IRPO that while in the short-term GPO is forced to rely on satellite TV such as VOA and BBC to get oppositionist news into Iran, it is seeking to create its own news fora, to include its own satellite television broadcast.

The latest Wikileaks release comes with an admonishment for the US.

"Every American schoolchild is taught that George Washington—the country's first President—could not tell a lie," Wikileaks insists. "If the administrations of his successors lived up to the same principle, today’s document flood would be a mere embarrassment. Instead, the US Government has been warning governments—even the most corrupt—around the world about the coming leaks and is bracing itself for the exposures."