WikiLeaks: Open Secrets -- The Guardian editorial
Never in their wildest nightmares could politicians, bankers, dissidents, world leaders and government officials have imagined that their confidences would be thus distributed
How secret is "secret?" That is the first question posed by the publication today of material derived from the leak of a quarter of a million US state department cables in the Guardian and a number of other newspapers. Much of the material is certainly very private. When people around the world tell sensitive things to American diplomats they do so in the expectation that there is a high degree of implicit confidentiality about the conversations. But "private" is not the same as "secret". It now transpires that these confidences were posted on a US government intranet, SIPDIS, for a very wide distribution among diplomatic, government and military circles. They may have been marked "secret" but all secrets are relative: there are around 3 million Americans cleared to read material thus classified.
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Commentaries, Opinions, And Editorials
Obama administration is weak in the face of WikiLeaks -- Marc A. Thiessen, Washington Post
Attack by WikiLeaks -- Wall Street Journal editorial
Editor's note: publishing the cables -- The Guardian
A Note to Readers: The Decision to Publish Diplomatic Documents -- New York Times
US embassy cables: A banquet of secrets -- Timothy Garton Ash, The Guardian
WikiLeaks target: American power -- Ben Smith, Politico
Sarkozy, the emperor with no clothes. Putin is Batman... and Ahmadinejad is like Hitler: What America REALLY thinks of our world leaders -- Nick Pisa, The Daily Mail
Why the WikiLeaks Drama Is Overblown -- Peter Beinart, The Daily Beast
An Infoterrorist? -- IBD Editorial
Exclusive: WikiLeaks Will Unveil Major Bank Scandal -- Andy Greenberg, Forbes
How to Read WikiLeaks -- Ruchard Haass, Council On Foreign Relations
John Kampfner: Wikileaks shows up our media for their docility at the feet of authority -- The Independent
Officials may be overstating the danger from WikiLeaks -- McClatchy News
Official Says Wikileaks Greatest Danger: 'Loss of Trust' -- ABC News
Hoekstra: World's Trust in U.S. Now at Risk -- CBS
Analysis - WikiLeaks shows 21st-century secrets harder to keep -- Reuters
Has WikiLeaks finally gone too far? -- Blake Hounshell, Passport/Foreign Policy
Wikileaks: Bumpy ride ahead for US diplomats -- BBC
WikiLeaks doc dump furthers Obama as weak on international front -- Kerry Pickett, Washington Times
Wikileaks 'secrets' reveal the paranoid mindset of internet activists obsessed with conspiracies -- Praveen Swami, The Telegraph
What Do the Diplomatic Cables Really Tell Us? -- Spiegel Online
Wikileaks: from humble beginnings to Government nemesis -- The Telegraph
Non-Wikileaks Commentaries And Opinions
The Taliban's expat jihadists -- Scott Atran, The Guardian
Fall guys in Beijing need better PR -- Sunny Lee, Asia Times
Postmortem: Egypt's parliamentary election -- Max Strasser, Foreign Policy
Empowering Partners: A Strategy For Helping Allies Share The Security Burden -- Daniel Goure, Lexington Institute
Europe's Ominous Reckoning -- Robert Samuelson, Real Clear Politics
New START Mischaracterization and Misdirection -- Keith B. Payne, National Review
The Emperor's Nuclear Clothes -- Stephen Peter Rosen, Wall Street Journal