The U.S. State Department says the latest mass release of leaked diplomatic cables by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks is a serious threat to individuals named in the documents and to U.S. national security.
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a statement Tuesday the publication of the cables also undermines U.S. diplomatic efforts to “solve shared problems.”
WikiLeaks in the past week has published on its web site more than 125,000 State Department cables. Before this, it had only made public about 20,000 such documents. According to several news outlets, these newly-released cables contain the names of a number of sources who had asked for protection and for their identities not to be released.
In its Twitter feed, WikiLeaks denied that it had exposed any sources. The twitter message said the New York Times, which was among the first newspapers to report Wikileaks had identified protected individuals, was “drooling, senile, and evil.”