LONDON (AP) -- Four of the high-profile media organizations that have collaborated with WikiLeaks on its release of secret documents on Friday condemned the group's disclosure of its entire archive of uncensored U.S. State Department cables.
WikiLeaks announced that it had posted the last of its collection of 251,287 U.S. Embassy cables, a trove of diplomatic material whose exposure has embarrassed officials and laid bare examples of corruption and double-dealing around the globe.
But unlike previous releases, many if not all the newly-posted documents appeared to have been left uncensored _ meaning that names and other details of people quoted in the often-sensitive cables are now freely available to all.
A joint statement published on the Guardian's website Friday said that the British publication and its international colleagues _ The New York Times, Spanish daily El Pais and German newspaper Der Spiegel _ ``deplore the decision of WikiLeaks to publish the unredacted State Department cables, which may put sources at risk.''
Le Monde, the French daily which also published some of WikiLeaks' documents, will join other media partners in signing the statement, according to executive editor Sylvie Kauffmann.
WikiLeaks members of staff have not returned repeated requests for comment sent in the past two days. But in a series of messages posted to Twitter, the group seemed to suggest that it had no choice but to post the archive to its website because copies of the document were already circulating freely online following a security breach at the site.
WikiLeaks has blamed the Guardian for the breach, pointing out that a sensitive password used to decrypt the files was published in a book put out by David Leigh, one of the paper's investigative reporters and a collaborator-turned-critic of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
But the Guardian, Leigh and others have rejected the claim, suggesting that the real problem was that WikiLeaks posted the encrypted file to the Web by accident and that Assange made the elementary mistake of reusing an old password.
The U.S. State Department has also condemned the latest release.
<한글기사>
위키리크스, 美외교전문 25만건 전면 공개
폭로 전문 웹사이트인 위키리크스는 2일 보유한 미국 외교 전문을 모두 공개했다.
위키리크스는 미국 외교전문 25만1천287건을 검색 가능한 형태로 모두 공개했다 고 트위터 계정을 통해 밝혔다.
지난해 11월부터 하루 단위로 미국 외교전문을 순차 공개해온 위키리크스는 지 난 1일 잔여 전문을 편집하지 않은 상태로 전면 공개하는 방안을 검토하고 있다고 밝힌 바 있다.
위키리크스가 예고한대로 모든 전문을 편집하지 않은 채 공개했는지 여부는 아 직 확인되지 않고 있다.
이에 대해 위키리크스와 공조하며 전문을 보도해온 미국의 뉴욕타임스(NYT), 영 국의 가디언, 스페인의 엘 파이스, 독일의 슈피겔 등 4개 매체는 가디언 사이트를 통해 공개한 공동성명에서 "편집하지 않은 채 외교전문을 공개한 위키리크스의 결정 을 개탄한다"며 "정보 제공자들을 위험에 빠트릴 수 있다"고 밝혔다.
