2006?08
WikiLeaks posted its first document in December 2006, a decision to assassinate government officials signed by Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys."[32] In August 2007, The Guardian published a story about corruption by the family of the former Kenyan leader Daniel arap Moi based on information provided via WikiLeaks.[133] In November 2007, a March 2003 copy of Standard Operating Procedures for Camp Delta detailing the protocol of the U.S. Army at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp was released.[134] The document revealed that some prisoners were off-limits to the International Committee of the Red Cross, something that the U.S. military had in the past repeatedly denied.[135] In February 2008, WikiLeaks released allegations of illegal activities at the Cayman Islands branch of the Swiss Bank Julius Baer which led to the bank suing WikiLeaks and obtaining an injunction which temporarily shut down wikileaks.org.[136] The site was instantly mirrored by supporters and later that month the judge overturned his previous decision citing First Amendment concerns and questions about legal jurisdiction.[137][138] In March 2008, WikiLeaks published what they referred to as "the collected secret 'bibles' of Scientology," and three days later received letters threatening to sue them for breach of copyright.[139] In September 2008, during the 2008 United States presidential election campaigns, the contents of a Yahoo account belonging to Sarah Palin (the running mate of Republican presidential nominee John McCain) were posted on WikiLeaks after being hacked into by members of Anonymous.[140] In November 2008, the membership list of the far-right British National Party was posted to WikiLeaks, after briefly appearing on a blog.[141] A year later, on October 2009, another list of BNP members was leaked.[142]
2009
In January 2009, WikiLeaks released 86 telephone intercept recordings of Peruvian politicians and businessmen involved in the 2008 Peru oil scandal.[143] In February, WikiLeaks released 6,780 Congressional Research Service reports[144] followed in March, by a list of contributors to the Norm Coleman senatorial campaign[145][146] and a set of documents belonging to Barclays Bank that had been ordered removed from the website of The Guardian.[147] In July, they released a report relating to a serious nuclear accident that had occurred at the Iranian Natanz nuclear facility in 2009.[148] Later media reports have suggested that the accident was related to the Stuxnet computer worm.[149][150] In September, internal documents from Kaupthing Bank were leaked, from shortly before the collapse of Iceland's banking sector, which led to the 2008?2010 Icelandic financial crisis. The document shows that suspiciously large sums of money were loaned to various owners of the bank, and large debts written off.[151] In October, Joint Services Protocol 440, a British document advising the security services on how to avoid documents being leaked was published by WikiLeaks.[152] Later that month, they announced that a super-injunction was being used by the commodities company, Trafigura to gag The Guardian newspaper from reporting on a leaked internal document regarding a toxic dumping incident in the Ivory Coast.[153][154] In November, they hosted copies of e-mail correspondence between climate scientists, although they were not originally leaked to WikiLeaks.[155] They also released 570,000 intercepts of pager messages sent on the day of the 11 September attacks.[156] During 2008 and 2009, WikiLeaks published the alleged lists of forbidden or illegal web addresses for Australia, Denmark and Thailand. These were originally created to prevent access to child pornography and terrorism, but the leaks revealed that other sites covering unrelated subjects were also listed.[157][158][159]
2010
In March 2010, WikiLeaks released a secret 32-page U.S. Department of Defense Counterintelligence Analysis Report written in March 2008 discussing the leaking of material by WikiLeaks and how it could be deterred.[160][161] In April, a classified video of the 12 July 2007 Baghdad airstrike was released, showing two Reuters employees being fired at, after the pilots mistakenly thought the men were carrying weapons, which were in fact cameras.[162] In the week following the release, "Wikileaks" was the search term with the most significant growth worldwide in the last seven days as measured by Google Insights.[163] In June 2010, A 22-year-old US Army intelligence analyst, PFC (formerly SPC) Bradley Manning, was arrested after alleged chat logs were turned in to the authorities by former hacker Adrian Lamo, in whom he had confided. Manning reportedly told Lamo he had leaked the "Collateral Murder" video, in addition to a video of the Granai airstrike and around 260,000 diplomatic cables, to WikiLeaks.[164] In July, WikiLeaks released 92,000 documents related to the war in Afghanistan between 2004 and the end of 2009 to The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel. The documents detail individual incidents including friendly fire and civilian casualties.[165] At the end of July, a 1.4 GB "insurance file" was added to the Afghan War Diary page, whose decryption details would be released if WikiLeaks or Assange were harmed.[130] About 15,000 of the 92,000 documents have not yet been released on WikiLeaks, as the group is currently reviewing the documents to remove some of the sources of the information. WikiLeaks asked the Pentagon and human-rights groups to help remove names from the documents to reduce the potential harm caused by their release, but did not receive assistance.[166] Following the Love Parade stampede in Duisburg, Germany on 24 July 2010, a local published internal documents of the city administration regarding the planning of Love Parade. The city government reacted by acquiring a court order on 16 August forcing the blog to remove the documents from its blog.[167] On 20 August WikiLeaks released a publication titled Loveparade 2010 Duisburg planning documents, 2007?2010, which comprised 43 internal documents regarding the Love Parade 2010.[168][169] Following on from the leak of information from the Afghan War, in October 2010, around 400,000 documents relating to the Iraq War were released in October. The BBC quoted The Pentagon referring to the Iraq War Logs as "the largest leak of classified documents in its history." Media coverage of the leaked documents focused on claims that the U.S. government had ignored reports of torture by the Iraqi authorities during the period after the 2003 war.[170]
Diplomatic cables release
Main articles: United States diplomatic cables leak, contents, and reactions
On 28 November 2010, WikiLeaks and five major newspapers from Spain (El País), France (Le Monde), Germany (Der Spiegel), the United Kingdom (The Guardian), and the United States (The New York Times) started to simultaneously publish the first 220 of 251,287 leaked confidential?but not top secret?diplomatic cables from 274 US embassies around the world, dated from 28 December 1966 to 28 February 2010.[171][172] WikiLeaks plans to release the entirety of the cables in phases over several months.[172]
The contents of the diplomatic cables include numerous unguarded comments and revelations regarding: critiques and praises about the host countries of various US embassies; political manoeuvring regarding climate change; discussion and resolutions towards ending ongoing tension in the Middle East; efforts and resistance towards nuclear disarmament; actions in the War on Terror; assessments of other threats around the world; dealings between various countries; US intelligence and counterintelligence efforts; and other diplomatic actions. Reactions to the United States diplomatic cables leak include stark criticism, anticipation, commendation, and quiescence. Consequent reactions to the US government include sympathy, bewilderment and dismay.
Upcoming leaks
In May 2010, WikiLeaks said they had video footage of a massacre of civilians in Afghanistan by the US military which they were preparing to release.[173][174]
In an interview with Chris Anderson on 19 July 2010, Assange showed a document WikiLeaks had on an Albanian oil well blowout, and said they also had material from inside BP,[175] and that they were "getting enormous quantity of whistle-blower disclosures of a very high calibre" but added that they have not been able to verify and release the material because they do not have enough volunteer journalists.[176]
In October 2010, Assange told a leading Moscow newspaper that "The Kremlin had better brace itself for a coming wave of WikiLeaks disclosures about Russia."[177][178] Assange later clarified: "we have material on many businesses and governments, including in Russia. It?s not right to say there?s going to be a particular focus on Russia".[179]
In a 2009 Computer World interview, Assange claimed to be in possession of "5GB from Bank of America", and in 2010 told Forbes magazine that WikiLeaks was planning another "megaleak" for early in 2011, which this time would be from inside the private sector and involve "a big U.S. bank". Bank of America's stock price fell by 3% as a result of this announcement.[180][181] Assange commented on the possible impact of the release that ?it could take down a bank or two.?[182][183]
In December 2010, Assange's lawyer, Mark Stephens, told The Andrew Marr Show on the BBC, that WikiLeaks had information it considers to be a "thermo-nuclear device" which it would release if the organisation needs to defend itself.[184]
