The Kissinger Cables: Wikileaks makes largest release yet

Wikileaks has made over 1.7-million diplomatic cables available to the public, the largest ever release of formerly confidential information to come from the whistle-blowing organisation.

Labeled the “Kissinger Cables”, they include diplomatic records from 1973 to 1976. Of the 1.7-million cables, 205 901 are connected to former US secretary of state Henry Kissinger.

The full release is around 700-million words long and apparently contains “significant revelations about US involvements with fascist dictatorships, particularly in Latin America, under Franco’s Spain (including about the Spanish royal family) and in Greece under the regime of the Colonels.”

Unlike its previous releases however, the Kissinger cables do not come in the form of a leak from a single source. Rather, they come in the form a searchable database of public records.

According to Wikileaks, the records should have been declassified after 25 years, but US has made repeated attempts to reclassify them. There are also no documents after 1976 available. Wikileaks therefore took it upon itself to collect all the cables from National Archives and Record Administration (NARA) and collate them into a single, searchable database.

The release forms the backbone of the WikiLeaks’ Public Library of US Diplomacy (PlusD), which contains over two-million records and aims to make it easier for people to access government information.

“The US administration cannot be trusted to maintain the history of its interactions with the world,” said Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. “Fortunately, an organisation with an unbroken record in resisting censorship attempts now has a copy.”