Constitutional Law

U.S.: WikiLeaks release gives hit list to al-Qaida

By By The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — In a disclosure of some of the most sensitive information yet revealed by WikiLeaks, the website has put out a secret cable listing sites worldwide that the U.S. considers critical to its national security. U.S. officials said the leak amounted to giving a hit list to terrorists.

Meanwhile, a British judge sent Julian Assange to jail today, denying bail to the WikiLeaks founder who vowed to fight efforts to extradite him to Sweden in a sex-crimes investigation.

On Dec. 5, WikiLeaks released a 2009 diplomatic cable from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton detailing key sites worldwide. Among the locations cited were undersea communications lines, mines, antivenin factories and suppliers of food and manufacturing materials.

The Pentagon declined to comment yesterday on the details of what it called ?stolen? documents containing classified information. But a spokesman, Col. David Lapan, called the disclosure ?damaging? and said it gives valuable information to adversaries.

The State Department echoed the Pentagon?s statement. ?Releasing such information amounts to giving a targeting list to groups like al-Qaida,? agency spokesman P.J. Crowley said. British Foreign Secretary William Hague condemned the disclosure, telling the BBC it was a ?reprehensible? act committed ?without regard to wider concerns of security, the security of millions of people.?

In the 2009 message, marked ?secret,? Clinton asked U.S. diplomatic posts to help update a list of sites around the world ?which, if destroyed, disrupted or exploited, would likely have an immediate and deleterious effect on the United States.?

The list was considered so confidential that the contributors were advised to come up with the information on their own: Posts are ?not being asked to consult with host governments in respect to this request,? Clinton wrote.

Attached to Clinton?s message was a rundown of sites included in the 2008 ?Critical Foreign Dependencies Initiative? list. Some of the sites, such as border crossings, hydroelectric dams and shipping lanes, could hardly be considered secret.

But other locations, such as mines, manufacturers of components used in weapons systems, and vaccine and antivenin sources, probably were not widely known. The Associated Press has decided against publishing their names due to the sensitive nature of the information.

The BBC was the first to report on the secret-sites cable and linked its story to the full cable on the WikiLeaks site. The BBC did not respond to questions about its decision to do so.

WikiLeaks had been working with a select group of international media but has been offering its cable revelations to new media partners in recent days.

The release came as WikiLeaks faced more pressure to end its disclosure of secret U.S. diplomatic cables, which started last week.

Yesterday, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder again condemned the leaks and said the Espionage Act was just one of the laws the U.S. could use to prosecute those involved in the WikiLeaks releases.

Holder declined to say which other laws might come into play. Possibilities include charges such as the theft of government property or receipt of stolen government property.

Meanwhile, Assange appeared this afternoon at the City of Westminster Magistrates? Court in London after turning himself in to Scotland Yard earlier in the day. He showed no reaction as Judge Howard Riddle denied him bail and sent him into U.K. custody until his next extradition hearing on Dec. 14.

Assange and his lawyers claim the Swedish accusations from two women stem from a ?dispute over consensual but unprotected sex? dating back to August, and have claimed the case has taken on political overtones. Swedish officials have rejected those claims.

Wikileaks, meanwhile, came under increasing financial pressure today — with both Visa and MasterCard saying they would block payments to the controversial website.

The move chokes off two important funding avenues for WikiLeaks, a loosely knit group of activists who rely on individual donations to fund their operations.

PayPal Inc., a popular online payment service, has already cut its links to the website, while Swiss authorities closed Assange?s new Swiss bank account yesterday, freezing tens of thousands of euros, according to his lawyers.

WikiLeaks is still soliciting donations through bank transfers to affiliates in Iceland and Germany, as well as by mail to an address at University of Melbourne in Australia.

Full post as published by First Amendment Center on December 06, 2010 (boomark / email).