The Guardian has responded to WikiLeaks’ accusations, denying responsibility for the leaked cables and saying it "calls on WikiLeaks not to carry through its plan to release the unredacted state department cables. We believe this would be grossly irresponsible. The paper utterly rejects any suggestion that it is responsible for the release of the unedited cables."
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The statement continues:
"WikiLeaks published 130,000 apparently unredacted cables last week. Until Wednesday of this week very few people had the required information to access the full cables, but over the last few days WikiLeaks has published more and more hints about how they could be accessed and are now carrying out their own ‘online poll’ about whether they should publish all the cables.
WikiLeaks should take responsibility for its own pattern of actions and not seek to deflect it elsewhere."
An article on the Guardian‘s website, too, relays the following:
"It’s nonsense to suggest the Guardian’s WikiLeaks book has compromised security in any way.
Our book about WikiLeaks was published last February. It contained a password, but no details of the location of the files, and we were told it was a temporary password which would expire and be deleted in a matter of hours.
It was a meaningless piece of information to anyone except the person(s) who created the database.
No concerns were expressed when the book was published and if anyone at WikiLeaks had thought this compromised security they have had seven months to remove the files. That they didn’t do so clearly shows the problem was not caused by the Guardian’s book."
On Wednesday of this week, WikiLeaks made public a link to an encrypted file—the most recent of the organizations releases. The Guardian‘s statement, however, claims that release "was not the one accessed by the Guardian last year."
WikiLeaks’ editorial about the Guardian states that the organization "has commenced pre-litigation action against the Guardian and an individual in Germany who was distributing the Guardian passwords for personal gain." The Guardian‘s statement, in turn, notes "that this is the third time that Assange has claimed he is suing the Guardian or its journalists… None of these actions ever materialised."
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