[68] Scott Gilmore wrote in The Globe and Mail that based on his experience as a Canadian diplomat in Indonesia the leak "is not a real victory for a more open world.
[69] Jonathan Powell, a British diplomat for sixteen years and Tony Blair's Chief of Staff, wrote: "It is very difficult to conduct diplomacy effectively when your confidential deliberations are made public in this way.
It is like having a conversation in the pub with your best mate about problems with your girlfriend and then finding the content, possibly with a bit of spin added, posted on the internet.
"[78] In response, WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson said with reference to the cable: "This further undermines claims made by the US Government that its embassy officials do not play an intelligence-gathering role.
[80] U.S. Representative Peter T. King, the ranking member of the United States House Committee on Homeland Security said that the release "posed a clear and present danger to the national security of the United States"[81] and that it "manifests Mr. Assange's purposeful intent to damage not only our national interests in fighting the war on terror, but also undermines the very safety of coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan.
[82] He called for Assange to be prosecuted for espionage,[83] and asked the U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to "determine whether Wikileaks could be designated a foreign terrorist organization", and that "by doing so we can seize their assets".
[82][83][84][85] New York attorney in international law and human rights Scott Horton responded by saying: In fact, the term 'foreign terrorist organization' (FTO) is established in section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act, which empowers the Secretary of State (not the attorney general) to apply that label to foreign organizations, with immediate and severe consequences for those so labeled and those who communicate or deal with them in any way.
To qualify as an FTO, an organization must have been engaged in 'terrorist activity' or 'terrorism,' which are defined to include multiple acts of violence threatening U.S. persons or the national security of the United States.
[94] Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Michael Mullen, said, "Mr. Assange can say whatever he likes about the greater good he thinks he and his source are doing, but the truth is, they might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family."
"[96] Phyllis Bennis, a senior analyst with the think-tank[97][98][99][100][101] Institute for Policy Studies and founder of the U.S. Campaign to End Israeli occupation,[102] told Paul Jay of The Real News Network that Clinton's orders of spying on U.N. leaders showed that George W. Bush's style is still around.
"[105] Similarly, writing in the American Spectator, Alex Massie defended Wikileaks on the grounds that it is, like any other major media outlet, a news publisher.
At that time British law prohibited reporting of U.K. parliamentary debates and speeches because those in power argued that the information was too sensitive and would be disruptive if published.
"[108] Glenn Greenwald wrote in Salon, "The WikiLeaks disclosure has revealed not only numerous government secrets, but also the driving mentality of major factions in our political and media class.
Indeed, I don't quite recall any entity producing as much bipartisan contempt across the American political spectrum as WikiLeaks has: as usual, for authoritarian minds, those who expose secrets are far more hated than those in power who commit heinous acts using secrecy as their principal weapon".
[111][112] Marc Lynch wrote in Foreign Policy that "my initial skepticism about the significance of this document leak, fueled by the lack of interesting revelations in The New York Times and The Guardian reports, is changing as I see the first batch of cables posted on WikiLeaks itself.
But for [White House Press Secretary Robert] Gibbs to try and claim that transparency and openness [has put at risk the cause of human rights] is intellectually and practically dishonest".
"[121] A complaint was filed against Flanagan, stating that he "counselled and/or incited the assassination of Julian Assange contrary to the Criminal Code of Canada", in his remarks on the CBC program Power & Politics.
[122] Scott Shane of The New York Times said "perhaps if we had had more information on these secret internal deliberations of governments prior to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, we would have had a better understanding of the quality of the evidence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
[124] Nancy Youssef of The McClatchy Company of newspapers wrote that "American officials in recent days have warned repeatedly that the release of documents by WikiLeaks could put people's lives in danger, but, despite similar warnings before the previous two releases of classified U.S. intelligence reports by the website, U.S. officials concede that they have no evidence to date that the documents led to anyone's death".
"[128] Jack Goldsmith, a former OLC official in the Bush administration, has written that Assange is "being unduly vilified" and though he does not like the leaks, "it is not obvious what law he has violated".
"[130] In an open letter to prime minister Julia Gillard, some of Australia's main media personnel said the U.S. and Australian governments' reaction to the release of diplomatic correspondence by the WikiLeaks website is "deeply troubling" and warned that they will "strongly resist any attempts to make the publication of these or similar documents illegal".
[131][132] A 30 November 2010 Ottawa Sun editorial criticised the leak: "we see no for-the-good-of-the-people journalistic justification for WikiLeaks reckless sabotage of U.S. international relations".
At that time British law prohibited reporting of parliamentary debates and speeches because those in power argued that the information was too sensitive and would be disruptive if published.
[136] The Sydney Morning Herald ran an 8 December 2010 editorial by Bryce Lowry describing Assange as "the Ned Kelly of the digital age" comparing him to a bushranger who defied colonial authorities in Australia in the nineteenth century.
[138] Richard Stengel, managing editor of Time, defended the leaks, on 13 December 2010, arguing that although the release of classified materials harms American security, he noted the right of news organizations to publish those documents under the First Amendment.
Colm O'Gorman, the organisation's executive director in Ireland, observed that concerns expressed by Irish citizens over the misuse of the airport by the Americans was "a problem to be managed rather than something to be taken seriously".
[152] The American Civil Liberties Union issued a statement, beginning "The Wikileaks phenomenon — the existence of an organization devoted to obtaining and publicly releasing large troves of information the U.S. government would prefer to keep secret — illustrates just how broken our secrecy classification system is.
[169][170] An example is the Saturday Night Live skit "WikiLeaks TMZ", in which Julian Assange (Bill Hader) presents ambushes of political leaders to expose their corruption: Libya's Muammar Qaddafi (Fred Armisen) is caught with his Ukrainian nurse; Afghanistan's Hamid Karzai (Robert De Niro) is caught pocketing money; and Hillary Clinton is found not wearing any underclothes.
Clinton added: 'It puts people's lives in danger, threatens our national security and undermines our efforts to work with other countries to solve shared problems.'