THE CABLES

AMERICAS

Diplomats say corruption is "a way of life" in Cuba, and name names.

MIDDLE EAST

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak thought George W. Bush was "naive, controlled by subordinates, and completely unprepared for dealing with post-Saddam Iraq."

Inside the U.S. military's $1.3 billion-a-year relationship with Egypt.

When Hillary met Hosni.

The Egyptian military's Plan B in the event of a regime change.

THE NEWS

WikiLeaks rival OpenLeaks is launched. And leaked.

New York Times Executive Editor Bill Keller details the Times' complicated relationship with Julian Assange. (Juicy bits here.)

The U.S. military hasn't turned up any evidence of collaboration between Assange and Pfc. Bradley Manning.

Manning's supervisors warned the U.S. Army not to deploy him to Iraq.

Police in Britain bust alleged Anonymous hackers. The FBI is going after them, too.

Der Spiegel's tick-tock on the lead-up to Cablegate. (Assange: "We have to survive this leak.")

When American newspapers aren't bashing Julian Assange, they're imitating him.

WikiLeaks: the next generation.

Assange wants more media partners.

Is anyone not publishing an instant book about WikiLeaks?

THE BIG PICTURE

Reading WikiLeaks as literature.

Is Manning Capt. James Yee all over again?

Is Algeria next?

Why the Palestine Papers aren't the next WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks has done more for Arab democracy than decades of U.S. diplomacy.

Although the U.S. State Department has reportedly downplayed the impact of WikiLeaks' cable disclosures in private, the Justice Department is still trying to find grounds to bring WikiLeaks honcho Julian Assange to trial in the United States. Doing that requires proving that Assange actively collaborated with his alleged source, Pfc. Bradley Manning, to obtain the cables; Assange has said from the beginning that this never happened, and that he didn't even know Manning's name until it was reported in the media.

NBC's Jim Miklaszewski reports that the U.S. military's investigation into the affair, thus far, bears out Assange's story:

U.S. military officials tell NBC News that investigators have been unable to make any direct connection between a jailed army private suspected with leaking secret documents and Julian Assange, founder of the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.

The officials say that while investigators have determined that Manning had allegedly unlawfully downloaded tens of thousands of documents onto his own computer and passed them to an unauthorized person, there is apparently no evidence he passed the files directly to Assange, or had any direct contact with the controversial WikiLeaks figure.

Manning is still being held at the Marine Corps Quantico base in Virginia, where he has been charged with eight crimes. He was put on suicide watch for two days last week, and his lawyers have alleged that he has been abused while in detention.

While the community of Middle East leak-watchers is focused on Al Jazeera's release of 1,600 documents from the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, WikiLeaks has released a number of U.S. diplomatic cables that call into question the long-term viability of Algerian strongman Abdelaziz Bouteflika. Particularly in the wake of Tunisia's revolt -- and the U.S. Embassy's success at identifying the seeds of unrest there -- these cables deserve a close read.

The most engaging report is a 2008 cable on disaffected Algerian youth known as "the harraga," or literally "one who burns." Unlike Mohamed Bouazizi, who lit himself on fire in Tunisia two years later, these men aren't burning themselves -- they're burning their identification papers before setting out on makeshift boats in an attempt to reach the shores of Spain or Italy. It's an unbelievably dangerous journey: The embassy estimates that over 90 percent of the harraga die at sea, are detained indefinitely by North African authorities, or are returned to their host country. According to one article cited in the cable, up to 50,000 Algerians and Libyans attempted to reach European shores in search of economic opportunities in 2007.

From the Algerian regime's perspective, perhaps the most troubling aspect of this story is that the harraga hail -- like Bouazizi -- from the society's educated classes. One boat, the embassy reported "includ[ed] five university graduates and two doctors." The grandson of a former Algerian president also departed the country in this way and "has not been heard from since."

A 2007 cable signed by U.S. Amb. Robert Ford -- now the newly appointed U.S. ambassador to Damascus -- lays out the consequences of this disaffection more explicitly. The Algerian regime, he writes, is "plagued by a lack of vision, unprecedented levels of corruption and rumblings of division within the military rank and file."

The most explosive comments in the cable are relayed to the embassy by Said Sadi, an opposition leader. Sadi described a conversation that he had with Gen. Toufik Mediene, Algeria's head of military intelligence, who "acknowledged that all was not well with the health of Bouteflika and Algeria writ large." When the conversation turned to Algeria's endemic corruption, Sadi reports that the general "motion[ed] silently to the portrait of Bouteflika that hung over their heads" to indicate where the problem lay.

Ford hedged his bets in late 2007, writing that the embassy does not expect an imminent revolt in Algeria. But in the aftermath of the Tunisian revolt -- and with Algerian protests and self-immolations mounting -- the moment may just be now.

THE CABLES

AMERICAS

U.S. officials worried about the return to Haiti of Jean-Claude "Baby-Doc" Duvalier back in 2006. (Duvalier returned to the country this week.)

Guatemalan President Álvaro Colom doesn't think Rigoberta Menchú exists.

EUROPE/CAUCASUS

BP's top Russia executive has his doubts about the survival of the company's partnership with Russian oil firm Rosneft.

MIDDLE EAST

Turkey allowed the United States to use one of its airbases for rendition flights.

Condoleezza Rice wanted U.S. diplomats in the Middle East to gather intelligence on Israeli communications technology and Palestinian leaders.

American diplomats were ambivalent about deposed Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, and alarmed by the growing opposition to him.

U.S. diplomats in Turkey fretted about a military backlash after the arrest of several officers in an alleged coup plot last year.

THE NEWS

Julian Assange is planning to release details on 2,000 offshore bank accounts, which he says contain evidence of serious tax evasion and money laundering. Swiss authorities are now mulling filing related charges against his source, former Swiss Banker Rudolf Elmer, who was already found guilty on Wednesday of breaking other banking secrecy laws.

Alleged Assange source Pfc. Bradley Manning is placed on suicide watch; his lawyer says he's being mistreated at the Marine Corps jail.

The State Department has made a big deal about the havoc caused by WikiLeaks, but privately officials tell congressional staffers the leaks were "embarrassing but not damaging."

Assange still has a lot of supporters in his home country of Australia.

Assange is slated to get the Hollywood treatment. (The FP newsroom votes for this guy.)

The Pentagon wants U.S. military personnel to get rid of any WikiLeaks files they might have on their computers.

Russian WikiLeaks knockoff RuLeaks posts pictures of Vladimir Putin's Black Sea estate.

French lawyers are using WikiLeaks cables to argue for the acquittal of five Guantánamo detainees.

Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt says that Assange's extradition is a judicial matter, and that his government won't be involved in the decision.

An investigative firm alleges WikiLeaks skims documents off of file-sharing networks.

Zimbabwe's attorney general is considering pursuing treason charges against more government officials based on WikiLeaks cables.

WikiLeaks volunteer Jacob Applebaum is detained at an airport again.

A German CEO is out of a job after calling Europe's multi-billion-dollar Galileo satellite system (on which his company was working) a "stupid idea" in a WikiLeaked cable. (If you're keeping track, this is officially the first time WikiLeaks has caused trouble in space.)

Libya's Muammar al-Qaddafi is not a WikiLeaks fan, and blames the site for the fall of Tunisian strongman Ben Ali. (The State Department disagrees.)

THE BIG PICTURE

WikiLeaks was supposed to have extensive safeguards for its whistleblowers -- so why are so many of them ending up in jail?

What the WikiLeaks cables tell us about Iran's nuclear ambitions.

The Tunisian uprising wasn't a WikiLeaks revolution, but it does help us understand how technology can and can't help spread democracy.

At last, someone thought to ask Miss America what she thinks about WikiLeaks.

RuLeaks, a WikiLeaks type site owned and operated by the Russian Pirate Party, was shut down by a denial of service attack yesterday after posting photos of a lavish mansion alleged to be Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's estate on the Black Sea. The site, and the photos, are now back up.

The existence of the "Putin palace" on the Black Sea was discussed by the Washington Post's David Ignatius in an article last year. According to Russian whistleblower Sergey Kolesnikov, the still under-construction digs cost more than $1 billion, include an amphitheater and three helipads and is being "predominantly paid for with money donated by Russian businessmen." Putin's spokesman denied the report, saying that the building has nothing to do with Putin.

From the photos, the place certainly looks fit for a Romanov, with frescoed ceilings, outdoor maze bushes, marble floors, and four-post beds. Bizarrely, a man who appears to be a construction worker with his face blacked out poses in a number of the shots. (He may want to read up on the fates of previous WikiLeakers.) RuLeaks' description of the photos coyly describes them as "photographs of a palace, which has recently been discussed in the press".

RuLeaks, which was founded on Jan. 14, operates on servers outside the country. The Pirate Party says it is currently looking into the source of the DDoS attack.

More lavish images from the (possibly) "Putin Palace" below the jump:

Read on

The original "About Us" page from the founding of WikiLeaks delares the site's intention to be of "assistance to people of all regions who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations." And indeed, the idea that the decentralized operating model and online anonymity provided by WikiLeaks could protect whistleblowers was central to the site's original model:

Whistleblowers can face a great many risks, depending on their position, the nature of the information and other circumstances. Powerful institutions may use whatever methods are available to them to withhold damaging information, whether by legal means, political pressure or physical violence. The risk cannot be entirely removed (for instance, a government may know who had access to a document in the first place) but it can be lessened. Posting CD's in the mail combined with advanced cryptographic technology can help to make communications on and off the internet effectively anonymous and untraceable. Wikileaks applauds the courage of those who blow the whistle on injustice, and seeks to reduce the risks they face.

Our servers are distributed over multiple international jurisdictions and do not keep logs. Hence these logs cannot be seized. Without specialized global internet traffic analysis, multiple parts of our organization and volunteers must conspire with each other to strip submitters of their anonymity. However, we will also provide instructions on how to submit material to us, by post and from netcafés and wireless hotspots, so even if Wikileaks is infiltrated by a government intelligence agency submitters cannot be traced.

Of course, a lot's changed since 2006. The site now relies more on cooperation with major news outlets like the Guardian and the New York Times rather than its own website, which can no longer really be described as a Wiki. WikiLeaks' primary adeversaries these days are global superpowers and the world's most powerful corporations, rather than the "oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East" who were its original stated targets. 

But perhaps most important for the WikiLeaks project, the site no longer seems very good at protecting its sources. Pfc. Bradley Manning, the U.S. soldier thought to be the source of the Afghan and Iraq war logs as well as the WikiLeaks cables, has been held a detention center in Quantico, Va. for the last five months without even a pre-trial hearing,  kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day and prevented from excercising or sleeping during the day. WikiLeaks dragged its feet for months on a pledge to donate money to his defense fund.

Yesterday, Swiss banker Rudolf Elmer was arrested by Swiss authorities after handing over two CDs of client data to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Elmer had just avoided jail time related to a previous release of data to WikiLeaks in 2007.

Granted, Elmer's motives seem more than a little suspect and he had no interest in anonymity -- he handed over the data to Assange at a news conference. But the fact that the sources behind WikiLeaks' biggest revelations are winding up in jail -- contradicting the site's original stated purpose -- doesn't bode very well for its ability to continue attracting whistleblowers. 

Well, this (from NPR) ought to be good:

A former Swiss banker said Monday that he has handed over to WikiLeaks two discs containing what he claims is information on 2,000 offshore bank account holders.

Rudolf Elmer, an ex-employee of Swiss-based bank Julius Baer, said the documents reveal case after case of tax evasion and involve 40 politicians as well as entertainers and multinationals from the U.S., the U.K. and elsewhere. He refused to name the account holders, but said the data span a period of at least 19 years and involve three banks.

Elmer was charged last week in Geneva with coercion and violating banking secrecy laws. Appearing with WikiLeaks' Julian Assange at London's Frontline Club yesterday, he told reporters, "I do think as a banker I have the right to stand up if something is wrong."

Two weeks after a leaked cable cost a U.S. ambassador his job, another diplomat has found his life suddenly complicated by WikiLeaks -- this time in the Netherlands. Yesterday WikiLeaks published a September 2009 cable from the U.S. embassy in the Hague detailing U.S. Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder's efforts to keep the Dutch from bailing on the war in Afghanistan after 2010. Among Daalder's interlocutors is a Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs official named Pieter de Gooijer, who at one point in the conversation suggests a means by which Daalder could secure the further support of the Netherlands in the war effort:

De Gooijer encouraged Daalder to ask [U.S. Treasury] Secretary [Timothy] Geithner to tell [Dutch] Finance Minister [Wouter] Bos that the Netherlands would not have a seat in G20 discussions but for its contributions in Afghanistan. Bos is head of the Labor party and key to the Dutch cabinet's decision on Afghanistan.

Whatever efforts were ultimately made to persuade Bos failed; the Dutch cabinet collapsed last February over the issue of Afghanistan deployment, when the contingent of Labor ministers -- who remained staunchly opposed to keeping troops in the country -- resigned. Dutch troops pulled out of Afghanistan in August.

The new revelation doesn't look all that great for de Gooijer, who last week was named the Netherlands' ambassador to the European Union. Since the cable was published, his appointment has been blocked by Frans Timmermans, a Labor member of Parliament, on the grounds that de Gooijer can't be trusted. The Dutch government has recently proposed sending Dutch troops back to Afghanistan for an Afghan police training mission, but 70 percent of the respondents in a poll taken this month were opposed to the idea, as is Timmermans's party.

WikiLeaks also claimed its first private-sector casualty today, in the form of Berry Smutny, the CEO of the German space technology company OHB System AG. Smutny was fired after appearing in a WikiLeaks cable calling Galileo, a 4.5 billion-euros-and-counting European satellite navigation system on which OHB System is a contractor, a "stupid idea."