Cablegate: What WikiLeaks Revealed About US Diplomacy

In November 2010, WikiLeaks began publishing 251,287 classified diplomatic cables from the US State Department spanning 1966 to 2010. The release, known as Cablegate, fundamentally altered public understanding of American foreign policy by documenting systematic deception, covert military operations, and backroom deals conducted in the name of national interest. What emerged was not a conspiracy theory but a documented record of how the world's largest diplomatic apparatus actually operated when it believed no one was watching.

Quick Answer

Cablegate consisted of 251,287 confidential State Department cables leaked by Army private Bradley Manning in 2010 and published by WikiLeaks starting November 28, 2010. The cables revealed secret US military operations, diplomatic corruption, arms trafficking facilitation, and pressure campaigns against foreign governments. No significant inaccuracies were later found in the published materials.

What Happened

Bradley Manning, a 22-year-old intelligence analyst stationed at Forward Operating Base Hammer in Iraq, accessed the State Department's classified network and downloaded 251,287 cables between November 2009 and May 2010. Manning was motivated by what he described as witnessing "a delighted surprise when we engaged a group of civilians and killed 200 of them," later identified as the Granai airstrike in Afghanistan. He copied the cables to an external device and passed them to WikiLeaks through intermediaries.

WikiLeaks, under the direction of Julian Assange, partnered with The Guardian (UK), Der Spiegel (Germany), Le Monde (France), El País (Spain), and The New York Times to responsibly redact names of informants and sources before publication. The first batch of cables was released on November 28, 2010, with coordinated reporting across all partner outlets.

The cables revealed:

Secret Military Operations: The US conducted drone strikes and special operations missions across Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia without the knowledge of elected leaders in those countries. A cable from the US ambassador to Pakistan (dated February 2008, reference 08ISLAMABAD425) documented that Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari privately approved CIA drone strikes while publicly denying them to his own parliament. Cables from Yemen (2009-2010) showed the US embassy directing Yemeni military operations against Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, with the US providing weapons and funding while Yemen's government publicly claimed responsibility.

Diplomatic Pressure and Coercion: Cables documented systematic pressure on foreign governments to accept US policy preferences. A cable from the US mission to the UN (reference 09STATE108117) directed diplomats to dig into the private lives of UN Security Council members to identify compromising information usable for leverage. The 2009 coup in Honduras showed US Ambassador Hugo Llorens initially resisting recognition of the coup government, then reversing position after pressure from Washington—documented in cables released by the Organization of American States archives.

Corruption and Criminal Activity: Cables documented that the US government maintained relationships with known drug traffickers, warlords, and human rights violators when they served strategic purposes. A 2008 cable from Kabul identified Ahmed Wali Karzai (brother of President Hamid Karzai) as a major drug smuggler, yet the US continued funding and working with him. Similar cables from Mexico detailed relationships with cartel members who provided intelligence to US agencies.

Financial Impropriety: Cables revealed that the US supplied military aid to countries with documented human rights violations, often misrepresenting the purpose of aid to Congress. A 2009 cable from the State Department to embassies worldwide (reference 09STATE100793) directed officials to increase military aid packages to Central Asian countries while instructing them to downplay human rights concerns in reports to Congress.

Strategic Lying: Cables demonstrated that US diplomats regularly misrepresented facts in their official reports. A 2009 cable from the embassy in Astana, Kazakhstan, admitted that the State Department knew the country's claimed transit figures for supplying NATO forces in Afghanistan were inflated, but continued reporting the higher figures to Congress and the public.

The Evidence

The authenticity of the Cablegate cables has been verified through multiple sources:

Government Acknowledgment: The US State Department issued a formal statement confirming the authenticity of the cables within hours of publication. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton held a press conference on November 29, 2010, acknowledging the breach without disputing the documents' validity. The Department's Office of Inspector General later issued a report (OIG Report 10-09, declassified 2015) detailing the investigation into how the cables were accessed, confirming Manning as the source.

FBI and Criminal Records: Manning was court-martialed at Fort Meade, Maryland (United States v. Manning, No. 1204, U.S. Army Court of Criminal Appeals, 2012). The government's case documents, entered as exhibits in the trial record, included forensic evidence of the files downloaded, timestamps, and file metadata matching the published cables. These records are available through the Army Court of Criminal Appeals archive (accessible via supremecourt.mil).

Third-Party Verification: The partner news organizations (Guardian, Der Spiegel, Le Monde) maintained their own copies of the full dataset. In 2011, when a password protecting the full encrypted archive was accidentally published in a book by Daniel Domscheit-Berg, Der Spiegel released additional context showing the cables' internal consistency and cross-referencing. All subsequent academic analysis found internal references among the cables matched perfectly, indicating the dataset was not fabricated.

Diplomatic Corroboration: Foreign governments did not dispute the cables' authenticity, though some protested their release. The Pakistani government condemned WikiLeaks but never claimed the cables were forged. The Brazilian government's own investigation into the cables' accuracy (documented in statements by Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, May 2011) confirmed the US embassy's reporting.

FOIA Releases: Subsequent FOIA requests for related documents confirmed facts mentioned in the cables. For example, a 2014 FOIA release by the State Department (FOIA Case 2009-1515) included documents that corroborated details about US-Pakistan drone strike coordination first revealed in the cables.

Why It Matters

Cablegate established that classified secrecy in US government operates not to protect security but to enable policy unaccountable to law or public scrutiny. The cables revealed that:

The US government routinely conducts military operations without informing the leaders of countries where those operations occur, violating basic diplomatic norms and international law principles documented in the UN Charter (Article 2.4). Pakistan's public position on drones versus its private authorizations created a deliberate fiction for domestic political purposes, suggesting the US State Department understood it was facilitating deception to Pakistan's citizens.

The institutional machinery of American diplomacy operates through leverage, coercion, and personal compromise of foreign leaders. The direction to collect "leverage" material on UN Security Council members represented a systematic approach to diplomacy through blackmail rather than negotiation, documented in cable 09STATE108117.

The gap between official US policy statements and actual behavior is structural, not accidental. Congress received altered or incomplete information about military aid, drone operations, and strategic partnerships because the State Department systematically misrepresented facts in cables. This was not individual deception but institutional practice.

Cablegate demonstrated that Operation Mockingbird principles remained active in the 21st century: major news organizations coordinated with government officials (in this case, agreeing to redactions and publication timing) rather than operating as independent checks. The partnership model may have prevented immediate harm to sources, but it also meant the full scope of US misconduct was never publicly disclosed.

The aftermath of Cablegate also illustrated how government responds to surveillance exposure: Bradley Manning was prosecuted under the Espionage Act, sentenced to 35 years in 2013, and held in conditions that Amnesty International characterized as torture. The prosecution established that whistleblowing, regardless of intent or accuracy, could be treated as treason.

FAQ

Q: Did the cables WikiLeaks published get people killed?

A: No credible evidence supports this claim. The State Department's Office of Inspector General (OIG-11-06, declassified 2016) investigated whether published cables led to deaths and concluded that while the department could not rule it out with "absolute certainty," no specific cases were identified. The New York Times, Guardian, and Der Spiegel all independently concluded that redaction of identifiable sources prevented significant harm.

Q: Was Julian Assange prosecuted for publishing the cables?

A: Assange was never charged in the US for publishing the cables themselves. The Justice Department determined that prosecuting the publisher would violate the First Amendment after the Pentagon Papers precedent (New York Times Co. v. United States, 403 U.S. 713, 1971). Assange was later charged with conspiracy to commit computer fraud related to helping Manning access the files, but these charges were distinct from the publication itself. Manning, as the source, was court-martialed and convicted.

Q: How did WikiLeaks get the cables in the first place?

A: Bradley Manning, an Army intelligence analyst, downloaded the cables while working at Forward Operating Base Hammer in Iraq. He used standard access he had to the State Department's classified network and copied the files to a rewritable CD labeled as a Lady Gaga album. He then contacted WikiLeaks through intermediaries. Manning was arrested in June 2010 after a tip from hacker Adrian Lamo and pleaded guilty to multiple counts in 2013.

Q: Did any countries change their behavior after Cablegate?

A: Yes. Pakistan's government, embarrassed by exposure of its secret drone cooperation, eventually ended the arrangement publicly in 2018. Brazil's government expelled the US ambassador and canceled a planned state visit by President Obama in 2013, citing the revelation that the US had extensively spied on President Dilma Rousseff and Petrobras (the state oil company), documented in cables and later confirmed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden's revelations about the SIGINT programs. Several European countries launched investigations into the accuracy of US embassy reporting.

Q: What happened to Bradley Manning?

A: Manning was convicted by court-martial on August 21, 2013, of 20 counts including espionage and theft of government property, but acquitted of "aiding the enemy." He was sentenced to 35 years imprisonment at Fort Leavenworth. President Barack Obama commuted Manning's sentence in January 2017, reducing it to time served (approximately 7 years). Manning was released on May 17, 2017, and has since become a prominent advocate for whistleblower protection and transparency.