Publication of an unedited version of the American diplomatic cables by Wikileaks is the result of negligence of the British newspaper The Guardian said Tuesday the site founder, Julian Assange.
“The Guardian turned out to be negligent”, said Assange in a videoconference organized at the electronics salon of IFA that was taking place today in Berlin.
“We discovered two months ago that the Guardian published a password” which provides access to a server where the telegrams were stored in full, explained Assange, under house arrest in Britain after accusations of rape and sexual assault in Sweden.
The “trust” of Wikileaks in the British newspaper and the “contract” between the two entities were “breached”, he said.
The Guardian is part of the five publications that Wikileaks has worked with in the disclosure of diplomatic cables, the other ones being the New York Times, Der Spiegel (Germany), Le Monde (France) and El Pais (Spain).
The British newspaper, which condemned the publication of the unedited cables in a joint statement with other partner publications, has explained that the password, which was included in a book about Wikileaks published in February by one of its journalists, should have been valid for only a few hours.
Assange said that the publication of these messages, could cause “some damage”, but not “significant damage”.
U.S. State Department did not seem “particularly concerned” when Wikileaks informed it of its intention to publish the 251,287 American diplomatic cables, he said.