WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said Wednesday that it has alerted Congress and begun notifying foreign governments that the WikiLeaks website is preparing to release sensitive U.S. diplomatic files that could damage U.S. relations with friends and allies across the globe.
“These revelations are harmful to the United States and our interests,” State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said. “They are going to create tension in relationships between our diplomats and our friends around the world.”
Crowley said the release of confidential communications about foreign governments will likely erode trust in the U.S. as a diplomatic partner and could cause embarrassment if the files include derogatory or critical comments about friendly foreign leaders.
“When this confidence is betrayed and ends up on the front pages of newspapers or lead stories on television or radio, it has an impact,” Crowley said.
A focus of the documents is Europe, but the cables likely will touch relations with key nations in Asia and elsewhere, another official said, speaking anonymously in order to discuss internal deliberations.
The release is expected this weekend.
One concern, for example, is that the documents may reveal the kinds of pressure the Obama administration has put on various countries to accept the transfer of Guantanamo Bay detainees who have been cleared for release but are unwelcome in their home countries.
State Department officials said privately that there was concern, too, that details about certain sensitive programs could be exposed. These might include details about surveillance at U.S. diplomatic compounds abroad or revelations about highly secret intelligence sources or practices.
In two previous releases of leaked secret U.S. government documents, in July and October, WikiLeaks provided them in advance to the New York Times, the Guardian newspaper in London and the German magazine Der Spiegel on condition that they publish their stories simultaneously.
The first leak contained thousands of military field reports on the war in Afghanistan; the second was a similar but larger file on the Iraq war.
No one has been charged with providing the documents to WikiLeaks, but a person of interest in the Pentagon’s investigation is Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, who was an intelligence analyst in Iraq when he was arrested in early June.
