WASHINGTON — U.S. diplomats and officials said they’re bracing for WikiLeaks to publish hundreds of thousands of classified State Department cables today that could drastically alter U.S. relations with top allies.
Intelligence officials pleaded with WikiLeaks and newspapers such as The New York Times, the Guardian in London and Der Spiegel, a German newsweekly, to not publish information that could endanger lives and U.S. policy.
Der Spiegel briefly published a story on its website Saturday saying that the documents include 251,287 cables and 8,000 diplomatic directives, most of which date after 2004. About 9,000 documents are from the first two months of this year, the newspaper said.
The newspaper said it would release all the documents at 2:30 p.m. today.
