Cables Obtained By WikiLeaks Shine Light Into Secret Diplomatic Channels (NYT)

A cache of a quarter-million confidential American diplomatic cables, made available to The New York Times and several other news organizations, contains some that were written as recently as late February, revealing the Obama administration’s exchanges over crises and conflicts. The material was originally obtained by WikiLeaks, which posted 220 cables, some redacted to protect diplomatic sources, in the first installment of the archive on its site on Sunday. Yahoo! / The Cutline: NYT editors said that although its reporters had been digging through WikiLeaks’ trove of State Department cables for “several weeks,” the online whistleblower wasn’t the source of the documents. Apparently, The Guardian — one of the five newspapers that had an advanced look at the cables — supplied a copy to The Times. David Leigh, The Guardian’s investigations executive editor, explained that British law “might have stopped us through injunctions [gag orders] if we were on our own.”