WASHINGTON - The WikiLeaks organizationsaid on Thursday it was releasing tens of thousands ofpreviously unpublished US diplomatic cables, some of whichare still classified."We will have released over 100,000 US embassy cables fromaround the world by the end of today," said a message onWikiLeaks' Twitter feed. The Twitter page is believed to becontrolled by Julian Assange, WikiLeaks' controversialAustralian-born founder and chief.
The cables which the website said it is dumping onto thepublic record appear to be from a cache of more than 250,000State Department reports leaked to the group. WikiLeaks beganreleasing the cables in smaller batches late last year, butuntil now had made them public in piecemeal fashion.Several news organizations around the world, includingReuters, have had complete sets of the cables for months. Butfor the most part, media outlets have only cited or publishedcables when publishing specific news or investigative storiesbased on them.