New WikiLeaks Docs Show 'Vast Range & Scope' of US Global Influence

Assange has created "the world's largest searchable collection of U.S. confidential, or formerly confidential, diplomatic communications."

Whistleblowing website WikiLeaks has published over 1.7 million U.S. diplomatic and intelligence documents that founder Julian Assange described to Britain's Press Association as showing the "vast range and scope" of U.S. global influence.

Called PlusD, the Public Library of US Diplomacy, the collection of documents are from 1973 to 1976, and are not leaked documents, agencies report, as they are available at the national archives. But WikiLeaks has created what it describes as "the world's largest searchable collection of U.S. confidential, or formerly confidential, diplomatic communications."

Assange said today, "It's like a source you can interview again and again on nearly any case," or "You can search say, all cables sent by the CIA. You can search by concept, particular regions, organizations, etc."

BBC reports that

Much of the correspondence is either written by or sent to Henry Kissinger, who was US Secretary of State and National Security Adviser during that period. [...]

Another cable, dated February 1975, from London sets out "some first impressions" of new leader of the Conservative Party, Margaret Thatcher, who died on Monday. [...]

She is "crisp and a trifle patronizing" with the media, but "honest and straight-forward" with her colleagues, "if not excessively considerate of their vanities", the diplomat wrote.

"The personification of a British middle class dream come true," she is the "genuine voice of a beleaguered bourgeoise [sic], anxious about its eroding economic power and determined to arrest society's seemingly inexorable trend towards collectivism", the cable said.

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