Leak on Wikileaks release says documents classified secret, not 'top secret'

Wikileaks is all set to release the promised documents which are classified as Secret, if not 'Top Secret', said an early leak by German newspaper Der Spiegel, that was withdrawn later.

Going by hints, Wikileaks documents will be released around 22:00 GMT on Sunday, Nov. 28, 2010.

The posting says the documents include:

* 251,287 cables and 8,000 diplomatic directives
* Except one cable from 1966, most are newer than 2004
* 9,005 documents are from the first two months of 2010

Apart from Der Spiegel, The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde and El País have had access to the files in advance.

According to Der Spiegel, just over half of the cables are not subject to classification, 40.5 percent are classified as confidential and only 6 percent or 15,652 dispatches as secret. It says the release contains 4,330 messages which are not meant for foreigners.

The SPIEGEL and SPIEGEL ONLINE have decided not to make the mass of documents accessible, but to quote only from individual dispatches or documented single cable, in which the names of informants have been deleted - unless the name of the informer has political relevance, says a Google translated version of the posting.

It said the documents contained assessments of the political situation in the country, meeting protocols, background information about personal decisions and events - or personality profiles of individual politicians in host countries. Many assessments were written by diplomats in the hope that they do not get published in next 25 years, says Spiegel's posting adding the fact most of them were gossip and hearsay reports to the headquarters without much depth in their veracity.

About 2.5 million U.S. employees have access to SIPRNET material, from where these cables apparently reached Wikileaks. It is accessible from specific computers that are located in the operation centers of the defense department, said the posting revealing that registration procedures and the need for password change approximately every 150 days. Even top secret material, which is not in Wikileaks release or not reportedly in possession of the whistleblower, is available to about 850,000 Americans, it said.