The Wikileaks Question

[Ben D]

Ben D, why do you appear to be addressing the Hacktivist as "Et"?

I just thought it an appropriate alternative respectful sounding title of address...

[seemslikeadream]

Witnesses Tell House Judiciary Committee: “Don’t Overreact to Wikileaks”
by Matt Schafer December 17, 2010

Note: This report oriignally appeared at the media website LWR.

On Thursday, the House Committee on the Judiciary met to discuss both Wikileaks and the Espionage Act of 1917. (See full video here.) Representative John Conyers [D-MI] opened the meeting, saying, "Prosecuting WikiLeaks would raise the most fundamental questions about free speech, about who is a journalist and what citizens can know about their government. The problem today is not too little secrecy but too much secrecy."

When all was said and done, the witnesses seemed to agree, in part, that the government is overclassifying information, the Espionage Act of 1917 is likely unconstitutional, the SHIELD Act, proposed recently by Sen. Joe Lieberman [I-CT], rests on a shaky constitutional footing also, and it is important that the legislature not overreact to the WikiLeaks cables.

"The government always overreacts to leaks, and history shows we end up with more damage from the overreaction than from the original leak," Tom Blanton of the National Security Archive said.

Blanton was also joined by six other witnesses: Ralph Nader, legal advocate and author; Stephen Vladeck, Professor of Law at American University; Gabriel Schoenfeld, Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute; Geoffrey Stone, Professor of Law at University of Chicago; Kenneth Wainstein, Partner at O'Melveny & Myers LLP; and Abbe Lowell Partner at McDermott Will & Emery LLP.

Almost all witness cited flaws within the Espionage Act, while the consensus on whether WikiLeaks is protected by the First Amendment did not enjoy a similar consensus. With all witnesses having testified, four argued that Wikileaks is protected by the Constitution, two argued that it should be prosecuted, and witness Stephen Vladeck abstained from making a determination on WikiLeaks.

"If WikiLeaks can be prosecuted for espionage for these leaks, there is no legal or logical reason why a similar prosecution could not lie against all of the mainstream news organizations that routinely receive and publish protected “national defense information," Kenneth Wainstein said.

Wainstein's comment echoed the sentiment from several witness regarding how one should define WikiLeaks. Indeed, is WikiLeaks a news organization? Are those people who work with WikiLeaks journalists? Moreover, should those organizations and people be punished for releasing information that should have never been classified in the first place.

"The government’s national security classification system is broken, overwhelmed with too much secrecy, which actually prevents the system from protecting the real secrets," Blanton said.

Abbe Lowell agreed, saying, "When asked to assess the rate of overclassification, [some have] stated that probably about half of all classified information is overclassified. Some agencies even classify newspaper articles and other public domain materials."

Nader, however, gave the most impassioned speech regarding both Wikileaks and overclassification. During his initial testimony, Nader, citing governmental abuses of classification, continued speaking until he was cut-off by members of the House Judiciary committee.

"Secrecy is the cancer—the destroyer—of democracy," Nader said. "If you take all of the present [WikiLeaks] disclosures, the vast majority should never have been classified, the vast majority are reprehensible use of people employing tax payer dollars, the vast majority should have been disclosed… for the benefit of the American people to hold their government accountable.”

[JackRiddler]

Witnesses Tell House Judiciary Committee: “Don’t Overreact to Wikileaks”
by Matt Schafer December 17, 2010

Take a good look, because that's likely to be the last island of sanity you see in the Congress for a long time, on this or any other issue.

.

[justdrew]

Witnesses Tell House Judiciary Committee: “Don’t Overreact to Wikileaks”
by Matt Schafer December 17, 2010

Take a good look, because that's likely to be the last island of sanity you see in the Congress for a long time, on this or any other issue.

.

yep.

I'd kinda like to see the democrats just walk out and prevent them from having a quorum until they agree to meet their demands, over and over again. won't happen of course and IIRC the sergeant at arms can haul reps in if so directed, but they could hide.

It's going to be war, or should be, but probably they'll just "close their eyes and think of England."

[Plutonia]

Minor point here: I had always understood this gesture to mean "You and I share a secret with each other", or, more generally, "I've got a secret".

saw that while following the first bail hearing live blog on the grauniad, dec. 14:

11.43am: Here's a fantastic new picture of Assange tapping his nose from inside that prison van.

The Daily Mail is appalled (again):

Assange even pokes fun at the establishment from his prison van as he prepares for court.

With a telling tap of the finger, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange gives the impression that he knows what's going on even when being transported in a prison van.

The 39-year-old Australian was photographed in the back of the vehicle while being ferried to City of Westminster magistrates court from his Wandsworth prison cell. [from the DMail: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... ision.html]

He might just be scratching his eye.

concurred with that reading then, do so now.

I wasn't really trying to suggesting a definitive interpretation of of his signal just that it really looks like he was.

So I can imagine three scenarios:

1) He was scratching his nose.

2) He had prearranged with one of the friendly journos from the Frontline Club for his signals to be photographed and uploaded to Wikileaks. What I would have done in his p[lace, would have been to pre-established with my cohorts precise meanings and even instructions per each gesture.

3) He may have taken the opportunity to "play" his spooky audience by only appearing to signal. I've seen folk who suspected their phones were tapped, play with their over-listeners that way.

I'm favouring #2 ATM.


But what about this bit from that post:

But get this- former US intelligence officer Michael Tanji says that "he" (Manning) "certainly had access" to Top Secret information through SIPRnet though "whether he shared/leaked that has yet to be discovered." Wha?!!! That's news! I haven't seen anyone speculate in this direction anywhere.

Tech Podcast: SIPRnet and the WikiLeaks cables

.. you’ll hear computer security expert Mikko Hypponen and former US intelligence officer Michael Tanji detail ... SIPRnet, and the challenges in securing it.

Anybody listen to that interview yet? Any thoughts?

[DrVolin]

"Mansion Arrest". Just like Paul of Tarsus.

[seemslikeadream]

¡Viva WikiLeaks! SiCKO Was Not Banned in Cuba
by Michael Moore
Yesterday WikiLeaks did an amazing thing and released a classified State Department cable that dealt, in part, with me and my film, 'Sicko.'

It is a stunning look at the Orwellian nature of how bureaucrats for the State spin their lies and try to recreate reality (I assume to placate their bosses and tell them what they want to hear).

The date is January 31, 2008. It is just days after 'Sicko' has been nominated for an Oscar as Best Documentary. This must have sent someone reeling in Bush's State Department (his Treasury Department had already notified me they were investigating what laws I might have broken in taking three 9/11 first responders to Cuba to get them the health care they had been denied in the United States).

Former health insurance executive Wendell Potter recently revealed that the insurance industry -- which had decided to spend millions to go after me and, if necessary, "push Michael Moore off a cliff" -- had begun working with anti-Castro Cubans in Miami in order to have them speak out and smear my film.

So, on January 31, 2008, a State Department official stationed in Havana took a made up story and sent it back to his HQ in Washington. Here's what they came up with:

XXXXXXXXXXXX stated that Cuban authorities have banned Michael Moore's documentary, "Sicko," as being subversive. Although the film's intent is to discredit the U.S. healthcare system by highlighting the excellence of the Cuban system, he said the regime knows the film is a myth and does not want to risk a popular backlash by showing to Cubans facilities that are clearly not available to the vast majority of them.

Sounds convincing, eh?! There's only one problem -- the entire nation of Cuba was shown the film on national television on April 25, 2008! The Cubans embraced the film so much so it became one of those rare American movies that received a theatrical distribution in Cuba. I personally ensured that a 35mm print got to the Film Institute in Havana. Screenings of Sicko were set up in towns all across the country.

But the secret cable said Cubans were banned from seeing my movie. Hmmm.

We also know from another secret U.S. document that "the disenchantment of the masses [in Cuba] has spread through all the provinces," and that "all of Oriente Province is seething with hate" for the Castro regime. There's a huge active underground rebellion, and "workers there readily give all the support they can," with everyone involved in "subtle sabotage" against the government. Morale is terrible throughout all the branches of the armed forces, and in the event of war the army "will not fight." Wow -- this cable is hot!

Of course, this secret U.S. cable is from March 31, 1961, three weeks before Cuba kicked our asses at the Bay of Pigs.

The U.S. government has been passing around these "secret" documents to itself for the past fifty years, explaining in painstaking detail how horrible things are in Cuba and how Cubans are quietly aching for us to come back and take over. I don't know why we write these cables, I guess it just makes us feel better about ourselves. (Anyone curious can find an entire museum of U.S. wish fulfillment cables on the website of the National Security Archive.)

So what do you do with about a false "secret" cable, especially one that involves you and your movie? Well, you wait for a responsible newspaper to investigate and shout what it discovers from the rooftops.

But yesterday WikiLeaks gave the 'Sicko' Cuba cable to the media -- and what did they do with it? They ran the it as if it were true! Here's the headline in the Guardian:

WikiLeaks: Cuba banned Sicko for depicting 'mythical' healthcare system

Authorities feared footage of gleaming hospital in Michael Moore's Oscar-nominated film would provoke a popular backlash

And not one scintilla of digging to see if Cuba had actually banned the movie! In fact, just the opposite. The right wing press started to have a field day reporting a lie (Andy Levy of Fox -- twice -- Reason Magazine and Hot Air, plus a slew of blogs). Sadly, even BoingBoing and my friends at the Nation wrote about it without skepticism. So here you have WikiLeaks, who have put themselves on the line to find and release these cables to the press -- and traditional journalists are once again just too lazy to lift a finger, point and click their mouse to log into Nexis or search via Google, and look to see if Cuba really did "ban the film." Had just ONE reporter done that, here's they would have found:

June 16, 2007 Saturday 1:41 AM GMT [that's 7 months before the false cable]

HEADLINE: Cuban health minister says Moore's 'Sicko' shows 'human values' of communist system

BYLINE: By ANDREA RODRIGUEZ, Associated Press Writer

DATELINE: HAVANA

Cuba's health minister Jose Ramon Balaguer said Friday that American filmmaker Michael Moore's documentary 'Sicko' highlights the human values of the island's communist-run government... "There can be no doubt this documentary by a personality like Mr. Michael Moore helps promote the profoundly human principles of Cuban society."

Or, how 'bout this little April 25, 2008 notice from CubaSi.Cu (translation by Google):

Sicko premiere in Cuba
25/04/2008

The documentary Sicko, the U.S. filmmaker Michael Moore, which deals about the deplorable state of American health care system will be released today at 5:50 pm, for the space Cubavision Roundtable and the Education Channel.

Then there's this from Juventudrebelde.cu (translation by Google). Or this Cuban editorial (translation by Google). There's even a long clip of the Cuba section of 'Sicko' on the homepage of Media Roundtable on the CubaSi.cu website!

OK, so we know the media is lazy and sucks most of the time. But the bigger issue here is how our government seemed to be colluding with the health insurance industry to destroy a film that might have a hand in bringing about what the Cubans already have in their poverty-ridden third world country: free, universal health care. And because they have it and we don't, Cuba has a better infant mortality rate than we do, their life expectancy is just 7 months shorter than ours, and, according to the WHO, they rank just two places behind the richest country on earth in terms of the quality of their health care.

That's the story, mainstream media and right-wing haters.

Now that you've been presented with the facts, what are you going to do about it? Are you gonna attack me for having my movie played on Cuban state television? Or are you gonna attack me for not having my movie played on Cuban state television?

You have to choose one, it can't be both.

And since the facts show that the movie played on state TV and in theaters, I think you're better off attacking me for having my films played in Cuba.

¡Viva WikiLeaks!

[JackRiddler]

.

seemslikeadream posted:

WikiLeaks: The Emperor Wears No Clothes
Now WikiLeaks has laid bare the lies and collusion, we pledge to not just witness but actively participate in its fight for democracy

by John Pilger and Others
We are writing this statement in support of democracy.

Since Sunday, 28 November, WikiLeaks and five major newspapers from around the world (the Guardian, the New York Times, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, El Pais) have been publishing redacted versions of leaked US diplomatic cables in an ongoing story that has become known as "Cablegate". The identity of the original leaker is – as yet – unconfirmed.

This is not the first leak of confidential documentation that exposes governmental lies – and it won't be the last. Secret information has long been used by elites to build and maintain power over huge populations of citizens, workers, armed forces and others. But when the secrets of the elite are revealed, the power they represent can be confronted and reversed.

Nor is this the first time that state (and other) forces of power have acted to prevent dissemination of information on the internet – and it won't be the last.

Sites have been removed by their hosting companies, servers seized by police or other governmental authorities, take-down requests issued under the rule of law: none of these prevented information spreading.

But the issues run deeper than this. As former US president Thomas Jefferson once stated, "information is the currency of democracy". Democracy – the rule of the people – as currently understood and practiced is, and has long been, severely restricted.

Power is abused in our name by governments and transnational corporations around the world: they fight illegal wars; abuse and kill people; pillage property and planet. The powerful accumulate wealth and force the majority – the rest of us – to pay for it: with our health, our freedom, our time, our money and with our lives. For a long time, we have been deceived about the reasons for this: it is our right for the truth to be known. Without that right, democracy cannot and does not exist. The current assault on WikiLeaks is yet another instance of democracy-hating by elites.

Now, we find we are witnessing a new level of info-struggle. We are witnessing how the emperor wears no clothes. We can see the lies made bare, we can see the posturing and propositioning that our governments participate in. We can see the collusion that occurs with transnational corporations and with global media giants. WikiLeaks and others are battling against powerful institutions bent on curtailing our knowledge of and influence over policies and structures that impact our lives: they are information heroes, not information villains. We see all this being done in our name, and we condemn it.

Thus, we pledge to not simply bear witness but to actively participate in this fight – for freedom of speech, for real democracy and for justice. We know this is only the beginning: de-masking the puppeteers facilitates action towards fairer and more just societies. We demand that the truth be heard. We stand at the doorway to a new, just and democratic world: a doorway we pledge to keep open and to march through. We stand with all the inhabitants of this world who are affected daily by governments that oppress the right to free speech and obstruct the path to true democracy.



Signed:

Andrei Morgan

Michael Albert

Jamie McClelland

Daniel Kahn Gillmor

Tachanka! collective

London Indymedia

John Pilger

Donnacha Delong, vice-president, National Union of Journalists

Yvonne Ridley, founder, Women In Journalism

Hessom Razavi

Mike Holderness, freelance journalist

Pennie Quinton, freelance journalist and human rights campaigner

May First/People Link

Phil Edwards

Sheffield Indymedia

Chris Grollman

Chris Anderson

David Graeber, reader in social anthropology, Goldsmiths, University of London

Toile-Libre

Plentyfact collective

Koumbit Worker's Committee

Sasha Costanza-Chock, fellow, Berkman Centre for Internet & Society, Harvard University

[JackRiddler]

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-20026103-281.html

December 18, 2010 8:24 AM PST
Bank of America cuts off WikiLeaks
by Steven Musil

Bank of America has added its name to a list of several financial institutions that have refused to process payments for WikiLeaks as the site reportedly readies a document release that targets the banking giant.

"This decision is based upon our reasonable belief that WikiLeaks may be engaged in activities that are, among other things, inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments," the bank announced late yesterday.

The announcement comes on the heels of similar moves made by MasterCard, Visa, and PayPal earlier this month, which have limited WikiLeaks' ability to raise funds to support its Web site's operation. Those institutions' Web sites subsequently came under cyberattack by a hacker group in retaliation for the moves.

The move comes as WikiLeaks is reportedly readying a document dump that targets Bank of America. Julian Assange, the founder of the embattled document-sharing Web site, told Forbes in November that he readying a release of documents related to the activities of an American bank, but he did not identify the bank. However, during a 2009 interview with Computerworld, Assange said he had 5GB of data from a Bank of America executive's hard drive.

WikiLeaks responded to the announcement by urging its supporters to stop doing business with Bank of America.

"We ask that all people who love freedom close out their accounts at Bank of America," WikiLeaks said on its Twitter page. "Does your business do business with Bank of America? Our advise is to place your funds somewhere safer."

Assange, who was the subject of an arrest warrant related to sex allegations, was released from a London prison on Thursday after posting bail of 200,000 British pounds, or about $316,000. Meanwhile, the U.S. government is reportedly piecing together a case against him for publishing classified Army and State Department files.



Steven Musil is the night news editor at CNET News. Before joining CNET News in 2000, Steven spent 10 years at various Bay Area newspapers. E-mail Steven.

[JackRiddler]

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/espi ... clu-warns/

Espionage Act endangers First Amendment rights, ACLU warns

By Eric W. Dolan
Thursday, December 16th, 2010 -- 11:30 am

Applying the US Espionage Act to third-party publishers of classified information like WikiLeaks would violate protected speech rights, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) told members of the House Judiciary Committee Thursday.

"If the Espionage Act were to be applied to publishers, it would have the unconstitutional effect of infringing on the constitutionally protected speech rights of all Americans, and it would have a particularly negative effect on investigative journalism – a necessary and fundamental part of our democracy," the ACLU said in a statement (.pdf).

"In the current environment, it would be all too easy for inflamed public passions to serve as the basis for arguments to justify broadening even further the proscriptions of the law. Instead, Congress should stand clear-eyed and firm against arguments based on passion, not reason – and narrow the Espionage Act to those who leak properly classified information."

"[W]e urge Congress to resist the urge to broaden the Espionage Act's already overbroad proscriptions and, instead, to narrow the Act’s focus to those responsible for leaking properly classified information to the detriment of our national security," they continued. "Publishers who are not involved in the leaking of classified information should be praised by our society for their contributions to public discourse, not vilified as the co-conspirators of leakers with whom they have no criminal connection."

Government documents are too easy to classify, which has resulted in the classification of thousands of documents that pose no real risk to national security if released, according to the ACLU.



"Documents that are unnecessarily classified under such a system have the effect of grossly expanding the penalties of the Espionage Act to the release and publication of documents having purely innocuous content – but which happen to be designated as secret."

The ACLU urged Congress to amend the Espionage Act by removing all references to "publication" from the legislation and to improve the current classification system.

The committee's Thursday hearing on "the Espionage Act and the Legal and Constitutional Issues Raised by WikiLeaks" included a number of legal scholars and attorneys, including Ralph Nader.

Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution, warned Monday that applying the Espionage Act to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange could make "felons of us all."

Under the Act, anyone "having unauthorized possession of" information relating to the national defense, or information that could be "used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation" may be prosecuted if he or she publishes it or "willfully retains" it.

"By its terms, it criminalizes not merely the disclosure of national defense information by organizations such as Wikileaks, but also the reporting on that information by countless news organizations," Wittes wrote on his blog. "It also criminalizes all casual discussions of such disclosures by persons not authorized to receive them to other persons not authorized to receive them–in other words, all tweets sending around those countless news stories, all blogging on them, and all dinner party conversations about their contents."

The State Department has argued that Assange is not "journalist" or "whistleblower," but a "political actor" with his own agenda.

Yeah, because "journalist" is never a subset of "political actor," which is why those enlightenment characters who wrote about rights of man and constitutions etc. never coined a term like "fourth estate." These are mutually exclusive categories! State Department says, the umpire's job is just to call the plays and let us pitch!

.

[seemslikeadream]

Pack Many Sweaters! The War On Wikileaks Has Moved to Antarctica!

United States Antarctic Program Responds to Wikileaks: You Are Not Allowed to Look at the Classified Information That’s All Over the Internet.

[vanlose kid]

After BofA Escalates, Refuses To Process Wikileaks' Payments, Wiki Retaliates, Advises Americans To Put Their Money "Somewhere Safer"
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 12/18/2010 11:29 -0500



Bank of America just fired the preemptive escalation shot in its duel with Wikileaks. Late on Friday, America's biggest mortgage lender, and the firm that is now getting sued left and right for various mortgage transgressions, announced it is joining MasterCard, Paypal and Visa in ceasing transactions for Wikileaks. While this decision will certainly not improve Operation Anonymous' empathy toward the North Carolina bank, it may just precipitate overt retaliation by Assange, who is now rumored to be in possession of data that could provie harmful to BAC. Which is why this sudden escalation out of left field by the bank strikes as surprisingly odd: BofA's upside is very limited while its downside could be 100% - even if Wikileaks is bluffing, why provoke them. And as expected, Wikileaks has already retaliated: in two sequential tweets it advised its 568,117 (and very rapidly growing) subscribers to pull their money out of Bank of America, and also to close all their accounts with the firm, urging them to put their money "somewhere safer." What is curious is to see whether this sudden escalation, in what has now become synonymous with a quest for preserving the first amendment for a substantial deal of people (and freedom of speech globally), will have a far broader impact than the comparable "Pull Your Money" out of the Big Banks venture that was attempted by Huffington Post over a year ago, with unsatisfactory results. If people suddenly personify Bank of America with a First Amendment threat, arguably the one freedom most cherished in America, which is precisely what Assange is trying to do, all bets for the Countrywide acquirer may soon be off.

Below is Bank of America's statement released on Friday night:

"Bank of America joins in the actions previously announced by MasterCard, PayPal, Visa Europe and others and will not process transactions of any type that we have reason to believe are intended for WikiLeaks," the bank said in a statement.

"This decision is based upon our reasonable belief that WikiLeaks may be engaged in activities that are, among other things, inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments."

Concurrently the bank was declined to comment whether it would be Wikileaks' next target.

This press release by Bank of America provoked the following two tweets out of @wikileas' twitter account:





Obviously it is the conditional "safer" keyword that will get everyone's attention. Especially since it is now known that Wikileaks will release it bank data trove as soon as January.

In retaliation to BofA's provocation, it appears that Assange just fired the preliminary shot in the massive run on Bank of America... and possible soon other US banks?

http://www.zerohedge.com/article/after- ... ricans-put

*

[seemslikeadream]

^^^^

boom boom boom


When you talk like that,
you knocks me out,
right off of my feet

[JackRiddler]

http://www.hindustantimes.com/WikiLeaks ... 39820.aspx

WikiLeaks 'unfortunate' for international diplomacy, says Ban Ki-moon
Indo-Asian News Service, New York, December 18, 2010


UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said on Friday the publication of leaked US diplomatic exchanges by whistle-blower website WikiLeaks is hurting diplomacy. "It is unfortunate that these confidential documents have been leaked," Ban said at a news conference in New York. "The motivation on the part of the leakers will make it more difficult for the normal and reasonable conduct of the diplomatic business."

He called for a balance between the freedom of expression and the right to know with the preservation of confidentiality in diplomatic work.

Ban pointed out that legislation in some countries requires a 30-year hiatus before a secret document can be made public.

Among the cables WikiLeaks has been gradually publishing since Nov 28, is a dispatch from the State Department suggesting diplomats at the UN engage in espionage.

Ban said he had explained to US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton when WikiLeaks began making public some 250,000 leaked US diplomatic cables that his job as UN secretary general "is open and transparent."

"The conduct of diplomatic business has been transparent on the basis of mutual trust and confidentiality, and that I will continue the work the same way," Ban said.

[chump]

WikiLeaks cables: Mervyn King plotted banks bailout by four cash-rich nationsBank of England

The Bank of England governor, Mervyn King, was so concerned about the health of the world's banks in March 2008 that he plotted a secret bailout of the system using funds from cash-rich nations, according to a US embassy cable released by WikiLeaks.

Six months before the world financial crisis reached its peak, forcing taxpayers to rescue collapsing financial institutions, King told US officials in London that the UK, US, Switzerland and Japan could jointly enable a multibillion-pound cash injection into global banks, overriding the "dysfunctional" G7 nations.

The leak may allow King to claim that he – rather than Gordon Brown – was one of the brains behind the bailout of the banks, which took place in October 2008.

According to the cable, King told Robert Tuttle, the US ambassador to Britain, and the treasury deputy secretary Robert Kimitt, who was visiting London, that there needed to be a "coordinated effort to possibly recapitalise the global banking system" as well as a way to rid the banks of the toxic loans on their balance sheets.

The ambassador said in the cable, dated March 2008, that King's proposals "were not casual ideas developed in the course of a luncheon conversation. It was clear that his principal objective in the meeting was to outline his outside-the-box thinking for Kimmitt. King suggested that the US, UK, Switzerland and perhaps Japan might form a temporary new group to jointly develop an effort to bring together sources of capital to recapitalise all major banks."

The grouping of the four nations would have been in addition to the 35-year-old G7, which comprises the finance directors of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the UK and the US. King appeared concerned that the G7 did not include cash-rich China, Singapore and countries in the Middle East that might have been tapped for a global bank bailout.

King said the G7 was "almost dysfunctional on an economic level" as key economies were not included. "It could be a temporary group and he suggested that perhaps the central banks and finance ministers of the US, the UK and Switzerland could coordinate discussions with other countries that have large pools of capital, including sovereign wealth funds, about recycling dollars to recapitalise banks," the cable went on. "King said Japan might not be included because it has little to offer. King noted though that including the Japanese might force their hand in finally marking to market impaired assets."

King had spelt out to the US officials that he was certain the UK's banks would need fresh cash. "He [King] said is it hard to look at the big four UK banks (Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays, HSBC and Lloyds TSB) and not think they need more capital. A coordinated effort among central banks and finance ministers may be needed to develop a plan to recapitalise the banking system."

It seems likely that the banks identified in the cable were provided as examples for Washington rather than named by the governor.

Shortly after the meeting between King and the US officials, leading UK banks began trying to shore up their balance sheets by launching cash calls on their shareholders. RBS stunned the markets in April 2008 by preparing the ground for a £12bn rights issue. HBOS, later rescued by Lloyds, tried – and failed – to raise £4bn from its shareholders, while Bradford & Bingley, later part-nationalised, also tried to raise fresh funds.

By October, RBS, Lloyds and HBOS had all been bailed out by the taxpayer, while Barclays raised funds from Middle Eastern investors and managed to avoid taking a direct injection of funds from taxpayers. HSBC launched a £12.5bn cash call in March 2009 and also avoided any government bailout.

King appeared before the Treasury select committee later in March 2008 and warned MPs that the financial crisis had "moved into a new different phase".

At the 28 March committee session, the governor raised his concerns about the need for fresh capital. He told the committee that the right response to the crisis was to "think very, very deeply about the causes of this crisis and whether levels of bank capital and the sort of financial system that generated this crisis does not require some action".

"I would not be opposed to a process in which the banks would find more capital, I think most central banks would regard that as a very desirable development," King told the MPs.

WikiLeaks cables: Sudanese president 'stashed $9bn in UK banks'

Omar al-Bashir, the Sudanese president, has siphoned as much as $9bn out of his impoverished country, and much of it may be stashed in London banks, according to secret US diplomatic cables that recount conversations with the chief prosecutor of the international criminal court.

Some of the funds may be held by the part-nationalised Lloyds Banking Group, according to prosecutor, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, who told US officials it was time to go public with the scale of Bashir's theft in order to turn Sudanese public opinion against him.

"Ocampo suggested if Bashir's stash of money were disclosed (he put the figure at $9bn), it would change Sudanese public opinion from him being a 'crusader' to that of a thief," one report by a senior US official states. "Ocampo reported Lloyds bank in London may be holding or knowledgeable of the whereabouts of his money," the cable says. "Ocampo suggested exposing Bashir had illegal accounts would be enough to turn the Sudanese against him."

Lloyds responded by saying it had no evidence of holding funds in Bashir's name. "We have absolutely no evidence to suggest there is any connection between Lloyds Banking Group and Mr Bashir. The group's policy is to abide by the legal and regulatory obligations in all jurisdictions in which we operate."

Details of the allegations emerge in the latest batch of leaked embassy cables released by WikiLeaks which reveal that:

• US officials regard European human rights standards as an "irritant", criticising the Council of Europe for its stance on secret rendition of terror suspects.

• Diplomats believe judges in the war crimes trial of the Liberian ex-president Charles Taylor have been deliberately causing delays to ensure the only African judge is presiding when the verdict is delivered.

The cables were released as the WikiLeaks editor-in-chief, Julian Assange, accused the US of mounting an aggressive, illegal investigation against him. "I would say that there is a very aggressive investigation, that a lot of face has been lost by some people, and some people have careers to make by pursuing famous cases, but that is actually something that needs monitoring," he told reporters outside the mansion on the Norfolk/Suffolk border where he is staying while on bail...

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