On Wikileaks' Twitter feed Thursday (presumed to be manned by Julian Assange): "We will have released over 100,000 US embassy cables from around the world by the end of today." The latest round appear to be from the massive cache of more than 250,000 US State Department diplomatic cables, which Wikileaks began releasing in smaller batches in 2010.
Several news organizations around the world, including Reuters, have had complete sets of the cables for months. But for the most part, media outlets have only cited or published cables when publishing specific news or investigative stories based on them.
By late afternoon Thursday, the WikiLeaks website said it had published 97,115 of the 251,287 cables it possesses. It did not specify its motives for releasing such a large amount of material at once.
A person in contact with Assange's inner circle told Reuters the rationale behind the mass release of documents was dismay among WikiLeaks activists that media organizations had lost interest in publishing stories based on the material.
The source described Assange and his associates as "frustrated" at the lack of media interest.
