The unredacted cables were already available online before 1 September 2011, because two Guardian journalists published the password to the encrypted archive.

The unredacted cables were already available online before 1 September 2011, because two Guardian journalists published the password to the encrypted archive. The Guardian continues to deny its responsibility for making the unredacted cables available. It says that people at the Guardian believed the password to the file was "temporary" (how does a password to an encrypted archive stop working after a given time?), and that WikiLeaks should have deleted the file from the internet (it was already mirrored on different sites beyond WikiLeaks' control). I'm willing to believe that people at the Guardian were just technically incompetent and didn't know that publishing the password to the archive would make it available to everyone. But denying responsibility after the fact is just malicious. > Leigh has always said this is nonsense. The password is in the book, for everyone to see. Why do people lie about things that are so easily verifiable?