The White House has set up a special anti-WikiLeaks panel after the embarrassing flood of State Department cables leaked by the website, and its proposals include teams of inspectors who would prowl government agencies looking for ways to tighten security.
A four-page draft memo circulated by the White House says President Barack Obama's national security staff has created an "Interagency Policy Committee for WikiLeaks." The panel is charged with assessing the damage caused by the WikiLeaks dump of State Department cables, co-ordinating various agencies' response to the leaks, and coming up with measures to improve security for classified documents.
The State Department cables, which follow similar document leaks by WikiLeaks on the Iraq and Afghan wars and have been published since Sunday, have cast a candid and sometimes embarrassing eye on the inner workings of US diplomacy. Bradley Manning, an Army private who worked as an intelligence analyst in Iraq, has been charged by militaryauthorities with unauthorised downloading of more than 150,000 State Department cables.