One of the allegations made about Wikileaks, a site which publishes leaked governmental (mostly US) secrets, is that it is simply a publicity exercise for the site in general or the founder in particular. I think the way that they've handled the latest release shows fairly clearly that this is not the case.
You see, they've essentially dumped a bunch of US diplomatic cables (up to Secret; no Top Secrets) onto the media and Internet, all at once. If they'd wanted to really take advantage of this from a publicity point of view, they would have done a staged release, like so:
Day 1: Catty personal comments; "Isn't Brian Cowen fat and dim?", "Gaddafi's new hat is ridiculous" etc. No major consequences, but it would sure build interest.
Day 2: Embarassing revelations; deals with drug dealers in Afghanistan, specific questioning of competence of major figures, "Gaddafi's favourite hat is ridiculous", etc. Probably no serious consequences (except for the Gaddafi thing, which might touch off a war) but extremely embarrassing for the US. Should keep interest building.
Day 3: Dangerous revelations; the Berlusconi/Putin thing, organised crime and Russian government, Israeli comments about window of opportunity to bomb Iran closing, etc. Considerable diplomatic fallout, mainstream press attention.
Day 4: Potentially illegal revelations; spying on UN officials, attempts to prevent attest of CIA agents who abducted German citizen, etc. Total chaos, lots of attention for Wikilieaks, maybe hold something back for day 5.
Instead, they've released it all on a Sunday evening, and it will no doubt be overwhelmed by news about who's gotten bumped off of X Factor and how cold it is and so forth tomorrow.
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