Internal struggles
The uncensored documents were exposed in the backdrop of internal disputes between WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and some of his colleagues who had left the site. Daniel Domscheit-Berg, Assange's former deputy and spokesman, was the only person to have access to the original cables which were kept on an external server and locked with a password.
At the end of 2010, Domscheit-Berg returned documents he had taken with him back to WikiLeaks, including the original copy of the unedited cables. A group of Assange's supporters uploaded the information, which was encrypted, to the internet without noticing the documents had not been edited and include the names of the US administration sources.
Several months ago, an associate of Assange revealed the code which allows access to the original documents. He never imagined that the password would enable access to documents which were already online, as he thought they were saved on an external server. The accident went undetected for weeks before WikiLeaks' competitors exposed it.
Domscheit-Berg's news site OpenLeaks exposed the blunder to prove that Assange's site was unprotected.