The WikiWeek: January 21, 2011

THE CABLES

AMERICAS

U.S. officials worried about the return to Haiti of Jean-Claude “Baby-Doc” Duvalier back in 2006. (Duvalier returned to the country this week.)

Guatemalan President Álvaro Colom doesn’t think Rigoberta Menchú exists.

EUROPE/CAUCASUS

BP’s top Russia executive has his doubts about the survival of the company’s partnership with Russian oil firm Rosneft.

MIDDLE EAST

Turkey allowed the United States to use one of its airbases for rendition flights.

Condoleezza Rice wanted U.S. diplomats in the Middle East to gather intelligence on Israeli communications technology and Palestinian leaders.

American diplomats were ambivalent about deposed Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, and alarmed by the growing opposition to him.

U.S. diplomats in Turkey fretted about a military backlash after the arrest of several officers in an alleged coup plot last year.

THE NEWS

Julian Assange is planning to release details on 2,000 offshore bank accounts, which he says contain evidence of serious tax evasion and money laundering. Swiss authorities are now mulling filing related charges against his source, former Swiss Banker Rudolf Elmer, who was already found guilty on Wednesday of breaking other banking secrecy laws.

Alleged Assange source Pfc. Bradley Manning is placed on suicide watch; his lawyer says he’s being mistreated at the Marine Corps jail.

The State Department has made a big deal about the havoc caused by WikiLeaks, but privately officials tell congressional staffers the leaks were “embarrassing but not damaging.”

Assange still has a lot of supporters in his home country of Australia.

Assange is slated to get the Hollywood treatment. (The FP newsroom votes for this guy.)

The Pentagon wants U.S. military personnel to get rid of any WikiLeaks files they might have on their computers.

Russian WikiLeaks knockoff RuLeaks posts pictures of Vladimir Putin’s Black Sea estate.

French lawyers are using WikiLeaks cables to argue for the acquittal of five Guantánamo detainees.

Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt says that Assange’s extradition is a judicial matter, and that his government won’t be involved in the decision.

An investigative firm alleges WikiLeaks skims documents off of file-sharing networks.

Zimbabwe’s attorney general is considering pursuing treason charges against more government officials based on WikiLeaks cables.

WikiLeaks volunteer Jacob Applebaum is detained at an airport again.

A German CEO is out of a job after calling Europe’s multi-billion-dollar Galileo satellite system (on which his company was working) a “stupid idea” in a WikiLeaked cable. (If you’re keeping track, this is officially the first time WikiLeaks has caused trouble in space.)

Libya’s Muammar al-Qaddafi is not a WikiLeaks fan, and blames the site for the fall of Tunisian strongman Ben Ali. (The State Department disagrees.)

THE BIG PICTURE

WikiLeaks was supposed to have extensive safeguards for its whistleblowers — so why are so many of them ending up in jail?

What the WikiLeaks cables tell us about Iran’s nuclear ambitions.

The Tunisian uprising wasn’t a WikiLeaks revolution, but it does help us understand how technology can and can’t help spread democracy.

At last, someone thought to ask Miss America what she thinks about WikiLeaks.