Cables released online by Wikileaks on Sunday were called a “terrorist blueprint” by many, including several prominent news outlets, which have begun to turn on Wikileaks despite continuing to run stories every few minutes about the leaked US Embassy Cables.

In recent releases, ambassadors suggest that resources in Sweden and Qatar should be added to the Critical Infrastructure and Key Resources (CIKR) list.

They include a Swedish company that owns and manages nearly 27,000 miles of fiber optic cable around Europe, linking Russia and the Baltics to the rest of Europe and the US.

“If these lines of communications were to be destroyed, disrupted, or exploited, it may compromise global communications,” reads a classified cable to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s office from the US Embassy in Stockholm.

The embassy also recommended keeping Swedish pharmaceutical manufacturing company Recip AB on the CIKR list for its production of ThyroSafe (potassium iodide).

“This resource provides protection in the aftermath of a nuclear emergency,” the cable reads. “ThyroSafe is the only FDA approved 65 mg potassium iodide tablet used to protect the thyroid gland against radioactive iodine released during a nuclear emergency.”

The embassy in Doha, the capital of Qatar, underscores the importance of Qatar’s energy industry, particularly its ongoing exports of liquefied natural gas to the US, “which if destroyed, disrupted or exploited might have an immediate and deleterious effect on the United States.”

The cable also identifies three main “industrial facilities of interest that if destroyed, or if their production is disrupted, could have an immediate effect on U.S. national economic security.”

The cables appear to have been written in response to another leaked cable, one from Clinton’s office, which asks embassies around the world to identify CIKR resources and report back.

About The Author

John Guilfoil is the editor-in-chief of Blast: Boston's Online Magazine and the Blast Magazine Network. He can be reached at [email protected]. Tweet @johnguilfoil.

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