MERVYN KING FACES CALLS TO RESIGN OVER HIS WIKILEAKS ATTACK ON CAMERON AND OSBORNE

By Jason Groves 3rd December 2010

• King said Cameron and Osborne had 'not fully grasped' economic problems
• Senior politician said Tories were 'caught flat-footed ' by the financial crisis
• Lib Dems planned attacked on Cameron dropped when his son Ivan died
• Senior Lib Dem MP said Tory leader and Nick Clegg 'did not get on'
  

Bank of England Governor Mervyn King faced calls to resign today after his personal attacks on the Prime Minister and Chancellor were leaked.

Mr King raised ‘great concerns’ about David Cameron’s lack of experience and political priorities in the run up to the General Election, according to cables released by whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks.

The diplomatic cables reveal that Mr King told the US Ambassador Louis Susman earlier this year that Mr Cameron and the Chancellor George Osborne had ‘not fully grasped’ the problems they would face in tackling Britain’s economic crisis.

In a scathing verdict on the two men’s priorities Mr King said they ‘had a tendency to think about issues only in terms of politics, and how they might affect Tory electability’.

Bad feeling: The Governor of the Bank of England Mervyn King, left, said he was concerned by George Osborne's ability to govern in leaked comments

Professor David Blanchflower, a former member of the Bank’s monetary policy committee, accused Mr King of compromising the bank’s independence.

'He is expected to be politically neutral but he has shown himself to be politically biased and as a result is now in an untenable position. King must go,' he said.

In a further embarrassing revelation it emerged that the Conservative Party’s deputy chairman Michael Fallon heaped scorn on Mr Osborne’s economic credentials.

In 2008 Mr Fallon, a senior member of the Commons Treasury committee, told American officials that the Tories had been ‘caught flat-footed’ by the financial crisis and had ‘felt the absence of a strong shadow chancellor’.

WIKILEAK BOSS MOST-WANTED

Interpol has placed the Australian-born founder of WikiLeaks on its most-wanted list after Sweden issued an arrest warrant against him as part of a drawn-out rape investigation.

The Lyon, France-based international police have issued a 'red notice' for Julian Assange - the equivalent of putting him on its most wanted list.

Interpol's actions were expected after a Swedish court in mid-November approved a motion to have Assange, 39, brought in for questioning.

The notice, posted on Interpol's site Tuesday, is likely to make international travel more difficult for him.

Assange, whose whereabouts are unknown, is suspected of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion.

He has denied the allegations, which stem from his encounters with two women during a visit to Sweden in August.

Mr Fallon told officials that an opinion piece on the crisis written by Mr Osborne in October 2008 had been ‘almost laughable’.

The criticisms from Mr King are potentially damaging for the coalition which has traded heavily on his public support for the Government’s economic plans.

The leaked cables reveal that Mr King harboured serious doubts about the ‘lack of depth’ in the Conservative leadership in the months running up to the election. He said both men were reluctant to consult beyond a small coterie of trusted advisers.

In private conversations with Mr Susman he said he had repeatedly pressed Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne in private for details of how they would cut the deficit but had ‘received only generalities in return’.

In a classified dispatch to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in February this year, Mr Susman wrote: ‘King expressed great concern about Conservative leaders' lack of experience.

'He opined that party leader David Cameron and shadow chancellor George Osborne have not fully grasped the pressures they will face from different groups when attempting to cut spending.

‘In recent meetings with (Cameron and Osborne), he has pressed for details about how they plan to tackle the debt but received only generalities in return.

'Both Cameron and Osborne have a tendency to think about issues only in terms of politics and how they might affect Tory electability.’

Politics: Mervyn King said David Cameron and Osborne only thought of things in terms of Tory electability

The revelations will be seized on by Labour which has repeatedly accused the coalition of naivety and of taking a reckless gamble with the nation’s finances.

The leaked documents reinforce suggestions that the Bank Governor played a central role behind the scenes in persuading the Coalition to adopt a much tougher approach to tackling the deficit than any party had publicly advocated during the election.

Mr King also warned the US Ambassador that there was a danger that Mr Cameron and Mr Osborne could suffer a repeat of the catastrophic breakdown in relations which plagued Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

He told Mr Susman: ‘Similar tensions could arise if Cameron and Osborne disagreed on how to handle the deficit, and the lack of depth in their inner circle would aggravate the situation.’

The revelations are likely to raise concerns that Mr King risked straying too far into politics.

His decision to share his concerns with the Americans so soon before the election is deeply embarrassing for Mr King, who would have known that his views would be reported back to the White House.

The leaked cables also reveal Mr King believes the debt crisis in the eurozone will accelerate the drive for greater political union.

A Bank of England spokeswoman last night said: ‘The governor has a very effective working relationship with the prime minister and the chancellor.’

BRITAIN PROMISED U.S. IT WOULD LIMIT INQUIRY INTO WAR IN IRAQ

The British Government told the White House it would limit the scope of the inquiry into the war in Iraq to protect American interests.

Diplomatic cables published on the WikiLeaks website reveal Jon Day, director-general of security at the Ministry of Defence, told America there were measures 'in place' to protect their interests during the Chilcot Inquiry.

Three months after the cable was sent Sir John Chilcot, who is chairing the inquiry, said he was frustrated he was unable to refer to key documents while questioning Lord Goldsmith, the former Attorney-General.

The cables also reveal that David Miliband, then Foreign Secretary, held meetings with Erin Tauscher last year to discuss nuclear proliferation and co-operation over Iran.

WikiLeaks boss targets banks

By Tom Leonard

Moving on: WikiLeaks boss Julian Assange is set to target a U.S. bank next

WikiLeaks ‘could take down a bank or two’ with tens of thousands of incriminating emails detailing misconduct in high finance, its founder has claimed.

As the U.S. reeled from global repercussions after the website published the first of 250,000 secret diplomatic cables, Julian Assange said his next target would be a major U.S. bank.

He said he possessed a ‘mega-leak’ about the bank’s ‘state secrets’ that was so serious it would lead to investigations and even financial sector reforms.

Mr Assange compared the tens of thousands of documents, which he plans to release early next year to the vast amount of damning email correspondence which detailed the Enron scandal.

Enron, the U.S. energy giant, was the biggest bankruptcy in American history when it collapsed in 2001 amid evidence that executives had hidden billions of dollars of debt.

Several executives were jailed for fraud and Enron’s auditor, the accountants Arthur Andersen, closed down.

Mr Assange, who has been accused of endangering innocent lives over his latest leaks, will not reveal the bank’s identity.

In a rare interview, with Forbes business magazine, conducted in London three weeks ago, he said the bank revelations ‘will give a true and representative insight into how banks behave at the executive level in a way that will stimulate investigations and reforms’.

He said WikiLeaks was still investigating whether the leak exposed criminality, although it clearly highlighted ‘unethical practices’.

While the leaks would expose ‘some flagrant violations’, they would also show an ‘ecosystem of corruption’, said Mr Assange.

He described this as ‘all the regular decision-making that turns a blind eye to and supports unethical practices: the oversight that’s not done, the priorities of executives, how they think they’re fulfilling their own self-interest’.

There was initial U.S. speculation that the unnamed bank could be Citigroup, which was fined $3billion for its role in financing Enron and which serves four million customers through its UK offshoot, Citibank.

Previous ‘mega-leaks’ on Mr Assange’s site have included 76,000 secret Afghan war documents and 392,000 files from the Iraq war.

Mr Assange, 39, said the leaks were an ‘important phenomenon’ and were ‘only going to increase’.

He confirmed an earlier claim that WikiLeaks has material on BP, telling Forbes: ‘We’ve got lots now but we haven’t determined how much is original.’

Mr Assange said that he was sitting on a treasure trove of documents, of which about half related to the private sector. He warned that badly run or unethical businesses should expect more embarrassment from online leaking.

‘WikiLeaks means it’s easier to run a good business and harder to run a bad business, and all CEOs should be encouraged by this,’ he said.

Rejecting his reputation as anti-establishment, Mr Assange, an Australian, insisted he was a libertarian who had ‘mixed attitudes towards capitalism but I love markets’.

‘For a market to be free, people have to know who they’re dealing with,’ he said.

However, it emerged last night that Mr Assange is facing legal threats, with the U.S. announcing it was investigating whether he had violated its espionage laws.

The U.S. attorney general, Eric Holder, said the justice department and Pentagon are conducting ‘an active, ongoing criminal investigation’.

'I wish you'd turn that radio off. Every time they mention WikiLeaks, Grandad has to go'

CIA MANCHURIAN CANDIDATES

A group of military veterans in California are suing the CIA over allegedly implanting remote control devices in their brains. They allege the spy agency was on a quest to turn humans into robot-like assassins via electrodes planted in their brains.

FEDERAL RESERVE MAY BE `CENTRAL BANK OF THE WORLD' AFTER UBS, BARCLAYS AID

By Bradley Keoun and Hugh Son - Dec 1, 2010

UBS was the biggest borrower under the Commercial Paper Funding Facility, with $74.5 billion overall, more than twice as much as Citigroup Inc., the top U.S. bank recipient, according to the data released yesterday. Photographer: Reto Andreoli/Bloomberg

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Dec. 1 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. Representative Ron Paul, a Republican from Texas, talks about the Federal Reserve's response to the financial crisis and the bank's that borrowed from the Fed's Term Auction Facility. Paul speaks with Pimm Fox on Bloomberg Television's "Taking Stock." (Source: Bloomberg)

Federal Reserve data showing UBS AG and Barclays Plc ranked among the top users of $3.3 trillion from emergency programs is stoking debate on whether U.S. regulators bear responsibility for aiding other nations’ banks.

UBS was the biggest borrower under the Commercial Paper Funding Facility, with $74.5 billion overall, more than twice as much as Citigroup Inc., the top U.S. bank recipient, according to the data released yesterday. London-based Barclays Plc took the biggest single amount under another program that made overnight loans, when it got $47.9 billion on Sept. 18, 2008.

“We’re talking about huge sums of money going to bail out large foreign banks,” said Senator Bernard Sanders, the Vermont independent who wrote the provision in the Dodd-Frank Act that required the Fed disclosures. “Has the Federal Reserve become the central bank of the world? I think that is a question that needs to be examined.”

The first detailed accounting of U.S. efforts to spare European banks may add to scrutiny of the central bank, already at its most intense in three decades. The Fed, which released data on 21,000 transactions, said in a statement that its 11 emergency programs helped stabilize markets and support economic recovery. The Fed said there have been no credit losses on rescue programs that have been closed.

The growth of the U.S. mortgage-backed securities market and the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency enticed overseas banks such as Zurich-based UBS to buy assets in the country before 2008. They paid for the holdings with U.S. dollars, and when funding seized up, the Federal Reserve refused to take the risk that European firms would unload the assets and further depress markets for housing-related investments.

‘Much Worse’

“Things would have been worse if they hadn’t lent to foreigners,” said Perry Mehrling, senior fellow at the Morin Center for Banking and Financial Law at Boston University and author of “The New Lombard Street: How the Fed became the Dealer of Last Resort.” “We’re finally getting to understand the role of the Fed in the world.”

Fed spreadsheets showed the central bank became the world’s lender of last resort as dollars flowed to European banks as well as Bank of America Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co., among top borrowers from the Term Auction Facility at $45 billion each.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc., which posted record profit last year, borrowed more than $24 billion from another program. Milwaukee-based Harley-Davidson Inc. and Fairfield, Connecticut- based General Electric Co. sold commercial paper, a form of short-term debt, to the Fed under a program that lent as much as $348.2 billion at its peak.

Sanders, the Vermont senator, said yesterday he plans to investigate whether banks profited by borrowing from the Fed and investing the funds in Treasuries, benefiting from the difference in interest rates.

‘Bailout Protection Act’

U.S. Representative Mike Pence, an Indiana Republican, said he planned to introduce a “European Bailout Protection Act” to restrict the flow of International Monetary Fund loans to European countries. He said he was responding to reports that U.S. officials might bolster a European fund designed to deal with this year’s debt crisis, which has spread from Greece to Ireland.

Edwin Truman, a former Fed official who is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, said any push to confine the Fed’s role to U.S. banks would create a “massive exercise in financial protectionism.”

“It would lead to retaliation, so U.S. banks in London or Tokyo would expect the same kind of treatment,” Truman said. William Poole, senior economic adviser to Merk Investments LLC and a former Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis president, said he was surprised by the extent of non-U.S. bank borrowing.

Commercial Paper

“I was under the impression that each country bore the responsibility for supervising the banks headquartered in their borders,” Poole said in an interview.

The $74.5 billion received by UBS through the CPFF, which bought short-term debt, represents total borrowings by UBS over the life of the program. The total outstanding at any point in time never exceeded about half that sum, said Karina Byrne, a UBS spokeswoman.

Byrne said the bank’s tapping the Fed fund “should be seen in the context of our overall desire to maintain flexibility and diversification in our funding sources.”

The loan to a Barclays unit came from the Primary Dealer Credit Facility, created to make sure U.S. securities firms and foreign firms’ U.S. affiliates had cash to satisfy clients’ financing demands.

Barclays took the loan the week in September 2008 that it acquired the U.S. operations of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. Mark Lane, a spokesman for Barclays, declined to comment.

‘A Big Operation’

Paris-based Natixis borrowed $27 billion under the commercial paper program. “We’ve got a big operation in the U.S.A.,” Victoria Eideliman, a spokeswoman for the bank said. “It was, for us, natural that we participate in this program like all the banks. When we participated, the liquidity situation was very tense.”

The $182.3 billion rescue of American International Group Inc. spared European banks that traded with the New York-based insurer from having to raise as much as $16 billion in capital, according to a June report from the Congressional Oversight Panel, which reviews bailout spending.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke addressed questions in a 2009 Congressional hearing about why non-U.S. banks benefited from the AIG rescue.

‘The Obligation’

“I would point out that the Europeans have also saved a number of major financial institutions, and the issue of whether those institutions owed American companies money has not come up,” Bernanke said. “So I think that there is a sense that we all have the obligation to address the problems of companies in our own jurisdictions.”

Three of the top seven borrowers under the CPFF program were private firms. New York-based Hudson Castle received $53.3 billion in aggregate, BSN Holdings took $42.8 billion, and Liberty Hampshire Co., a unit of Guggenheim Partners LLC, drew $41.4 billion, Fed data show.

Hudson’s website says it develops “customized debt products.” A person who answered its phone said no one was available to comment. A Guggenheim spokesman didn’t return phone calls.

BSN Capital Partners Ltd., which was associated with BSN Holdings according to a 2006 Standard & Poor’s note, was founded by John Burgess, a former Deutsche Bank AG managing director. Burgess declined to comment.

To contact the reporters on this story: Bradley Keoun in New York at bkeoun@bloomberg.net;Hugh Son in New York at hson1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: David Scheer at dscheer@bloomberg.net

"EVERY SINGLE BIOLOGY TEXTBOOK MUST BE REVISED!" MICHIO KAKU EXPLAINS NASA PRESS CONFERENCE FINDINGS

WHO PRECISELY IS ATTACKING THE WORLD?

Paul Craig Roberts Infowars.com December 2, 2010

The stuck pigs are squealing. To shift the onus from the U.S. State Department, Hillary Clinton paints WikiLeaks’ release of the “diplomatic cables” as an “attack on the international community.” To reveal truth is equivalent, in the eyes of the U.S. government, to an attack on the world.

Iran has not invaded any of its neighbors, but the Americans are invading countries halfway around the globe.

It is WikiLeaks’ fault that all those U.S. diplomats wrote a quarter of a million undiplomatic messages about America’s allies, a.k.a. puppet states. It is also WikiLeaks’ fault that a member of the U.S. government could no longer stomach the cynical ways in which the U.S. government manipulates foreign governments to serve, not their own people, but American interests, and delivered the incriminating evidence to WikiLeaks.

The U.S. government actually thinks that it was WikiLeaks’ patriotic duty to return the evidence and to identify the leaker. After all, we mustn’t let the rest of the world find out what we are up to. They might stop believing our lies.

The influential German magazine Der Spiegel writes: “It is nothing short of a political meltdown for U.S. foreign policy.”

This might be more a hope than a reality. The “Soviet threat” during the second half of the 20th century enabled U.S. governments to create institutions that subordinated the interests of other countries to those of the U.S. government. After decades of following U.S. leadership, European “leaders” know no other way to act. Finding out that the boss badmouths and deceives them is unlikely to light a spirit of independence. At least not until America’s economic collapse becomes more noticeable.

The question is: how much will the press tell us about the documents? Spiegel itself has said that the magazine is permitting the U.S. government to censor, at least in part, what it prints about the leaked material. Most likely, this means the public will not learn the content of the 4,330 documents that “are so explosive that they are labeled ‘NOFORN,’” meaning that foreigners, including presidents, prime ministers, and security services that share information with the CIA are not permitted to read the documents. Possibly, also, the content of the 16,652 cables classified as “secret” will not be revealed to the public.

Most likely the press, considering their readers’ interests, will focus on gossip and the unflattering remarks Americans made about their foreign counterparts. It will be good for laughs. Also, the U.S. government will attempt to focus the media in ways that advance U.S. policies.

Indeed, it has already begun. On Nov. 29, National Public Radio emphasized that the cables showed that Iran was isolated even in the Muslim world, making it easier for the Israelis and Americans to attack. The leaked cables reveal that the president of Egypt, an American puppet, hates Iran, and the Saudi Arabian government has been long urging the U.S. government to attack Iran. In other words, Iran is so dangerous to the world that even its co-religionists want Iran wiped off the face of the earth.

NPR presented several nonobjective “Iranian experts” who denigrated Iran and its leadership and declared that the U.S. government, by resisting its Middle Eastern allies’ call for bombing Iran, was the moderate in the picture. The fact that President George W. Bush declared Iran to be a member of “the axis of evil” and threatened repeatedly to attack Iran and that President Obama has continued the threats – Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, has just reiterated that the U.S. hasn’t taken the attack option off the table – are not regarded by American “Iran experts” as indications of anything other than American moderation.

Somehow it did not come across the NPR newscast that it is not Iran but Israel that routinely slaughters civilians in Lebanon, Gaza, and the West Bank, and that it is not Iran but the U.S. and its NATO mercenaries who slaughter civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, and Pakistan.

Iran has not invaded any of its neighbors, but the Americans are invading countries halfway around the globe.

The “Iranian experts” treated the Saudi and Egyptian rulers’ hatred of Iran as a vindication of the U.S. and Israeli governments’ demonization of Iran. Not a single “Iranian expert” was capable of pointing out that the tyrants who rule Egypt and Saudi Arabia fear Iran because the Iranian government represents the interests of Muslims, and the Saudi and Egyptian governments represent the interests of the Americans.

Think what it must feel like to be a tyrant suppressing the aspirations of your own people in order to serve the hegemony of a foreign country, while a nearby Muslim government strives to protect its people’s independence from foreign hegemony.

Undoubtedly, the tyrants become very anxious. What if their oppressed subjects get ideas? Little wonder the Saudi and Egyptian rulers want the Americans to eliminate the independent-minded country that is a bad example for Egyptian and Saudi subjects.

As long as the dollar has enough value that it can be used to purchase foreign governments, information damaging to the U.S. government is unlikely to have much affect. As Alain of Lille said a long time ago, “Money is all.”

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts is the father of Reaganomics and the former head of policy at the Department of Treasury. He is a columnist and was previously the editor of the Wall Street Journal. His latest book, “How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds,” details why America is disintegrating.

THE SECRET THE TSA DOESN’T WANT YOU TO KNOW

Paul Joseph Watson Infowars.com December 2, 2010

While many Americans think they can skip being sexually molested at the hands of the TSA by avoiding airports, Big Sis has been quietly preparing the groundwork for the total takeover of all public transport and highways by federal government goon squads.

Local police, TSA and Homeland Security agents are already implementing airport-style security measures at bus and train stations, including earlier this year in Tampa, where bomb-sniffing dogs and grope downs were used to check passengers.

As we reported earlier this year, as the national outrage surrounding the TSA’s use of naked body scanners at airports simmered, the feds had already purchased hundreds of x-ray scanners mounted in vans that were being used to randomly scan vehicles, passengers and homes in complete violation of the 4th amendment and with wanton disregard for any health consequences.

In addition, as was announced way back in 2005, VIPR teams now patrol Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor and Los Angeles rail lines; ferries in Washington state; bus stations in Houston; and mass transit systems in Atlanta, Philadelphia, Washington and Baltimore, “expanding their work beyond airplanes, launching counterterror surveillance at train stations and other mass transit facilities.”

Homeland Security is also implementing technology to be enforced at “security events” which purportedly reads “malintent” on behalf of an individual who passes through a checkpoint. The video below explains how “Future Attribute Screening Technology” (FAST) checkpoints will conduct “physiological” and “behavioral” tests in order to weed out suspected terrorists and criminals.

The clip shows individuals who attend “security events” being led into trailers before they are interrogated as to whether they are terrorists while lie detector-style computer programs analyze their physiological responses. The subjects are asked about their whereabouts, and if they are attempting to smuggle bombs or recording devices into the “expo,” proving that the technology is intended to be used at public events and not just airports. Individuals who do not satisfy the first lie detector-style test are then asked “additional questions”.

The implementation of ‘Checkpoint USA’, where citizens are routinely stopped, searched and radiated by federal VIPER teams is further evidence of how America is crumbling into a Soviet-style police state where the presumption of innocent until proven guilty is abolished and the 4th amendment eviscerated.

With the devices already being used at highway checkpoints, DHS chief Janet Napolitano has now publicly outlined the plan for mobile scanners to be used on all forms of transit, from trains and the metro to boats.

Apathetic Americans who think they can avoid the clutches of Big Sis by merely refusing to fly are going to be in for a rude awakening when they see DHS scanners rolling around their neighborhoods taking naked pictures of their children while firing them up with dangerous radiation, all in the name of safety and security.

We have been warning for years that everything you saw unfolding in the airports would soon be heading for the streets.

People who were perfectly happy with their naked body being ogled by TSA thugs scorned those who felt body scanners were a violation of privacy. “Don’t fly,” they said and you won’t have to go through it. Next it will be “don’t take a bus,” “don’t visit the shopping mall,” hey just “don’t leave your house”.

With authorities in Europe planning to unveil mobile body scanners and naked body scanners attached to lamp posts, and with Big Sis already cruising the highways with mobile radiation scanners, soon we won’t be able to walk down the street without some federal enforcer gawking at our genitalia – all for our own safety of course.

Is that the kind of society you want to live in? A warped hybrid of Orwell’s 1984 and The Running Man?

Not content with the fact that one in every 31 U.S. adults is either on probation, in jail or prison, or on parole, the prison is now being built around us, with the population treated as guilty until proven innocent as the invisible bars descend around society and the implosion of private industry forces everyone to get government jobs acting as jackboots to police the rest of the inmates.

Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show. Watson has been interviewed by many publications and radio shows, including Vanity Fair and Coast to Coast AM, America’s most listened to late night talk show

HUNT WIKILEAKS CHIEF DOWN LIKE OSAMA BIN LADEN: SARAH PALIN DEMANDS ASSANGE IS TREATED LIKE AL CIADA TERRORIST

By Daily Mail Reporter 1st December 2010

• U.S. launches criminal investigation into Assange
• Australia looks into whether he has broken local laws
  
• 39-year-old is already facing rape inquiries in Sweden

Sarah Palin has demanded that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is hunted down like Osama bin Laden.

In an extraordinary outburst on Facebook, the former Alaska governor attacked the White House for 'incompetent handling of this whole fiasco.'

'First and foremost, what steps were taken to stop Wikileaks director Julian Assange from distributing this highly sensitive classified material especially after he had already published material not once but twice in the previous months?.' she wrote.

Attack: Republican Sarah Palin (left) has claimed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should be treated like a terrorist

'Assange is not a "journalist," any more than the "editor" of al Qaeda's new English-language magazine Inspire is a "journalist."

'He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands.

'His past posting of classified documents revealed the identity of more than 100 Afghan sources to the Taliban.

'Why was he not pursued with the same urgency we pursue al Qaeda and Taliban leaders?'

Palin claimed that the administration's inability to hunt down Assange showed a lack of effort.

It emerged today that the U.S. has opened a criminal investigation into whether the 39-year-old could be charged under its Espionage Act for releasing secret diplomatic documents.

And he is facing a separate criminal inquiry in his native Australia where police are investigating whether the latest leak has broken any local laws.

Mr Assange, who is believed to be in London, is already facing a criminal investigation in Sweden where two women have accused him of rape.

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder today said the American government is in the midst of an 'active, ongoing criminal investigation' into WikiLeaks.

The latest disclosures, involving classified and sensitive State Department documents, jeopardised the security of the nation, its diplomats, intelligence assets and relationships with foreign governments, General Holder said.

On the warpath: U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said the latest WikiLeaks disclosures jeopardised the security of the nation, its diplomats, intelligence assets and relationships with foreign governments

Speaking to the Washington Post, General Holder did not confirm whether Mr Assange would be charged for violations of the Espionage Act, nor whether such an indictment was imminent.

But former CIA general council Jeffrey H Smith told the newspaper: 'I'm confident that the Justice Department is figuring out how to prosecute him.'

Mr Assange was last night warned that he could face criminal charges if he ever returns to Australia.

Australian attorney general Robert McClelland said police are investigating whether the latest leak of secret U.S. documents had broken any Australian laws.

There have also been claims that the U.S. is putting pressure on Australia to cancel Mr Assange's Australian passport., but this was flatly denied by Mr McClelland.

A range of options were under consideration by Australian government agencies in response to the latest disclosure of classified U.S. material, he said.

Mr McClelland told reporters there were 'potentially a number of criminal laws' that could have been breached.

Australia's Defence Minister Stephen Smith said later that a cross-government committee was studying the documents to see what damage could have been done by their release.

Mr Smith said: 'We need to take it... step by step, but our starting and end point is essentially protecting Australia's national interest.

'This is an act which again one has no option but to absolutely condemn it. It potentially puts national security interests and it puts the safety and welfare of individuals at stake.'

Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard last week condemned the planned leaks as reckless and potentially harmful to national security interests.

Senior U.S. politicians, meanwhile, have launched a series of scathing attacks against Wikileaks, even demanding for the website to be treated as a terrorist organisation.

Controversy: The WikiLeaks disclosures have made headlines around the world

Peter King, a Republican congressman and incoming chairman of the House homeland security committee, called on Washington to pursue aggressively Wikileaks and Mr Assange for violating the Espionage Act.

Senator Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate homeland security committee, said those responsible for the 'outrageous, reckless and despicable' leaks 'are going to have blood on their hands'.

He urged the U.S. to do everything it could to shut down the whistle-blowing website.

According to Peter Hoekstra, the senior Republican on the House intelligence committee, the documents contained a 'whole number of time bombs' and he described the likely breakdown in trust between the US and other countries as a 'catastrophic issue'.

Mr Assange is already facing a criminal investigation in Sweden where two women have accused him of rape.

He strongly denies the charges, which stem from his encounters with two women during a visit to Sweden in August.

Court documents filed by a Swedish prosecutor show Mr Assange is suspected of raping and sexually molesting a woman in the town of Enkoping, central Sweden.

He is suspected of sexual molestation and unlawful coercion of the second woman in Stockholm.

The prosecutor's office began an investigation into allegations of rape against Mr Assange in September.

The office now wants to detain him for questioning. If the request is granted, authorities could issue an international arrest warrant.

'The reason for my request is that we need to interrogate him. So far, we have not been able to meet him to carry out the interrogations,' said Marianne Ny, leading the case for the Prosecution Authority.

A police report shows that the women had met Mr Assange in connection with a seminar he gave in Stockholm on August 14. The women filed their complaints together six days later.

Investigators initially disagreed on how to deal with the case.

A Stockholm prosecutor started a rape investigation that was dropped by the city's chief prosecutor a day later. Ms Ny reopened it the following week.

He had been seeking to build a base in Sweden, where some his servers are located, because of its strict journalist protection laws.

Swedish immigration authorities denied Mr Assange a residence permit and earlier this month he said he may seek political asylum in Switzerland.