Candid diplomacy?
There's an oxymoron

Candid reporting by diplomates to their own governments is essential.

Publicly, diplomacy is the art of achieving your outcomes using words, rather than weapons. The very idea that it should be fully transparent is naive and foolish.It like saying you should show the enemy your war plans in the interest of fairness.

Who doesn't know that the North Koreans are mad dogs? How does it help to say so? Anyone who reads the newspapers knows Silvio Berlusconi is a vain and frivilous man. How is the greater good served by exposing that US diplomates know it also and have said as much to their home gov't?

It is interesting that leaks are US documents. Not the documnents of any of the myriad of dictatorships which could actually lift the carpet on their afairs. Assange is an enemy of the west. He leaks these documnents not to help the US, as often whistleblowers do. Assange leaks these documents to damage as much as he can.

Looking at the mentally unstable individual who actually stole all of this material it is clear he also was not motivated by a desire to educate. He was a self obsessed hacker looking for personal notoriety.

These are not whistleblowers who deserve our protection.