Map of Wikileaks US Embassy Cables

The release of over a quarter of a million US embassy cables by Wikileaks has raised a lot of important questions, and journalists and researchers will undoubtedly spend the next few weeks closely analysing the dataset. In the meantime, here is a quick map that I put together using data from the Guardian's data store.


It is important to point out that the dataset released by Wikileaks does not contain all cables sent by all US embassies and consulates. It is unclear whether the data in the release were selected according to any specific criteria or if they are a random sample (all of the cables were sent between 1966 and 2010).

In either case, and as one might expect, we see that there are a relatively large number of cables originating in the Middle East. We should therefore expect to hear much more about controversies from the region over the next few days.