DC District Court rejects ACLU push to disclose embassy cables allegedly published by WikiLeaks

07/23/12: The Blog of Legal Times reports a federal judge ruled today that the State Department doesn’t have to publicly disclose a cache of embassy cables even though the information is purportedly in the public domain via a document release from WikiLeaks.  The American Civil Liberties Union sued the State Department in June 2011 in the US District Court for the District of Columbia to press the agency to release twenty-three cables addressing, among other things, bilateral relations with foreign countries and investigations of individuals suspected of terror acts.  Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly today rejected the ACLU’s argument that the cables should be published because a third party, the independent whistleblower site WikiLeaks, put the information in the public domain.  Public disclosure itself, she held, does not trump an agency’s intent to keep information secret.