International • The
Panama Papers, confidential documents leaked on 3 April 2016 regarding
offshore tax havens. • The
Paradise Papers, confidential documents leaked on 5 November 2017 regarding offshore tax havens. • The
FinCEN Files collection of
FinCEN documents brought to the public's attention in September 2020. • The
Pandora Papers, confidential documents leaked on 3 October 2021 regarding offshore tax havens.
United States • Leaks to the press were commonly made by both sides of the U.S. government's internal debate during August 1949–January 1950 regarding whether to proceed with development of the
hydrogen bomb. • The
Pentagon Papers, a top-secret United States Department of Defense history of the United States' political-military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967. Made public on the front page of the
New York Times in 1971. • The
United States diplomatic cables leak of November 2010 in which the organisation
WikiLeaks began releasing details of 251,287 US diplomatic cables provided to them by
Chelsea Manning. • The
NSA leaks in June 2013, in which
NSA employee
Edward Snowden leaked secret documents exposing the American
PRISM and the British
Tempora, clandestine espionage programs. • The
Vault 7 leaks of March 2017 in which the
CIA employee Joshua Adam Schulte leaked secret documents exposing the capabilities of the CIA to perform electronic surveillance and cyber warfare.
United Kingdom •
Spies for Peace, a group of British anti-war activists associated with
CND and the
Committee of 100 who publicised government preparations for rule after a nuclear war. In 1963 they broke into a secret government bunker where they photographed and copied documents. They published this information in a pamphlet,
Danger! Official Secret RSG-6. Four thousand copies were sent to the national press, politicians and peace movement activists. • The
NSA leaks in June 2013, in which
NSA employee
Edward Snowden leaked secret documents exposing the British
Tempora and the American
PRISM clandestine espionage programs.
Israel •
Mordechai Vanunu, an Israeli nuclear technician who revealed details of
Israel's nuclear weapons program to the British press in 1986. •
Anat Kamm leaked classified documents from the
Israeli Defense Force in 2008, which suggested the Israeli military had been engaged in
extrajudicial killings.
Spain • At the time of the
Spanish coup of July 1936, the takeover of the
Spanish Republican Navy by coup leaders failed mainly because the messages calling for a coup against the Spanish Republic were not sent in
code, as would have been the norm, from
Ciudad Lineal to the senior officers commanding the ships. Navy
radiotelegrapher Benjamin Balboa took credit for the news leak.
China • Leaked minutes from an internal meeting of China's
National Health Commission held on 2022-12-21 revealed that as many as 248 million people in China might have contracted COVID-19 over the first 20 days of December and nearly 37 million people may have been infected on a single day. A copy of the notes were circulated on Chinese social media.
The Financial Times said it was Sun Yang – a deputy director of the
Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention – who presented the figures to officials during the closed-door briefing, citing two people familiar with the matter. • In November 2019, the
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published the
China Cables, consisting of six documents. The documents include a telegram which details the first known "operations manual" for running the
Xinjiang internment camps, including detailed use of
predictive policing and AI to target people and regulate life inside the camps. •
Document Number Nine is a
confidential internal document widely circulated within the
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 2013 by the
General Office of the CCP. The document warns of seven dangerous Western values, allegedly including media freedom and judicial independence. ==See also==