The U.S. ambassador to London made an unprecedented personal visit to Downing Street to warn that whistleblower website WikiLeaks is about to publish secret assessments of what Washington really thinks of Britain.
The website is on the verge of revealing almost 3million documents, including thousands of sensitive diplomatic cables sent to Washington from the American embassy in London.
The bombshell leak is thought to include U.S. assessments of Gordon Brown’s personality and his prospects of winning the General Election, and secret discussions on the return of the Lockerbie bomber to Libya.

However, according to the UK-based Arabic daily newspaper al-Hayat, the WikiLeaks release includes documents that show Turkey has helped Al Qaeda in Iraq - an extraordinary revelation which could kill off the country’s hopes of joining the EU.

David Cameron's spokesman this morning declined to discuss the nature of any confidential communications which may have been obtained by WikiLeaks.

The spokesman said: "Obviously, the government has been briefed by US officials, by the US ambassador, as to the likely content of these leaks.

"I don't want to speculate about precisely what is going to be leaked before it is leaked."

Washington could be embarrassed by the publication of candid and forthright assessments of foreign governments made by its officials.

Crowley warned that publication could erode trust in the US as a diplomatic partner.

Whistle-blowing website Wikileaks says it is under attack from a computer-hacking operation, ahead of a release of secret US documents.

"We are currently under a mass distributed denial of service attack," it says on its Twitter feed.

Wikileaks has said the release of classified messages sent by US embassies will be bigger than past releases on Afghanistan and Iraq.

The newspapers set to publish details of the US embassy cables include Spain's El Pais, France's Le Monde, Germany's Speigel, the UK's Guardian and the New York Times.

Pentagon says it expects 'nothing new' in next Wikileaks dump. 'Nothing new' to THEM goes without saying.

The US embassy cables are marked "Sipdis" – secret internet protocol distribution. They were compiled as part of a programme under which selected dispatches, considered moderately secret but suitable for sharing with other agencies, would be automatically loaded on to secure embassy websites, and linked with the military's Siprnet internet system.

They are classified at various levels up to "SECRET NOFORN" [no foreigners]. More than 11,000 are marked secret, while around 9,000 of the cables are marked noforn. The embassies which sent most cables were Ankara, Baghdad, Amman, Kuwait and Tokyo.

More than 3 million US government personnel and soldiers, many extremely junior, are cleared to have potential access to this material, even though the cables contain the identities of foreign informants, often sensitive contacts in dictatorial regimes. Some are marked "protect" or "strictly protect".

Oh yes, and I do hope the Royal causing a fuss was Phil - it's only right

I'm betting Harry. Some wild partying that got out of hand...

All this could be a smokescreen for something else happening.

Sensational claims of ‘inappropriate behaviour’ by Prince Andrew emerged last night in the biggest intelligence leak in history.
Secret U.S. embassy cables are said to show the prince, who is a UK trade envoy, has shocked the Americans with his ‘rude behaviour abroad’.
A Buckingham Palace source said: ‘We are awaiting further detail, as everyone else is.’