Victor Roncea Blog

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Live from Guardian:

11.40am (ora UK – 13.40 ora noastra): Der Spiegel has more on the German foreign minister Guido Westerwelle’s chief of staff who admitted to passing secrets information to the Americans.

A worker at the party’s headquarters who was chief of staff to the FDP chairman, German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle (foto dreapta), came forward and admitted to being the source, an FDP party spokesperson said.

Frankfturter Allgemeine names him as Helmut Metzner (foto stanga) and says he has been relieved of his duties rather sacked. Does that mean he’s been suspended?

Der Spiegel adds:

Helmut M. became chief of staff to the chairman of the party in Berlin after Westerwelle became Germany’s foreign minister in a coalition government with Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservative Christian Democrats in 2009. During the coalition talks, Helmut M. had participated as a notetaker, FDP officials stated.

In a cable sent back to Washington that has been published online by WikiLeaks and cited by Spiegel, US Ambassador Philip Murphy described the worker as a “young, up-and-coming party loyalist.” The cable states that during his meetings at the US Embassy in Berlin, he brought along internal papers from the coalition talks, including participant lists from working groups, schedules and handwritten notes. According to Spiegel information, they include, for example, information about an internal dispute over disarmament that took shape during the coalition negotiations.

11.31am: Another technical update on the WikiLeaks site, from Josh Halliday.

The Wikileaks.ch domain name, which only surfaced on Friday morning, is being served by the Swiss Pirate Party. And the routing to it is still being done by everydns.

11.22am: The WikiLeaks affair has claimed its first victim, according to the EU Observer. It reports that Germany’s vice-chancellor Guido Westerwelle today sacked his chief of staff for spying for the Americans.

Westerwelle’s chief of staff, Helmut Metzner, admitted that he gave regular information to the US embassy in Berlin, and has been “relieved from his duties,” a spokesman for the Liberal Free Democrats (FDP) said in a statement.

11.12am: Julian Assange will be live on the Guardian’s site from 1pm today to answer readers’ questions. That’s if he can get access to the internet. A big if at the moment.

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