You're reading: Clinton says leaked documents attack the world

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said Monday the leak of hundreds of thousands of secret diplomatic documents is an attack not only on the United States but also against the international community.

In her first public comments since the weekend release of the classified U.S. State Department cables, Clinton said that online whistle-blower Wikileaks acted illegally in posting the material. She said the Obama administration was taking "aggressive steps to hold responsible those who stole this information."

"This disclosure is not just an attack on America’s foreign policy interests," Clinton said, "it is an attack on the international community: the alliances and partnerships, the conversations and negotiations that safeguard global security and advance economic prosperity."

"It puts people’s lives in danger, threatens our national security and undermines our efforts to work with other countries to solve shared problems," she told reporters at the State Department.

Clinton would not content on the specific contents of the cables but said the administration "deeply regrets" any embarrassment caused by their disclosure. Many of them contain candid and often unflattering assessments of foreign leaders, both friends and foes.

She acknowledged that the newly released cables that revealed deep concerns among Arab world leaders about Iran’s nuclear ambitions have a basis in reality.

"It should not be a surprise to anyone that Iran is a great concern," she said, adding that the comments reported in the documents "confirm the fact that Iran poses a very serious threat in the eyes of her neighbors."

Clinton’s comments came before she left Washington Monday on a four-nation tour of Central Asia and the Persian Gulf. She alluded to discussions she expects to have about the leaked documents with officials from Europe and elsewhere. Some of those diplomats may be cited in the leaked documents, which if so will confront her with uncomfortable conversations.

She said, however, that in warning various foreign officials about the release of the cables, some had joked to her that their governments’ assessments of American leaders were even harsher than those found in the leaked U.S. files.