SECRET+NOFORN

“SECRET+NOFORN” is all of the “Cablegate” U.S. diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks classified “SECRET” or “SECRETNOFORN” in chronological order, printed on 66 volumes hard-cover books. Most of the world heard of the historic publication of 251,287 diplomatic cables by WikiLeaks in 2010. Yet, few have taken time to browse through and read a couple of them. By reformatting the cable archive from an abstract trove of digital documents online to a collection of hard-cover books, “SECRET+NOFORN” re-imagines the experience of this window into the secret diplomacy of the Empire. The collection of 66 books, representing only the most secret of the cables (the 6.2% of them with classification levels “SECRET” and “SECRETNOFORN” as in “secret, no foreigners”), sits like an “elephant in the room”, hard to avoid by its bulkiness and impressive physical presence. The project thus also aims at giving a visual cue of the vastness of this trove of public-interest information. ( It is actually a working proof-of-concept, first step towards a wider project of printing in a similar format the integrality of the 251,287 cables, in more than 1000 such volumes. )

Beyond the pagination, the elaboration of “SECRET+NOFORN” involved some state-of-the-art algorithmic techniques - similar to those of scientific journalism pioneered and exemplified by WikiLeaks - in order to research, authenticate and guarantee the integrity of the dataset during the process of its handling.

By physically representing the cold and dark state-violence of the World’s secret diplomacy and turning it into a portable public-interest library, accesible beyond IT skills, censorship or prejudice, “SECRET+NOFORN” is meant as a tribute to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, and as a strong reminder of the inner motives for their ongoing vengeful persecution by the US.

---