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White House: Clinton didnâ€™t order diplomats to spy

02 December 2010 01:42 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. President Barack Obamaâ€™s spokesman is labeling as "ridiculous" an assertion by the founder of WikiLeaks that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton should resign if she was involved in asking U.S. diplomats to gather intelligence at the United Nations, APA reports quoting â€œAssociated Pressâ€.
And Sen. Joe Lieberman said the website should be shut down and founder Julian Assange arrested.
In an online interview with Time magazine from an undisclosed location, Assange on Tuesday called on Clinton to resign "if it can be shown that she was responsible for ordering U.S. diplomatic figures to engage in espionage in the United Nations" in violation of international agreements.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said Wednesday that Assangeâ€™s statements "are both ridiculous and absurd." Clinton, he said, has done nothing wrong, and U.S. diplomats do not engage in spying. He spoke in an interview on NBCâ€™s "Today" show.
State Department officials said Tuesday that secret instructions to American diplomats to gather sensitive personal information about foreign leaders originated from the U.S. intelligence community but did not require diplomats to spy. Requests for DNA and biometric data on foreign officials were contained in leaked classified cables published by WikiLeaks.
"Secretary Clinton is doing a great job," Gibbs said. "The president has great confidence in and admires the work that Secretary Clinton has done."
Speaking later Wednesday in a television interview, independent Connecticut senator Lieberman said the international community should work together to stop WikiLeaks.
"This is guy whoâ€™s done terrible damage to our country and to a lot of other countries around the world," Lieberman said on the Fox News "Fox and Friends" program. "The U.S. government and allied governments ought to be doing everything we can to close down WikiLeaks...to try to get other countries to deny him access to servers, and I think we ought to be doing everything we can with our allies around the world to arrest this guy.
"Heâ€™s a menace," Lieberman said. "In my opinions heâ€™s risked lives."
Lieberman compared Assange to pirates operating off the coast of Africa in that he is a concern internationally.
"If we canâ€™t shut this guy down, shame on the civilized world," Lieberman said.