WikiLeaks Cablegate

Reference Network Visualization

A interactive visualization of the references between diplomatic cables.

Screenshot cable2graph


  1. Browse the visualizations!
  2. How is it made?
  3. What is the structure of the network?
  4. What are missing cables?
  5. What can i do?
  6. How do i read the graph?
  7. Code and Data
  8. Contact

Browse the visualizations!

Please use a recent Chrome or Safari. Firefox does display it correctly, but is missing the "jump" functionality.

How is it made?

The cables.csv contains a field for referencing related cables via MRN. In the cables this is often called "REFTEL" and the following notation is used in the cable body.


REF:  A) HARARE 17 B) HARARE 394 C) 87 HARARE 6985 D) HARARE 240

Around ~232300 of these references exist and they form a large network (or so called graph).

What is the structure of the network?

Not all cables belong to a single large network but rather form smaller groups of networks. These smaller groups are also known as clusters or connected components.

Some of these clusters form a star which can be a indication for a type of "action request" that was sent to multiple embassies.

The largest cluster (giant) contains ~100000 cables with ~143000 references. A graph method called "community detection" can be used to split the giant cluster into smaller communities.

For every community, cluster or star a interactive visualization is generated.

What are missing cables?

From the total of 251287 cables ~56000 additional cables are referenced but not included in the cables.csv. These missing cables are also shown in the graph.

For some of the missing cables it is possible to estimate the date of creation. This estimated date is included.

What can i do?

How do i read the graph?

The visualization contains some indicators of graph and cable properties.

Code and Data

cable2graph source code (GPLv3).

Made with python, igraph, SVG, HTML5, CSS3 and a little bit of javascript.

cable2graph comes with tools and data useful for research on the cables.csv


@datapornstar can haz moar data pr0n?