he would strike them ere that day Twelve-moneth with some markable punishment

WikiLeaks might have provided a pressure valve for those agents who were terribly worried about what might happen and frustrated by their superiors' seeming indifference.

Nor safe their dwellings were, for sapped by floods, / Their houses fell upon their household gods.

The less we look abroad, the more our ideas are introverted, and our habitual impressions... grow together into a kind of concrete substance.