Constitutional Law

Don't publish any new classified WikiLeaks info, military asks press

By By The Associated Press

WASHINGTON ? The Pentagon today asked news organizations not to publish any classified war files released by the WikiLeaks Web site, as the U.S. braces for the potential disclosure of hundreds of thousands of secret Iraq war documents.

In July, WikiLeaks obtained and released nearly 77,000 classified military reports from Afghanistan. Now, the Pentagon says the group has as many as 400,000 documents from a military database on operations in Iraq.

WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange today downplayed expectations that a leak was imminent. In a Twitter post, Assange said such information was coming from "a single tabloid blog" that had put out a "tremendous amount" of false information about his site.

Still, the military says its 120-person task force has been on high alert. The group has been reviewing the documents for weeks to determine what information might be compromised.

Marine Corps Col. Dave Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters that the military wasn't sure whether WikiLeaks had shared the Iraq war logs with any news organizations. But, he said, news media should not disseminate the "stolen" information even if it's already posted online by WikiLeaks.

"The concern is that WikiLeaks as an organization should not be made more credible by having credible news organizations facilitate what they're doing," Lapan said.

WikiLeaks gained international notoriety in July when it coordinated its release of the 77,000 Afghan war logs with The New York Times, The Guardian in London and the German magazine Der Spiegel. The New York Times says it omitted information from its coverage that would have jeopardized military operations or exposed Afghan informants. The Times also refused to provide a link to the WikiLeaks data base.

Der Spiegel and The Guardian said they withheld sensitive information as well, although The Guardian published a selection of the documents that it believed were significant.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon has concluded that no U.S. intelligence sources or practices were compromised by the WikiLeaks posting of secret Afghan war logs. But the military said the leaks could still cause significant damage to U.S. security interests.

The assessment, outlined in a letter obtained Oct. 15 by the Associated Press, suggests that some of the Obama administration's worst fears about the July disclosure of almost 77,000 secret U.S. war reports have so far failed to materialize.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates reported these conclusions in an Aug. 16 letter to Sen. Carl Levin, chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who had requested a Pentagon assessment.

Questions persist about whether the disclosure undermined U.S. officials' ability to maintain the allegiance of allies and people from other countries who take risks to cooperate with the U.S.

"The mere fact of the disclosure erodes confidence in the ability of the military to keep secrets," said Steven Aftergood, whose Secrecy News blog tracks trends in government openness. "And that can have subtle but real effects on recruitment of sources and on maintenance of relationships with individuals and with other security services," he added. "So it's something they have to take seriously."

U.S. officials warned of dire consequences in the days following the July leak. In his letter to Levin, Gates struck a more measured tone in describing the impact.

"Our initial review indicates most of the information contained in these documents relates to tactical military operations," Gates wrote, suggesting the materials did not include the most sensitive kinds of information.

"The initial assessment in no way discounts the risk to national security; however, the review to date has not revealed any sensitive intelligence sources and methods compromised by this disclosure," he added.

A Pentagon spokesman, Marine Col. David Lapan, said the assessment of the July documents is still valid, even after a more thorough review. A special task force led by the Defense Intelligence Agency combed the posted reports for weeks to determine what might have been compromised.

Names of intelligence sources generally are classified at a higher level than the secret-level documents published by WikiLeaks. The documents provided a ground-level view of the war, from 2004 through 2009, based largely on narrow intelligence reports and other battlefield materials.

Gates noted that the documents contained the names of "cooperative Afghan nationals." These were not secret intelligence sources but Afghans who had decided to cut their ties to the Taliban.

The Taliban later vowed to punish these individuals, if the reports proved true.

"We assess this risk as likely to cause significant harm or damage to the national security interests of the United States and are examining mitigation options," Gates wrote. "We are working closely with our allies to determine what risks our mission partners may face as a result of the disclosure."

So far, the Pentagon has not reported any incidents of reprisals against Afghans named in the leaked documents.

Full post as published by First Amendment Center on October 17, 2010 (boomark / email).