WIKILEAKS founder Julian Assange has denied the claim that he could have blood on his hands.
Instead Assange insists the deaths of any Afghan collaborators after the massive release of classified documents would be the fault of the US military. In an interview with The Observer, he said the material was widely available on the ground in Afghanistan and he accused the US military of being careless with its informers.
“This material was available to every soldier and contractor in Afghanistan,” he told the British Sunday paper. “It’s the US military that deserves the blame for not giving due diligence to its informers. We are appalled that the US military was so lackadaisical with its Afghan sources. Just appalled. We are a source protection organisation that specialises in protecting sources and have a perfect record from our activities.”
Mr Assange maintained that WikiLeaks had taken great care not to put anyone in Afghanistan at risk, even though the files released last week contain the names and sometimes the locations of informers.
“Well, anything might happen, but nothing has happened. And we are not about to leave the field of doing good simply because harm might happen . . . In our four-year publishing history, no one has ever come to physical harm that we are aware of or that anyone has alleged.”
But if it were proven that an informer came to harm because of WikiLeaks, he said the organisation would “review our procedures”, The Observer reported.
Private Bradley Manning was arrested in May after giving WikiLeaks classified material, including a video taken from a US army helicopter that showed the killing of civilians, including two journalists. He has been charged over that leak and is the main suspect in the latest. Now, according to a report in The New York Times, authorities are investigating whether he had civilian help.
Adrian Lamo, the California-based computer hacker who turned in Private Manning in May, claimed in a telephone interview on Saturday he had first-hand knowledge that someone helped the army analyst set up encryption software to send classified information to WikiLeaks.
Mr Lamo said the software enabled Private Manning to send classified data in small bits so that it “wouldn’t look too much different from your average guy doing his banking online”.
Also yesterday, a New York Times reporter dismissed Mr Assange’s claim that WikiLeaks had offered to let US government officials go through leaked documents to ensure that no innocent people were identified.
Eric Schmitt said that on July 23 he had relayed to Mr Assange a White House request that WikiLeaks not publish information that could lead to people being physically harmed.
The next evening, Schmitt said, Mr Assange replied in an email that WikiLeaks was withholding 15,000 documents and would consider recommendations by the International Security Assistance Force “on the identification of innocents for this material if it is willing to provide reviewers”. On Friday, White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said it was “absolutely, unequivocally not true” that WikiLeaks had offered to let US government officials go through the documents to make sure no innocent people were identified”.
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