PRESS freedom campaigners and the Pentagon have denounced plans by WikiLeaks to release 15,000 more classified documents on the war in Afghanistan.
Julian Assange, the founder of the whistleblowing organisation, said that his associates were halfway through the remaining batch. He said they were trying to redact the names of Afghans whose lives might be put at risk, before posting the documents on the internet.
Mr Assange had been criticised by human rights organisations for failing to erase from the previous 77,000 files the names of many Afghan informants. Reporters Without Borders described his decision to publish the remainder as an act of “incredible irresponsibility”.
“Revealing the identity of hundreds of people who collaborated with the coalition in Afghanistan is highly dangerous,” it said in an open letter to Mr Assange. “It would not be hard for the Taliban and other armed groups to use the documents to draw up a list of people for … deadly revenge attacks.”
Dismissing Mr Assange’s promise to ensure that nobody could be hurt this time, Colonel David Lapan, spokesman for the Pentagon, said WikiLeaks lacked the expertise for such a task. “What kind of experience does he have to detect properly what information is sensitive. It’s not just simply about taking out names,” he said. “Even with names redacted, these are classified documents and they should be returned to the Pentagon.”
Concern has grown around the world after an investigation by The Times found numerous Afghan informants named, often with family members and home addresses, in the files posted on the internet last month.
Addressing an audience in London via a video link from an undisclosed location, Mr Assange said yesterday: “The right to knowledge is to some degree above legislation.”
Pressed on the ethics of releasing documents with names of possible military sources, he said it was “regrettable” that some individuals “may face a threat”. But he added there was no evidence that anyone had yet been targeted in Afghanistan and suggested that estimates of those at risk were inflated.
The Pentagon thinks that it has identified the 15,000 leaked documents and has also been studying them to assess the potential damage if they are released. Officials have indicated that allied nations involved in the campaign in Afghanistan might also be affected.
Geoff Morrell, press secretary to Robert Gates, the US Defence Secretary, told The Washington Post that the 15,000 documents were potentially “more explosive, more sensitive”. He said: “We have found many instances in which our allies or their forces are mentioned in these documents.”
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