Pentagon dealing with doc leaks, new media environment
White House calls the disclosures \'alarming\" and scrambles to assess the damage.
From “Damage from leaks? WH says disclosure alarming” on FederalNewsRadio.com:
“The monumental leak of classified Afghan war documents threatened Monday to create new conflict with Pakistan, whose spy agency was a focus of much of the material, and raised questions about Washington’s own ability to protect military secrets. The White House called the disclosures ‘alarming” and scrambled to assess the damage.
“The documents are described as battlefield reports compiled by various military units that provide an unvarnished look at combat in the past six years, including U.S. frustration over reports Pakistan secretly aided insurgents and civilian casualties at the hand of U.S. troops.
“WikiLeaks.org, a self-described whistleblower organization, posted 76,000 of the reports to its website Sunday night. The group said it is vetting another 15,000 documents for future release.
“Col. Dave Lapan, a Defense Department spokesman, said the military would probably need ‘days, if not weeks’ to review all the documents and determine ‘the potential damage to the lives of our service members and coalition partners.’
“The White House says it didn’t try to stop news organizations who had access to secret U.S. military documents from publishing reports about the leaks. However, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said it did ask WikiLeaks – through reporters who were given advanced copies of the documents – to redact information in the documents that could harm U.S. military personnel.
“It was not clear whether Wikileaks’ decision to withhold 15,000 of its files was related.
“The Pentagon declined to respond to specifics detailed in the documents, including reports of the Taliban’s use of heat-seeking anti-aircraft missiles.”
Federal News Radio National Security Correspondent JJ Green joined me at the beginning of the show to analyze the Wikileaks release and discuss the fallout for the military and intelligence communities.
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