US angry over leaked files

WASHINGTON – The Pentagon said yesterday it was trying to assess the damage caused by the Internet leak of some 91 000 classified documents on the Afghanistan war. 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 United States frustration over reports Pakistan secretly aided insurgents and civilian casualties at the hand of United States troops. Wikileaks.org, a self-described whistleblower organisation, posted the reports to its website Sunday night. Colonel Dave Lapan, a Defence 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 organisations who had access to secret United States 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 United States military personnel. The Pentagon declined to respond to specifics detailed in the documents, including reports of the Taliban’s use of heat-seeking anti-aircraft missiles.“Just because they are posted on the Internet, doesn’t make them unclassified,” Lapan said. The Pentagon says it is still investigating the source of the documents. The military has detained Bradley Manning, a former Army intelligence analysts in Baghdad, for allegedly transmitting classified informetion. But the latest documents could have come from anyone with a secret-level clearance, Lapan said. (AP)