National Interest USA

By JULIAN E. BARNES And JEANNE WHALEN

U.S. defense officials on Thursday responded angrily to WikiLeaks’ plan to post additional Afghan war logs, with Defense Secretary Robert Gates suggesting that the move could further endanger the lives of Afghans who helped the U.S. war effort.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, speaking to a group in London by video link on Thursday, said his group had gone through 7,000 of the 15,000 documents the group has so far withheld from publishing. WikiLeaks had said it was withholding posting those documents until it had time to review them to block out the names of sources contained in the documents.

“Absolutely,” he replied when asked whether he still plans to publish the remaining documents.

The organization has already released some 76,000 classified documents covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010, leaked by a source the website has refused to identify.

The U.S. says it is investigating army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning as a possible source of the leak.

The documents touch on unreported incidents of Afghan civilian killings by North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces and covert operations against Taliban figures, among other things.

Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell said posting more documents would be “the height of irresponsibility.”

“The only responsible course of action for them is to immediately remove all the stolen documents from their website and expunge all classified material from their computers,” he said.

Earlier Thursday, Mr. Gates, responding to a question from a Navy sailor in San Diego, said intelligence sources have confirmed that al Qaeda and Taliban leaders have given direction to comb the documents looking for the names of Afghans who had helped the American war effort.

“I think the consequences are potentially very severe,” Mr. Gates said. “We don’t have specific information of an Afghan being killed yet because of them. But I put the emphasis on ‘yet.’ ”

WikiLeaks’ supporters say the accounts of the conflict should be publicized to reveal potential war crimes and the toll of the war.

Mr. Assange said some of the criticism has been “legitimate,” but repeated his earlier call for the Pentagon and human-rights groups to help him redact the names. “So far there has been no assistance,” he said.

He expressed some ambivalence about the need to protect Afghans who have helped the U.S. military. “We are not obligated to protect other people’s sources,” including sources of “spy organizations or militaries,” unless it is from “unjust retribution,” he said, adding that the Afghan public “should know about” people who have engaged in “genuinely traitorous” acts.

Mr. Assange said he still fears that the U.S. is trying to have him arrested for publishing the classified documents. He was meant to appear in person at the panel discussion about the media at London’s Frontline Club, but dialed in by Skype instead. Asked by an audience member for his current location, he said “no comment.” He appeared to have dyed his trademark white hair brown, and to have cut it in a close crop.

Write to Jeanne Whalen at jeanne.whalen@wsj.com

Tom Fenton – From: The Daily Telegraph. What damage .. Julian Assange, Australian-born editor-in-chief of whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. Source: AFP

the dust is sort of settling, what was the impact of tens of thousands of classified Afghanistan War documents which were dumped on the internet by WikiLeaks.org?

Was it – as most of the mainstream media immediately pronounced – the biggest intelligence leak since the Pentagon Papers?

It was certainly the most voluminous.

But it only added details to what serious newspaper readers already knew; war is messy, soldiers make mistakes, weapons sometimes hit the wrong targets – in short, that “stuff happens”, as Donald Rumsfeld said of the Iraq War.

In fact, you could find ammunition to make any point you want from the WikiLeaks.

It was all there – the good, the bad and the meaningless of years of combat.

What are we to make of Julian Assange’s bombshell? The WikiLeaks founder seemed to think it was a game changer. But ironically, the only thing it may change is the way the Pentagon manages its security. There may be fewer leaks in the future.

Obama supporters said the leaks showed what a mess the Bush administration’s counter-terrorism strategy left behind in Afghanistan, and pointed out that the current administration is now pursuing a potentially more successful counter-insurgency strategy.

That would have been more convincing if a few days later an administration official had not leaked to the New York Times that in fact the Pentagon now believes counter-terrorism (killing Taliban leaders) is more effective than counter-insurgency (protecting the Afghan population).

In fact the only big news in the WikiLeaks is that someone was able to turn so much secret information over to a whistle-blower website. That was the real shocker.

The Pentagon needs to pull up its socks and improve the security of its computer programs. And maybe it needs to stop classifying so many routine reports secret.

If it had fewer classified documents, it might do a better job keeping them secret.

Another big question raised by the leaks is whether they will change government policy on the Afghan war.

Since they told us very little (other than details) that we did not already know, they are not likely to change public opinion – which anyway in America and Europe is already against the war.

If anything, WikiLeaks is a tribute to how well old-fashioned journalists of the mainstream media have kept the public informed of how the war is going.

Certainly, coverage of the war has become thinner in the past few years but it’s enough to give the public the general picture: The war is not going well.

It does not seem “winnable” in a strictly military sense of the word.

And of course, the Obama administration and a number of high-ranking military officers have also told us that.

The inevitable outcome of the war in Afghanistan is already clear. American and allied troops will be going home soon.

The Taliban will remain.

The Afghan population and neighbouring Pakistan have already drawn the obvious conclusion.

They know who they will have to do business with.

A gunman coolly drew a weapon from his pocket and opened fire at the teeming subway entrance to the Pentagon complex on Thursday evening, wounding two police officers before being shot and critically wounded, officials said.

Authorities said all three were taken to a hospital.

Richard Keevill, chief of Pentagon police, said the two officers suffered grazing wounds that were not life-threatening.

The suspect, believed to be a US citizen, walked up to a security checkpoint at the Pentagon in an apparent attempt to get inside the Defence Department headquarters, at about 6.40pm (1040 AEDT today).

“He just reached in his pocket, pulled out a gun and started shooting,” Keevill said. “He walked up very cool. He had no real emotion on his face.”

The Pentagon officers returned fire with semiautomatic weapons. “His (the suspect’s) injury is pretty critical,” Keevill said.

The rush-hour assault happened outside a massively fortified building that nevertheless is near busy crowds of transit riders.

The subway station is immediately adjacent to the Pentagon building. Since a redesign following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the Pentagon, riders can no longer disembark directly into the building. Riders take a long escalator ride to the surface from the underground station, then pass through a security check outside the doors of the building, where further security awaits.

In the immediate aftermath, all Pentagon entrances were secured, then all were reopened except one from the subway, said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman.

A Pentagon official working late in the building said people inside first heard of the shooting on television. They were later told the building was locked down and to stay in place. The huge five-sided building is crisscrossed by 10 main corridors.

Then at around 7.30pm (1140 AEDT), they heard an announcement on the public address system that they could leave through Corridor 3 – one widely used to get access to one of the parking lots.

“We really don’t know anything, just that we can leave now through that corridor,” one official said on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorised to speak about the incident.

AP