Pentagon Braces for Another WikiLeaks Dump
VOA News 18 October 2010
The U.S. Defense Department is bracing for a massive leak of more than 400,000 secret U.S. military documents on the website WikiLeaks.
Pentagon spokesmen say they are preparing for the expected leak of sensitive intelligence on the Iraq war.
The release is expected to dwarf the website's July publication of 77,000 classified military documents on the war in Afghanistan, including the names of Afghan informants and other details from raw intelligence reports.
At the time of the July leak, Pentagon officials said WikiLeaks may have the blood of U.S. soldiers and Afghan civilians on its hands.
Recent news reports quoted a private letter from Defense Secretary Robert Gates saying that while the leak endangered the lives of Afghans helping NATO forces, no U.S. intelligence sources or practices were compromised.
In the August 16 letter sent to Senator Carl Levin, the head of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gates said the disclosure could still cause "significant harm or damage" to U.S. security interests.
WikiLeaks has not identified the source of the documents it has released so far, but suspicion has fallen on Bradley Manning, a U.S. Army intelligence analyst.
Manning is under arrest and charged with leaking a classified video showing a 2007 helicopter attack that killed a dozen people in Iraq.
The timing of the Iraq leak remains unclear.
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