WikiLeaks challenges Pentagon
Source:
WikiLeaks challenges Pentagon - Arab News
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange attends a seminar at the Swedish Trade Union Confederation headquarters in Stockholm Saturday. News reports said that WikiLeaks plans to release soon about 15,000 documents on the Afghan war it held back last month. WikiLeaks caused an uproar when it published more than 70,000 documents in July, at a time when US public and congressional support for the nine-year war in Afghanistan is flagging. (Reuters)
STOCKHOLM: WikiLeaks will publish its remaining 15,000 Afghan war documents within a month, despite warnings from the US government, the organization's founder said Saturday.
The Pentagon has said that secret information will be even more damaging to security and risk more lives than WikiLeaks' initial release of some 76,000 war documents.
This organization will not be threatened by the Pentagon or any other group, Assange told reporters in Stockholm. We proceed cautiously and safely with this material.
In an interview with The Associated Press, he said that if US defense officials want to be seen as promoting democracy then they must protect what the United States' founders considered to be their central value, which is freedom of the press.
For the Pentagon to be making threatening demands for censorship of a press organization is a cause for concern, not just for the press but for the Pentagon itself, the Australian added.
He said WikiLeaks was about halfway though a line-by-line review of the 15,000 documents and that innocent parties who are under reasonable threat would be redacted from the material.
It should be approximately two weeks before that process is complete, Assange told AP. There will then be a journalistic review, so you're talking two weeks to a month.
WikiLeaks would be working with media partners in releasing the remaining documents, he said, but declined to name them.
The first files in WikiLeaks' Afghan War Diary laid bare classified military documents covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010. The release angered US officials, energized critics of the NATO-led campaign, and drew the attention of the Taleban, which has promised to use the material to track down people it considers traitors.
That has aroused the concern of several human rights group operating in Afghanistan and the Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders, which has accused WikiLeaks of recklessness. Jean-Francois Julliard, the group's secretary-general, said Thursday that WikiLeaks showed incredible irresponsibility when posting the documents online.
WikiLeaks describes itself as a public service organization for whistle-blowers, journalists and activists.
There are no easy choices for our organization, Assange said. We have a duty to the people most directly affected by this material, the people of Afghanistan and the course of this war which is killing hundreds every week. We have a duty to the broader historical record and its accuracy and its integrity. And we have a duty to our sources to try and protect them where we can.
Assange told the AP that while no country has taken steps to shut down WikiLeaks, some have been gathering intelligence on the organization.
There has been extensive surveillance in Australia, there has been surveillance in the United Kingdom, there has been the detainment of one of our volunteers who entered the United States a week and a half ago. But he was released after four hours, Assange said.
In addition to speaking at a seminar, Assange was in Sweden to investigate claims that the website was not covered by laws protecting anonymous sources in the Scandinavian country.
Assange confirmed that WikiLeaks passes information through Belgium and Sweden to take advantage of press freedom laws there. But some experts say the site does not have the publishing certificate needed for full protection in Sweden.
Assange said two Swedish publications had offered their publication certificates to WikiLeaks, but we will soon be registering our own this week. He declined to disclose what other countries house WikiLeaks' technical infrastructure