Pentagon demands return of leaked war documents

The Pentagon demanded today that a website that solicits leaked government secrets stop publishing more secret military documents and pull back tens of thousands of secret Afghan war logs already posted on the internet.

The demand, which the Pentagon has no independent power to enforce, is primarily aimed at preventing the release of about 15,000 secret documents that the whistleblower website WikiLeaks has said it is holding.

The Pentagon also hopes to stop WikiLeaks from making public the contents of a mammoth encrypted file recently added to the site. Contents of that file remain a mystery.

“We are asking them to do the right thing,” Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said. “I don’t know that we’re very confident they’ll have a change of heart.”

WikiLeaks did not immediately reply to calls and emails seeking comment on the Pentagon’s demand, although on its Twitter feed the group seemed dismissive, calling Mr Morrell “obnoxious” and saying his demand was tantamount to a “formal threat”.

WikiLeaks posted more than 76,900 classified military and other documents, mostly raw intelligence reports from Afghanistan, on its website on July 25. The 15,000 additional documents are apparently related to that material.

The documents leaked so far illustrate the frustration of US forces in fighting the protracted Afghan conflict and revived debate over the war’s uncertain progress. The White House angrily condemned the leaks, saying they put the lives of Afghan informants and US troops at risk.

“The Defence Department demands that WikiLeaks return immediately to the US government all versions of documents obtained directly or indirectly from the Department of Defence databases or records,” Mr Morrell said.

He called the material stolen property, but would not say whether the demand was a prelude to legal action against the website or others.

Mr Morrell spoke at a Pentagon press conference that amounted to a televised public appeal to the secretive site and its editor in chief, Julian Assange.

Generally speaking, WikiLeaks has so far struck an uncompromising tone, with Mr Assange telling journalists in London last week that he had no obligation to the US military and found the very notion of “national security” ridiculous.

US Army private Bradley Manning is custody on suspicion of leaking classified material to WikiLeaks in a previous case. He was a “person of interest” in the latest release, Mr Morrell said.

As a practical matter, the Pentagon has little, if any, hope that it can recapture all electronic forms of the documents already placed online and since downloaded and examined by countless people.

“The genie is out of the bottle,” Mr Morrell acknowledged later, but said WikiLeaks would make matters worse by releasing more information.

The Pentagon has had no direct contact with WikiLeaks about possible efforts to redact those documents to make them less of a security threat, he said, and he ruled out such an exercise.

“We’re not looking to have a conversation about harm minimisation,” Mr Morrell said. “We’re looking to have a conversation about how to get these perilous documents off the website as soon as possible, return them to their rightful owners and expunge them from their records.”

The Pentagon had some idea what the 15,000 unpublished documents contain, he said.

US intelligence and security officials appear worried that the unpublished material contains more damaging secrets than were contained in the low-level military intelligence reports first released.

WikiLeaks claimed on Wednesday that the group had always sought – and was still seeking – to open a line of communication with the Defence Department.

“WikiLeaks have wanted that for some time,” the website said. But it added that the Pentagon had so far made no attempt to make contact directly.

WikiLeaks has posted a huge encrypted file named “Insurance” to its website, raising the possibility that the organisation may be prepared to release another wave of secret material if the US government attempts to block the site or target its operators.

Bloggers have noted that the file is 20 times the size of the batch already released.

WikiLeaks would not comment yesterday on the 1.4-gigabyte file beyond a vague reference to “security procedures”.