Washington: The Pentagon is investigating who leaked an enormous cache of military documents on the Afghan war, and whether the material placed troops at risk, spokesman Geoff Morrell said Tuesday.
"Our first priority is to figure out whether there`s anything in here ... that could endanger our forces," Morrell told reporters.
"But, obviously, we want to figure out who did this and make sure there isn`t more coming and others who are leaking this."
Some 92,000 documents dating from 2004 to 2009 were released to The New York Times, Britain`s Guardian newspaper and Germany`s Der Spiegel news weekly by the whistleblowers` website Wikileak, which posted them on Sunday.
Morrell complained that WikiLeaks "didn`t have the decency to contact this department and to alert us to the fact that this information was about to be dumped, and thereby
potentially adversely impacting the well-being of our forces."
In the past, he said, "responsible" news organisations have approached the Pentagon before publishing such documents to try to determine whether they might "harm our forces" if made public.
The WikiLeaks people "claim to be going through these documents to render judgement about whether or not anything inside could harm US forces, but what`s their expertise when it comes to making those judgements?" Morrell asked.
"We`re the only ones who are really equipped to make that judgement. They certainly don`t seem to have those kinds of expertise, so that is disturbing."
Bureau Report
