WikiLeaks: Facing 90,000 documents, US officials take go-slow approach
| Washington
厂耻苍诲补测鈥檚 WikiLeaks release of more than 90,000 classified documents has thrown US officials and some lawmakers on the defensive. But so far, many have opted for a restrained response.
Congress, for one, completed an emergency war-funding bill Tuesday, despite the WikiLeaks controversy. The Pentagon, meanwhile, has launched a probe into who leaked the trove 鈥� and whether the leaks put US forces or its allies at risk. But it is not gearing up to revamp its procedures.
Even before the classified documents have been fully analyzed, some top officials have argued that the files don鈥檛 actually reveal much new information.
鈥淭here is nothing in these documents, most of which date way back into the previous administration, that should change anyone's judgments about the situation in Afghanistan and Pakistan,鈥� said Richard Holbrooke, the US special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, in testimony Wednesday before a subcommittee of the House Appropriations Committee.
But in fact, the volume of this vast document dump is unprecedented, and it鈥檚 too early to come to conclusions on what an analysis of these documents could produce, says Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington.
鈥淗ardly anyone is going to go through the documents in detail,鈥� he says. 鈥淭hey are mesmerized by the mere phenomenon of the disclosure: The publication of 90,000 classified records is an astonishing act in itself.鈥�
He adds, 鈥淥n the one hand, it鈥檚 a sign of open defiance on the part of the publishers, WikiLeaks. On the other hand, it鈥檚 a sign of incompetence on the part of the military that failed to protect this material.鈥�
At the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Robert Gates launched an investigation this week into who leaked the documents to the group WikiLeaks.org. But so far, he is rejecting calls for changes in the way the US military shares information with uniformed members.
鈥淲hat makes our military the envy of the world is that we entrust the most junior officers, the most junior enlisted with incredible amounts of responsibility,鈥� said Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell in an interview Tuesday on MSNBC.
The Army鈥檚 criminal investigative division is also investigating the case of Army Spc. Bradley Manning, charged with leaking a video of a 2007 US helicopter attack in Iraq to WikiLeaks. But the new probe isn鈥檛 focused on any one individual, says Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan. 鈥淚t鈥檚 much broader. They鈥檙e going to look everywhere to determine what the source may be,鈥� he said in a briefing Tuesday.
On Capitol Hill, Sen. John Kerry (D) of Massachusetts called on the public to be cautious in its reading of what鈥檚 been released to date. 鈥淭hese documents appear to be primarily raw intelligence reports from the field, and as such anybody who鈥檚 dealt with those kinds of reports knows some of them are completely dismissible, some of them are completely unreliable, some of them are very reliable," he said at a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday.
鈥淏ut raw intelligence needs to be processed properly, and generally by people who have a context within which to put it. And so I think people need to be very careful in evaluating what they do read there,鈥� he added.
Defense analyst Michael O鈥橦anlon, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, calls the WikiLeaks controversy a distraction. 鈥淲ikiLeaks has us looking backward again, and that鈥檚 been our problem,鈥� he says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 time to give the new [Afghanistan] strategy a bit of time and analyze how it鈥檚 working. We need to worry not so much about responding to WikiLeaks but refocusing on what鈥檚 happening in Afghanistan.鈥�
For antiwar lawmakers, the documents are grist for the ongoing war debate. 鈥淭aken as a whole, the picture from these documents is pretty grim,鈥� says Rep. Jim McGovern (D) of Massachusetts. 鈥淲e need to put some more pressure on the Obama administration to change [its] strategy.鈥�
Related:
