Afghan Wikileaks 'could put lives at risk'
Updated
At war: Paratroopers fron the US 82nd Airborne Division leap away from the collapsing wreckage of a civilian truck that hit a buried mine in Herat Province (Getty Images: Chris Hondros)
The United States says the release of tens of thousands of secret documents about the Afghanistan war breaches federal law and potentially threatens national security.Spanning a six-year period, they reveal details of assassination plots, field intelligence, Pakistan's alleged support for the Taliban, and previously unreported civilian deaths during the period George W Bush was in office.
There is reportedly even a reference to a plot to poison Western troops' beer supplies.
The US has condemned the leaks, with the White House saying they could threaten national security and endanger American lives. The source of the leaks has not been confirmed and the Pentagon says it could take days or weeks to assess the damage that has been caused.
The previously secret documents also include several references to Australian forces.
They include: A July 2006 attack where an Australian and Danish soldier were injured, possibly by friendly fire, when their fortified position collapsed; A December 2008 mortar engagement with insurgents that left an Australian soldier wounded; and an account of children being taken to hospital after Australian soldiers fired at a car at a checkpoint.
There is also a report that in early April 2007, a senior Australian Defence official advised that the then-Howard government was planning to nearly double the number of Australian defence personnel in Uruzgan province from 500 to 1,000.
The report mentions that the Australian government was not planning to announce the new deployment for another five days, and the Australian official asks the US not to publicly mention it.
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange says another reference to Australia involves an escalation of force by Australian troops.
"A shooting passing a convoy as an example, but I haven't looked at that material in detail so I'm not qualified to speak about it, but there are a number of reports that concern Australian troops," he said.
The files cover many different aspects of the almost nine-year-old war, including the Taliban's use of heat-seeking anti-aircraft missiles.
Mr Assange says there are another 15,000 files on Afghanistan which are still being vetted by his organisation.
The Obama administration is furious.
"It poses a very real and potential threat to those that are working hard every day to keep us safe," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
Mr Gibbs says the release is illegal and a breach of national security, and insists there is nothing new in the documents.
"What generally governs the classification of these documents are names, operations, personnel, people that are cooperating, all of which, if it's compromised, has a compromising effect on our security," he said.
The Pentagon is scrambling to assess the damage done caused by the leak.
A spokesman says the review could take "days if not weeks".
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