The State Department has warned the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks that its expected release of classified United States documents would endanger countless lives, jeopardise American military operations and hurt international cooperation on global security issues.
The department’s top lawyer urged WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in a letter on Saturday to keep classified documents off the website, remove records of them from its database and return any material to the US government.
Lawyer Harold Koh said the department has learned that WikiLeaks provided about 250Â 000 documents to the New York Times, the Guardian and Der Spiegel.
Some media reports indicated the news outlets may post stories on the documents as early as Sunday and said they have also been given to newspapers Le Monde and El PaÃs.
Lives at risk
Koh wrote that publication of the documents would “place at risk the lives of countless innocent individuals” as well as military initiatives and cooperation between countries to confront problems from terrorism to pandemic disease.
The lawyer also rejected what he said was Assange’s request for more information about individuals who might be at risk from publication of the documents.
“We will not engage in a negotiation regarding the further release or dissemination of illegally obtained US government classified materials,” Koh wrote.
The letter echoed concerns expressed by Admiral Mike Mullen, chairperson of the US military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, in an interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS.
“I would hope that those who are responsible for this would, at some point in time, think about the responsibility that they have for lives that they’re exposing and the potential that’s there and stop leaking this information,” Mullen said in the interview due to air on Sunday.
Past releases by WikiLeaks, founded by Assange, an Australian-born computer hacker, contained sensitive information about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which the US government had said compromised national security and put some people at risk.
The British Foreign Office on Sunday condemned the releases, saying they could “damage national security, are not in the national interest and, as the US have said, may put lives at risk”.
“We have a very strong relationship with the US government. That will continue,” according to a statement quoted by the Guardian. – Reuters and Staff reporter