Anti-Secrecy Web Site Touts Pentagon 'Cover-Up' Video

WASHINGTON (April 2) -- An anti-secrecy Web site with a penchant for drama promised to release on Monday a classified U.S. military video that it alleges shows the indiscriminate killing of civilians and evidence of a "Pentagon cover-up."

WikiLeaks announced today it would be releasing "a previously unseen classified video showing the indiscriminate killing of civilians and alleged insurgents by U.S. military pilots within the past three years." The press conference follows a flurry of recent publicity for the Web site dedicated to airing official secrets.

In a series of dispatches from the organization's Twitter account, WikiLeaks in recent weeks has claimed it's been the target of a U.S. government surveillance campaign, with its employees followed by U.S. agents and a volunteer detained in Iceland.

WikiLeaks has built a credible record of obtaining and releasing sensitive and classified government materials as well as corporate documents. But other than a flurry of tweets, the organization has offered little proof to back up some of its recent persecution claims.

"Perhaps the Reykjavik police chief is also part of a global campaign to destroy WikiLeaks," Stephen Aftergood, the editor of Secrecy News, wrote of WikiLeaks' recent claims. "Or perhaps the whole story is one of mystification and error."

Money could also be an issue. Fundraising has been an ongoing challenge for WikiLeaks, which relies on private donations for its operating costs. In 2008 it offered to the highest bidder what it claimed were e-mails and documents related to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Ironically, WikiLeaks censored itself earlier this year, taking all of its material offline until it could raise enough donations. It later relented, at least in part, and resumed posting newly leaked documents -- including a Defense Department report devoted to WikiLeaks.

As of today, WikiLeaks says it has raised just $370,000 of its required $600,000 annual budget.

But for a Web site dedicated to extreme transparency, WikiLeaks has been surprisingly tight-lipped about what the video purports to show. "Allegations about the event have been previously made by the press, but the video provides dramatic proof and new facts," the announcement reads, without providing any further details.

One press report claimed the video shows a Jan. 8 air strike, but a spokesman for the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan said that no air strike from that day is a possibility. "One precision bomb was used in support of troops Jan. 8, but there were no reports of any civilian casualties following this operation," Lt. Col. Todd Vician, an ISAF Joint Command spokesman, told AOL News in an e-mail.

Vician also reviewed other operations in January and February of this year and said there were no incidents showing civilian casualties that were caused by ISAF operations.

More recent speculation is that the video is one of three controversial May 4, 2009, air strikes near the village of Gerani in Afghanistan's Farah province, which were part of U.S. military operations targeting the Taliban. The air strikes killed a number of civilians, and McClatchy Newspapers last year cited two military officials who said a video of the strike revealed that "no one checked to see whether any women or children were in the building before it was bombed."

In an interview with NPR, Gen. David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command, said that video of the air strike would be shown as part of a later press briefing.

U.S. Central Command later released the executive summary of an investigation into the three air strikes, which concluded that two of them did indeed cause civilian casualties. The report deemed the air strikes lawful, but said the inadvertent killing of civilians was "inconsistent with U.S. government objectives of providing security and safety for the Afghan people."

In June 2009, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the commanding general in Afghanistan, strictly limited air strikes. The video of the May strike, however, was never released.

"The reason we declassify imagery and provide it to the media/the public is so we can provide a better understanding of things when there is confusion or misinformation," Capt. Jack Hanzlik, a U.S. Central Command spokesman, told AOL News in an e-mail. "In this case, we were able to provide a clear, written account of the investigator's findings, and the imagery didn't help clarify anything further."

If the video is of the May bombing and shows evidence not revealed in the written report, it could prove embarrassing for the U.S. Central Command.

"I don't have any reason to believe this was the video," Hanzlik wrote.

In the meantime, WikiLeaks has been content to offer tantalizing hints but no solid proof. "You will have to wait until the press conference, but the material is extremely serious," Julian Assange, the editor of WikiLeaks, wrote in an e-mail to AOL News.