Informants Allegedly Endangered by WikiLeaks Release

LONDON (July 28) -- The lives of hundreds of Afghan informants working with NATO forces, as well as their families, may have been put in danger by the release of more than 75,000 confidential military documents by the WikiLeaks site, according to the London Times.

The paper today reported that in just two hours of trawling through the trove of information, it pulled out the names of dozens of Afghans who allegedly provided intelligence to coalition forces. U.S. officers recorded detailed logs of the informants' personal details -- including their home village and in many cases their father's name -- and the information that was handed over. Michael Hayden, a former director of the CIA, told the Times that militants would now be able to discover "who was in the room" when NATO operations were planned, giving them the option to "punish the traitor."

Among the damning documents found by the paper is a 2008 report of an interview with a militant considering defection, who gave details of other potential Taliban turncoats. The fighter is named in the report, as is his father and village -- but the Times withheld those details out of fear it could put the man at risk of reprisals. "The meeting ended with [X] agreeing to meet with intel personnel from the battalion," the report states. It is not known if the fighter subsequently switched sides.

Speaking on NBC's "Today" program this morning, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said his organization took the allegations "seriously" and was "checking to see whether this is in fact credible. It is probably unlikely." He noted that WikiLeaks had held back 15,000 intelligence reports from its initial release Monday, because the U.S. military had classified them in such a way that implied some might contain the names and details of informants.

"We have taken care to in fact hold back 15,000 [papers] for review," he said, adding that if any informants' names had been made public, "this would be because of a misclassification [on the part] of the U.S. military itself."

During a talk at London's Frontline Club (a meeting space for journalists) Tuesday night, Assange repeatedly emphasized that WikiLeaks had a "harm-minimization policy" in place designed to protect human life.

"We held back 15,000 reports not because we viewed them as any threat to Western forces in Afghanistan," he said, "but because a very few number mention the names of local Afghans who might have been subject to retribution. We decided to pause and study these documents further."

He told the audience that his organization drew on a panel of ex-military and ex-intelligence agency employees, as well as people "that write for strategic magazines," to decide whether the release of a document could put someone's life at risk. And he confidently declared that WikiLeaks was more than capable of deciding the danger posed by an individual report .

"We have read more leaked documents than any other organization -- apart from spy agencies -- on earth," he said. "So if anyone can apply that policy, surely we can do it."