Wikileaks Releases Classified Afghan War Documents, But Does So Carefully

With the release of its Afghan War Diary, Wikileaks has just perpetrated what many are calling one of the largest leaks in military history. Comprising nearly 92,000 classified reports from Afghanistan, the Diary sheds new light on the challenges that the U.S. and coalition forces face on the ground, exposing the conflict as more dire than most may have imagined. The documents reveal, among other things, that Pakistan's secret service has been helping Afghan insurgents fight the U.S., even after receiving over $1 billion in American aid. The reports also claim that the CIA's paramilitary operations are expanding within the region, and that the Taliban has been using heat-seeking missiles against coalition aircraft.

In a statement, national security adviser General James Jones pointed out that the documents only span from January 2004 to December 2009, when President Obama officially announced a new approach to the war. Although Jones went on to claim that the leak could put American lives in danger, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange seems unconvinced. "We believe that the way to justice is transparency, and we are clear that the end goal is to expose injustices in the world and try to rectify them," Assange said.

Assange went on to explain that his site chose to go about the leak carefully, so as to minimize the potential for any violent fallout. Instead of going public with his scoop immediately, Assange selected three newspapers -- the New York Times, the Guardian, and Germany's Der Spiegel -- and gave them the documents 15 days before releasing them on the Web. As the New York Times explained to its readers, Wikileaks didn't say where it had received the documents, nor was Wikileaks involved in the Times' research, writing or editorial processes.

The Atlantic's Alexis Madrigal points out that this case is indicative of a broader trend, whereby major news outlets rely upon smaller groups of investigators to put stories together. Wikileaks, though, is an especially peculiar outfit, because no one really knows what it is; it's not a traditional news outlet, its ethics aren't clearly explained and its sources remain anonymous. NYU journalism professor Jay Rosen summed it up when he called the site "the first stateless news organization." "In media history up to now, the press is free to report on what the powerful wish to keep secret because the laws of a given nation protect it," Rosen wrote. "But Wikileaks is able to report on what the powerful wish to keep secret because the logic of the Internet permits it. This is new." [From: Washington Post, The Atlantic, New York Times, via: BoingBoing]

Tags: afghanistan, AfghanistanWar, CIA, documents, insurgency, journalism, JulianAssange, LeakedDocument, media, ObamaAdministration, pakistan, PakistaniTaliban, taliban, terrorism, top, war, Wikileaks