A criminal investigation into the leak of tens of thousands of secret Afghanistan war logs could go beyond the military, US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said on Thursday, and he did not rule out that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange could be a target.
“The investigation should go wherever it needs to go,” Gates said.
Gates would not be more specific, waving off questions about whether Assange, who is Australian, or media outlets that used the WikiLeaks material could be subjects of the criminal probe. However, he said he had asked the FBI to help in the investigation “to ensure that it can go wherever it needs to go.”
The US Army is leading an inquiry inside the defense department into who downloaded about 91,000 secret documents and passed the material to WikiLeaks, an online archive that describes itself as a public service organization for whistle-blowers, journalists and activists.
The Pentagon inquiry is looking most closely at Private Bradley Manning, a US Army intelligence specialist who was already charged with leaking other material to the Web site.
The FBI would presumably handle aspects of the investigation that involve civilians outside the defense department, and the Department of Justice could bring charges in federal court.
Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called the release of the documents that WikiLeaks calls its “Afghan War Diary” deeply damaging and potentially life-threatening for Afghan informants or others who have taken risks to help the US and NATO war effort.
Theirs was the most sober assessment of the ramifications of the leak on Sunday of raw intelligence reports and other material dating to 2004.
“Mr Assange can say whatever he likes about the greater good he thinks he and his source are doing, but the truth is they might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family,” Mullen said.
Assange told the Australian Broadcasting Corp in an interview aired on Thursday that WikiLeaks had contacted the White House — via the New York Times acting as intermediary — and offered to let government officials go through the documents to make sure no innocent people were identified. The White House did not respond to the approach, he said.
Gates said that the Pentagon was tightening rules for handling classified material in war zones as a result of the leak. He did not mention Manning by name, and Pentagon officials caution that Manning may not be the sole target of the Army inquiry.
Manning was stationed at a small post outside Baghdad. If he was the source of the Afghan war logs, he would have been amassing material he had little if any reason to see.
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