Wikileaks to unveil Iraq War files

The Pentagon scoured through an Iraq War database Monday to prepare for a potential fallout from an expected release by Wikileaks of about 400,000 secret military reports.

The massive release, which could come this week, is set to dwarf the whistleblower website's previous publication of 77,000 classified US military documents on the war in Afghanistan in July that included the names of Afghan infor-mants and other details from raw intelligence reports.

An Icelandic spokesman for Wikileaks said Monday that the website would make new documents public "very soon."

In order to prepare for the new release, officials set up a 120-person task force several weeks ago to comb through the database and "determine what the possible impacts might be," said Colonel David Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman.

The US Department of Defense is concerned that the leak compiles "significant activities" from the war, which include incidents such as known attacks against coalition troops, Iraqi security forces, civilians or infrastructure in the country.

Lapan urged Wikileaks to return the documents to the US military, which he said found no need to redact them in the interim.

"Our position is redactions don't help; it's returning the documents to their rightful owner," he said. "We don't believe Wikileaks or others have the expertise needed. It's not as simple as just taking out names. There are other things and documents that aren't names that are also potentially damaging."

For the Iraq leak, Wikileaks is believed to be teaming up with the same news outlets as it did for the Afghanistan leak - The New York Times, Britain's Guardian and Der Spiegel of Germany, and Newsweek magazine has reported that all partners will release the material simultaneously.

Although the Iraq conflict has faded from public debate in the US in recent years, the document dump threatens to revive memories of some of the most trying times in the war, including the Abu Ghraib pris-oner abuse scandal.

It could also renew debate about foreign and domestic actors influencing Iraq, which has been wrestling with a political vacuum since an inconclusive election in March.

One source familiar with the Iraq documents said they are likely to contain revelations about civilian casualties, but expected them to cause less of a stir than the Afghan leak.

So far the investigation into the Afghan war leak has focused on Bradley Manning, who worked as an Army intelligence analyst in Iraq.

Manning is already under arrest and charged with leaking a classified video showing a 2007 helicopter attack that killed a dozen people in Iraq, including two Reuters journalists.

Launched in 2006, Wikileaks is facing internal troubles amid criticism that its releases harm US national security and an ongoing investigation into its founder, Julian Assange, over an alleged sex crime in Sweden.

Agencies