The Pentagon said yesterday it would not negotiate with WikiLeaks to create “a sanitised version” of a second batch of classified Afghan war documents the whistleblower website plans to release.
A WikiLeaks insider in Iceland said the US military was willing to discuss removing sensitive information from the 15,000 confidential documents, but the Pentagon appeared to deny this was the case.
“We’ve had no direct contact with WikiLeaks,” said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman. “We are not interested in negotiating a sanitised version of the classified documents.”
WikiLeaks has already released nearly 77,000 leaked classified US military documents about the war in Afghanistan and is preparing to publish 15,000 more, despite criticism that doing so could endanger lives, since the files include names of some Afghan informants.