Pentagon braces for Wikileaks release of 400,000 files on Iraq

Whistleblowing website prepares to release some 400,000 classified US military documents on the war in Iraq.

The Pentagon has assembled a 120-member team to prepare for the expected publication of some 400,000 Iraq war documents on the Wikileaks website.

The documents are thought to concern battle activity, Iraqi security forces and civilian casualties.

Colonel Dave Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, said the timing of the leak remained unclear but are preparing for it to be as early as Monday or Tuesday – a possibility raised in previous WikiLeaks statements.

The Pentagon said on Sunday it wants the documents back to avoid “potentially damaging” information being released.

‘Significant file’

Lapan said the files were from an Iraq-based database that contained “significant acts, unit-level reporting, tactical reports, things of that nature”.

If confirmed, the leak would be much larger than the record-breaking release of more than 70,000 Afghan war documents in July, which stoked debate about the nine-year-old conflict but did not contain major revelations.

Spencer Ackerman, a journalist who has covered Wikileaks extensively, told Al Jazeera this particular release of documents would dwarf Wikileaks’ July publication of more than 70,000 Afghan war files.

“The Pentagon recently assessed that the initial impact of the Afghanistan document release was not as great as they had feared. This time, however, Wikileaks is talking about releasing in the neighbourhood of 400,000 documents as opposed to the 92,000 they obtained from Afghanistan – it may in fact be very significant,” he said.

“A history of the Iraq war that no one has ever seen, from 2004 to 2009, will be out in the public domain.”

According to Ackerman, the documents are expected to include “a lot of frontline military reports about how US troops perceived the war”.