WASHINGTON — The Obama administration on Friday implored the website WikiLeaks to stop posting secret Afghanistan war documents, as the Pentagon pressed its investigation of the massive security breach by bringing a soldier under scrutiny back to the U.S. for trial.
Administration officials said the investigation into the release of the documents — more than 76,900 so far — could extend beyond members of the military.
White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said WikiLeaks’ online posting of mostly raw military intelligence reports jeopardized national security and put the lives of Afghan informants and U.S. troops at risk.
Asked what the Obama administration could do to stop WikiLeaks from disclosing thousands of similar documents it claims to have, Gibbs said, “We can do nothing but implore the person that has those classified top-secret documents not to post any more.”
The Pentagon’s inquiry has been looking most closely at Pfc. Bradley Manning, an Army intelligence analyst charged with leaking a helicopter video from Iraq to the WikiLeaks website.
Manning, 22, also has been charged with illegally obtaining more than 150,000 classified State Department cables and leaking more than 50 of them. It is not clear from the charges whether the allegedly diverted documents were those published on the WikiLeaks site.
The Associated Press
