. . . June
WikiLeaks says it won't be threatened by Pentagon
By KEITH MOORE, Associated Press Sat Aug 14, 11:40 am ET
WikiLeaks will publish its remaining 15,000 Afghan war documents within a month, despite warnings from the U.S. government, the organization's founder said Saturday.
The Pentagon has said that secret information will be even more damaging to security and risk more lives than WikiLeaks' initial release of some 76,000 war documents.
"This organization will not be threatened by the Pentagon or any other group," Julian Assange told reporters in Stockholm. "We proceed cautiously and safely with this material."
In an interview with The Associated Press, he said that if U.S. defense officials want to be seen as promoting democracy then they "must protect what the United States' founders considered to be their central value, which is freedom of the press."
"For the Pentagon to be making threatening demands for censorship of a press organization is a cause for concern, not just for the press but for the Pentagon itself," the Australian added.
He said WikiLeaks was about halfway though a "line-by-line review" of the 15,000 documents and that "innocent parties who are under reasonable threat" would be redacted from the material.
"It should be approximately two weeks before that process is complete," Assange told AP. "There will then be a journalistic review, so you're talking two weeks to a month."
Wikileaks would be working with media partners in releasing the remaining documents, he said, but declined to name them.
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What do you think? Is the Pentagon correct in trying to muzzle WikiLeaks? Or are the WikiLeaks people right in insisting on their right to publish the documents? Leave a comment
. . . June
