Pentagon says not negotiating with Wikileaks
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The U.S. Defense Department won't negotiate a "minimized" or "sanitized" release of classified U.S. military information about the war in Afghanistan with Wikileaks, according to a letter released by the Pentagon on Wednesday.
WikiLeaks, a whistleblower website, earlier controversially published nearly 77,000 leaked U.S. military documents about the war, which the U.S. officers said might endanger the lives of those working for the U.S. troops in Afghanistan.
"The Department of Defense will not negotiate some 'minimized' or 'sanitized' version of a release by Wikileaks of additional U.S. government classified documents. The Department demands that nothing further be released by WikiLeaks," the letter said.
The Pentagon's top lawyer Jeh Charles Johnson sent the letter dated Aug. 16 to Timothy Matusheski, WikiLeaks' lawyer.
In the letter, Johnson said he understood WikiLeaks' intention to directly discuss with the Pentagon about "harm minimization" concerning the second batch of documents, but Matusheski was a "no show" for a phone call between the two sides at an agreed-on time.
Matusheski, for his part, said he never had a scheduled call with Pentagon officials.
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has stuck to the release of the remaining 15,000 documents, and repeatedly asked the Pentagon for help in analyzing the documents and minimizing the harm the release may cause.
However, the Pentagon has turned down the request, as acceptance would mean a nod to WikiLeaks' release of the classified information.
U.S. Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said, "There should be no further posting of these classified documents, and those that have been posted should be removed."
The Army's Criminal Investigation Division and the FBI are conducting an investigation into the leak of the documents.
WikiLeaks moved its servers to Sweden from the United States in 2007 as Sweden has laws protecting whistleblowers and a culture supporting Internet mavericks.
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