USA — Chairman Appalled by Wikileaks Release

ABOARD A U.S. MILITARY AIRCRAFT, July 27, 2010 — The chair­man of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said he is “appalled” by the breach of secu­ri­ty rep­re­sent­ed by the Wik­ileaks case.

Navy Adm. Mike Mullen told reporters trav­el­ing with him that the leaks could put Amer­i­can ser­vice­mem­bers at risk. Inves­ti­ga­tors are still sift­ing through some 90,000 clas­si­fied doc­u­ments to deter­mine the exact harm that the release could bring, he said. 

The chair­man said the infor­ma­tion is old­er – from 2004 to 2009 – and this may mit­i­gate the sit­u­a­tion to an extent. Many of the doc­u­ments are field reports cov­er­ing the sit­u­a­tion in Pakistan. 

“From the time I’ve been chair­man I’ve been very clear about the need to improve the rela­tion­ship with Pak­istan, re-estab­lish the trust that was bro­ken in the 1990s,” he said. “In the Afghanistan-Pak­istan strat­e­gy, none of us have been any­thing but very forth­com­ing on the crit­i­cal­i­ty of Pak­istan. We can’t get at the safe havens that we know exist in Pak­istan with­out their cooperation.” 

The chair­man is very con­cerned about the release of these doc­u­ments. “Releas­ing clas­si­fied doc­u­ments could put in jeop­ardy Amer­i­can lives,” he said. 

“We’re going through a review to see in fact if that release has done that. But in my expe­ri­ence with troops from con­ven­tion­al to spe­cial forces, I think some­times peo­ple don’t appre­ci­ate what infor­ma­tion could be out there that makes their jobs a lot more dif­fi­cult and in fact, could jeop­ar­dize their lives.” 

“I feel very strong­ly to do all we can to make sure leaks like this don’t occur in the future,” he continued. 

Mullen spoke to the reporters aboard an Air Force C‑17 trans­port fol­low­ing meet­ing in Kab­ul, Bagram and Kan­da­har, Afghanistan. Pre­vi­ous­ly the chair­man had vis­it­ed Islam­abad, Pak­istan; New Del­hi, India and Seoul, South Korea. 

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs) 

Face­book and/or on Twit­ter

Team GlobDef

Seit 2001 ist GlobalDefence.net im Internet unterwegs, um mit eigenen Analysen, interessanten Kooperationen und umfassenden Informationen für einen spannenden Überblick der Weltlage zu sorgen. GlobalDefence.net war dabei die erste deutschsprachige Internetseite, die mit dem Schwerpunkt Sicherheitspolitik außerhalb von Hochschulen oder Instituten aufgetreten ist.

Alle Beiträge ansehen von Team GlobDef →