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Pentagon Has Team Ready To Respond To WikiLeaks Iraq Documents


The U.S. Defense Department says it has put together a 120-person team to respond to the potential leak of hundreds of thousands of U.S. documents connected to the Iraq war, many of them meant to be secret.

The WikiLeaks website is expected to release the documents sometime before the end of October.

A Pentagon spokesman, Colonel Dave Lapan, told the Reuters news agency that the timing of the leak remained unclear, but the Defense Department was ready for a release as early as October 18 or October 19.

Lapan said the team had been reviewing Iraq war files to prepare responses to a possible WikiLeaks release of U.S. documents that could feature details on battle activity and casualties.

In July, WikiLeaks released more than 70,000 Afghan war documents in the largest security breach of its kind in U.S. military history.

WikiLeaks, a nonprofit organization, has not disclosed how it obtained the documents. The Pentagon has demanded that the website return all classified information.

compiled from agency reports

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