CDF says leak could endanger Afghans

Wikileaks documents could potentially imperil Afghans who work with Australian
troops in Afghanistan, Defence head Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston has warned.
Air Chief Marshal Houston said that particularly applied to 15,000 Wikileaks
documents yet to be published.
"The concern is that some of those documents actually have names in them of people
we work with in Afghanistan," he told reporters.
"The concern is that those Afghans might be imperilled by the release of those
document unless they are suitably redacted."
In late July Wikileaks, a website which specialises in leaked government documents,
revealed a first tranche of some 77,000 assorted US military, intelligence and
diplomatic documents relating to the conflict in Afghanistan.
Another 15,000 have yet to be disclosed.
The Australian Defence Department formed a task force to assess whether this massive
leak would have any impact on the safety of Australia's 1,550 troops in Afghanistan.
At that stage it appeared not, with Australia rating only fleeting and seemingly
unexceptional references.
However, US commentators attacked Wikileaks for failing to remove the names of
Afghans working with US forces.
An Australian defence spokesman said defence was continuing the internal review of
documents now in the public domain and that was taking some time.
"An important part of this review was determining the force protection implications
for our personnel deployed on operations," the spokesman said.
He said Defence would not comment on details within the material released by Wikileaks.
"While we note that the information contained in the Wikileaks material is now dated
and does not relate to current operations we expect that the Taliban will try to
exploit this information in any way they can," he said.
"The release of this information is at best disappointing."



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