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The reports were first made available to three newspapers - The New York Times, England’s The Guardian and Germany’s Der Spiegel - whose staffs reported on their contents. The documents tell of Afghan civilian deaths, Pakistan’s involvement in aiding the Taliban insurgency and general chaos in the handling of the war in Afghanistan.
The documents’ release coincided with an already controversial vote in the House of Representatives about whether to provide $33 billion in funding for the Afghan war. The House eventually approved the funds in a 308-114 vote. However, Democrats were deeply divided, and the WikiLeaks documents increased some lawmakers’ doubts about whether President Obama’s strategy could work in Afghanistan.
What is WikiLeaks?
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Julian Assange provided three news outlets with the classified military information during wartime. This is not the first time his organization has leaked widely publicized information. |
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WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has come under fire for breaching U.S. security protocol by making the reports public.
Assange, a former computer hacker, set up WikiLeaks as a way to reveal the world’s secrets to all. The WikiLeaks website states, “We believe that transparency in government activities leads to reduced corruption, better government and stronger democracies. All governments can benefit from increased scrutiny by the world community, as well as their own people.”
WikiLeaks recently garnered international attention when it publicized a video of U.S. troops accidentally shooting at civilians and journalists from a helicopter in Iraq. The site also published e-mail exchanges between climate scientists which, it has been argued, question the existence of global warming.
Incident recalls Pentagon Papers, Freedom of the Press issues
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The Nixon Administration lost a Supreme Court case that sided with the NYTimes over "Pentagon Papers" surrounding the Vietnam War. |
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For many, the WikiLeaks incident recalled the controversy surrounding the Pentagon Papers, secret documents about the Vietnam War that were reported on by the New York Times in 1971. The Pentagon Papers were a study of the U.S. involvement in Vietnam between 1945 and 1967, and they showed that the U.S. government had misled Americans about the nature of the country’s presence in Vietnam.
President Richard Nixon’s administration sued the New York Times over the Pentagon Papers, insisting the newspaper had committed treason by publishing the top secret documents. The case went all the way to the Supreme Court, where the justices voted 6-3 in favor of the New York Times.
In its argument, the Supreme Court stated that “only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government." That argument was based on the U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, which says that “Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.”
Some say the leak broke the law
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Some in Congress have disregarded the information that WikiLeaks has made public, while the Obama Administration has condemned the whistle-blowing website. |
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Unlike the Pentagon Papers, the WikiLeaks documents do not show that the government deliberately misled Americans about the nature of the Afghan war. President Obama said that the documents don’t reveal any new information and show that his review of the Afghan war strategy in the fall of 2009 was necessary.
However, White House officials are concerned that the WikiLeaks documents contain details about specific military operations and the names of people involved. White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said the leak "poses a very real and potential threat to those that are working hard every day to keep us safe.”
A 22-year-old Army intelligence specialist is in custody for allegedly turning the documents over to WikiLeaks; he has been charged with stealing classified information. Philip Shenon, a reporter who has been covering the WikiLeaks story, told the NewsHour that “it is just remarkable what we are learning about how much…top-secret information is available to very junior officers in the military and other government employees."
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I think we've been witnessing violence for years, whether in reality through the media or through video games, and I don't think that's a first-hand effect.
