US says not negotiating with Wikileaks
By IANSThursday, August 19, 2010
WASHINGTON - The US has said it is not in direct contact with Wikileaks, a website that published tens of thousands of classified documents related to the Afghanistan war and has plans to publish more.
Defence Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said Wednesday the website contacted no “competent authorities” in the Pentagon and the department “has had no direct contact with WikiLeaks” although the website’s operator intends to use the media as intermediary, Xinhua reported Thursday.
The whistle-blowing website has already released 92,000 classified documents, and the site’s publisher said he plans to release about 15,000 more.
“Those documents should be returned,” Whitman said. “There should be no further posting of these classified documents, and those that have been posted should be removed.”
The department is not interested in negotiating with Wikileaks, Whitman said, noting that it’s against the law to release classified documents.
The army’s Criminal Investigation Division and the FBI are conducting an investigation into the leak of the documents.
