US warns of ‘damaging’ Wikileaks

Wikileaks plans to release seven times as many documents as it did in October

Wikileaks’ plan to release millions more classified American documents will damage the US and its relations, the state department has warned.

A spokesman said: “These revelations are harmful to the United States and our interests.”

He added: “They are going to create tension in relationships between our diplomats and our friends around the world.”

The whistleblower website says it will publish nearly three million documents.

The spokesman, PJ Crowley, said the state department had known for some time that Wikileaks had obtained some of its classified documents. He said congress had been warned of the impending leak.

He added that US diplomatic missions around the world had begun notifying other governments that the documents may be released within days.

“We wish this would not happen, but we are obviously prepared for the possibility that it will,” he said.

A Pentagon spokesman, Col David Lapan, said the defence department had also notified congressional committees of the expected Wikileaks release.

He said that although the files were believed to be state department documents, they could contain information about military tactics or reveal the identities of sources.

Wikileaks said on Monday that it planned to release seven times as many documents as it released in October, when it posted some 400,000 documents about the Iraq war on its site.

In a message on its Twitter feed, it said: “Next release is 7x the size of the Iraq War Logs. intense pressure over it for months. Keep us strong.”

It would be Wikileaks’ third mass release of classified documents after it published 77,000 secret US files on the Afghan conflict in July.

Wikileaks argues the release of the documents has shed light on the wars, including allegations of torture and reports that suggest 15,000 additional civilian deaths in Iraq.

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