Wikileaks, Afghanistan and Pakistan

On 25 July 2010, the New York Times carried an explosive story by Mark Mazzetti, Jane Perlez, Eric Schmitt and Andrew W. Lehren about some 92,000 classified Pentagon documents which had passed into the hands of Wikileaks, a Sweden-based whistleblowerwebsite headed by Julian Assange. Ostensibly, the leak sent shock waves through the US Administration – not just for the sheer volume of the leaked material but also because the revelations could significantly affect the course of the war in Afghanistan.
The documents comprised a host of field intelligence reports initiated by covert sources, combat units and the Afghan intelligence agency, the National Directorate of Security (NDS). Much of the plethora of documents is a compilation of assorted reports known as “collation” in the intelligence craft. Such stuff is not deemed to be intelligence until it is sifted, corroborated and analysed for its value, the authenticity of the source and the plausibility of the information. The documents cover the period from 2004 to 2009. The fact that that such a large array of reports remained unprocessed for this long is a poor reflection on the Pentagon’s efficiency.
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