WASHINGTON, (Reuters) – The Pentagon said yesterday it had a 120-member team prepared to review a massive leak of as many as 500,000 Iraq war documents, which are expected to be released by the WikiLeaks website sometime this month.
Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan told Reuters the timing of the leak remained unclear but the Defense Department was ready for a document dump as early as Monday or Tuesday, a possibility raised in previous WikiLeaks statements.
Still, people familiar with the upcoming leak told Reuters they do not expect WikiLeaks to release the classified files for at least another week.
If confirmed, the leak would be much larger than the record-breaking release of more than 70,000 Afghan war documents in July, which stoked debate about the 9-year-old conflict but did not contain major revelations.
It was the largest security breach of its kind in U.S. military history.
“It’s the same team we put together after the publication of the (Afghan war documents),” Lapan said, adding it was unclear how many of the 120 personnel would be needed to contribute to the Iraq leak analysis.
Although the Iraq conflict has faded from public debate in the United States in recent years, the document dump threatens to revive memories of some of the most trying times in the war, including the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal.
