Washington: The Pentagon scoured through an Iraq war database on Monday to prepare for potential fallout from an expected release by WikiLeaks of some 4,00,000 secret military reports.
The massive release, possibly early this week, is set to dwarf the whistle-blower website's publication of 77,000 classified US military documents on the war in Afghanistan in July, including the names of Afghan informants and other details from raw intelligence reports.
Another 15,000 are due out soon.
In order to prepare for the anticipated release of sensitive intelligence on the US-led Iraq war, officials set up a 120-person task force several weeks ago to comb through the database and "determine what the possible impacts might be," said Colonel David Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman.
The Department of Defense is concerned the leak compiles "significant activities" from the war, which include incidents such as known attacks against coalition troops, Iraqi security forces, civilians or infrastructure in the country.
The data was culled from an Iraq-based database that contained "significant acts, unit-level reporting, tactical reports, things of that nature," said Lapan, noting that Pentagon officials still do not know how many and which documents would be released.
He urged WikiLeaks to return the documents to the US military, which he said found no need to redact them in the interim.
"Our position is redactions don't help, it's returning the documents to their rightful owner," Lapan said.