Pentagon Hunts for Wikileaks Founder

DoD fears site will release classified US embassy cables
By Kevin Spak,  Newser Staff
Posted Jun 11, 2010 10:26 AM CDT
Pentagon Hunts for Wikileaks Founder
Julian Assange, Wikileaks   (©New Media Days)

The Pentagon is frantically searching for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, hoping it can somehow convince him not to release hundreds of thousands of classified State Department cables it believes he has. The cables were pilfered by 22-year-old Army intelligence specialist Bradley Manning, according to the Daily Beast, and contain communiqués from diplomats throughout the Middle East with details on the inner workings of Arab governments.

The Pentagon won’t say how it’s searching for the secretive drifter or what it would be able do if it finds him. The site is tied to a server in Sweden. “We’d like his cooperation in this,” said a US official. In a Twitter post, Wikileaks said allegations that “we have been sent 260,000 classified US embassy cables are, as far as we can tell, incorrect.” But the sites leaders are playing “semantic games,” according to one US official. “They may not have 260,000 cables, but they’ve probably got enough to make trouble.” (More Julian Assange stories.)

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