Pentagon scrambles to prep for 'thermonuclear' Wikileaks release
The Pentagon is trying to anticipate what Julian Assange's 'thermonuclear' file might contain. The Wikileaks founder has promised to release the file if anything happens to him.
Demonstrators hold up images of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange before a protest in Brisbane, Australia, on Friday.
Tertius Pickard/AP
Perhaps more than any other organization, the Pentagon is trying to figure out what, precisely, is contained in the so-called “thermonuclear” file that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has promised to share with the world if “something happens” to him or to his staff.
With the threat of Wikileaks releases looming earlier this year, the Defense Department made the decision to create a team of some 120 intelligence analysts to cull through files that they deemed Wikileaks most likely to have in its possession.
This hasn’t been particularly difficult, since military investigators have been able to conduct forensic searches of the computer that once belonged to Private First Class Bradley Manning, an Army intelligence analyst, while he was stationed in Iraq. Pfc. Manning has been charged with providing classified material to Wikileaks and has been held in solitary confinement since July at the Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia.
