The Pentagon called on news organizations in October 2010 to withhold cooperation from WikiLeaks ahead of an expected release of roughly 400,000 classified US military records on the Iraq war.
Pentagon spokesman Colonel Dave Lapan warned that working with the site would give it "a veneer of legitimacy," but he declined to threaten legal action. No news outlet had at that point indicated any intention to participate in the release.
Defense officials had assembled a 120-member task force to comb through the Iraq database and brace for the disclosure. The anticipated release would far exceed WikiLeaks' July publication of 77,000 Afghanistan war documents, which had gone first to the New York Times, The Guardian, and Der Spiegel.
WikiLeaks spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson confirmed nothing would appear Monday but said new material was coming imminently. Swedish authorities separately denied a residency application from founder Julian Assange, who had sought a legal base there because of the country's whistleblower protections.
US Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning remained in military custody as the suspected source of the documents, arrested in May after WikiLeaks released footage of a US helicopter strike that killed civilians in Iraq. The Justice Department had reportedly weighed charges under the 1917 Espionage Act.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this wire report, first published in October 2010, in its own words.