U.S. ponders fate of Iraqi informants in wake of Wikileaks' trove

U.S. military officials are pondering what to do with their Iraqi informants, whose lives could be in danger, after whistleblower website Wikileaks published nearly 400,000 U.S. military files about the Iraq War, said the Pentagon on Monday.

"We had identified 300 or so people whose names were (mentioned in the documents) that possibly would be put at risk if their names were published," Pentagon spokesman Dave Lapan said.

Of that group, he said, the names were removed in the published files but "in a few dozen cases there's still information that could identify those people," such as job titles.

The U.S. Central Command has the names of those potentially at risk and "is deciding whether they're going to make notifications or not," Lapan said.

A joint task force led by the Defense Intelligence Agency is comparing the original with redacted documents made public by Wikileaks Friday, to assess the publication of the classified Iraq significant-activities reports could pose to the U.S. military, Iraqi allies and current operations.

Source: Xinhua