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Founder defends Wikileaks release

LONDON, July 26 (UPI) -- The founder of Wikileaks said in London Monday the decision to post more than 75,000 documents on the Afghan war was to give a complete picture of the war.

Julian Assange said the secret U.S. military reports are "a history, it is an enormous compendium of material that will affect many different people in many different ways," the Voice of America reported.

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At the White House, presidential press secretary Robert Gibbs said: "Whenever you have the potential for names and for operations and for programs to be out there in the public domain ... (it) has a potential to be very harmful to those that are in our military, those that are cooperating with our military, and those that are working to keep us safe."

The documents were posted on the Wikileaks Web site Sunday. The VOA report said the Afghan government in Kabul expressed outrage over the posting, but said the material is not new.

Assange said he does not believe the release of the documents -- which are more than 7 months old -- reveals troop movements or other sensitive tactical information.

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He said: "We have no reason to doubt the reliability of these documents. We should say what they do not include, they do not include top secret reports, they do not include most reports from U.S. special forces, they do not include reports by the CIA, they do not include reports by other coalition partners," but "they do include the majority of regular U.S. Army activity," VOA reported.

ABC News reported Assange, an Australian Internet activist, told the German newspaper Der Spiegel before publishing the Afghan documents: "That is my temperament. I enjoy creating systems on a grand scale, and I enjoy helping people who are vulnerable. And I enjoy crushing bastards."

He founded WikiLeaks three years ago.

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