Afghanistan war logs: as it happened

The revelation of the 92,000 Afghanistan war logs sparked a day of drama in London and Washington, as governments and the media scrambled to make sense of the raw data and judge what impact it would have on the conduct of the war against the Taliban, relations with Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the effect on the public mood in the countries that provide the coalition forces, especially the US, Britain and Germany.

Here is how events unfolded as commentators, policy-makers and politicians reacted.

8.00am: In one of the biggest leaks in US military history 90,000 files reveal blow-by-blow account of what the Guardian describes as the failing war in Afghanistan, including the death of hundreds of civilians and a steep rise in Taliban attacks despite the efforts of a covert unit set up to kill or capture Taliban leaders without trial.

The White House has condemned the leaks as irresponsible.

"These irresponsible leaks will not impact our ongoing commitment to deepen our partnerships with Afghanistan and Pakistan," Jim Jones, Barack Obama's National Security adviser, said in a statement.

The documents have been published by the whistleblowing website Wikileaks and made available to the Guardian, the New York Times and the German news magazine Der Spiegel.

All three news organisations have stressed that they have vetted the files and removed any materials which threatens the safety of troops.

Each of the news organisations has a slightly different take on the files.

For the Guardian the files reveal the futility of the conflict and the current strategy.

However you cut it, this is not an Afghanistan that either the US or Britain is about to hand over gift-wrapped with pink ribbons to a sovereign national government in Kabul. Quite the contrary. After nine years of warfare, the chaos threatens to overwhelm. A war fought ostensibly for the hearts and minds of Afghans cannot be won like this.

Der Spiegel says: "Never before has it been possible to compare the reality on the battlefield in such a detailed manner with what the US Army propaganda machinery is propagating."

It adds that they show "The German army was clueless and naïve when it stumbled into the conflict."

The New York Times focuses on what the documents reveal about the role of Pakistan's security service in directing the Afghan insurgency.

"The documents suggest that Pakistan, an ostensible ally of the United States, allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organize networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders," its top stoy on the leaks says.

8.36am: John Kerry, the former Democratic presidential candidate and chairman of Senate foreign relations committee told the New York Times that the leaks raise "serious questions about the reality of America's policy toward Pakistan and Afghanistan".

A White House briefing on the leaks is also published in full by the New York Times.

It says:

1) I don't think anyone who follows this issue will find it surprising that there are concerns about ISI and safe havens in Pakistan. In fact, we've said as much repeatedly and on the record. Attached please find a document with some relevant quotes from senior USG officials.

2) The period of time covered in these documents (January 2004-December 2009) is before the President announced his new strategy. Some of the disconcerting things reported are exactly why the President ordered a three month policy review and a change in strategy.

3) Note the interesting graphs (pasted below) from the Guardian's wikileaks story. I think they help put these documents in context.

4) As you report on this issue, it's worth noting that wikileaks is not an objective news outlet but rather an organization that opposes US policy in Afghanistan.

8.38am: The BBC is leading with the story. On the Radio 4 Today programme at 8.10am, it ran an interview with its Kabul correspondent David Loyn who highlighted what the logs show about the proximity of the Pakistani intelligence service (ISI) to the Taliban. He was also interested in how the CIA was shown to have "very significant penetration of Afghan intelligence".

Presenter Sarah Montague went on to interview two former British commanders in Afghanistan, Colonel Richard Kemp, and Colonel Stewart Tootal, who took slightly different views. Tootal's line was that the logs show "nothing new" and that there have been "been significant changes on the ground" since the period (2004-09) covered by the logs - in particular the troop surge and the US's stated drive to minimise civilian casualties. But Kemp said that the release of the information could help public understanding of the war.

It's important the public understands the complexities of the conflict and this will help. Although it may not be good news that this has been published and [this information] is not classified for no reason... but it's important for people to understand how difficult
it is.

In particular, Kemp suggested that the revelations about the ISI could prompt US and UK diplomats to confront the issue directly. The ISI's apparent support of the Taliban had been "underplayed", he said, and publication of this information could "drive the diplomats to confront it more head on".

8.53am: Sarah Holewinski, the director of Civic, a group that campaigns against civilian casualities, called for full inquiries into the individual instances detailed in the report.

There are some tragic stories of civilian loss in these 90,000 pages, some that could have been avoided and some that seem like honest, horrible mistakes. Either way, they've got to be analysed so lessons can be drawn from them. It's a matter of life and death for civilians and soldiers alike, and every incident of civilian harm deserves a full investigation.

This is a trove of information, but it needs to be understood in context before meaningful conclusions can be drawn. Having said that, the documents are bound to provide the public with an important view of events on the ground as their leaders take stock of the situation in Afghanistan.

To really understand a war and its implications, the human cost should be weighed against the strategic considerations. The two go hand-in-hand. That's particularly true in Afghanistan, where commanders now realise the people are the main strategic consideration.

These documents focus attention on "escalation of force" - one of the most important and perhaps least understood aspects of military-civilian interaction. Often with only seconds to act, troops and civilians misread each other. Troops have orders that dictate how they respond in these situations, from shouting to shooting. These pages are bound to contain information on whether or not orders were followed and whether changes need to be made in military procedure.

9.12am: Good morning, this is Haroon Siddique taking over from Matthew Weaver.

To start, a summary of where to find the various aspects of our coverage.
The main story gives an overview of the extent and significance of the leak. It says the story "provides a devastating portrait of the failing war in Afghanistan".

There is a video interview with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange

The significance of this material is both the overarching context, in that it covers the entire war since 2004, and invidividual events, which are also significant, or a thread of events. Now this included something like task force 373, a US assassination squad that goes round Afghanistan killing people on a 'kill and capture' list.

Our reporting team has picked out 300 key incidents. If you want to delve further into the detail you can download the data in spreadsheet format.

The Guardian's editorial says there is suspicion of "a casual disregard for the lives of innocents":

A bus that fails to slow for a foot patrol is raked with gunfire, killing four passengers and wounding 11 others. The documents tell how, in going after a foreign fighter, a special forces unit ended up with seven dead children. The infants were not their immediate priority. A report marked 'Noforn' (not for foreign elements of the coalition) suggests their main concern was to conceal the mobile rocket system that had just been used.

It concludes:

A war fought ostensibly for the hearts and minds of Afghans cannot be won like this.

9.23am: Some more reaction from the Today programme. Pakistan's ambassador in Washington, Husain Haqqani, vehemently denied claims the country's intelligence agency, the ISI, had backed the Taliban.
"I think that the American leadership knows what Pakistan is doing," he said. "We have paid a price in treasure and blood over the last two years. More Pakistanis have been killed by terrorists, including our military officers and intelligence service officials."

While Colonel Tootal (see 8.38am) tried to dismiss the significance of the documents in that they did not relate to the present, Rachel Reid, Afghanistan researcher for Human Rights Watch, referring to apparent "concealment" of civilian deaths revealed by the leak, said she had seen incidents where civilians had been killed in the past two months but were "still not represented in their [the military's] reporting".

9.55am: I've just been speaking to Jon Boone, the Guardian's Afghanistan correspondent, about the revelation that the Taliban have acquired deadly surface-to-air missiles (Stingers), which were used to down a Chinook helicopter over Helmand in 2007 , killing seven soliders. Boone told me it was the most significant piece of information in the leaked documents and something that has not been reported previously, as the cause of the Chinook fatalities was covered up:

It is significant because Stinger missiles were part of the story of how the Russians were beaten in the 1980s [in Afghanistan] and it's always been said that if the insurgents got these weapons it would do immense damage to the counter-insurgency campaign because air power is so significant - it's the power we have that the insurgents don't. My sources always led me to believe they did not have this technology and that it's impossible to get this stuff on the private market. It would be a huge move if a surrounding state had given this technology to the Taliban, even if it hasn't had as much of an impact as anticipated.

After the Russian withdrawal the main business of the CIA was a Stinger buyback programme . Although they didn't get them all, it was thought that those remaining were ineffective because of flat batteries etc. Maybe some of those old Stingers have been brought back into operation but maybe, more significantly, a neighbouring country has provided these.

Regarding the availability of surface-to-air missiles on the private market, Boone pointed out that Viktor Bout, the so-called "Merchant of Death", allegedly offered to sell such missiles to US drug enforcement agents in a sting operation in 2008.

10.06am: The White House has condemned Wikileaks as "irresponsible" for publishing the leaked files ( (8.36am).

This post explains how the Guardian, the New York Times and Der Speigel obtained and investigated the logs. And this video explains how to navigate your way around the logs.

My colleague Jo Adetunji points out the Washington Post writes that WikiLeaks' decision to let the New York Times, Guardian and Der Spiegel access the classified reports "reflects the growing strength and sophistication of the small nonprofit website".

Steven Aftergood, director of the Federation for American Scientists' Project on Government Secrecy, told the Post.

They [the public] want greater clarity and greater candor than they have gotten up to this point. Wikileaks, in this case, has filled a void left by the Pentagon.

10.13am: The Guardian's investigations executive editor, David Leigh, will be taking part in a live Q&A on the website at 1pm in which he will be expanding on the information in the video posted at 10.06am, answering questions on how the Guardian obtained the material and how it processed it. When the link is available, I will post it on this blog.

10.24am: This is from my colleague Matt Wells:

As noted earlier (8am), three news organisations have been involved in the investigation into the leak. But, save from an agreement with Wikileaks on the the time of publication, 10pm BST yesterday, the three news organisation worked separately on the reporting. That is illustrated in different takes on the same information. The New York Times, for example, highlights the alleged links between the Pakistani intelligence service (ISI) and the Taliban. Its lead story says:

Pakistan, an ostensible ally of the United States, allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organize networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch
plots to assassinate Afghan leaders.

But the Guardian takes a more cautious line:

But for all their eye-popping details, the intelligence files, which are mostly collated by junior officers relying on informants and Afghan officials, fail to provide a convincing smoking gun for ISI complicity. Most of the reports are vague, filled with incongruent detail, or crudely fabricated.

10.48am: Der Spiegel's website focuses on the Afghan conflict, as revealed in the documents, being "far worse than it is depicted in the reports German Chancellor Angela Merkel gives to parliament":

The German army was clueless and naïve when it stumbled into the conflict. The Germans had expected that the relatively calm northern provinces where their soldiers were stationed would remain peaceful. Moreover, they believed their reconstruction teams would provide a model for the other allies on how best to help this country ravaged by civil war.

It also predicts embarrassment for Berlin, in the revelation that Task Force 373, the unit that hunts down Taliban leaders for "kill and capture" without trial, "has a unit stationed on a German base":

When the commanders of the German ISAF contingent were offered the targeted killing of the Bundeswehr's enemies, as a service of sorts, it was done so almost officially. After seven German soldiers had died within a short period of time in the spring, a senior US officer at headquarters in Kabul promised the highest-ranking German ISAF officer, General Bruno Kasdorf, that the Americans would hunt down and kill the people behind the attacks on the Germans. And indeed, several Taliban fighters were eliminated in the ensuing weeks.

10.56am: Here's a link to the 300 key incidents in the war logs that our reporters have picked out (click on the picture).

11.02am: On BBC News, Carole Walker said that according to Ministry of Defence sources, the MoD is checking its records to try to verify some of the 21 incidents involving British troops and civilian deaths or casualties identified by the Guardian and ascertain whether they were reported at the time and if so, how they were reported.

11.15am: Security minister Lady Neville-Jones, former chair of the UK's joint intelligence committee, said the leak had implications for the security of government data.

"I think that every government has to be extremely aware of the vulnerability of its systems," she told BBC Breakfast.

"We don't know how they got that material - it may be a combination of leaking of documents, but also one strongly suspects they have hacked into systems as well.

"This is a very, very big story. But if you stop to think about it for a moment, military systems have to be secure because people's lives are at stake."

From the quotes running on the wires, it appears she did not comment otherwise on the significance of the material.

11.16am: Siamak Heraqi, a spokesman for the Afghan government, is reported as saying: "The Afghan government is shocked with the report that has opened the reality of the Afghan war."

11.26am: If you're interested in learning more about Wikileaks founder Julian Assange (and have some spare time on your hands), the New Yorker profiled him in some depth last month:

In his writing online, especially on Twitter, Assange is quick to lash out at perceived enemies. By contrast, on television, where he has been appearing more frequently, he acts with uncanny sangfroid. Under the studio lights, he can seem – with his spectral white hair, pallid skin, cool eyes, and expansive forehead – like a rail-thin being who has rocketed to Earth to deliver humanity some hidden truth. This impression is magnified by his rigid demeanor and his baritone voice, which he deploys slowly, at low volume.

In private, however, Assange is often bemused and energetic. He can concentrate intensely, in binges, but he is also the kind of person who will forget to reserve a plane ticket, or reserve a plane ticket and forget to pay for it, or pay for the ticket and forget to go to the airport. People around him seem to want to care for him; they make sure that he is where he needs to be, and that he has not left all his clothes in the dryer before moving on. At such times, he can seem innocent of the considerable influence that he has acquired.

11.31am: Guardian political reporter Hélène Mulholland was at this morning's lobby briefing but Downing Street refused to comment on the contents of the leaked documents.

A spokeswoman said:

We would lament all unauthorised releases of classified material. The White House has made a statement and we do not comment on leaked documents.

11.39am: Jay Rosen, from the journalism institute of New York University, describes the White House response to the leak as "unimpressive", adding his own observations to the points made by the US government:

• This leak will harm national security. (As if those words still had some kind of magical power, after all the abuse they have been party to.)

• There's nothing new here. (Then how could the release harm national security?)

• Wikileaks is irresponsible; they didn't even try to contact us! (Hold on: you're hunting the guy down and you're outraged that he didn't contact you?)

• Wikileaks is against the war in Afghanistan; they're not an objective news source. (So does that mean the documents they published are fake?)

• "The period of time covered in these documents … is before the president announced his new strategy. Some of the disconcerting things reported are exactly why the president ordered a three month policy review and a change in strategy." (Okay, so now that we too know the basis for the President's decision, that's a bad thing?)

11.51am: I mentioned earlier (10.13am) that guardian.co.uk will be hosting a live webchat with investigations editor David Leigh at 1pm. You can post your questions to him and follow the discussion here.

11.52am: The Frontline Club in London is hosting a press conference with the Wikileaks founder Julian Assange at 12pm BST (7am ET, 1pm CET). It will be streamed live here. We will embed the stream when it goes live.

11.59am: Here is a midday summary.

The whistleblowing website Wikileaks has today published more than 90,000 secret US military files on the war in Afghanistan. Disclosures from the logs, published by the Guardian, the New York Times and Der Spiegel, give a a detailed portrait of the war in Afghanistan.

Key disclosures relate to the relationship of the Pakistani intelligence service with the Taliban and how the US covered up evidence that the Taliban have acquired deadly surface-to-air missiles.

The White House said Wikileaks was "irresponsible" for publishing the leaked documents, accusing the website of putting the lives of troops in danger. Downing Street said it "lamented" the leak but did not make a detailed comment (11.31am)

The Ministry of Defence is checking its records to try to verify some of the 21 incidents involving British troops and civilian deaths or casualties. It is investigating whether they were reported at the time and if so, how they were reported.

12.04pm: The press conference with Julian Assange is under way.

12.27pm: In his press conference, Assange has said that he believes the Australian government was asked by the US to engage in surveillance of him and other Wikileaks staff. He says he has "no doubt" about the authenticity of the documents. And he says most of the conflict in Afghanistan results from the "everyday squalor of war".

I'll post a full summary when the press conference is over.

12.55pm: Julian Assange has been speaking at the Frontline club. Behind him was one of Don McCulin's most arresting images of the Vietnam war – a haunted-looking US soldier.

He said the documents contained details of "war crimes" but refused to elaborate. Asked what the most significant revelation was in the leaked documents, he declined to name a single incident: "The real story of this material is that it's war, it's one damn thing after another, it's the continuous small events, the continuous deaths of children, insurgents, armed forces ... the maimed people ... this is the story of the war since 2004."

Assange said: "This is the equivalent of opening the Stasi archives."

He also noted: "The course of the war needs to change. The manner in which it needs to change is not yet clear."

He expressed scepticism that President Barack Obama's exhortations to avoid civilian casualties would have an impact (military officials have responded to the revelations by saying the efforts of the armed forces to avoid civilian casualties has changed radically in the past six months). Assange said: "The US army is an immense boat that is very difficult to turn around and the cover up begins at the bottom and moves to the top. It's quite hard to enact a new policy and have it filter down to the bottom."

When challenged that some of the information contained in the leaked information might be inaccurate, he pointed out that the documents were "true", but the information contained in them might not be. He said that was down to the military units who were behind the reporting, and not Wikileaks.

He said he saw "no difference" between the reaction of the White House to the leak and that of "other groups that we have exposed".

1.18pm: With the number of documents released, many have, understandably, struggled to reach an instant verdict on how significant the information is. But media commentators have been quick to see the significance of the way the information was released for future models of journalism.

One example is Jay Rosen's blog for New York University (see link at 11.39am) and another is Alexis Madrigal's blog on the Atlantic. Madrigal describes the publication of the documents as "a milestone in the new news ecosystem", and writes of "new conduits ... opened into the most highly regarded newsrooms in the country":

In the new asymmetrical journalism, it's not clear who is on what side or what the rules of engagement actually are. But the reason WikiLeaks may have just changed the media is that we found out that it doesn't really matter. Their data is good, and that's what counts.

1.31pm: Some of the newly published items on the guardian website relating to the release of documents:

An interactive showing all the IEDs from 2004 to 2009, where and who they hit.

Simon Tisdall has written about the hunt for Osama bin laden.

He says:

Despite the CIA's self-confessed cluelessness, raw intelligence reports contained in the leaked war logs show that, every now and then, US forces believe they can see the mist surrounding Bin Laden briefly lift.

Phillippe Sands, on Comment is Free, on the targeted killings in Afghanistan:

These logs are unvarnished and brutal, and it will take some time to digest in full their implications. They describe the reality of the Afghan war, including, apparently, the widespread and increasing use of targeted killings.

In particular, the logs describe the efforts of a secret commando unit, Task Force 373, with its 'joint prioritised effects list' of hundreds of senior targets, and its efforts to assassinate the enemy. Contrary to the impression that governments seek to promote, these operations are often unsuccessful and sometimes result in the killing of friendly forces and civilians.

1.53pm: Remarkably, Assange is still speaking at the Frontline Club (see summary 12.55pm). I've been keeping one ear on proceedings. One of the interesting things he said is that the MoD is blocking Wikileaks to its staff so officials can't actually view the material they are criticising. The Guardian reported MoD attempts to block Wikileaks access last year.

2.06pm: The Pakistani news organisation Dawn carries a denial from the Pakistani spy agency, the ISI, that it has been supporting Taliban militants. It reports:

A senior ISI official denied the allegations, saying they were from raw intelligence reports that had not been verified and were meant to impugn the reputation of the spy agency. He spoke on condition of anonymity in line with the agency's policy.

It continues:

Other reports mention former ISI officials, including Hamid Gul, who headed the agency in the late 1980s when Pakistan and the US were supporting militants in their fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

In one report, Gul, who has been an outspoken supporter of the Taliban, is alleged to have dispatched three men in December 2006 to carry out attacks in Afghanistan's capital.

"Reportedly Gul's final comment to the three individuals was to make the snow warm in Kabul, basically telling them to set Kabul aflame," said the report.

Gul, who appeared multiple times throughout the reports, denied allegations that he was working with the Taliban, saying "these leaked documents against me are fiction and nothing else".

Dawn notes that some of the reports "do seem a bit far-fetched", referring to the alleged plot to kill Afghan and Nato forces using poisoned alcohol.

2.34pm: Some more reaction to the leaks, with the UK and Afghan governments attempting to play down the contents of the documents but a British military expert warning they are "politically pretty damaging".

The UK foreign secretary, William Hague, told the BBC that they could "poison the atmosphere in Afghanistan" but at the same time insisted it would not affect British troops:

They don't mean anything for British troops. We are working hard with our allies in Afghanistan on improving security on the ground, in increasing the capacity of the Afghan government, so we are not going to spend our time looking at leaks.

Waheed Omar, spokesman for Afghan president Hamid Karzai said:

So far as we are concerned, two things ... [are] obvious in most of the documents that we have read so far: one is about civilian casualty cases and one is about the role that ISI has played in destabilizing activities inside Afghanistan. And we assume that our stands on both these issues have been very clear over the years ... Yes, we were shocked by the fact that certain number, a huge number of documents were leaked. That was the shocking news. But so far as the substance of these leaked documents were, the president's immediate reaction was that most of this is not new, most of this is what has been discussed in the past, and most of this is what we have always raised with our international partners, and this is going to help raise more awareness.

Professor Michael Clarke, director of the Royal United Services Institute thinktank, said the leaked files were not as damaging as the Abu Ghraib Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal but would prove awkward for politicians:

Isaf and the Obama administration do have a credible defence when they say these papers were from 2004 and 2009 - a time when the situations in both Washington and Afghanistan were different to today. But there is no doubt that the leaks are politically pretty damaging. The papers give an impression of a lack of military discrimination in how operations were conducted. They are also appearing at the worst possible time, particularly in the United States, because people are looking for an exit strategy. This is old bad news at a new bad time.

3.07pm: The publication of the documents coincide with a Stop the War rally tonight in central London entitled: "Afghanistan - Time to Go". The rally was organised because of the release of Joe Glenton from prison for refusing to fight in Afghanistan, before the documents emerged, but Stop the War said it was experiencing "renewed interest" on the back of today's news headlines.

Caroline Lucas, the Green party leader and MP for Brighton Pavilion, is one of the speakers.

She tweeted earlier:

3.17pm: From the comments below the line, a lot of people are sceptical about the value of the information garnered from the leaks. Adam Weinstein, copy editor for the US website Mother Jones, shares your doubts. He writes:

Most of this information is tactical nuts and bolts, devoid of context, and largely useless for a war narrative; what would be far more valuable than this stuff is the strategic/political data: military info that's TOP SECRET or above, which I haven't seen yet; or stuff from the State Department or provincial reconstruction teams (PRTs)... By and large, like most of the stunts pulled by Assange, this one's long on light and short on heat, nothing we didn't already know if you were paying attention to our wars.

3.20pm: David Miliband, former foreign secretary and current Labour leadership contender, has given his reaction to the leaked material.

This has never been a war that can be won through military means alone. What the "war logs" show is something that has been known for some time. We cannot kill our way out of an insurgency. Instead, the battle for power is fought in the minds of the local population, insurgents and western publics. The purpose of military effort and civilian improvement is to create the conditions for political settlement.
There is now a race against time to persuade the Afghan people that the correct strategy is in place and show our own people it can succeed. Better Afghan security forces, better police, better schooling and economic opportunities are all vital but not enough. None of them are durable or possible without a political settlement. We need the tribes inside the system, al-Qaida outside, and the neighbours onside. A peace settlement must include the vanquished as well as the victors.

3.49pm: For all the information provided by the documents published last night, what will their impact be? The US, UK and Afghan governments have all been quick to condemn the leak but at the same time play down the relevance and or timeliness of the information.

On the UN dispatch blog, Mark Leon Goldberg writes that this could be a turning point for John Kerry, the influential chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee. Given that his initial reaction to the leak was "however illegally these documents came to light, they raise serious questions about the reality of America's policy toward Pakistan and Afghanistan".

Goldberg blogs:

Keep in mind that 1) Kerry put his name on a $5 billion aid package for Pakistan last year and 2) these documents seem to show that the Pakistani intelligence and military liaisons with the Taliban were rather extensive. It seems to me that Kerry might be forced to act on these revelations. Can we expect a wikileaks doc dump inspired hearing at the Senate foreign relations committee sometime soon? Stay tuned.

4.02pm: Amy Davidson has written an interesting post for the New Yorker on the New York Times' conclusion that "overall, the documents do not contradict official accounts of the war".

She blogs:

What does it mean to tell the truth about a war? Is it a lie, technically speaking, for the administration to say that it has faith in Hamid Karzai's government and regards him as a legitimate leader – or is it just absurd?

Is it a lie to say that we have a plan for Afghanistan that makes any sense at all? If you put it that way, each of the WikiLeaks documents – from an account of an armed showdown between the Afghan police and the Afghan army, to a few lines about a local interdiction official taking $75 bribes, to a sad exchange about an aid scam involving orphans – is a pixel in a picture that does, indeed, contradict official accounts of the war, and rather drastically so.

4.30pm: Here is an afternoon summary.

The Wikileaks founder Julian Assange said his website is working through a "backlog" of further secret material after it posted more than 90,000 leaked US military documents about the war in Afghanistan. At a press conference in London he also revealed that he believed the revelations amounted to "war crimes" (see 12.55pm).

The Pentagon has just announced that it is reviewing the "war logs" documents to "determine the potential damage" to the lives of troops. Reuters said the review would take "days, if not weeks", and said the documents appeared to be of "secret, but not top secret" classification.

The Pakistan intelligence agency has denied suggestions contained in the war logs that it supported Taliban insurgents. An ISI official told Dawn TV in Pakistan that the allegations were "meant to impugn the reputation of the spy agency" (see 2.06pm).

The White House said Wikileaks was "irresponsible" for publishing the leaked documents, accusing the website of putting the lives of troops in danger. Downing Street said it "lamented" the leak but did not make a detailed comment (11.31am).

The Guardian has published more material from the logs, including a story about the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

4.56pm: Here's more on the Pentagon inquiry. Reuters are quoting Pentagon spokesman Colonel Dave Lapan as saying:

We will be looking at them to try to determine the potential damage to lives of our service members and our coalition partners, whether they reveal sources and methods and any potential damage to national security. It will take a matter of days if not weeks, again depending on how these documents are actually made available so that they can be reviewed.

5.28pm: Richard Adams in Washington DC here, keeping track of the political and media reaction as America's political class struggles to get a grip on the scale of the war logs. We're expecting that the subject will come up during today's White House press briefing with press secretary Robert Gibbs at 1pm Eastern Time (6pm in the UK), although the White House has a habit of being late to start on heavy news days.

Also, President Obama is making a statement to the press at 2.20pm ET (7.20pm BST) this afternoon, on campaign finance reform legislation before the Senate, but he may veer off to talk about Afghanistan in light of what's happened.

5.38pm: The Guardian's Berlin correspondent, Kate Connolly, reports that Germany's government is reacting to the war logs leaks, which have been carried in full by Der Spiegel.

The German government said today it planned to investigate the leaked US military documents amid concern that the information disclosed might put its troops in danger. Foreign minister Guido Westerwelle called for the information to be closely scrutinized. 'All of it must of course be carefully examined, to see what possible new revelations there might be,' he said, speaking on the sidelines of a meeting of EU foreign ministers in Brussels.

The German government has shown little alarm over the release of the documents, although commentators said they did much to highlight the "naivety" with which German troops had entered the conflict in Afghanistan and would do further damage to the already very jaded public view of the mission.

Westerwelle added that from what he had already seen of the classified documents, they had served to emphasise the gravity of the situation on the ground. He said he had "never talked up the situation in Afghanistan, which is exceptionally serious".

Christian Dienst, spokesman for the defence ministry said there was "nothing newsworthy" about the released information, but said there would now be an investigation into whether it endangered German troops on the ground in Afghanistan.

He said the reports about the dramatic escalation on the number of Taliban attacks on allied troops were well known, adding that German ISAF troops had been the target of 60 attacks – an almost three-fold increase – this year alone.

Claudia Roth, leader of the opposition Greens party, welcomed the release of the documents. She said:

The Wikileaks documents prove just how dramatic the situation in Afghanistan is. They also show the lengths the allies are prepared to go to in their fight for more stability.

5.46pm: Amnesty International, the human rights NGO, says the documents "paint a picture of an incoherent process of dealing with civilian casualties" by coalition forces in Afghanistan:

The leaked records support Amnesty's concerns about improper reporting of civilian casualties, a lack of investigations into casualties that are recorded, and poor coordination between different national forces about incidents and even over investigations that do take place.

The leaked documents show better monitoring of incidents after new rules of engagement were put in place in June 2009 by the former Nato commander, US General Stanley McChrystal. But since General McChrystal's dismissal in June 2010, his replacement, US General David Petraeus, has been under pressure from military officials and US law-makers to ease restrictions that had provided more protection to civilians.

5.58pm: Eric Joyce, one of the few recent Labour MPs to have worn a military uniform, argues on Comment Is Free that the Wikileaks documents could have a "game-changing" impact on British public opinion and the war in Afghanistan:

The trouble for the US and British governments now is that most people are coming to feel that the military operations in Afghanistan are unlikely to achieve our apparent aims, and this will lead them to demand answers to the very large questions that have been raised by this initial batch of leaks. The implications of some of these questions are stunning in their enormity.

6.03pm: Here in Washington the heat is on the White House – and we're waiting for press secretary Robert Gibbs to come up to the podium in the briefing room.

6.08pm: While we are waiting for Robert Gibbs – running late as usual (this never happened in the Bush White House, which was reliably punctual, if nothing else) – here's Time magazine's Michael Crowley, who agrees with Eric Joyce that the biggest effect could be on public opinion:

In recent months we've seen a steady drumbeat of bad headlines from Afghanistan, from the mixed success of the ballyhooed Marjah offensive to the spectacular flame out of General Stanley McChrystal. The Wikileak dump is certain to accelerate the feeling, both around the country and here in Washington, that the war effort isn't sustainable for much longer. And right now, the biggest secret of all, the one no one is leaking, is whether Barack Obama agrees.

6.20pm: Robert Gibbs is up, speaking now in the White House. His initial tack is that the documents are old news, especially the New York Times angle on the Pakistan intelligence-Taliban links.

What is the US getting for its billions in aid to Pakistan? Gibbs responds: "I am not going to stand here and tell you all is well. I will tell you that we have made progress in moving forward." He cites the changes in the last year and a half in Pakistan's domestic politics, as Pakistan woke up to the "violent extremists" in its midst.

"We understand we are in this region of the world because of what happened on 9/11" says Gibbs, playing the 9/11 card fairly early on in the game here.

Gibbs says the Wikileaks documents "pose a very real threat" to US forces in Afghanistan – but then stresses that the information in the documents isn't new. Pressed by CNN's Ed Henry about the contradiction there, Gibbs says it's the details that are more worrying:

It's not the content ... there are names, there are operations, there are sources, all of that information out in the public domain has the potential to do harm.

Gibbs is at pains to repeat that the documents all date from 2009 and earlier. "Nobody is here to declare 'mission accomplished'," he says – in a dig at George Bush's notorious aircraft carrier appearance in 2003, before a banner proclaiming "mission accomplished".

Has President Obama read any of the documents? Gibbs says:

The president does not need to read a leaked document on the internet to day to be shocked [by civilians casualties] ... Each and every civilian casualty is a tragedy and makes the job over there much, much harder."

Gibbs won't answer questions suggesting that the documents have endangered the US war effort in Afghanistan. "I think they constitute a potential danger to national security," is Gibbs's line. He dismisses Julian Assange's comparison between the war logs and East Germany's Stasi secret police files.

7pm: So that was a fine exercise in line-holding by Robert Gibbs, and that's why they pay him the big bucks.

In summary: the White House position is that the broad themes of the documents were already well known and have been aired previously. But the leaks themselves are dangerous because they reveal too much detail about military operations and so are a potential "threat to national security" in Robert Gibbs's words. (The Pentagon's briefers appear to be taking exactly the same sort of line.)

Significanly, Gibbs repeatedly made reference to a statement by the president in March 2009, when he announced his new Afghanistan strategy, in which Obama warned:

And after years of mixed results, we will not provide a blank check. Pakistan must demonstrate its commitment to rooting out al Qaeda and the violent extremists within its borders.

The idea being to defang the New York Times's angle on the Wikileaks documents, that Pakistan's intelligence services are working with the Taliban.

7.10pm: The Wikileaks war logs weren't the only big news at today's White House briefing. One member of the crack White House press corp asked if President Obama was attending the Chelsea Clinton wedding. Gibbs: "No." Thus proving that he can give a straight answer.

7.32pm: Pakistan's spy agency, the Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI), denies that it has been supporting the Taliban. In a manner of speaking. Saeed Shah reports for the Guardian from Islamabad:

An ISI official said: "In the intelligence world, preliminary and final reports are two different things. Only once something is collaborated from multiple sources does it become a credible piece of information.

"The majority of these [documents] are preliminary reports, and they are mostly from Afghan intelligence, so you can imagine their credibility."

7.49pm: If you want to know why these Afghanistan war logs are an important and, in some cases, devastating account, have a look at this excellent analysis of some of the records by Declan Walsh, into how US marines sanitised their account of a blooody rampage in which 19 civilians were killed:

It started with a suicide bomb. On 4 March 2007 a convoy of US marines, who arrived in Afghanistan three weeks earlier, were hit by an explosives-rigged minivan outside the city of Jalalabad.

The marines made a frenzied escape, opening fire with automatic weapons as they tore down a six-mile stretch of highway, hitting almost anyone in their way – teenage girls in fields, motorists in their cars, old men as they walked along the road. Nineteen unarmed civilians were killed and 50 wounded.

None of this, however, was captured in the initial military account, written by the marines themselves. It simply says that, simultaneous to the suicide explosion, "the patrol received small arms fire from three directions".

8.02pm: Not everyone is a fan of Wikileaks's action in leaking the 90,000-plus documents. Ross Baker is a professor of political science at Rutgers, the very fine state university of New Jersey, and former staff member for several Democratic senators. As I blogged earlier today, Baker called it "WikiTreason" – and tells my colleague Ewen Macaskill that the site's actions are "treasonable by any definition":

Giving aid and comfort to the enemy, which WikiLeaks does in the release of this material, is treasonable by any definition. Revelation of these documents will likely result in US battle casualties as it gives our enemy, the Taliban, useful information about the manner in which Nato forces communicate and use tactics.

The divulging of this information is more damaging than the Pentagon papers ever were. [Pentagon papers leaker Daniel] Ellsberg revealed a history of the origins of the Vietnam War but nothing in the substance of the documents themselves was harmful to US forces.

Any nation at war is entitled to come down with the full force of the law on those who traffic on behalf of the enemy.

8.24pm: Top blogger Andrew Sullivan lays out the implications of the Afghanistan war logs:

When one weighs the extra terror risk from remaining in Afghanistan, the absurdity of our chief alleged ally actually backing the enemy, the impossibility of an effective counter-insurgency when the government itself is corrupt and part of the problem, the brutality of the enemy in intimidating the populace in ways no civilized occupying force can counter, the passage of ten years in which any real chance at success was squandered ... the logic for withdrawal to the more minimalist strategy originally favored by Obama after the [2008] election and championed by Biden thereafter seems overwhelming.

8.55pm: The Guardian's coverage of the Afghanistan war logs continues to explore the fallout from the documents, with reporting on the war of words between the governments of Pakistan and Afghanistan:

Relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan deteriorated sharply today as officials from both countries traded angry accusations over the leaked US military documents suggesting Pakistan's spy service is entwined with the Taliban.

As the tens of thousands of documents are being combed through, more damaging details come to light, in this case of the crime, intrigue and drug-dealing in Afghan society operating under the noses of the coalition forces:

One log claims to describe how a "notorious criminal" was recruited to spy for Iran. It says he returned to Afghanistan and then became a police chief, gaining power and wealth by drug-dealing. This byzantine story comes from Bala Beluk, a district in the country's south-western province of Farah.

9.15pm: In an interesting aside, White House press spokesman Robert Gibbs mentioned the administration first learned about the Wikileaks documents "last week" – a curious fact, given that the three publications involved – the Guardian, the New York Times and Der Spiegel – all maintained a strict embargo until last night.

However, it appears that the New York Times sent a high level delegation to the White House, reports Ben Smith at Politico, in an attempt to verify the documents:

[New York Times] Washington bureau chief Dean Baquet, reporter Mark Mazzetti and a third Timesman presented senior administration officials with synopses of the reports they planned to use, if not the actual documents, at a meeting in the White House late week

Michael Calderone, blogging for Yahoo, confirms the visit, and quotes Baquet saying the White House "praised us for the way we handled it":

Baquet, along with reporters Mark Mazzetti and Eric Schmitt, went to the White House last week to discuss what they planned on publishing.... "I did in fact go the White House and lay out for them what we had," Baquet said. "We did it to give them the opportunity to comment and react. They did. They also praised us for the way we handled it, for giving them a chance to discuss it, and for handling the information with care. And for being responsible."

9.33pm: American journalists are notoriously snobbish about other organisation's scoops. For example: Tom Ricks was a reporter on the military for the Washington Post, and wrote a fine book on the aftermath of the occupation of Iraq, Fiasco. But the exposed Wikileaks documents didn't impress him much:

A huge leak of US reports and this is all they get? I know of more stuff leaked at one good dinner on background.

Ricks might be more interested if he sampled some of David Leigh's excellent coverage of the documents, including his latest article describing how a US special forces mission was touted in the logs as a success that killed Taliban leaders without civilian casualties:

Within 24 hours, however, villagers were telling a very different story from the one presented in the war logs. Locals told Reuters that up to 300 civilians – as well as a number of Taliban – were killed in the air strike after they had been rounded up to watch a Taliban-organised public hanging of two suspected spies. No mention of such a "Taliban court" appears in the official war logs , where it might have flagged up the prospect of civilian deaths.

10pm: A leading US Republican finally goes on the record over the Wikileaks documents. Senator John McCain puts out a statement condemning the publication of the 90,000-plus war logs from Afghanistan as "deeply troubling and a serious breach of national security", and calls for "the full penalties of the law" for whoever leaked the information:

There is one final thing that we must keep in mind: WikiLeaks has a clear agenda, and it is not to win the war in Afghanistan. This biased organization seeks to undermine the achievement of a vital national security interest that more than one thousand Americans have already given their lives to safeguard. This is the height of irresponsibility, and all involved should be ashamed of themselves.

10.25pm: The Democracy Now! radio show tonight devotes itself to a package on the Wikileaks documents saga, including contributions from the Pentagon papers whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg. Ellsberg – once described by Henry Kissinger as "the most dangerous man in America" – says of the Afghanistan war logs leak:

I'm very impressed by the release. It is the first release in 39 years or 40 years, since I first gave the Pentagon papers to the Senate, of the scale of the Pentagon papers.

You can hear the whole programme here.

11pm: The New York Times points out that the Wikileaks disclosures come at a tricky time for the Obama administration, which tomorrow faces a vote in the House of Representatives on $33bn war funding for Afghanistan. The bill is being put to a vote under emergency rules, which means it needs a two-thirds majority to pass, and the war logs may inspire enough Democrats to join Republicans and vote against it. But, as Chris Bowers at OpenLeft points out, it will eventually pass.

11.34pm: David Carr, the NYT's media correspondent, seeks to explain why Wikileaks – the antithesis of a traditional news establishment – turned to three members of the print media to help get its content out to the public:

"WikiLeaks was soaking, drowning in data," said Clay Shirky, the author of Cognitive Surplus. "What they needed was someone who could tell a story. They needed someone who could bring accuracy and political context to what was being revealed."

12.06am: Time to wrap things up for the night – there will almost certainly be more revelations from this cache of documents in the coming days. In the meantime, two considered views from the US:

Michael Isikoff, NBC News investigative reporter, says that contrary to the White House's earlier response, there is nothing in the documents that are a threat to US national security, according to the Pentagon:

David Lapan, deputy assistant secretary of defense for media operations, told NBC News on Monday that a preliminary review by a Pentagon "assessment" team has so far not identified any documents whose release could damage national security. Moreover, he said, none of the documents reviewed so far carries a classification level above "secret" — the lowest category of intelligence material in terms of sensitivity.

Caroline Wadhams and Colin Cookman at the Centre for American Progress think-tank have a clear overview of the long-term impact:

[T]he administration must provide greater clarity on the end state it is hoping to achieve in Afghanistan and how it hopes to get there given the enormous challenges highlighted in the WikiLeaks documents.