“The release was in error in many respects and has been removed from the AFMC website,” Lt. Col. Todd Vician, an Air Force spokesman at the Pentagon, said in a prepared statement. “The Air Force guidance did not address family members who are not Air Force members or employees, nor does it apply to personally owned computers.”
The AFMC, a major command which includes Wright-Patterson and nine other Air Force bases around the country, told its employees in a Web posting last week that the documents leaked in recent months, which include military and intelligence reports from Afghanistan and Iraq and U.S. diplomatic cables discussing foreign governments, should be assumed to contain classified material.
Air Force employees found to have downloaded the leaked documents could face prosecution, including possible charges of dereliction of duty for military members, said the AFMC, based at Wright-Patterson.
Vician said he was aware of a “few instances” across the Air Force of personnel downloading the forbidden documents, but he had no details. The AFMC said it was unaware of any instances within its 10 bases.
Access from the Air Force computer network to the Wikileaks website has been blocked, Vician said.
Defense analyst Loren Thompson acknowledged that the Air Force is implementing a directive sent across the Defense Department, but he questioned what impact it will have in an age of easy computer access to information.
“I think what this directive shows is how out of step with the information age the American military really is,” said Thompson, chief operating officer of the Lexington Institute in Arlington, Va. “It just makes the military look foolish to put out directives like this.”
The Obama administration has condemned Wikileaks for making the sensitive documents public and has said it is investigating to determine how the documents were leaked.
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2242 or jnolan@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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