The State Department has warned the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks that its expected release of classified U.S. documents would endanger countless lives, jeopardize American military operations and hurt international cooperation on global security issues.
The department's top lawyer urged WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in a letter Saturday to keep classified documents off the website, remove records of them from its database and return any material to the U.S. government.
Lawyer Harold Koh said the department has learned that WikiLeaks provided about 250,000 documents to The New York Times, The Guardian of Britain and German magazine Der Spiegel.
Some media reports indicated the news outlets may post stories on the documents as early as Sunday and said they have also been given to newspapers Le Monde in France and El Pais in Spain.
Mr. Koh wrote that publication of the documents would "place at risk the lives of countless innocent individuals" as well as military initiatives and cooperation between countries to confront problems from terrorism to pandemic disease.
The lawyer also rejected what he said was Mr. Assange's request for more information about individuals who might be at risk from publication of the documents.
"We will not engage in a negotiation regarding the further release or dissemination of illegally obtained U.S. Government classified materials," Mr. Koh wrote.
The letter echoed concerns expressed by Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. military's Joint Chiefs of Staff, in an interview with CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS."
"I would hope that those who are responsible for this would, at some point in time, think about the responsibility that they have for lives that they're exposing and the potential that's there and stop leaking this information," Adm. Mullen said in the interview due to air on Sunday.
Past releases by WikiLeaks, founded by Mr. Assange, an Australian-born computer hacker, contained sensitive information about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which the U.S. government had said compromised national security and put some people at risk.