February 8, 2011

Warning to families of military staff not to read leaked US state department cables was not sanctioned

The US air force has backtracked after issuing guidance last week banning the families of staff from reading classified material released by WikiLeaks.

The guidance also warned that the families faced prosecution as spies if they read the leaked diplomatic cables.

But the air force, seeking to calm a growing row, said on Monday night that the advice had not been sanctioned by headquarters and it had been removed fromits website.

The row illustrates the extent to which the Obama administration has struggled to respond to the WikiLeaks disclosures, at times appearing sanguine and at others imposing Kafkaesque bans.

The federal government has warned millions of its employees not to read the thousands of state department documents, saying they remain classified, even though they have been published in the Guardian, the New York Times and other newspapers.

In the latest development, lawyers for the Air Force Materiel Command, one of the biggest branches of the service and which conducts research and development of weapons, issued guidance on 3 February that extended the ban for the first time to families of military staff, saying they too would be subject to prosecution under the Espionage Act.

The lawyers said: "If a family member of an air force employee accesses WikiLeaks on a home computer, the family member may be subject to prosecution for espionage."

The ban received widespread attention after being reported by Steven Aftergood, of the Federation of American Scientists, on his Secrecy News website.

Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Johnson, an air forces spokesman, confirmed the guidance had been issued but said it had not been coordinated with headquarters and had been withdrawn from the Air Force Materiel Command website.

He said that the guidance from the air force, which is above the Air Force Materiel Command, was that military members of staff cannot download classified information. But he added: "The air force guidance did not address family members who are not air force members or employees."