VIDEO: U.S. confirms leaked video of helicopter attack real

 Dramatic and disturbing video of a U.S.military Apache helicopter attack in Baghdadthree years ago that killed 12 people, including two Reuters news employees, has been released by whistleblower website WikiLeaks.

 

The release on Monday of the classified footage from the July 2007 attack, recorded by helicopter gun cameras, comes just two weeks after a leak to the website of a classified U.S.counterintelligence report identifying WikiLeaks as a potential threat to national security.

 

“The intentional or unintentional leaking and posting of U.S. Army sensitive or classified information to Wikileaks.org could result in increased threats to [Department of Defence] personnel, equipment, facilities, or installations,” says the report, written in March 2008. “Such information could be of value to foreign intelligence and security services, foreign military forces, foreign insurgents, and foreign terrorist groups for collecting information or for planning attacks against U.S. forces, both within the United States and abroad.”

 

WikiLeaks describes itself as non-profit organization that publishes leaks of controversial government and corporate documents on its website, while protecting the anonymity of contributors.

 

The release of the attack video on Monday is the latest embarrassment for the U.S.government, which, according to the leaked 2008 counterintelligence report, fears that current employees within the military, rather than ex-employees, are providing WikiLeaks with sensitive and classified information.

 

The 18-minute black and white video, which WikiLeaks says it obtained, along with supporting documents, from a number of “military whistleblowers,” shows an aerial view of a group of men walking through a square in a Baghdad suburb on July 12, 2007. Two of the men were later identified as Reuters photographer Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and his driver Saeed Chmagh, 40.

 

The video is accompanied by an audio track of banter between the flyers.

 

The Apache pilots tell controllers they have spotted “five to six individuals with AK-47s” and ask for permission to “engage.”

 

It appears that some of the men are carrying weapons but the pilots seem to mistake a camera carried by one of the Reuters employees as a rocket-propelled grenade launcher or RPG. The helicopters fire several bursts of 30 mm cannon ammunition into the crowd, after which one flyer says: “Look at those dead bastards.”

 

Another replies: “Nice.”

 

A short time later, a van is seen pulling up to assist the wounded and pick up the dead, at which point the Apaches open fire again. Two young children who can be seen seated in the front seat were injured and evacuated to an Iraqi hospital by U.S.troops who later arrived on the scene.

 

A U.S.military official confirmed on Monday the footage is real, but argued the video provides no new information.

 

“Since 2007, we acknowledged everything that’s in the video,” the official told Agence France-Presse. “We acknowledged that the strike took place and that there were two Reuters employees [killed].”

 

Shortly after the air strike, Major Brent Cummings, executive officer with the 2nd Battalion, 16th Infantry Regiment, told the Washington Post that the Apache crew fired on the men because they “had weapons and were using them against coalition and Iraqi security forces.”

 

“No innocent civilians were killed on our part deliberately,” he said. “We took great pains to prevent that. I know that two children were hurt, and we did everything we could to help them. I don’t know how the children were hurt.”

 

Reuters editor-in-chief, David Schlesinger, said the deaths of Mr. Noor-Eldeen and Mr. Chmagh were “tragic and emblematic of the extreme dangers that exist in covering war zones.”

 

“We continue to work for journalist safety and call on all involved parties to recognize the important work that journalists do and the extreme danger that photographers and video journalists face in particular,” Mr. Schlesinger said. “The video released today via WikiLeaks is graphic evidence of the dangers involved in war journalism and the tragedies that can result.”

 

Reuters has been seeking the release of the video using Freedom of Information laws since 2007.

 

Julian Assange, a WikiLeaks spokesman, told reporters gathered at the National Press Club in Washington for the video’s release that he disagreed with a U.S. military assessment of the incident that the attack was justified. He said the pilots in the video act “like they are playing a computer game and their desire is they want to get high scores.”

 

“I believe that if those killings were lawful under the rules of engagement, then the rules of engagement are wrong, deeply wrong,” he said.

^{National Post, with files from Reuters and Agence France Presse}