A letter [PDF] from Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates to Comittee of Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin dated August 16 but recently made available to the public says, "The initial assessment in no way discounts the risk to national security; however, the review to date has not revealed any sensitive intelligence sources and methods compromised by this disclosure."
In other words, WikiLeaks didn't expose any current U.S. intelligence operatives or operations. Gates says that this is in part because "most of the information contained in these documents relates to tactical military operations," data about which is generally not sensitive after they've already occurred. But that doesn't mean the leak didn't make fighting for U.S. interests abroad more difficult.
Notably, "the documents do contain the names of cooperative Afghan nationals." This concern has been raised before, and it's the biggest problem with the "Afghan War Reports" as far as ethics are concerned.
Afghan nationals who aided U.S. intelligence or forces were named in the document, and the Taliban and affiliated organizations hostile to U.S. interests could use that information to target and punish the cooperative Afghans or their families.
The Pentagon threatened to take decisive action against WikiLeaks, but the organization did not take the threat seriously -- at least publicly. On its Twitter account, WikiLeaks called the Pentagon's threats "obnoxious," adding, "What we didn’t hear from the Pentagon last week: ‘Killing all those innocent people is bad. Sorry. We will stop that.’"
What do you think: Is public access to the truth worth the "collateral damage" to U.S. sympathizers in war-torn regions?