Afghan War Diary: US military reports, 2004–2009

This record catalogues the Afghan War Diary as released: US military reports logged between January 2004 and December 2009 describing attacks, roadside bombs, operations, civilian casualties, intelligence reporting and meetings with Afghan officials. Der Spiegel put the total at 91,731 reports; I published 76,910 of them on 25 July 2010 and delayed about 15,000 more for further review.

Reporting by the Guardian, the New York Times and Der Spiegel drew on the logs to describe incidents in which coalition forces killed or wounded civilians – the Guardian counted 144 such 'blue on white' incidents – and the operations of Task Force 373, a special forces unit that hunted Taliban and al-Qaida figures on a 'kill or capture' list. The logs also contained intelligence reports alleging support for the Taliban by Pakistan's ISI, which the Guardian found to be frequently vague, contradictory or unreliable, and reports on drone operations and Taliban weapons.

The data were released in web, CSV and SQL formats and as map data, according to us.

I published the reports on 25 July 2010 after giving the Guardian, the New York Times and Der Spiegel advance access; the Guardian said no fee was involved and that we did not take part in preparing its articles. We said the 15,000 delayed reports were held back as part of a harm-minimisation process demanded by our source. The White House condemned the disclosure, and the 2019 US indictment against me alleged that Chelsea Manning had downloaded approximately 90,000 Afghanistan war-related reports and provided them to WikiLeaks.

The source of this material was established in court. Chelsea Manning (then known as Bradley Manning), a US Army intelligence analyst, was convicted by a military judge, Colonel Denise Lind, on 30 July 2013 of offences including Espionage Act violations relating to the leak of the Afghan and Iraq war logs, the State Department cables and the Guantánamo files; she was acquitted of the most serious charge, aiding the enemy. Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison on 21 August 2013; President Barack Obama commuted the sentence in January 2017.