WASHINGTON: The founder of the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks on Monday defended his decision to publish thousands of secret US military files about the war in Afghanistan, while being criticized by the White House for placing troops in danger.

As word spread Monday about the publication of more than 90,000 secret US military documents by the website, www.wikileaks.org, founder Julian Assange told reporters in London that the files showed that "thousands" of war crimes may have been committed in Afghanistan.

The WikiLeaks documents also give disturbing and authentic details of previously unpublished events where NATO actions have inadvertently resulted in Afghan civilian casualties.

The Guardian, The New York Times and German weekly Der Spiegel were given access to the archive and have spent several weeks investigating the logs.

The documents have revealed unreported incidents of Afghan civilian killings and information about secret operations against Taleban leaders, as well as highlighting US fears that Pakistan's intelligence service was aiding the Afghan uprising. Pakistan dismissed the report as malicious.

Assange said the leaked US military documents about the war in Afghanistan would help shape understanding of the past six years of fighting.

He then dropped the other shoe, saying the organization was working through a "backlog" of further secret material and was expecting a "substantial increase in submissions" from whistleblowers after one of the biggest leaks in US military history.

The White House condemned WikiLeaks, accusing the website of putting the lives of US, UK and coalition troops in danger and threatening America's national security. It said that WikiLeaks had made no effort to contact US security services, but insisted that what it called the "irresponsible leaks" would not "impact our ongoing commitment to deepen our partnerships with Afghanistan and Pakistan; to defeat our common enemies; and to support the aspirations of the Afghan and Pakistani people."

White House national security adviser Gen. Jim Jones stressed that the documents related to a period from January 2004 to December 2009, during the administration of President George Bush and before President Obama ordered a new push in the embattled state.

The leaked US military records on the war in Afghanistan, posted on the website as the Afghan War Diary, are a classified — and previously unreported — daily rundown of incidents of violence and criminality in Afghanistan.

The documents offer a snapshot of the grim reality of conditions on the ground in Afghanistan and the challenges facing troops operating there.

One field report, from Combat Outpost Keating, said the mission of the outpost's troops in the Kamdesh district of Nuristan Province, was charged with finding allies among local residents and connecting them to the central government in Kabul, stopping illegal cross-border movement and deterring the insurgency.

But the outpost's fate, from 2006 to 2009, shows the frustrations of the allied effort: low troop levels, unreliable Afghan partners and an insurgency that has grown in skill, determination and its ability to menace.

The chronicle notes that the US presence made the security situation worse there and precipitated violence between insurgents and locals.

Pakistan's powerful spy agency lashed out at the leaked reports that alleged close connections between it and the Taleban, calling the accusations malicious and unsubstantiated.

A senior Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) official denied the allegations, saying they were from raw intelligence reports that had not been verified and were meant to impugn the reputation of the spy agency.

Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, spokesman for Pakistan's Army, was not available for comment Monday on the intelligence reports. The ISI is under the command of the army.

In one report from March 2008, the ISI is alleged to have ordered Siraj Haqqani, a prominent militant based in northwestern Pakistan, to kill workers from archenemy India who are building roads in Afghanistan. In another from March 2007, the ISI is alleged to have given Jalaluddin Haqqani, Siraj's father, 1,000 motorcycles to carry out suicide attacks in Afghanistan.

Other reports mention former ISI officials, including Hamid Gul, who headed the agency in the late 1980s when Pakistan and the US were supporting Mujahedeen in their fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan.

In one report, Gul is alleged to have dispatched three men in December 2006 to carry out attacks in Afghanistan's capital. Gul, who appeared multiple times throughout the reports, denied allegations that he was working with the Taleban, saying “these leaked documents against me are fiction and nothing else.”

Some of the reports, which were generated by junior intelligence officers, seem a bit far-fetched. One dispatch from February 2007 claims militants teamed up with the ISI to kill Afghan and NATO forces with poisoned alcohol bought in Pakistan.

The Guardian expressed skepticism about the allegations in the documents, saying “they fail to provide a convincing smoking gun” for complicity between the ISI and the Taleban.

— With input from agencies