London: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said Thursday the Pentagon was intent on destroying the whistleblower website and denied it had endangered innocent people.
The 39-year-old said WikiLeaks faced a fierce onslaught from the Pentagon after releasing tens of thousands of classified US military documents on the Afghan war.
"I need to express the seriousness of the attack against this media organisation," he told an audience in London.
"The Pentagon has demanded... that we destroy, totally destroy, our previous publications, including that Afghan publication.
"The Pentagon is trying to get up an espionage case and destroy our organisation," the Australian former computer hacker added.
His warning was the latest salvo in a war of words between the website and US military chiefs since WikiLeaks published nearly 77,000 classified US military documents on the war in Afghanistan on July 23.
Assange had previously said a further 15,000 from the massive cache are being prepared for release.
The released files included allegations that Pakistani spies met with the Taliban and that deaths of innocent civilians at the hands of international forces were covered up.
But the documents also included names of some Afghan informants, prompting claims that the leaks have endangered lives.
Assange insisted Thursday the site aimed to protect people.
"We do not have a goal of innocent people being harmed. We have precisely the opposite goal," he said at London's City University.
Asked about the approach taken to vetting the documents, he refused to go into details but said: "We took a harm limitation approach... we think that that effort was pretty good."
On US media
Assange lashed out at the mainstream media, fighting back at a string of unfavorable stories that have appeared since his organisation's publication of a cache of US intelligence documents.
He accused the Wall Street Journal of participating in what he described as a "scam" to discredit WikiLeaks by publicizing the details of its e-mail exchanges with human rights groups, which reportedly expressed disquiet over the naming of informants in the Afghanistan intelligence reports it posted to the web.
Critics claim WikiLeaks may have endangered the lives of Afghan civilians and military personnel by failing to censor the files.
Assange also attacked The Huffington Post website for investigating his organization's financing, and criticized Wired magazine _ which recently published a report that claimed WikiLeaks was suffering from an internal power struggle that had led to the ouster of key staffers.
He also rejected claims that his group was obsessed with attacking the American military, but said "We have to deal with that country, if we are to deal - even partially - with the problem of secrecy in the world."
Assange denied reports that WikiLeaks's representative in Germany was suspended over criticisms of the way the website was run.
Daniel Schmitt told German news magazine Der Spiegel that Assange had unilaterally taken the decision to suspend him and had "reacted to the smallest criticism by accusing me of being disobedient and disloyal towards the project."
But Assange dismissed this as "absolute lies". "He was suspended a month ago for other reasons," said the WikiLeaks founder, without giving details.
The WikiLeaks chief made only an oblique reference to his legal troubles in Sweden, where prosecutors are probing complaints against Assange filed by two women in August. Assange has denied the allegations, saying they are part of a smear campaign. Asked about his future plans in the Scandinavian country, Assange dodged the question, wistfully describing Sweden as a fascinating place.
WikiLeaks' site is currently down, citing maintenance issues.
