The Pentagon removed thousands of Afghan War-related photographs and videos from a Department of Defense website over concerns they could expose Afghans who face possible reprisals because they worked with U.S. troops.
The images and videos, some dating back several years, had been published on the Defense Visual Information Distribution Service, known as DVIDS. The material is in the public domain and available to the media and public.
On Monday, chief Pentagon spokesman John Kirby said he made the decision to pull down any videos or photographs that could be used by
Afghanistan’s new Taliban leadership to target citizens who had assisted the U.S. and allied effort in the country over the past two decades.
“I wanted it to be unpublished for a temporary period of time and it is temporary,” Mr. Kirby told reporters at the Pentagon on Monday. “It was done out of an abundance of caution.”
About 120,000 photographs and 17,000 videos were taken off the website if they showed faces or any other identifying information of the Afghans. Although Taliban fighters have targeted members of the former government and family members of those who worked for the U.S. government, Mr. Kirby said the decision to remove the images and videos was not prompted by any particular security threat.
“Nothing has been deleted from the record. It is simply being archived until we believe it’s the appropriate time to put [it] back up,” Mr. Kirby said.