WASHINGTON -- The White House on Monday sought to reassert control over the public debate on the Afghanistan war as political reaction to the disclosure of a six-year archive of classified military documents increased pressure on President Barack Obama to defend his war strategy.
On Capitol Hill, a leading Senate Democrat said the documents, with their detailed account of a war faring even more poorly than two administrations had portrayed, would intensify congressional scrutiny of Obama's policy.
"Those policies are at a critical stage, and these documents may very well underscore the stakes and make the calibrations needed to get the policy right more urgent," said Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and an influential supporter of the war.
Rep. Jane Harman, D-Venice, who heads a homeland security intelligence subcommittee and is more skeptical about the current state of the war, said the documents "reinforce the view that the war in Afghanistan is not going well."
The disclosures came at a crucial moment. Amid difficulties on the ground and mounting casualties in the war, more administration officials are privately questioning the Afghan policy.
In Congress, the House could vote as early as today on a critical war-financing bill, the same day a Senate panel is set to hold a hearing on Obama's choice to head the military's Central Command, said Gen. James Mattis, who would oversee military operations in Afghanistan.
Administration officials acknowledged the documents, released on the Internet by an organization called WikiLeaks, will make it harder for Obama as he tries to hang on to public and congressional support until the end of the year, when he has scheduled a review of the war effort.
"We don't know how to react," one frustrated administration official said. "This obviously puts Congress and the public in a bad mood."
Obama is facing a tough choice: He either must figure out a way to convince Congress and the American people that his war strategy remains on track and is seeing fruit -- a harder sell given that the war is lagging -- or move more quickly to a far more limited U.S. presence.
As the debate over the war begins anew, administration officials have been striking tones similar to the Bush administration's to argue for continuing the current Afghanistan strategy, which calls for a significant troop buildup.
Richard Holbrooke, Obama's special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, said the Afghan war effort came down to a matter of U.S. national security, in testimony before the Foreign Relations Committee two weeks ago.
White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs struck a similar note Monday in responding to the documents, which WikiLeaks made accessible to the New York Times, the British newspaper the Guardian and the German magazine Der Spiegel.
"We are in this region of the world because of what happened on 9/11," Gibbs said. "Ensuring that there is not a safe haven in Afghanistan by which attacks against this country and countries around the world can be planned. That's why we're there, and that's why we're going to continue to make progress on this relationship."
Several administration officials privately expressed hope they might be able to use the leaks, and their description of a sometimes duplicitous Pakistani ally, to pressure Pakistan to cooperate more fully on counterterrorism.
The documents seem to lay out rich, new details of connections between the Taliban and other militant groups and Pakistan's main spy agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence.
White House officials said the connection between the Pakistani spy agency and the Taliban was well-known.
While agreeing that the disclosures were not altogether new, some leading Democrats said the new details underscored deep suspicions they have harbored toward the spy agency.
"Some of these documents reinforce a longstanding concern of mine about the supporting role of some Pakistani officials in the Afghan insurgency," said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Armed Services Committee.
During a visit to Pakistan this month, Levin, who has largely supported the war, said he confronted senior Pakistani leaders about the spy agency's continuing ties to the militant groups.
Pakistan on Monday strongly denied suggestions that its military spy service has guided the Afghan insurgency.
A senior intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity under standard practice, sharply condemned the reports as "part of the malicious campaign to malign the spy organization" and said the agency would "continue to eradicate the menace of terrorism with or without the help of the West."
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