Wikileaks, the website that has drawn interest for its release of a variety of leaked documents and information, dropped a bombshell Sunday night, posting what it describes as a six-year “War Diary” of government documents related to the Afghanistan War.

The New York Times is one of several news outlets that have used the information for a story that contends Pakistan has secretly aided Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan, among other revelations. The newspaper indicates it had access to the documents for weeks along with two other European news outlets, but held off posting them until today at the request of Wikileaks

“The documents, made available by an organization called WikiLeaks, suggest that Pakistan, an ostensible ally of the United States, allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organize networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders," the Times reported online late Sunday. “Taken together, the reports indicate that American soldiers on the ground are inundated with accounts of a network of Pakistani assets and collaborators that runs from the Pakistani tribal belt along the Afghan border, through southern Afghanistan, and all the way to the capital, Kabul.”

The Times adds: “Much of the information -- raw intelligence and threat assessments gathered from the field in Afghanistan-- cannot be verified and likely comes from sources aligned with Afghan intelligence, which considers Pakistan an enemy, and paid informants. Some describe plots for attacks that do not appear to have taken place. But many of the reports rely on sources that the military rated as reliable.”

In addition, the Times posted a lengthy editor's note Sunday night, which defended the use of the leaked documents and explained the decision behind posting them. It stated, in part:

“Deciding whether to publish secret information is always difficult, and after weighing the risks and public interest, we sometimes chose not to publish. But there are times when the information is of significant public interest, and this is one of those times. The documents illuminate the extraordinary difficulty of what the United States and its allies have undertaken in a way that other accounts have not.

”Most of the incident reports are marked 'secret,' a relatively low level of classification. The Times has taken care not to publish information that would harm national security interests. The Times and the other news organizations agreed at the outset that we would not disclose -- either in our articles or any of our online supplementary material -- anything that was likely to put lives at risk or jeopardize military or antiterrorist operations. We have, for example, withheld any names of operatives in the field and informants cited in the reports. We have avoided anything that might compromise American or allied intelligence-gathering methods such as communications intercepts. We have not linked to the archives of raw material. At the request of the White House, The Times also urged WikiLeaks to withhold any harmful material from its Web site.

The Times is posting reaction to its coverage on its “At War” blog HERE.