US trying to stop WikiLeaks disclosures: Biden

Washington: Vice President Joe Biden says the Justice Department is looking at what the US can do to stop more document releases from WikiLeaks.

Biden says he won't comment on that process, but has strong words about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Biden says if Assange conspired to get classified documents with a member of the US military, then "that's fundamentally different" than if a reporter were given classified material by a source.

The vice president tells NBC television's 'Meet the Press' that he would argue it's closer to being "a high-tech terrorist" than what happened in the Pentagon Papers, with the 1971 leak of a government study about US involvement in Vietnam.

An Army private is suspected of passing classified information to WikiLeaks.

On Afghanistan, the Vice President said next summer's planned withdrawal of US troops will be more than a token reduction.

He also promised that "we're going to be totally out of there, come hell or high water, by 2014."

Al-Qaida's strength, he said, "has been significantly degraded" as US forces have gone after the terrorist network's leadership.

But, he added, there has been less success in countering the Afghan insurgency, dealing with the safe havens in Pakistan and creating a stable Afghan government.

"We're making progress on all fronts, more in some areas than in others," Biden said.

"Are we making sufficient progress fast enough? The answer remains to be seen."

Nevertheless, Biden said plans have not changed on President Barack Obama's pledge to begin US troop reductions next summer.

"We are going to, come July, begin to draw down American forces" and begin to transfer responsibility to the Afghans, said Biden. "It will not be a token amount."

The Obama administration repeatedly has said that July would mark the beginning of the troop withdrawals and its size would depend on military conditions at the time.

"We're starting it in July of 2011, and we're going to be totally out of there, come hell or high water, by 2014," Biden said.

Biden said intelligence agencies are united in believing that al-Qaida in Pakistan and Afghanistan no longer has the capacity to pull off an operation on the level of the September 11 attacks.

But allied terrorist groups elsewhere, he said, are thought to be planning "much smaller bore but yet deadly attempts to go after the United States."