The New York Times made a similar claim Monday and that too was a lie.
Posted on 07/31/2010 9:40:14 AM PDT by Kaslin
Official Rejects Claim WikiLeaks Offered Document Review
By Army Sgt. 1st Class Michael J. Carden American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, July 30, 2010 – A claim by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange that the U.S. government had an opportunity to review stolen military documents published on the group’s website is untrue, a Pentagon spokesman said today.
“It’s absolutely false that WikiLeaks contacted the White House and offered to have them look through the documents,” Marine Corps Col. David Lapan said.
The website recently published tens of thousands of classified documents spanning the timeframe January 2004 through December 2009 that reportedly were given to several U.S. and international media outlets weeks ago. The documents detail field reports from Afghanistan and an alleged Pakistani partnership with the Taliban. The documents also include names of Afghan informants who work or have worked with the U.S. military.
Assange told “ABC Lateline” in Australia last night that WikiLeaks and several media groups contacted the White House prior to releasing the documents for assistance in reviewing them to make sure innocent names were not released. White House officials declined, he said.
He added that White House officials were not given “veto” power, but were given an opportunity help WikiLeaks minimize potential danger to informants and innocent civilians named in the cables. The New York Times acted on behalf of WikiLeaks, he said.
“We never had the opportunity to look at any of the documents in advance to determine anything,” Lapan said. “The documents were brought to the attention of the White House, but no copies of documents, or opportunities to review were given.”
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said yesterday that Defense Department officials have asked the FBI to assist in investigating the leak of the classified material. Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said those responsible for the leak may have the blood of U.S. servicemembers and Afghan civilians on their hands.
Will see what he says on Judge Napolitano’s show at 7PM.
The DOD should have kept their mouths shut.
You can bet money the melinin deficient one has proof of who and what he made available to WH.
Expect it to be @@@@@@leaked.
The New York Times made a similar claim Monday and that too was a lie.
As despicable as the Obama administration is, I figure the chances that the murdering little twit Assange is telling the truth are pretty low.
Imagine you believe America is an empire that slaughters people indiscriminately for little or no reason. Then imagine you call up said empire and say, “I have 90,000 documents stolen from you. Would you like to look at them? No one knows I have them, so you could just shut down my site or even kill me and no one would be the wiser.”
Yeah...right.
>>Lapan said. “The documents were brought to the attention of the White House, but no copies of documents, or opportunities to review were given.” <<<
We knew about the documents, but couldn’t DO anything. So we fired Shirley Sherrod instead, and then uh, rehired her.
Yeah, I just set my FIOB box to record it and watch it later
It’s a curious thing...why would anyone offer a document review? If I were DOD or the US government...I’d say the whole thing is classified and you can’t publish. It’d be a Chinese fire hose drill...with no outcome. So why offer?
I still say none of this is as it appears. As to what the reality is, pure speculation, but what we all see is about 5% of the iceberg of truth IMO.
Ping
Hell he said they were aware of the documents and content and there was nothing that hadn’t already been reviewed and discussed - resulting in a strategy change.
WikiLeaks pretty much admitted to it!
“It;s a curious thing ... why would anyone offer a document review?”
Actually it makes a lot of sense. Wikileaks wanted to post original documents to discredit the war, but didn’t want to be reponsible for the mass murder of the many informants, who were identified by name and address in the documents. The Obama administration could have reviewed them, and while Wikileads wouldn’t agree to not publish any of them, they might have agreed to redact portions that deal with the human beings who are now being hunted by the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
Or even if Wikileaks wouldn’t redact those portions, the advance notice to the WH would have allowed us to take the people named, to safely, rather than abandoning them to the terrorists.
One article said that our entire intelligence network we built up in Afghanistan has been compromised - not to mention any future atttempts to find informants willing to help us, given they will be abandoned.
This IS a major issue.
Given the credibility of the Obama administration and their statements that they consider this “no big deal”, as they stated a number of times, I believe Wikileaks founder, or anyone, before I believe Obama.
It's simple. If the USG says don't publish anything, nothing is lost, because you publish everything anyway. If the USG says "Don't publish documents A, B, and C," then you publish documents A, B, and C with big flashing headlines. Or you sell it instead of publishing it. Wikileaks was trying to use our own government to authenticate what they collected and analyze it for importance. Pretty cheeky of them.
Expected response from the Lie House and its lapdog cronies.....
I heard earlier there was more to come and included BP stuff!
In my opinion WikiLeaks is lying. In fact the only alterations to the documents they made was to hide the traitor’s info. I know, I bothered to look through them. I knew about the Afghan Informers before the Time of London wrote about it.
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