http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2010/08/18/pentagon-rebuffs-wikileaks-request- for-help/
. * August 18, 2010, 7:35 PM ET Pentagon Rebuffs Negotiations With WikiLeaks By Adam Entous The Pentagon rebuffed a WikiLeaks request for help reviewing 15,000 classified documents about the war in Afghanistan. Instead, it demanded the online whistleblower return all of the logs to the U.S. government and abandon plans to publish them. A lawyer who claims to represent WikiLeaks had reached out to the Pentagon to discuss ways to minimize the risk to civilians who may be identified in the yet-to-be-published documents. WikiLeaks has already released some 76,000 classified documents covering the war from 2004 to 2010, leaked by a source the website has refused to identify. The Pentagon said it believes that the 15,000 additional documents, like the initial batch, contain the names of Afghans who have helped the U.S. war effort and who could be targeted by the Taliban if their identities were made public. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told the Associated Press in Stockholm that the Pentagon had expressed a willingness to discuss the group's request for help going through the 15,000 documents. The Pentagon acknowledged that it had arranged a phone call on Sunday between its general counsel, Jeh Charles Johnson, and the purported WikiLeaks lawyer, Timothy Matusheski. But Matusheski was a "no-show for the call," Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said. Matusheski was not immediately available to comment. In a letter to Matusheski released on Wednesday, Johnson said the Pentagon would not collaborate with WikiLeaks. "The Department of Defense will not negotiate some 'minimized' or 'sanitized' version of a release by WikiLeaks of additional U.S. government classified documents," Johnson wrote in the Aug. 16 letter. "The department demands that nothing further be released by WikiLeaks, that all of the U.S. government classified documents that WikiLeaks has obtained be returned immediately, and that WikiLeaks remove and destroy all of these records from its databases," Johnson added. The U.S. says it is investigating army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning as a possible source of the leak. The documents touch on unreported incidents of Afghan civilian killings by North Atlantic Treaty Organiz ation forces and covert operations against Taliban figures, among other things. WikiLeaks' supporters say the accounts of the conflict should be publicized to show potential war crimes and the toll of the war. The Pentagon has said that posting more documents would be "the height of irresponsibility." [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [email protected]. -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [email protected] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: [email protected] Subscribe: [email protected] Unsubscribe: [email protected] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtmlYahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
