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.
They ignored the panty bomber's daddy, too.
What kind of friggin' govt do we have??
WikiLeaks claims they have an additional 15000 docs to be released later. They didn't expect the blowback from this debacle. We'll see...
If the other media groups back him up, then this looks very bad for this administration.
Whenever a political type uses the word "absolutely" there's a good possibility that they mean the exact opposite of what they are saying. At least we should be on the lookout for weasel words.
Uh, sorry, Col. Lapan...there's just no way you can know that.
The good Colonel has absolutely nothing other than the words of White House staff backing his claim. Those are worth less than nothing.
Add in the fact that the Lie House has already lied so many times already that any denial of this type is bound to be largely a ....well as Joe Wilson stated...LIE! Example: the Lie House also claimed to the contrary and told us they knew nothing of the Lockerbie terrorist release...guess what....
Considering they all concern the Bush Admin, why would Obama and his ilk care? They don’t care about the USA, and they lie at will, even when easily disproven.
The thing is that the sort of wannabe who thinks America purposefully carpet bombs innocents and sends Apache drivers out to kill Reuters reporters is usually the sort of person who thinks that...
1. One American president is the same as another.
2. The capitalist system is the monster, so pretty much anything short of walking into Obama’s office with the docs on a dolly and reporters in tow is the same as giving emailing the docs to The Cigarette Smoking Man.
TELEGRAPH.co.uk: "BRADLEY MANNING, SUSPECTED SOURCE OF WIKILEAKS DOCUMENTS, RAGED ON FACEBOOK PAGE" (SNIPPET: "Mr Manning, who is openly homosexual..." SNIPPET: "His tagline on his personal page reads: "Take me for who I am, or face the consequences!"") (July 30, 2010, 10:00 pm BST)
WASHINGTON TIMES.com - Editorial: "A WIKILEAK TOO FAR There are limits to press freedom in times of war" (SNIPPET: "These secret reports have the greatest possibility of causing deadly consequences, which under the American legal tradition is why those who leaked them should be held accountable.") (July 29, 2010, 6:03 pm)
Travel.State.Gov - U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE Bureau of Consular Affairs - Travel Warning: "PAKISTAN" (SNIPPET: "The presence of Al-Qaida, Taliban elements, and indigenous militant sectarian groups poses a potential danger to U.S. citizens throughout Pakistan...") (July 22, 2010)
Was Wikileaker Bradley Manning Betrayed By His Queer Identity?
Was Wikileaker Bradley Manning Betrayed By His Queer Identity?It’s been speculated that alleged Army leaker, PFC Bradley Manning, is transgendered. We’ve found evidence that strongly suggests Manning has some sort of LGBT identity, and that the man who snitched on him exploited this to win his trust.
Twenty-two year-old army intelligence specialist Bradley Manning was arrested May 26th for allegedly leaking the notorious Iraq Apache attack helicopter video and more than a quarter million classified State Department documents to secret-sharing website Wikileaks. He was turned in by his confidant, ex-hacker Adrian Lamo. Lamo then gave logs of his chats with Manning to Wired’s Kevin Poulsen, who broke the story of Manning’s arrest.
There are many unanswered questions about this story—the largest of which is: Why would Manning trust an ex-hacker he had never met enough to confess, almost immediately, via instant message, his terrible Wikileaks secret—something he knew could put him in prison for a long time? Lamo told Salon that Manning found him by doing a Twitter search for “Wikileaks,” and that he doesn’t know what motivated his confession. Yeah fucking right.
Wired suggested Manning sensed a “kindred-spirit in the ex-hacker” Lamo. But Manning and Lamo also apparently share something stronger than a fondness for breaking into computer systems: An LGBT identity. Lamo is an out bisexual, while an increasing number of clues suggest that Manning is, if not transgendered, deeply uncertain about his sexuality and/or gender. Interviews with Lamo’s acquaintances and a close reading of the chat logs suggest Lamo traded on this identity to exploit Manning at his most vulnerable, as questions about his sexuality were unbearably pressing on his personal and professional lives......
http://gawker.com/5571388/was-wikileaker-bradley-manning-betrayed-by-his-queer-identity
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