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Pentagon Demands Return of Leaked Afghanistan Documents
Multiple news agencies are reporting that the Pentagon has demanded the return of WikiLeaks' collection of secret documents relating to the war in Afghanistan. Defense Department spokesman Geoff Morrell said, "The only acceptable course is for WikiLeaks to take steps immediately to return all versions of all of these documents to the US government and permanently delete them from its website, computers and records." According to the BBC, Morrell also "acknowledged the already-leaked documents' viral spread across the internet made it unlikely they could ever be quashed," but hopes to prevent the dissemination of a further 15,000 documents WikiLeaks is reportedly in the process of redacting. "We're looking to have a conversation about how to get these perilous documents off the website as soon as possible, return them to their rightful owners and expunge them from their records." WikiLeaks, predictably, shows no sign of cooperating.
It doesn't matter if Wikileaks complies, Pentagon has made it very clear they will make them comply:
Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said that not embarrassing the US military was "doing the right thing" and he hoped Wikileaks would "honour our demands".
However, asked what the Pentagon would do next, Morrell told the AP that it was up to the FBI and Justice Department to decide how to proceed.
"If doing the right thing is not good enough for them [Wikileaks], then we will figure out what other alternatives we have to compel them to do the right thing," he added.
Of course the right thing to the US government is always whatever the US military says is the right thing, and as the Wikileaks documents that have recently been released show in brutal detail, the US military has an unusual interpretation of what is 'right'.
to decrypt the insurance file!
".. we've got to be careful, Amy. Mullen actually was quite crafty in his words. He said "might already have" blood on my hands .. it's really quite fantastic that Gates and Mullen, Gates being the former head of the CIA during Iran-Contra and the overseer of Iraq and Afghanistan, and Mullen being the military commander for Iraq and Afghanistan -- I'm not sure what his further background is -- who have ordered assassinations every day, are trying to bring people on board to look at a speculative understanding of whether we might have blood on our hand"
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The part of the picture which I think you're missing is this: the copies may be missing information that the originals contain. This is certainly the case if WikiLeaks is editing them (redacting text) before releasing them. If the files have been tampered with, they may not be admissible as evidence in a court, or they may not be as compelling to a jury, even if they are. There are legal standards for admitting digital evidence, and then there are the forensic experts, of course. Telling a court, "here's a file I downloaded from bittorrent, and it looks pretty legit" isn't going to cut it. If the pentagon manages to get the originals back, they might just save Cheney, Powell, Rice, Bush, Wolfowitz, etc. from a public hanging.
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Not to be confused with Col.
Considering they've already shared the unedited files with at least three other news agencies.. yeah, this is just the beginning.
Newspapers have sat on much bigger stories just because the government said "please".
Multiple newspapers sat on or killed stories because, then Director of National Intelligence, Negroponte asked them to.
Telecom spying anyone?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
I wonder what crackpipe you people are smoking. I see a lot of "Bush/Cheney will be hanged one day!!!!" going on, and I'm laughing at this. Nobody is going to go back, find the former president, put him on trial, say "You did shit during a war while you were president that we should hang you for," and hang them. It won't happen. You're all talking about things you "know," and thus things they'd already be on trial for because it's rather public knowledge; obviously there's been no indictment (if it was even possible, they'd pay lawyers to file charges themselves BEFORE there was any evidence, so they could ride through the trial and get acquitted and avoid further trial on "unearthed evidence" later due to double-jeopardy).
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Multiple newspapers sat on or killed stories because, then Director of National Intelligence, Negroponte asked them to.
And the government isn't used to anybody telling them "no". That's the biggest reason they're pissed - because they aren't in control of this situation, Wikileaks is. I watched the full press conference yesterday where they issued this ultimatum. He looked like such a fool. "Demanding" that Wikileaks "does the right thing". If you ask me, Wikileaks has already done the right thing by asking for assistance from the U.S. Gov't (albiet indirectly) in redacting the documents. Wikileaks should issuea a public statement/open letter to the DoD making it clear that they want to do the right thing by redacting documents and omitting portions of them which could put people in danger. If (more likely when) the DoD refuses, the blood is on their hands.
The only problem here is, Wikileaks is essentially using these 15,000 documents as insurance. They're in somewhat of a stalemate now, since if they release them, they've lost their leverage. Unless they can use the un-redacted versions as insurance after they release the redacted ones.
To expand on my comment, Wikileaks released the initial documents and with-held this additional 15,000 documents BECAUSE they were concerned about the risk that these particular documents may contain some information that should be redacted for safety (in particular, names/locations, etc). As Wikileaks states, they approached the Pentagon and requested their assistance in identifying certain documents or items within these particular 15,000 documents that should be redacted. The Pentagon REFUSED to assist them in doing it.
So if you're going to try and claim that Assange and Wikileaks don't care about people's safety that might be directly impacted by release of these documents, then you MUST also claim the same of the Government. The government is pouting and saying that they would rather tell Wikileaks to eat it than disagree with them AND at least have a chance to promote the safety of those very people they claim to be concerned about.