Pentagon Finally Reaches Out to Wikileaks—Probably to Slap It
Secret-sharing website Wikileaks is hinting that the Pentagon is interested in helping them release a new cache of 15,000 classified Afghanistan war documents. The Pentagon's lawyer did in fact try to talk to Wikileaks. Is the Pentagon going soft?
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange told the AP that the Pentagon wanted to talk about helping Wikileaks desensitize 15,000 unreleased documents of their massive Afghanistan leak.
But the Pentagon was like, That's news to us:
"The Defense Department will not negotiate some 'minimized' or 'sanitized' version of the release by WikiLeaks of additional U.S. government classified documents," wrote Jeh Johnson, the Pentagon's top lawyer.
The Pentagon's General Counsel did indeed try to talk with Wikileaks' lawyer, Timothy Matusheski. (They say Matusheski was a "no show.") Here's what the meeting would have looked like if it had occurred.
Pentagon: Give us those 15,000 documents back.
Wikileaks: No.
Pentagon: !!!
It's unclear how issuing nonsensical statements helps Wikileaks' cause. (Really? The Pentagon is interested in helping you be an enormous pain in its ass?) So we will reiterate our plea: Hire a good PR person, Wikileaks! They can even have weird hair and a harrowing life tale like Julian Assange. Just stop talking crazy-talk!
Update: Wikileaks just posted a letter the Pentagon sent to them in which they write what they would have said at that meeting. Which is: Give us those 15,000 documents back.
[The Department of Defense] demands that nothing further be released by WikiLeaks, that al of the U.S. Government classified documents that WikiLeaks has obtained be returned immediately, and that WikiLeaks remove and destroy all of those records from its database
