USA — Pentagon Releases Letter Sent to Purported WikiLeaks Attorney

WASHINGTON, Aug. 18, 2010 — Defense Depart­ment offi­cials today released a let­ter the Pentagon’s top lawyer sent to a man pur­port­ed to be an attor­ney for the Wik­iLeaks web­site, which pub­lished tens of thou­sands of clas­si­fied doc­u­ments last month and is threat­en­ing to release 15,000 more.

Pen­ta­gon spokesman Bryan Whit­man told reporters this after­noon that Tim­o­thy J. Matush­es­ki was a “no show” for a tele­phone call that was arranged last week when his name and pur­port­ed sta­tus as a Wik­iLeaks attor­ney came up in an inves­ti­ga­tion of the doc­u­ment leak. 

The fol­low­ing day, Whit­man said, the Pentagon’s gen­er­al coun­sel cod­i­fied the Defense Department’s posi­tion in a let­ter and sent it to Matusheski. 

Here is the text of the let­ter, dat­ed Aug. 16 and signed by Gen­er­al Coun­sel Jeh C. John­son. Words that were under­lined in the orig­i­nal are pre­sent­ed here in all cap­i­tal let­ters: Dear Mr. Matusheski 

I under­stand that you rep­re­sent your­self to be an attor­ney for Wik­iLeaks and that you, on behalf of that orga­ni­za­tion, sought a con­ver­sa­tion with some­one in the Unit­ed States Gov­ern­ment to dis­cuss “harm min­i­miza­tion” with respect to some 15,000 U.S. Gov­ern­ment clas­si­fied doc­u­ments that Wik­iLeaks is hold­ing and is threat­en­ing to make pub­lic. In response, I was pre­pared to speak with you yes­ter­day at 10:00am EDT and con­vey the posi­tion of the Depart­ment of Defense. Despite your agree­ment to be avail­able by tele­phone yes­ter­day morn­ing, we could not reach you at that time. 

The posi­tion of the Depart­ment of Defense is clear, and it should be con­veyed to your client in no uncer­tain terms: 

Wik­iLeaks is hold­ing the prop­er­ty of the U.S. Gov­ern­ment, includ­ing clas­si­fied doc­u­ments and sen­si­tive nation­al secu­ri­ty infor­ma­tion that has not been autho­rized for release. Fur­ther, it is the view of the Depart­ment of Defense that Wik­iLeaks obtained this mate­r­i­al in cir­cum­stances that con­sti­tute a vio­la­tion of Unit­ed States law, and that as long as Wik­iLeaks holds this mate­r­i­al, the vio­la­tion of the law is ongoing. 

The Sec­re­tary of Defense has made clear the dam­age to our nation­al secu­ri­ty by the pub­lic release by Wik­iLeaks of some 76,000 clas­si­fied doc­u­ments sev­er­al weeks ago, and the threat to the lives of coali­tion forces in Afghanistan and to the lives of local Afghan nation­als as a result. As the Sec­re­tary has also stat­ed, we know from var­i­ous sources that our ene­my is access­ing the Wik­iLeaks web­site for the pur­pose of exploit­ing Wik­iLeaks’ ille­gal and irre­spon­si­ble actions, to pur­sue their own ter­ror­ist aims. 

The threat­ened release of addi­tion­al clas­si­fied doc­u­ments by Wik­iLeaks will add to the dam­age. Among oth­er sen­si­tive items, we believe the clas­si­fied doc­u­ments con­tain, like the first batch of released doc­u­ments, the names of Afghan nation­als who are assist­ing coali­tion forces in our efforts to bring about peace and sta­bil­i­ty in that por­tion of the world. Thus, the Depart­ment of Defense will NOT nego­ti­ate some “min­i­mized” or “san­i­tized” ver­sion of a release by Wik­iLeaks of addi­tion­al U.S. Gov­ern­ment clas­si­fied doc­u­ments. 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. 

(Signed)

Jeh Charles Johnson 

Source:
U.S. Depart­ment of Defense
Office of the Assis­tant Sec­re­tary of Defense (Pub­lic Affairs) 

Face­book and/or on Twit­ter

Team GlobDef

Seit 2001 ist GlobalDefence.net im Internet unterwegs, um mit eigenen Analysen, interessanten Kooperationen und umfassenden Informationen für einen spannenden Überblick der Weltlage zu sorgen. GlobalDefence.net war dabei die erste deutschsprachige Internetseite, die mit dem Schwerpunkt Sicherheitspolitik außerhalb von Hochschulen oder Instituten aufgetreten ist.

Alle Beiträge ansehen von Team GlobDef →