The Wikileaks War With the Pentagon And In The Media

THE SECRET WAR BETWEEN WIKILEAKS AND THE PENTAGON, (AND SOME MEDIA OUTLETS)

By Danny Schechter Author of The Crime Of Our Time

Much of this commentary first appeared on the AlJazeera website.

It happened on a Friday, the anniversary of the first US casualties of the Vietnam War way back in l957. It was also the anniversary, in l964, of French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre's announcement that he was turning down the Nobel Prize. He later sat as a judge on Bertrand Russell's Vietnam War Crimes Tribunal, which indicted that conflict's carnage and lies.

It was the day this year that the often shadowy Wikileaks, chief nemesis of the Pentagon, maybe their worst nightmare--considered perhaps even more dangerous than the Taliban-- surfaced again with the largest public drop of secret military documents in history. Wikileaks is a public web site run by the Sunshine Press, a non-profit group.

For understandable reasons, the Pentagon is at war with its information war against the war--literally.

Wikileaks introduced the significance of their immense treasure trove of secrets on their website this way: "The 391,832 reports ('The Iraq War Logs'), document the war and occupation in Iraq, from 1st January 2004 to 31st December 2009 (except for the months of May 2004 and March 2009) as told by soldiers in the United States Army. Each is a 'SIGACT' or Significant Action in the war. They detail events as seen and heard by the US military troops on the ground in Iraq and are the first real glimpse into the secret history of the war that the United States government has been privy to throughout."

This time around, and unlike the earlier dissemination of what they called Afghan "war logs, they sanitized these documents to remove names that might become targets for retribution. The gesture did not satisfy the Pentagon that said they would provide aid and comfort to the enemy. Forcibly retired General Stanley McCrystal called the release " sad."

The Los Angeles Times reported, " In addition to the Times, the documents were made available to the Guardian newspaper in London, the French newspaper Le Monde, Al Jazeera and the German magazine Der Spiegel, on an embargoed basis.

The New York Times said it had edited or withheld any documents that would "put lives in danger or jeopardize continuing military operations.'' It said it redacted the names of informants, a particular concern of the Defense Department

The Pentagon had been bracing for the release for months. Fearing more compromises of national security and more embarrassment for practices they wanted hidden, they had set up a Wkileaks war room staffed with 120 operatives in anticipation. The Central Command in Tampa Florida has been fully engaged in trying to get newspapers not to run "stolen" documents.

A special intelligence unit called the Red Cell was involved. The task has been to prod the American spy networks to operate in a cleverer and more intelligent manner. (Ironically, Wikileaks had leaked some of their internal reports earlier.)