There was another massive release of more Wikileaks documents and cries rang out by Village elitists and the Obama administration condemning them.
The Obama administration is condemning the latest release of classified documents by WikiLeaks that provide new details about detainees held at Guantánamo Bay.
More than 700 documents were made public Monday that detail sensitive information about the status of, evidence against and treatment of some of the 172 prisoners still housed at the detention facility in Cuba. The government said that the leak, published by news outlets like The Washington Post and The New York Times, could impede its anti-terrorism efforts. It defended its conduct in handling the prisoners...read on
Any person that believes in the basic concept of journalism should be supporting the legality of these releases. Don't look for that from the Beltway elites, though. Greg Mitchell has been doing an excellent job of covering WikiLeaks and is the go-to place for anything related to them:
As I’ve done for five months, I will be updating news and views on all things WikiLeaks all day, with new items added at the top.
--10:50 Strong NYT editorial tonight: "The internal documents from the prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, published in The Times on Monday were a chilling reminder of the legal and moral disaster that President George W. Bush created there. They describe the chaos, lawlessness and incompetence in his administration’s system for deciding detainees’ guilt or innocence and assessing whether they would be a threat if released....The disaster at Guantánamo Bay is now Mr. Obama’s problem. He should not compound Mr. Bush’s mistakes in his efforts to correct them."
7:45 The Gitmo Files: Center for Constitional Rights analysis, video.
5:05 Amazing: The Atlantic does the counting and finds that the NYT (tho often critical of Assange) has cited WikiLeaks docs in more than half of daily editions this year -- and that's not counting brief references to Assange or Manning but only actual use of documents. Would probably be even higher percentage going back to last Thanksgiving when Cable gate broke.
4:25 Bombshell from the Guardian: Al-qaeda terrorist / bomber also worked for Brit spy service M-16. "Adil Hadi al Jazairi Bin Hamlili, an Algerian citizen described as a "facilitator, courier, kidnapper, and assassin for al-Qaida", was detained in Pakistan in 2003 and later sent to Guantánamo Bay.
"But according to Hamlili's Guantánamo "assessment" file, one of 759 individual dossiers obtained by the Guardian, US interrogators were convinced that he was simultaneously acting as an informer for British and Canadian intelligence."...read on
Which leads me to Bernie Goldberg, who's book has had a very negative impact on right wing extremists. He's a useful tool for Fox News because he's their resident expert on "librul bias" in the media, but since he did work for CBS in the news department, he does understand how vital it is for journalists to use leaked information so that they can do their jobs when it comes to the government. Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers is a lesson from history on why they are so important.
Anyway, Bill O'Reilly wants Wikileaks tried for treason (as you'd expect), but Goldberg sets him straight about their value and echoes what progressives have been saying about WikiLeaks. As long as they received them without participating in their retrieval if it was done illegally, then they are obligated to release them to the public.
O'Reilly: This is an ongoing situation. Some of the press is seizing upon it. If I got leaked Wikileaks documents I wouldn't put them on the air. I'm gonna tell everyone I wouldn't flat out do it. Especially if it put the ISA in any kind of a dangerous situation, which the Guantanamo Bay thing can whip up people easily around the world
Goldberg: I think we disagree. Certainly I'm against it if it put lives in jeopardy or jeopardizes an ongoing operation to capture terrorists then I'm against it, but I think you have to distinguish between the person who actually downloaded and in effect stole the documents. That person is clearly guilty of some crime and Wikileaks, if WIkileaks was not in collusion with that person who downloaded the documents. Wikileaks didn't give them software to do it or didn't tell them how to do it in any way, then Wikileaks is pretty much a news organization. Granted it's an anti-American, anti war organization, but they got the information from whoever stole the documents and then made a decision as to whether or not to publish. I think they have a right to do that. I don't think they should be prosecuted
Bernie called Wikileaks a news organization and rightly so. O'Reilly tries to say the government can make some sort of Rico case against Wikileaks and says this.
O'Reilly: You can get them on that Rico thing. Now, is Sweden going to expedite over here? I don't know whether they will or they're not. I think you can make a strong case that these people are practicing espionage against this country.
Bernie actually lends the voice of reason to The Factor and explains the Pentagon Papers to Bill.
O'Reilly, unsurprisingly, refuses to listen.
