Adam Weinstein
Mother Jones
The Pentagon is walking back initial denials that it tried to contact WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, in recent days to discuss still-unreleased secret files from the Afghanistan war. And new details divulged by defense officials suggest their middleman for contacting the website was an obscure lawyer based in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
Earlier today, Assange told reporters that he’d “received contact” from the military and he’d “welcome their engagement,” adding: “It is always positive for parties to talk to each other.” But according to Newsweek:
…spokesmen for both the US Army and the Office of the Secretary of Defense denied that any such contacts had occurred. The office of the Army’s general counsel, the military service’s chief lawyer, has had “no contact with Julian Assange or any representative of WikiLeaks,” said Col. Thomas Collins, an Army spokeman.
Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman went on to say that there was no “direct contact with WikiLeaks,” and the DOD’s only avenue of communicating with the site was “via the media.”
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