WikiLeaks Lawyer Says Pentagon Given Access to Unpublished Secret Documents

[kpete]

A lawyer representing the whistle-blowing Web site WikiLeaks says U.S. government officials have been given codes and passwords granting them online access to official U.S. government documents that WikiLeaks so far has not published.

Timothy Matusheski, a lawyer from Hattiesburg, Miss., who says he represents whistle-blowers and has been in touch with both WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and at least one government official involved in investigations of WikiLeaks, said the site had set up a “secure channel” through which authorized users could access the unpublished material. He said credentials for using this channel had been forwarded to representatives of the U.S. government whom he did not identify. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Matusheski indicated that the reason WikiLeaks had taken these steps was to make good on its offer to try to work with U.S. authorities to remove from reports, published in the future by the Web site, sensitive information that could put innocent lives in jeopardy.

Matusheski said U.S. officials had even been given access to an online mechanism through which they would be able to redact what they consider potentially sensitive information. Matusheski says he himself has been given only a portion of the codes needed to access the unpublished material. So, he says, the U.S. government now has wider and more complete access to the material than he did.

more:
http://www.newsweek.com/blogs/declassified/2010/08/20/wikileaks-lawyer-says-pentagon-has-been-given-codes-granting-access-to-unpublished-secret-documents.print.html

[Jeffersons Ghost]

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