Could Woodward's Afghanistan Story Have Really Happened Without Obama's OK?

On Monday, Washington Post investigative reporter nonpareil Bob Woodward caused a tremor inside the Beltway with an exclusive account of  Gen. Stanley McChrystal's 66-page report to President Barack Obama, warning that without the deployment of more US troops, the administration's Afghanistan policy will fail.

There has followed the usual Washington parlor game of pundits and journalists speculating about who leaked the report to Woodward, and why.  By Tuesday the ascendant theory was that the report was leaked by Pentagon insiders who support McChrystal's call for additional troops and are annoyed at the White House for seeming to delay action on the General's recommendation.

Could be. But what caught my eye was the copy of the redacted report that ran with the Post's story. Download the file and you won't see excerpts of a classified document intended for the President's consumption. Rather, you will see what appears to be an officially declassified version of that report, with multiple deletions of presumably classified material indicated by the term "REDACTION" in caps.

Woodward, in his story, says this about the provenance of the document:

"Senior administration officials asked The Post over the weekend to withhold brief portions of the assessment that they said could compromise future operations. A declassified version of the document, with some deletions made at the government's request, appears at washingtonpost.com. "

Now, it's not unheard-of for government officials to be given an advance look at a Woodward blockbuster so they can have a chance to alert him and Post editors to information, not necessarily essential to the news story, whose revelation could compromise intelligence "sources and methods" or otherwise harm bona fide national security interests. And maybe that's all that happened in this case.

But it is odd, and I think highly unusual, for the government, as a result of such an exchange, to provide a reporter with an officially declassified edition of the report, "with some deletions made at the government's request," to use Woodward's words, for publication in a newspaper or on a newspaper's website.

Classified documents are not declassified by leakers acting anonymously, they are declassified by identifiable government officials acting with authorization. That means the document was given to Woodward either by the White House or by a Defense Department official acting at the direction of the White House and almost certainly with Obama's approval.

So, why would President Obama want to "leak" this report to Woodward?

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Peter Scheer, a lawyer and journalist, is Executive Editor of the First Amendment Coalition. www.firstamendmentcoalition.org

 

Comments

[AlGionfriddo]

Hey... why not give the Afgans tax cuts? It was the cure all for Ronny RayGun. I hear it can cure cancer too.

[arvay]

I have a far more disturbing explanation.

The US military for some time now has been inserting itself, in defiance of the Constitution, into the public discussion of strategy.

Commander-in-chief is not consultant in chief, it's absolute leader. They advise in private, he or she decides in public.

Truman fired MacArthur for far less, but since then our military has gotten away with this kind of politicking.

[AllAlongTheWatchtower]

Really? Does the name Maj. Gen. John Singlaub ring a bell?

[watchTVgetSTUPID]

CSPAN had a panel discussing how we need to be very aggressive in Afghanistan. They were obviously trying to drum up support for the coming troop increase. However when they took answers from the audience, their PR effort turned into a disaster. They ended up admiting the election has gone bad. Also they explained if the elections are seen as fraudulant then the foreign troops will be seen as occupiers. They admited we would certainly fail if the foreign troops are seen as occupiers. Connecting the dots leads to the conclusion more troops are not going to help. Several days later CSPAN re-aired to same program but this time the disasterous questions and answers were seamlessly deleted from the other questions and answers. I was surprised to see CSPAN re-enact a page out of the book "Animal Farm"

[Marcospinelli]

I haven't been counting, and perhaps I should, but I have noticed that this administration seems to not be letting itself come in second to the previous administration when it comes to "anonymous senior administration officials" leaking information (as opposed to delivering on the openness and transparency of government that Obama promised).

The overall picture that's being painted of this administration is one of cowardice and treachery.

This is not how people in a democracy make good and wise decisions.

[watchTVgetSTUPID]

Control of information by this administration is looking more like Cheney every day. That includes the selective "leaks" through large venue media outlets, refusal to investigate the previous administration acts, refusal to investigate the FED for complicity in the Wall Street criminal looting, and the promised transparancy being opaque.

[S1m0n]

What makes you think this was an official declassification?