Sgrena Report Available for Download — Including Classified Information
What purports to be the report regarding the shooting of the car with Giuliana Sgrena can be downloaded — apparently including confidential information and all! — from a link available at this Slashdot post.
I have been able to skim the unclassified portions, but haven’t figured out the trick the Slashdot people recommend for reading the classified information.
After a quick scan, I don’t see anything about a satellite recording.
Let’s assume that there is nothing in the report about a satellite recording. Could the editors at the L.A. Times have known this? If so, does this mean The Times was right to cut that information out of two separate Reuters reports?
Absolutely not.
First, from the reporting about the satellite recording, it’s not clear to me that its existence (if it does exist) was included in the report. If it wasn’t included, though, that seems quite strange — which leads to my second point: the information about the satellite recording was reported by CBS News, Reuters, and AFP, among others. It is in the public domain. If The Times has information debunking the claim about the satellite recording, it should report it.
Readers, let me know if you’re able to look at the (no longer very) classified portions.
UPDATE: Apparently I’d been reading the “classified” stuff all along. It’s just that portions of it had been redacted.
Via the Angry Clam in the comments, here is a link to an unredacted version that you don’t need to download.
UPDATE x2: I have an analogy for the L.A. Times‘s treatment of this story — giving them the benefit of the doubt and assuming that they have doubts about the satellite story. Would it have been right for a right-wing publication to simply ignore the CBS story about President Bush’s National Guard Service? Of course not. If they had doubts about the documents, the right thing to do would be to run the story and express the doubts. But don’t pretend the story isn’t out there. That’s disingenuous.
Frankly, I would be suspicious of any claim that The Times editors did this for sound reasons anyway, because they have ignored so much past evidence of Sgrena’s dishonesty in the past (as documented at Captain’s Quarters).
UPDATE x3: Michelle Malkin explains the significance of the inadvertently released classified information. Heads should roll over this.
[…] on for doubting the CBS News story. Response: Great! Let’s hear it! As I’ve said, the satellite story has been wi […]
Patterico's Pontifications » Responding to Howard Kurtz (0c6a63) — 5/4/2005 @ 12:55 amIf you download the PDF, you can simply copy and paste the content into word and read the whole thing. The redaction was done by changing the background color to match the foreground color. THis works much better with hardcopy where that is irreversible than with electronic text.
You can now skip the process and download the unredacted version from the /. users, though there is nothing really new in the unredacted file.
aodhan (9becd3) — 5/1/2005 @ 9:32 amYeah, this one’s genius, especially since this has happened to redacted PDF documents before.
Here’s one of the unredacted documents
Here’s another
Have fun kids.
The Angry Clam (fde4e6) — 5/1/2005 @ 9:47 amAngry,
I think I’m missing the classified material in those links.
Patterico (756436) — 5/1/2005 @ 9:50 amMuch ado about probably nothing
Blind Mind's Eye (d00f28) — 5/1/2005 @ 6:30 pmA leaked document (HTML version) allegedly containing sensitive information about Coallition troop movements, positions, terrorist tactics, their success and other information has been causing quite a bit of controversy online. There are two things tha…
Patterico,
Please delete all links to the classified (yes it seems that it is classified) information. I have reported the matter to the FBI and Centcom. Centcom is aware of the problem.
This is time sensitive. Let’s give the good guys time to protect out troops from their goof.
Paul Deignan (4285f7) — 5/1/2005 @ 6:37 pmPaul,
I appreciate the sentiment; I really do. But you can’t put the lid back on Pandora’s box. The cat’s out of the bag and the genie is out of the bottle. Pick any other metaphor you like, but there’s no reversing it — and that was already the case when I put up the links, or I never would have put them up in the first place.
Patterico (756436) — 5/1/2005 @ 6:43 pmPatterico,
Of course, I understand it. However, please do not assume that our guys on the ground get the information as rapidly as the bad guys. They need to be notified directly ASAP. Meanwhile, we need to do what we can to limit the probability that the bad guy will get the info in time to make use of it.
Time–it all about time.
Paul Deignan (4285f7) — 5/1/2005 @ 6:51 pmSgrena’s Satellite
JackLewis.net (807fbc) — 5/2/2005 @ 6:47 amFrom the AFP via Yahoo News: A US satellite reportedly recorded a checkpoint shooting in Iraq last month, enabling investigators…
La rivincita dei Carabinieri
Quante barzellette si raccontano sui Carabinieri italiani?
Uno casino, vero?
Beh, questa volta i nostri bravi ragazzi si possono prendere una rivincita.
Sì, perchè i servizi segreti americani (probabilmente “der Kansas Siti”) non sanno nem…
Boney - Sostantivo Monodose (9fdd50) — 5/2/2005 @ 11:44 am