Pentagon says ex-SEAL book contains secrets

KIMBERLY DOZIER

LOLITA C. BALDOR

Asso­ci­ated Press

WASHINGTON — A for­mer Navy SEAL’s insider account of the raid that killed Osama bin Laden con­tains clas­si­fied infor­ma­tion, the Pen­ta­gon said Tues­day, and the admi­ral who heads the Naval Spe­cial War­fare Com­mand said details in the book may pro­vide ene­mies with dan­ger­ous insight into secre­tive U.S. operations.

Rear Adm. Sean Pybus told his force Tues­day that “hawk­ing details about a mis­sion” and sell­ing other infor­ma­tion about SEAL train­ing and oper­a­tions puts the force and their fam­i­lies at risk.

“For an elite force that should be hum­ble and dis­ci­plined for life, we are cer­tainly not appear­ing to be so,” Pybus wrote in a let­ter to the roughly 8,000 troops under his com­mand. “We owe our chain of com­mand much bet­ter than this.”

The let­ter was obtained by The Asso­ci­ated Press.

At the Pen­ta­gon, press sec­re­tary George Lit­tle said that an offi­cial review of the book, “No Easy Day,” deter­mined that it reveals what he called “sen­si­tive and clas­si­fied” infor­ma­tion. He was not more spe­cific but said the author was required to sub­mit the book to the Pen­ta­gon before pub­li­ca­tion for a for­mal review of poten­tial dis­clo­sures of such information.

“When you have spe­cial oper­a­tions units that per­form these mis­sions, there are tac­tics, tech­niques, and pro­ce­dures, not to men­tion human life, that are in play,” Lit­tle said. “And it is the height of irre­spon­si­bil­ity not to have this kind of mate­r­ial checked for the pos­si­ble dis­clo­sure of clas­si­fied information.”

He told reporters dur­ing a brief­ing that the Pen­ta­gon is still review­ing what legal options should be taken against the author.

If the Pen­ta­gon deter­mines the bin Laden book does dis­close clas­si­fied secrets, the gov­ern­ment could con­sider bring­ing fed­eral crim­i­nal charges against Bis­son­nette. The poten­tial charges and penal­ties would depend largely on what type of secrets were disclosed.

Pybus, in his let­ter, was more direct, say­ing that, “We must imme­di­ately recon­sider how we prop­erly influ­ence our peo­ple in and out of uni­form NOT to seek inap­pro­pri­ate mon­e­tary, polit­i­cal, or celebrity profit from their ser­vice” with the SEALS.

“We all have much to gain or lose,” he said. “In the weeks ahead, we will be tak­ing actions to meet this chal­lenge, and I appre­ci­ate your lead­er­ship and sup­port of our com­mu­nity in this effort.”

Last week, Adm. William McRaven, head of U.S. Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Com­mand, warned his troops that he would take legal action against any­one found to have exposed sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion that could cause fel­low forces harm. The Naval Spe­cial War­fare Com­mand is a unit within U.S. Spe­cial Oper­a­tions Command.

A lawyer for author Matt Bis­son­nette, who wrote under the pseu­do­nym Mark Owen, has dis­puted that he was legally obliged to have the book screened before publication.

Bissonnette’s co-author Kevin Mau­rer said in a state­ment Tues­day that Bis­son­nette “was metic­u­lous about adher­ing to his desire to never do any­thing to under­mine the SEALs’ mis­sion or put his for­mer col­leagues in harm’s way.”

Lit­tle would not say what dam­age may result from the book’s rev­e­la­tions and he declined to point to any spe­cific por­tions of the book that con­tain mate­r­ial that would be con­sid­ered a vio­la­tion and a release of clas­si­fied information.

He said the Pen­ta­gon did not try to stop the pub­lic release of the book this week in part because there wasn’t much time.

“Pre-release copies of the book were already being cir­cu­lated around,” Lit­tle said. “So the prac­ti­cal effect of request­ing that the pub­lisher with­hold release of the book just wasn’t an avail­able option.”

He added that the Pen­ta­gon also has not taken steps to stop the book from being sold on mil­i­tary instal­la­tions. It’s not the Pentagon’s prac­tice, Lit­tle said, “to get into the busi­ness of decid­ing what and what does not go on book­shelves in mil­i­tary exchanges. But that doesn’t mean in any way, shape or form that we don’t have seri­ous con­cerns about the fact that this process of pre-publication review was not followed.”

The book, which was pub­lished by Dut­ton, an imprint of Pen­guin Group (USA), was No. 1 on Amazon’s best seller list Tues­day, which was its offi­cial release day. The ini­tial print run was 575,000 copies and pub­li­ca­tion of the book was moved up from Sept. 11 to Sept. 4 amid a flurry of reports about the book last week.

Jeh John­son, the Pentagon’s top lawyer, noti­fied Bis­son­nette last Thurs­day that the Pen­ta­gon believes he is in “mate­r­ial breach and vio­la­tion” of two nondis­clo­sure agree­ments and of a related doc­u­ment he signed upon leav­ing active duty in April 2012.

In response, Robert D. Luskin of the law firm Pat­ton Boggs wrote to John­son on Fri­day that his firm is rep­re­sent­ing Bis­son­nette and assert­ing that he is not in breach of his nondis­clo­sure agreements.

The Jus­tice Depart­ment could go after the prof­its of the book in a civil pro­ceed­ing if it is deter­mined that he vio­lated the nondis­clo­sure agree­ment by not get­ting the book pre-cleared.

Posted by AP News on Sep 4 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.