The Defense Department is threatening to go after an ex-SEAL author and his publisher over a new book that challenges the administration’s official account of last year’s raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
The Pentagon late Thursday released a letter from its top lawyer, Jeh Johnson, to publishing giant Penguin and “Mark Owen,” the pseudonym of an ex-SEAL special operator who has been identified as Matt Bissonnette. In the letter, Johnson said Bissonnette had breached non-disclosure agreements he signed while on active duty in 2007.
According to official Navy records obtained Thursday by POLITICO, Bissonnette served in the Navy from 1998 until April of this year. Johnson wrote that the NDA he’d signed remained in effect “even after you left the active duty Navy.”
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5 Responses
Is that all the Pentagon has to do is sue for the book. Must be on obamas order
What happened to the transparency that Obama & his administration were supposed to give the Gov’t.
what about the guy that leaked details for the movie….
oh wait that was the president
The author of this book signed two sworn agreements that required him to submit his manuscript for prior review by intelligence officials. He broke his vow, he broke the law and hopefully will be charged with serious crimes and sent to jail if found guilty. We cannot have every soldier deciding for himself what information he can release without compromising national security.
Nos. 1-3, servicemen are “government property” whether they sign on it or not, and this SEAL signed on it. No less than Yitzhak Rabin had to tiptoe around the prohibition of unauthorized revelations when he put out two memoirs. If the SEAL were Jewish, he also might have noticed a sweeping commandment in last week’s parsha: “Keep your word.”