American Newspapers Excluded from WikiLeaks Dump; NYT Publishes Anyway

Jillian Bandes | November 29, 2010 8:58 AM

The Washington Post and the New York Times were originally not given copies of the latest round of WikiLeaks documents, though the New York Times received them ahead of time by the Guardian newspaper in England. Michael Calderone

speculates that the Times and the Post were left out because of unflattering articles about WikiLeaks since the last document dump, when both papers were included in on all the fun.

The Times published a lengthy memo to readers, in which it detailed the process as to how it decided to publish the documents. They exchanged notes with the Obama administration about the material, and agreed to some — but not all — redactions that were suggested by security officials. In the end, the Times summed up its justification for this incredible national security breach:

..the more important reason to publish these articles is that the cables tell the unvarnished story of how the government makes its biggest decisions, the decisions that cost the country most heavily in lives and money. They shed light on the motivations — and, in some cases, duplicity — of allies on the receiving end of American courtship and foreign aid.