Iraq

In an Department of Defense memo sent last week to officials and the news media, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Douglas B. Wilson reaffirmed the Pentagon’s effort to curb the flow of leaked or otherwise unauthorized information to the news media.

The Justice Department has asked a judge to close a Jan. 7 hearing in the prosecution of five security guards charged with killing more than a dozen Iraqi civilians, The National Law Journal reported. The security guards worked for Blackwater Worldwide, now known as Xe, at the time of the shootings.

A federal judge in Washington, D.C., today refused The Washington Post’s request to open the pretrial proceedings in the manslaughter prosecution of five security guards who were charged in an attack that left more than a dozen civilians dead in Baghdad.

The security guards were working for Blackwater Worldwide, now known as Xe, in 2007 when they allegedly participated in the unprovoked attack that killed 14 civilians and wounded 20 more.

It has been one year since Reuters cameraman Ibrahim Jassam was detained by U.S. forces in Iraq, the International Press Institute pointed out today in a press release. No charges have been filed against him, and he has never been presented with evidence against him. An Iraqi court found there was no evidence to support charges in November 2008 and ordered that he be released, but even that didn't prompt the U.S. to release him. The U.S.

After a years-long battle to withhold images of abuse and torture at U.S.-run military facilities -- a battle lost in court -- the White House is being urged to reverse its position to release them to the public by two U.S. senators who still don't seem to get it.

The Obama administration announced it will finally release photos of abuse in U.S.-run prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a report in the Los Angeles Times. Last September, a federal appeals court ruled images of abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib must be made available to the public, but the government has since failed to actually release them or other abuse photos.

According to an Iraqi government proposal, foreign and domestic journalists would have to agree to a code of conduct if they want to cover the upcoming provincial elections, The Associated Press reports.

The saga continues over whether CBS has to turn over to the government footage of an interview with Marine Staff Sergeant Frank Wuterich discussing his role in the killing of a group of Iraqi citizens in Haditha, Iraq.

In a decision issued Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces sent the case back to the military judge who had initially quashed the government’s subpoena, holding that the judge should have reviewed the tapes privately before making a decision.

An Army historian today told a government declassification group that the Army is not enforcing its record-keeping policies and that it is not receiving adequate records from military units in Afghanistan and Iraq.

"Records are just not kept," Dr. Richard Davis of the U.S. Army Center of Military History told the Public Interest Declassification Board at its third open meeting of the year. "As of October 2005, not one Army unit returned one record."

Responding to a complaint from Reps. John Dingell (D-Mich.) and Rosa DeLaura (D-Conn.), the Federal Communications Commission is investigating whether certain television analysts did not properly disclose their military connections when they discussed the Iraq war on air, according to U.S. News and World Report.