Franklin Foer, editor of The New Republic, said in an interview that the documents Matt Drudge posted this afternoon—and removed several hours later without explanation—could have only come from the Army.
Mr. Foer said he called TNR’s contact there, Major Kirk Luedeke, as soon as the documents appeared on Drudge’s Web site. According to Mr. Foer, Major Luedeke told him that the Army was “investigating the source of the leak,” though they did not explicitly take responsibility for it.
“It’s maddening to see the Army selectively leak to the Drudge Report things that we’ve been trying to obtain from them through Freedom of Information Act requests,” Mr. Foer said. “This fits a pattern in this case where the army has leaked a lot of stuff to right wing blogs.”
Mr. Foer said TNR had been trying since July to get access to some of the documents Mr. Drudge posted, but that the Army had not cooperated.
Among these was the Army’s final report on its investigation into Mr. Beauchamp’s TNR pieces. The report concludes that portions of those pieces had been “completely fabricated."
UPDATE: In an e-mail to the Media Mob, Major Luedeke of the 4th Brigade Public Affairs office said, “All I can tell you is that the leak did not originate with this office, and that the Army is looking into who is responsible. That process is being handled at levels above this brigade, however."
E-mails to Mr. Drudge have not been returned.
