Pentagon Threatens To Sue Former SEAL Who Wrote Bin Laden Book
The Department of Defense is threatening a lawsuit against the former Navy SEAL who wrote a book about the raid that resulted in the death of Osama bin Laden:
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.”
“In the judgment of the Department of Defense, you are in material breach and violation of the non-disclosure agreements you signed,” Johnson wrote to “Owen,” in keeping with DOD’s policy not to identify some special operators. “Further public dissemination of your book will aggravate your breach and violation of your agreements.”
Johnson closed by informing “Owen” and Penguin that the Defense Department “is considering pursuing against you, and all those acting in concert with you, all remedies legally available to us in light of this situation.”
The Pentagon could ask the Justice Department to try to prosecute Bissonnette or seize the royalties raised by the book, which is officially due out Monday but has already gone on sale in some places. Its original release date was Sept. 11, but it was moved up in response to national hype over the first account of the bin Laden raid to come from a member of the team that staged it.
The government won’t be able to stop publication of the book at this point, but it seems fairly clear that Bissonnette is in some serious legal trouble here for not clearing this book with the Pentagon.
I blame Obama and his socialist ways.
In Obama’s State of the Union address he stated: “I’m Barack Obama and I Killed Osama bin Laden.” Evidently, this administration is trying to defend Obama’s ridiculous statement by threatening a Navy SEAL who just happened to be on the mission. Let’s take note here, the SEAL is only disagreeing with how bin Laden died and nothing more. Who you gonna believe, a SEAL member who was there, or the POTUS who wasn’t there?
@AllenS: I was wondering how many comments it would take for the “mean Obama going after a Hero” BS to appear. I didn’t think it would take only two.
This is not a surprise to anyone (me included) who has signed a NDA with the government. If I ever want to write about my job I know I have to submit any material to the Publication Review Board to let it be vetted. It stated clearly it was a lifetime obligation, not only when you are working for the government. Anyone who has read Frank Snepp’s “Decent Interval” knows his story in battling the USG on the publication of his book and how he ended up forfeiting any profits from its publication.
I am curious why the ex Seal didn’t think the non disclosure agreement still applied.
He was working off some bad advice.
Anyone notice how the Republicans, after weeks of howling about how bad leaks of classified information are hurting national security, suddenly don’t care about it anymore?
I’m sure that Congressman Darrell Issa will initiate an inquiry into why the Obama Administration is threatening to go after this SEAL Team partisan hack.
@Murray:
HEY! I blamed Obama first!
@Stormy Dragon:
That’s because he’s a hero Stormy. Don’t you know anything?
@OzarkHillbilly:
Thomas Drake was a hero. This guy is just a partisan with an axe to grind.
@AllenS:
In Obama’s State of the Union address he stated: “I’m Barack Obama and I Killed Osama bin Laden.”
You lie!
@AllenS:
You are a liar.
@sam:
This is what happens when people like Allen listen to FoxNews and conservative talk radio regularly. If something like “Barack Obama and I Killed Osama bin Laden,” is repeated often enough people accept it as fact. That’s not media bias, that’s media lies.
I think we can place this nitwit in the same pigeonhole as the ROTC student who was shocked, absolutely shocked to discover that just because he was convicted of a felony he couldn’t become an officer.
(I mean, really–I’m only a lowly patent agent at a law firm but even I know that before you release potentially confidential information YOU CLEAR IT WITH YOUR EMPLOYER.)