I Am Going to Say Something Controversial

The US had nothing to do with the release. Snowden stole it, gave it to Assange, and then Assange decided what edits to do and released it. I'm not sure where you're getting the idea that Assange and wiki were trying to get the US to 'edit' the dump when the US had no control over it.

Oh, I get it, it's like when terrorists ask for ridiculous demands that they know will never be met, and then do their attacks when the demands don't get met. It makes the government look like the bad guys. I'm not surprised that a total narcissist like Assange would use such a surface level bit of classic image-manipulation to make himself look like the benevolent one.

@BlueDiver: I was mistaken. It was The Afghan War Diaries released by Chelsea Manning that were offered to the DoD for 'minimalization of harm.' There was no promise that the DoD's 'version' would be used. But I believe the gesture was made & legit.

For the record - I am no Julian Assange fan.

I'm looking at this more from the angle of the informant or source or whatever we want to call these folks. As you rightly point out, these folks risk a lot. It wasn't the boots on the ground that lost handle on this info - it was the US government, by one of its own employees. I guess I [b]do [/b]think it reasonable - since the material was obviously legit - that the govt do everything in their power to protect their sources & informants in the field. Whether someone is holding a gun to their head, or not. If it's going to happen, why not do damage control?

Heh, I don't know much about the Chelsea Manning leak - the Snowden one was the one that happened at a time when I was politically active enough to take the time to learn about it, so I can't comment on the other one. I do wonder though how realistic the offer was. Like, how much time were they given to do the 'minimization of harm?' And I dunno, it seems unrealistic to say to the DoD "hey, could you edit these illegally obtained documents that you don't want released in any form? And could you do it without editing out anything except for these ultra-narrow areas? And no, I won't do a prolonged back and forth negotiation to come to an agreement on exactly how much gets edited, you just have to do it the way I want it." It just seems unrealistic to expect them to play ball in that kind of context.

That's extraordinarily naive. Who decides what's legal in international matters? Especially when every other country that plays on the international stage uses spies.