“I don’t know the facts — the legal facts — but I know the information that’s coming out is very important. I read an editorial in the Los Angeles Times, about the fact that had we had WikiLeaks in 2001, we may well not have had 9/11 occur.”
Rowley, a former FBI Special Agent and Division Counsel whose May 2002 memo described some of the FBI’s pre-9/11 failures, was named one of Time Magazine’s “Persons of the Year” in 2002.
McDermott continued: “The American people have the right to know. The most important of our freedoms is free speech. The First Amendment is what makes a democracy work. If the public doen’t know what’s going on, then they can’t vote intelligently and when the government wants to hide stuff, then the people are cut off from information.”
“…I certainly don’t think that they [WikiLeaks] were wrong until I hear the evidence and see what’s going on. I really think that people ought to be very careful on what they make as a judgment now.”
“I’m old enough to remember something called the Pentagon Papers, and those papers told us what was going on in Vietnam and why it never should have occurred or it should have ended.”
With these statements McDermott apparently became only the second U.S. government official to be positive about WikiLeaks’ disclosure of diplomatic cables, the other being Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tx), see and read his speech on the House floor.
[originally published on Washington Stakeout on Dec. 12, 2010; posted on posthaven Nov. 13, 2015]