…ALAS, ALL OF THE SPECULATION is based on falsehoods. Obama had no hand in the release and the report wasn’t classified. In January, FederalCourt Judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington ordered the Defense Department to release the report by Feb. 12, in response to the FOIA suit by Grant Smith, head of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy, a small policy-research and education organization highly critical of U.S. policy toward Israel. The timing of the judge’s decision was purely coincidental.
Under the law, the U.S. government had to obey the judge absent a written objection from Israel. The Israelis were contacted prior to the release and saw no reason to block it, a senior administration official tells me. More
