Military botches release of video seized in Yemen raid
By Nicole Gaouette and Ryan Browne, CNN
Updated 4:26 PM ET, Fri February 3, 2017
Washington (CNN)The US military is scrambling to explain an embarrassing mix-up after it released video obtained from Sunday's raid in Yemen that turned out to have already been published online.
A military spokesman acknowledged it was released without having been thoroughly analyzed.
The video was meant to demonstrate the value of the weekend raid whose stated aim was to recover key intelligence about al Qaeda. But the footage released Friday morning actually consisted of video that was previously available to the public.
The video was pulled because "we didn't want to make it appear that we were trying to pass off old video," said US Central Command spokesman Col. John Thomas. The mistake was due "to our lack of having time to properly analyze it."
"We were trying to provide an example of some of the things recovered on the raid," Thomas said.
Thomas was adamant there was no pressure to release anything. He insisted it was CENTCOM'S decision alone to put out the video and not an order from above.
A second defense official agreed that there was no White House pressure. The official said that the desire to get this out came from a subordinate Special Operations unit involved in the raid frustrated by the politicization and coverage of the mission. The Pentagon quickly approved the idea when broached by CENTCOM, the official added.
more + video report
http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/03/politics/yemen-raid-videos/
= new reply since forum marked as read
