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Exploring public data for the public good, every day.

Watch the video that ended a war correspondent's career

My column Sunday described how Wayne Anderson, a free lance journalist in Wisconsin, lost his permission to be an embedded reporter with the Minnesota National Guard after he shot the video below and posted it in conjunction with a story in The Washington Times. After the military objected, Anderson took the video down, and it hasn't been available until now. Check it out and see if you agree that the men on the stretchers were recognizable.

Anderson wanted to clarify one point in the story: "Actually, they expelled me for 'posting video of wounded personnel' and not for posting anyone's identity. Posting video of wounded is not a rules violation. Showing their identity before notification is a violation." Whether it was stated explicitly in its initial paperwork, however, the Army has contended that the fact that wounded or dying soldiers could be recognized was its main objection to the video. 

Read the (redacted) CIA report on Father Carney

The U.S. adventures in Central America in the 1980s were my first real engagement with the news, so that's why the mystery of James Francis Carney's disappearance in Honduras in 1983 had a special resonance. My Sunday column was the first time a Star Tribune staffer revisited the story since 1998.

I also found it interesting that the CIA put its correspondence with Sen. Paul Wellstone on its FOIA page. That was all declassified in September 2001, probably coinciding with the confirmation hearings of John Negroponte, the former ambassador to Honduras, as George W. Bush's ambassador to the United Nations. I did call the CIA media relations line for comment, but I never got a call back.

That left me with the afore-mentioned letter and the heavily redacted 1997 CIA Inspector General report, which you can read below: