The panel contends that the 262-page report is based
only on public sources, and several commission officials
say they believe the Defense Department came down
on them so hard because their conclusions include
harsh criticism of some elements of Rumsfeld's strategy
for streamlining the military.
An official involved in the discussions, who refused
to be named, said the Pentagon's primary complaint
appeared to be that the report specified Bulgaria,
Poland and Romania as countries U.S. forces would
rotate through for training, rather than using a more
vague regional identification such as eastern Europe....
According to e-mails that an official involved in
the dispute read to The Washington Post, Barry Pavel,
the Defense Department's director of strategy on global
posture, wrote to Cornella on May 7 to warn of "the
potential need to conduct an investigation regarding
violation of security classification procedures, including
the IT-related aspects (eg, possibly having to clean
your servers, etc)."
Commission officials said they took that as a threat
to revoke their security clearances and to bring military
police or information-technology agents to their Arlington
offices.
The officials said Pavel raised the concerns with
Cornella on May 6 in an e-mail with the subject line,
"Re: report." "I'll be frank,"
Pavel wrote, according to the e-mail read to The Post.
"I found it professionally disappointing; riddled
with errors of fact, misperceptions, and misunderstandings;
and divulging classified information that will damage
our foreign relations and national security."
