now I want to highlight one thing you said:

if they had a comms chain showing that they could hang it on the USG, they'd be trumpeting it from the heavens and it wouldn't be buried in a wire service article from three weeks ago.

Just consider this little factoid: the Pentagon spends $5 billion a year on media relations.

And you want to put the burden of proof on Wikileaks?

^{"Sí che dal fatto il dir non sia diverso."}

-Dante

...against some pretty significant PR machines - my number one little learning is that the truth, when it happily breaks down into something simple to appreciate like this, is a pretty awesome defence. And yeah, if they want to use the defence, they should have to prove it.

“The absence of any US-Iran bilateral channel...may have the perverse effect of reinforcing Iranian interest in progressing in the nuclear realm so that the US will be forced to take it seriously and engage it directly." ~ Richard Haass

, for example, the truth that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. 70% of the US population believed it when it mattered: when the war was being sold.

The truth does not set you free. It is not always believed, and propagandists often do win.

...assertion. Even at this point the truth is wee bit more complex than than the now predominant absolutist talking points against any connections.

This case, very simple: one's got the comms log - if it says what one says it does, one releases it. If one doesn't, reasonable observers tend to think either they don't got the log, or it doesn't say what it's billed to say.

“The absence of any US-Iran bilateral channel...may have the perverse effect of reinforcing Iranian interest in progressing in the nuclear realm so that the US will be forced to take it seriously and engage it directly." ~ Richard Haass

Sean, you said that "The Pentagon not only lied about it, but has even refused to cooperate going forward:" I'll accept the accuracy of this based on your read.

Having done so, that places the responsibility on the Pentagon.* There was another party here, Wikileaks. They released the documents. They also had responsibility. They should have done their best to redact the documents. There was no excuse to release them to the NYT, der Spiegel, or the Guardian without having done that.

Since they didn't redact the material that they would have suspected could get someone killed, they're responsible for those deaths.

*Based on what Dave said, the 24 hours is a real problem in all of this. That's not realistic or serious.

"offering oversight on the night of the 24th (a Saturday) for something released less than 24 hours later is, um, optimistic."

You're subtlty is not lost but allow a cruder interpretation. How serious was the offer with a 24 hour time line? Sounds a bit contrived.

do you know if the documents were released on a pre-announced schedule, or if they just appeared that day out of the blue?

Seems one possibility that requires elimination is that it wasn't a 24 hour deadline at all - that the Pentagon's response caused them to shrug and say "Oh well, since you have no interest, it might as well be tomorrow then".

[Wiki says "25th by previous agreement" - I'd like to know the specific nature of that agreement]

...which translates to 5:03 PM EDT. Guardian story has this quote buried:

The Guardian, the New York Times and Der Spiegel agreed to publish their reports simultaneously, at the same time as Wikileaks released the full database online."

The NYT note to readers states:

The documents — some 92,000 individual reports in all — were made available to The Times and the European news organizations by WikiLeaks, an organization devoted to exposing secrets of all kinds, on the condition that the papers not report on the data until July 25, when WikiLeaks said it intended to post the material on the Internet."

My assessment? Consistent with release on pre-planned sked dating prior to the offer of oversight.

“The absence of any US-Iran bilateral channel...may have the perverse effect of reinforcing Iranian interest in progressing in the nuclear realm so that the US will be forced to take it seriously and engage it directly." ~ Richard Haass

Iran had a democracy. The British and US intel operations groups staged a coup and destroyed the democracy. This followed an extended period of sanctions against Iran. The reason behind the sanctions is the reason behind the coup. Iran was demanding reasonable terms for extracting its oil and then British Petroleum would have none of it. This is similar to the coup in Guatemala around the same time. A freely elected government was tagged Communist and overthrown by a US intelligence operation to secure United Fruits' banana franchise. Senior members of the Eisenhower administration had interests in United Fruit or connections to the company.

Wikileaks has yet to match the leak of Ajax. In fact, it's behind the National Security Archive at George Washington University in releases on major events.