Report slamming Rumsfeld taken off Govt website

An official involved in the discussions, said the Pentagon’s primary complaint appeared to be that the report specified Bulgaria and Romania as countries US forces would rotate through for training, rather than using a more vague regional identification such as eastern Europe.

The Overseas Basing Commission released a partial version of the report at a news conference on May 9, but now the panel has removed that version from its website because of the Pentagon’s complaints. Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said the Defense Department’s objections are about the release of classified information. ‘‘The commission was informed and agreed to the requirement to submit their report for a security review in advance of releasing it,’’ Whitman said. ‘‘Their failure to do so appears to have resulted in unauthorised disclosure of classified information.”

Commission chairman Al Cornella, a Republican, said in a interview that he was trying to cooperate but that he had not agreed to have the Pentagon clear the report in advance. ‘‘The Commission is confident that everything in our report was obtained from unclassified sources or settings,’’ he said. —LAT-WP