in response to this criticism, Julian Assange claimed that WikiLeaks had sought the help of the White House, via The New York Times, in redacting the names of 'innocent' people but that this request had been denied. However, The New York Times reporter, Eric Schmitt, who was acting as an intermediary between WikiLeaks and the White House, told the Associated Press that, "I certainly didn't consider this a serious and realistic offer to the White House to vet any of the documents before they were to be posted, and I think it's ridiculous that Assange is portraying it that way now." WikiLeaks spokesperson, Daniel Schmitt, told The Daily Beast that they had sought the help of the Department of Defense in reviewing a further 15,000 documents for redactions before releasing them but Marine Colonel David Lapan, a senior spokesperson for the Department of Defense, said they had not been contacted by WikiLeaks. Julian Assange later told an Associated Press reporter in Sweden that WikiLeaks had contacted the Department of Defense's chief legal counsel, via its lawyers—a claim that was denied by Bryan Whitman, a spokesman for Defense Secretary, Robert Gates. However, a letter, written by General Counsel of the Department of Defense, Jeh Charles Johnson, in reply to WikiLeaks' attorney, Timothy Matusheski, was later released (either by the Department of Defense or WikiLeaks), in which Johnson identified the names of Afghan informants as 'sensitive items' but, in keeping with Bryan Whitman's later public statement, stated that: Asked by The Daily Beast why WikiLeaks did not review all of the documents and make redactions where necessary before their release, Daniel Schmitt replied that the volume of documents made it impossible. Speaking to Channel 4 News, official spokesman for the Taliban, Zabihullah Mujahid, said that the Taliban would study the released documents in order to discover and punish informants. When Assange was questioned about this statement by Amy Goodman in a Democracy Now! interview, he responded, Former WikiLeaks volunteer, Smári McCarthy, told The Independent, 'there were serious disagreements over the decision not to redact the names of Afghan civilians'. The Guardian journalist, David Leigh, claimed that Julian Assange initially refused to redact the names of informants. In his book, co-authored with Luke Harding, WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy, Leigh claimed Assange to have said in relation to whether the names should be redacted, "Well, they're informants. So, if they get