Press release from AAN

AAN’s original intention was to withhold the release of the full memo, as it includes a section with new and useful leads on corruption in the United Nations Oil-For-Food Program that Jason Vest was working on developing as a separate story. However, given the high degree of reader interest and number of media queries the current story has generated, we have decided to go ahead and release the memo.

I talked to Vest earlier today and he was uncertain about this — as the press release states, he (and AAN) originally planned to hold off on the oil-for-food part of the memo until he could do more work on that angle. I suggested that, with all the interest in this story, the smart thing was probably to make the full memo public sooner rather than later. Looks like AAN agreed. The memo is here.