A top Defense Agency official was furious after reading front-page stories on March 15 here about Japan's negotiations with the United States.
The stories apparently featured details from behind-the-scenes negotiations about the cost of realigning the U.S. forces in Okinawa. The cost estimates, he said, were leaked to the newspapers by an anonymous Pentagon official.
According to the articles, the cost of transferring 8,000 U.S. Marines and their families from Okinawa to a U.S. base in Guam will be a hefty $10 billion, with Tokyo expected to shoulder 75 percent of the burden.