Twitter seems only to have grown more furious at the tech blog that published its internal documents, accusing TechCrunch of lying and hinting at legal action. Bizarrely, TechCrunch is refusing to fight back.

TechCrunch this week published internal Twitter documents obtained by a computer hacker. Twitter wasn't thrilled, but entered talks with the influential business website.

Then, today, TechCrunch claimed it had received a "green light" from the company to publish some internal business discussions. Twitter has now vehemently disputed that, first via its CEO's Twitter stream, then on its blog, where co-founder Biz Stone (pictured) wrote, "we absolutely did not give permission for these documents to be shared."

Several hours later, TechCrunch had not changed its posting or addressed Twitter's contradictory version of events. We called TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington to clear up the confusion, but he cryptically said he wouldn't comment on the matter for at least 24 hours. We asked if this meant no new statements would be posted to TechCrunch, and he wouldn't comment on that, either.

Twitter, meanwhile, sounds like it's rattling a saber. From Stone's blog post:

Out of context, rudimentary notes of internal discussions will be misinterpreted by current and future partners jeopardizing our business relationships. We are pursuing a path to address the harm caused by these actions and as noted yesterday, we've already reached out to the partners and individuals affected.

And so it begins. Who would have thought that blogs vs. microblogs would be one of the fiercest media wars of 2009? It's enough to make you long for a good old fashioned Google-newspaper fight.