Wikileaks and Julian Assange Mega-thread

[HavokFour]

Bank of America says cuts off WikiLeaks ​

(Reuters) - WASHINGTON — Bank of America was quoted as saying late on Friday that it was joining other financial institutions in declining to process payments to WikiLeaks, which has angered U.S. authorities with the mass release of U.S. diplomatic cables.

"Bank of America joins in the actions previously announced by MasterCard, PayPal, Visa Europe and others and will not process transactions of any type that we have reason to believe are intended for WikiLeaks," the bank said in a statement, quoted by McClatchy Newspapers.

No one at Bank of America was immediately available to comment.

WikiLeaks has said it will release documents early next year that will point to "unethical practices" at a major U.S. bank, widely thought to be Bank of America.

Several companies have ended services to WikiLeaks after the website teamed up with major newspapers to publish thousands of secret U.S. diplomatic cables that have caused tension between Washington and some of its allies.

"This decision is based upon our reasonable belief that WikiLeaks may be engaged in activities that are, among other things, inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments," the Bank of America statement added.

WikiLeaks later issued a message on Twitter urging its supporters to leave the bank.

"We ask that all people who love freedom close out their accounts at Bank of America," it said on the social networking medium.

"Does your business do business with Bank of America? Our advice is to place your funds somewhere safer," WikiLeaks said in a subsequent tweet.

In a backlash against organizations that have cut off WikiLeaks, cyber activists have been targeting companies seen as foes of the website.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was released on bail this week from a jail in Britain, where he is fighting extradition to Sweden over alleged sexual offenses.

Assange, a 39-year-old Australian, said on Friday that he was the target of an aggressive U.S. investigation and feared extradition to the United States was "increasingly likely."

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has said his government was considering using the U.S. Espionage Act, under which it is illegal to obtain national defense information for the purpose of harming the United States, as well as other laws to prosecute the release of sensitive government information by WikiLeaks.

 

[ModlrMike]

Kinda makes you wonder what he's hiding when he's running away from questioning.

If he were truly interested in the truth, he would have presented himself for questioning right away and made a media event of it. To paraphrase his own words "The innocent have nothing to fear from the truth".

 

[armyvern]

If he were truly interested in the truth, he would have presented himself for questioning right away and made a media event of it. To paraphrase his own words "The innocent have nothing to fear from the truth".

And that is exactly it. Instead, he chose to go underground ... and now complains that authorities did what they have to do. He put himself in this situation by going underground - no one else did. He needs to look in the mirror if he wants someone to blame for his current plight-of-his-own-making.

:

 

[George Wallace]

Oh!  But he never meant for the world to look at him under a microscope.  That just isn't how it works.  Julian can expose the world's secrets, but he is exempt any such scrutiny.  That is how it works in his slightly paranoid mind.

 

[Jarnhamar]

Oh!  But he never meant for the world to look at him under a microscope.  That just isn't how it works.  Julian can expose the world's secrets, but he is exempt any such scrutiny.  That is how it works in his slightly paranoid mind.

Yea so true, but did we expect anything less?
No.

 

[garb811]

Hold_Fast:  The point of course, is not the awkwardness of his attempted courtship (although that is the awkward style I would expect of a 16 year old, not a 33 year old man), the pursuit of a 19 year old by a 33 year old, his inability to take the hint or even an outright go away (again, actions I would expect of a besotted 14 year old with his first crush, not a 33 year old man) or even the areas that veer towards the realm of criminal harassment (such as obtaining her licence plate number after being told to stop calling her), rather it is to peel away the veil of secrecy he has built around him.  As GW pointed out, Assange's MO is to try to expose secrets while being exceptionally defensive of his own privacy and secrets.

 

[MarkOttawa]

Terry Glavin eviscerates the Michael Moore crowd, and the Guardian:

Wikileaks & Michael Moore: A Lesson In Propaganda And Mass Idiocy. (lots of further links)
http://transmontanus.blogspot.com/2010/12/wikileaks-michael-moore-lesson-in.html

Today's artfully manufactured (if depressingly predictable) media rumpus, at the epicentre of which the pseudo-left blowhard and celebrity docudramatist Michael Moore is pleased to have successfully situated himself, casts an especially cold and helpful light on both the frivolous nature and the bourgeois-reactionary function of the cultural phenomenon known as Wikileaks.

To be fair, in its favour it is an amusing spectacle and goes well with popcorn. But by way of background, it is useful to recall a couple of things.

First: Moore's entreprenurial genius arises from the grand American tradition of circus empresario P.T. Barnum, who may or may not have been the source of the maxim "No one ever went broke understimating the intelligence of the American people," and to whom the phrase "A sucker is born every minute" may or may not be accurately attributed, but you get the point. Central to Moore's success was his invention of his own cirriculum vitae and his persistent talent for telling the masses of comfortable Europeans and North Americans who fancy themselves to be "progressive" exactly what they want to hear...

The fellow is certainly a dab hand at polemic.  While I make a more general point:

Torture by India: Once again WikiLeaks confirms the well-known
http://unambig.com/torture-by-india-once-again-wikileaks-confirms-the-well-known/

From a post November 17:

"Corruption? What stinking corruption? And what stinking torture?

…There’s a hell of a lot of willfully blinkered hypocrisy in Canada…

In fact we are so desperate to gain Indian favour–and business–that we even abandon our supposed principles on human rights…"

Now at Foreign Policy’s AfPak “Daily Brief”:

"…
U.S. diplomatic cables released by the web site Wikileaks show that the International Committee of the Red Cross secretly briefed U.S. officials in 2005 about Indian security forces’ use of electrocution, beatings, and sexual humiliation against detainees in Indian-administered Kashmir..."

Mark
Ottawa

 

[57Chevy]

WikiLeaks' Julian Assange a 'high-tech terrorist': Joe Biden

U.S. seeking legal pursuit of Australian hacker
article link

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Justice Department is exploring a legal pursuit of Julian Assange, said Vice-President Joe Biden, who described the WikiLeaks founder as a dangerous "high-tech terrorist."

"We're looking at that right now," Biden told NBC's Sunday talk show Meet the Press, but the vice-president stopped short of elaborating on just how the administration could act against the head of the organization whose release of thousands of classified U.S. diplomatic cables has enraged Washington.

"I'm not going to comment on that process."

When asked whether he thought Assange was a high-tech terrorist or a whistleblower akin to those who released the Pentagon Papers - a series of top-secret documents revealing U.S. military policy in Vietnam - Biden was clear: "I would argue that it's closer to being high-tech terrorist."

Legal pressure has been been building steadily on WikiLeaks and Assange, who is in England fighting extradition to Sweden, where he faces sexual assault allegations.

Assange said Friday it looked "increasingly likely" that the U.S. would try to extradite him on charges related to the leaked cables.

A report by congressional researchers found the Espionage Act and other U.S. laws could be used to prosecute the 39-year-old Australian hacker, but there is no known precedent for prosecuting publishers in such a case.

A group of U.S. senators early this month introduced a bill to make it easier to target the self-described whistleblowing website by making it illegal to publish names of informants serving the U.S. military and intelligence community.

Media reports suggested that U.S. prosecutors are trying to build a case against Assange on the grounds that he encouraged U.S. Army Pte. Bradley Manning, currently in U.S. custody, to steal U.S. cables from a government computer and pass them to WikiLeaks.

Assange has denied knowing Manning. Biden appeared to leave the door open for charges against Assange.

"If he conspired to get these classified documents with a member of the U.S. military, that's fundamentally different than if somebody drops (documents) on your lap here, (saying) 'You're a press person, here is classified material.'"

In a legal case, the U.S. would seek to show Assange's responsibility for damage to national security, but legal experts have said the path to prosecution is strewn with legal complications, including constitutional free speech protections.

Biden insisted WikiLeaks "has done damage" through its documents dump.

"Look, this guy (Assange) has done things that have damaged and put in jeopardy the lives and occupations of people in other parts of the world," Biden said.

In particular, he acknowledged that among world leaders concerned over the leaks, "there is a desire now to meet with me alone rather than have staff in the room."

Photo:
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange "has done things that have damaged and put in jeopardy the lives and occupations of people in other parts of the world," U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden charged in an interview that aired Sunday.
Photograph by: William B. Plowman, Getty Images
                        (Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act)

 

[tomahawk6]

Irony  ;D

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/lawyers-cry-foul-over-leak-of-julian-assange-sex-case-papers/story-e6frg6so-1225973548657

LAWYERS for Julian Assange have expressed anger about an alleged smear campaign against the Australian WikiLeaks founder.

Incriminating police files were published in the British newspaper that has used him as its source for hundreds of leaked US embassy cables.

In a move that surprised many of Mr Assange's closest supporters on Saturday, The Guardian newspaper published previously unseen police documents that accused Mr Assange in graphic detail of sexually assaulting two Swedish women. One witness is said to have stated: "Not only had it been the world's worst screw, it had also been violent."

Bjorn Hurtig, Mr Assange's Swedish lawyer, said he would lodge a formal complaint to the authorities and ask them to investigate how such sensitive police material leaked into the public domain. "It is with great concern that I hear about this because it puts Julian and his defence in a bad position," he told a colleague.

"I do not like the idea that Julian may be forced into a trial in the media. And I feel especially concerned that he will be presented with the evidence in his own language for the first time when reading the newspaper. I do not know who has given these documents to the media, but the purpose can only be one thing - trying to make Julian look bad."

Mr Assange is facing criminal allegations in Sweden over claims by two women that he sexually assaulted them while he was in the country earlier this year.

Another supporter close to the WikiLeaks founder said the leak appeared designed by the authorities in Sweden to jeopardise Mr Assange's defence. "There has been a selective smear through the disclosure of material. That material, in Swedish, was passed to a journalist at The Guardian," a source said. "The timing appears to have been cynically calculated to have the material published in the middle of the bail application and the appeal."

Mr Assange, 39, was arrested and held in custody at Wandsworth prison in south London after Sweden issued an extradition request. He was released on bail last week after a High Court judge dismissed an appeal by the British authorities, on behalf of the Swedes, to overturn an earlier decision to free him.

The Australian was told that he could walk free on a surety of £275,000 ($432,305). The money came from nine celebrity backers including Jemima Khan and Bianca Jagger.

In an editorial, The Guardian defended its decision to report on the incriminating police files. It said having been given access to the official papers, it had a duty to present a "brief summary" of the sex allegations against Mr Assange, together with his response.

Others were less enthused by The Guardian's treatment of its top source, pointing out that this is someone whom the newspaper has elevated into hero status as a campaigner for freedom of information. Some commentators point to the apparent hypocrisy of some of Mr Assange's supporters, such as the journalist John Pilger, bemoaning the Swedish police leaks, given their campaign for a man whose life is devoted to publishing confidential material. "Hoist by his own petard," said one observer.

Ever since the sex assault claims surfaced, Mr Assange has claimed that they are part of a conspiracy by the Swedes and the Americans to punish him for having masterminded the leak of the US cables. His lawyers, including Mark Stephens, are confident they can stop Mr Assange's extradition on both legal and human rights grounds. They point out that the offence of "minor rape", with which he may be charged, has no equivalent in British law because the accused can be guilty even if a woman consents.

A spokesman for The Guardian said: "Julian is not a confidential source. The argument that the papers involved with the WikiLeaks cables should not report criticism of him is one all journalists would find ridiculous."

The Sunday Times

 

[George Wallace]

:

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.

Montreal protesters rally in support of WikiLeaks


POSTMEDIA NEWS
18 Dec 2010

LINK


MONTREAL — Chanting “long live WikiLeaks” and “down with censorship,” about 35 protesters staged a small but noisy demonstration in downtown Montreal Saturday to show their support of the controversial whistle-blowing website.

“Attempts to censor are wrong,” said Nadim Kobeissi, a Concordia University student and one of the organizers of the protest. “The Internet is proving that it’s ridiculous to (try to) censor. But that doesn’t excuse that many governments around the world are attempting to hold journalists, messengers, for engaging in investigative journalism that is typical and legal.

“If you’re attempting to censor the Internet, what’s next? Are you going to censor The New York Times? Le Monde? El Pais?”

Kobeissi made headlines last week after deciding to create a mirror website for WikiLeaks after the original was shut down.

“There are now 2,000 (mirror sites),” he said proudly.

The protesters, carrying homemade placards and escorted by police vehicles, marched to the United States consulate, where they jeered the U.S. for imprisoning Bradley Manning, the U.S. armed forces computer expert who is charged with leaking confidential government information to the WikiLeaks site.

Montreal’s protest was held the same day as similar demonstrations in Ireland, the Netherlands and the U.S.

Further protests are planned in the coming days in Germany, Austria and Australia.

Montreal Gazette

© Copyright (c) The Montreal Gazette

Nadim Kobeissi has been mentioned here before, and is easily searchable through Google, Bing, and other search engines. 

 

[ModlrMike]

I wager these protesters would be first in line to hang any man other accused of these same crimes were he not St Julian.

 

[George Wallace]

;D

Reproduced under the Fair Dealings provisions of the Copyright Act.

This Just In

CIA responds to WikiLeaks: WTF


December 22nd, 2010
01:52 PM ET
CNN

LINK

It's no secret that WikiLeaks' cable document dumps have caused ripples of concerns and speculation about how well the United States can keep secrets – its own and those of other countries.

It's been embarrassing to both U.S. diplomats and foreign leaders mentioned in the cables, but there haven't been any bombshells from the small percentage of documents released so far. The CIA, known for its ability to keep secrets, is taking no chances of being pulled further into the fray. The CIA has only been mentioned a few times in the cables, and has not been hit nearly as hard as other agencies and diplomats, but it does not appear willing to wait on the sidelines.

And it has an answer for WikiLeaks: WTF. Seriously.

In a move that couldn't be more ironic, and made for headlines such as the above, the CIA adopted a task force. And like all things involving the military, or secrecy, acronyms are huge. So when the CIA developed the WikiLeaks Task Force, naturally, it was likely thinking of the KISS method – Keep It Simple Stupid.

But in doing so, the CIA has proved it either has a really good sense of humor or was trying to send a snarky message, or perhaps someone at the agency just didn't think hard enough about the name choice.

"Officially, the panel is called the WikiLeaks Task Force," The Washington Post reports. "But at CIA headquarters, it's mainly known by its all-too-apt acronym: W.T.F."

OK, all jokes and obvious humor aside, the CIA is trying to do something real here – and that's to try and protect its reputation for secrecy.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and top aides had to start a new game plan – going to meet with foreign ministers, explaining, apologizing, cajoling and trying – to salvage relationships that she and the Obama administration had worked hard to establish. The State Department went into "war room" mode, pulling together an emergency round-the-clock team to handle the fallout.

So no doubt, the CIA is looking to make sure it won't be in the same situation.

"The director asked the task force to examine whether the latest release of WikiLeaks documents might affect the agency's foreign relationships or operations," CIA spokesman George Little told The Washington Post.

That's a high priority, officials told the paper. Because having any compromised informants really could lead to a real WTF situation – and not one the CIA or any government department would want on its hands.

 

[HavokFour]

Assange book deal worth over $1M​

An autobiography of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange that will be published in 2011 may bring its author more than $1 million US.

Assange told the Sunday Times he has signed a deal for $800,000 with Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of Random House Inc., and another deal for £325,000 ($505,000 Cdn) with British publisher Canongate.

The date of publication and the book's title have not been released.

The 39-year-old Australian computer expert said he agreed to the deal only because he was under financial pressure.

"I don't want to write this book, but I have to," he told the newspaper. He said the legal costs he has incurred fighting extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning about allegations of sexual misconduct, have reached more than $300,000 US.

"I need to defend myself and keep WikiLeaks afloat," he said.

Read more...

 

[GAP]

Affidavit Details FBI "Operation Payback" Probe
4chan, "Anonymous" targeted over attacks on PayPal
Article Link

DECEMBER 29--As part of an international criminal probe into computer attacks launched this month against perceived corporate enemies of WikiLeaks, the FBI has raided a Texas business and seized a computer server that investigators believe was used to launch a massive electronic attack on PayPal, The Smoking Gun has learned.

The FBI investigation began earlier this month after PayPal officials contacted agents and “reported that an Internet activist group using the names ‘4chan’ and “Anonymous” appeared to be organizing a distributed denial of service (“DDoS”) attack against the company,” according to an FBI affidavit excerpted here.

The PayPal assault was part of “Operation Payback,” an organized effort to attack firms that suspended or froze WikiLeaks’s accounts in the wake of the group’s publication of thousands of sensitive Department of State cables. As noted by the FBI, other targets of this “Anonymous” effort included Visa, Mastercard, Sarah Palin’s web site, and the Swedish prosecutor pursuing sex assault charges against Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder.

On December 9, PayPal investigators provided FBI agents with eight IP addresses that were hosting an “Anonymous” Internet Relay Chat (IRC) site that was being used to organize denial of service attacks. The unidentified administrators of this IRC “then acted as the command and control” of a botnet army of computers that was used to attack target web sites.

Federal investigators noted that “multiple, severe DDos attacks” had been launched against PayPal, and that the company’s blog had been knocked offline for several hours. These coordinated attacks, investigators allege, amount to felony violations of a federal law covering the “unauthorized and knowing transmission of code or commands resulting in intentional damage to a protected computer system.”

The nascent FBI probe, launched from the bureau’s San Francisco field office, has targeted at least two of those IP addresses, according to the affidavit sworn by Agent Allyn Lynd.

One IP address was initially traced to Host Europe, a Germany-based Internet service provider. A search warrant executed by the German Federal Criminal Police revealed that the “server at issue” belonged to a man from Herrlisheim, France. However, an analysis of the server showed that “root-level access” to the machine “appeared to come from an administrator logging in from” another IP address.

“Log files showed that the commands to execute the DDoS on PayPal actually came from” this IP, Agent Lynd reported. Two log entries cited in the affidavit include an identical message: “Good_night,_paypal_Sweet_dreams_from_AnonOPs.”

Investigators traced the IP address to Tailor Made Services, a Dallas firm providing “dedicated server hosting.” During a December 16 raid, agents copied two hard drives inside the targeted server. Court records do not detail what was found on those drives, nor whether the information led to a suspect or, perhaps, a continuing electronic trail. In a brief phone conversation, Lynd declined to answer questions about the ongoing denial of service probe.

Search warrant records indicate that agents were authorized to seize records and material relating to the DDoS attacks “or other illegal activities pertaining to the organization “Anonymous” or “4chan.”

A second IP address used by “Anonymous” was traced to an Internet service provider in British Columbia, Canada. Investigators with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police determined that the Canadian firm’s “virtual” server was actually housed at Hurricane Electric, a California firm offering “colocation, web hosting, dedicated servers, and Internet connections,” according to its web site.
More on link

 

[a_majoor]

Apparently Wikileaks is also revealing information that is not damagng to the United States, which is pretty embarrasing for the makers and keepers of "the narrative". Facts really get in the way of a good story....

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=40978

Media Slow To Show WikiLeaks Justified Iraq War
by James Zumwalt
01/05/2011
Trackback Link (Loading. . .)

While the media have been quick to run with WikiLeaks’ U.S. State Department cable releases to undermine Washington’s efforts to effect stability in unstable parts of the world, it is slow, if not silent, in giving credit where credit is due. Although other credible sources confirmed it before WikiLeaks did, in receiving similar disinterested responses from the media, it should be clear now that President Bush’s concerns about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) program were well-founded.

The controversy goes back to Bush’s State of the Union address in January 2003. In the speech, he said the British government learned Saddam had "recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." This became one of several justifications leading to the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq two months later — and one about which, Bush critics later claimed, he lied.

British intelligence had determined an effort was made by Iraq to obtain "yellowcake" —  a uranium concentrate extracted from ores for use as material in higher-grade nuclear enrichment — from Niger. The waters separating fact from fiction over this allegation were muddied after various claims and counter-claims followed.

In July 2003, former U.S. career diplomat Ambassador Joe Wilson, in a New York Times op-ed, claimed he had been sent to Africa by the Bush Administration in 2002 — and had debunked the yellowcake claim. While Wilson reported he had met with a former Niger prime minister, who said he knew of no such sales, that prime minister also recalled a 1999 visit by the Iraqis seeking to buy yellowcake. Despite Wilson's claim, a 2004 bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report found his visit actually supported evidence Saddam was undertaking a WMD effort, based on the 1999 incident.

The 2003 Iraq invasion by U.S. forces also launched a massive effort to find WMDs. By late 2003, as determined in a review by a Wired Magazine editor of WikiLeaks documents on the issue, the Administration was losing faith WMDs would be found. But, as Wired reports, the WikiLeaks documents clearly show "for years afterward, U.S. troops continued to find chemical weapons labs, encounter insurgent specialists in toxins and uncover weapons of mass destruction. . . . Chemical weapons, especially, did not vanish from the Iraqi battlefield. Remnants of Saddam's toxic arsenal, largely destroyed after the Gulf War, remained. Jihadists, insurgents and foreign (possibly Iranian) agitators turned to these stockpiles during the Iraq conflict — and may have brewed up their own deadly agents."

A September 2004 New York Times op-ed by the former head of Saddam’s nuclear research program supported this, as well. He wrote:

"[T]he West never understood the delusional nature of Saddam Hussein’s mind . . . he lived in a fantasy world . . . .  giving lunatic orders . . . he kept the country’s Atomic Energy Commission alive . . . Saddam fooled  . . .  the world . . . . [O]ur nuclear program could have been reinstituted at the snap of Saddam Hussein’s fingers."

Of note too is a January 2004 revelation by Syrian journalist defector Nizar Nayuf. He reported there were three locations in Syria where Iraqi WMDs had been transported prior to the 2003 invasion and were being stored. He also revealed some of these sites were being built with North Korean cooperation. This explained why three years later Israel attacked a nuclear facility being built in Syria by Pyongyang — and Syria’s subsequent failure to criticize Israel for fear of drawing further international attention to what Damascus had been doing.

Five years after Joe Wilson’s op-ed claimed no yellowcake was sold to Iraq — the ease with which Saddam could have snapped his fingers and reinstituted his nuclear program became apparent. In July 2008, in an operation kept secret at the time, 37 military air cargo flights shipped more than 500 metric tons of yellowcake — found in Iraq — out of the country for further transport and remediation to Canada.

The U.S. government is committed to efforts to make the world a safer place by seeking the removal of WMD threats. One would think a press undermining that effort at the time under the guise of freedom of the press would feel an obligation to accurately report the success of such a governmental effort. This should especially be the case after those same media contributed to the false perception Saddam possessed no WMD capability and, therefore, never really posed a serious threat.

As evidenced by the WikiLeaks disclosures, apparently no such obligation is felt.

Lieutenant Colonel James Zumwalt is a retired Marine infantry officer who served in the Vietnam war, the 1989 intervention into Panama and Desert Storm. An author, speaker and business executive, he also currently heads a security consulting firm named after his father -- Admiral Zumwalt & Consultants, Inc. He has also been cited in numerous other books and publications for unique insights based on his research on the Vietnam war, North Korea (a country he has visited ten times and about which he is able to share some very telling observations) and Desert Storm.

 

[IBM]

Irony much?

http://www.boingboing.net/2011/01/05/vanity-fair-profiles.html

--- Begin article

Vanity Fair profiles Julian Assange: Wikileaks threatened to sue Guardian over leaked cables

Xeni Jardin at 10:02 PM Wednesday, Jan 5, 2011

    The partnership between The Guardian and WikiLeaks brought together two desperately ambitious organizations that happen to be diametric opposites in their approach to reporting the news. One of the oldest newspapers in the world, with strict and established journalistic standards, joined up with one of the newest in a breed of online muckrakers, with no standards at all except fealty to an ideal of "transparency"--that is, dumping raw material into the public square for people to pick over as they will. It is very likely that neither Alan Rusbridger nor Julian Assange fully understood the nature of the other's organization when they joined forces. The Guardian, like other media outlets, would come to see Assange as someone to be handled with kid gloves, or perhaps latex ones--too alluring to ignore, too tainted to unequivocally embrace.

No standards at all!

But among the more interesting revelations in this piece: at one point, VF reports that Assange threatened to sue The Guardian because he was upset that the newspaper secured an unauthorized copy of one leak "package" from a Wikileaks volunteer, and was considering breaking the embargo.

In other words: Wikileaks was going to sue The Guardian over a leak, because Assange believed he owned the content which had been leaked to him.

    Enraged that he had lost control, Assange unleashed his threat, arguing that he owned the information and had a financial interest in how and when it was released.

Go ahead and let that one sink in a minute.


--- End Article


Seems Assange is starting to look less and less like the saint he claims to be.

 

[a_majoor]

A longer term look at the effects of the Wikileaks document dump:

http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/al-qaeda-wikileaks-and-the-war-on-terror/?singlepage=true

Al-Qaeda, Wikileaks, and the War on Terror
Why the Wikileaks document dump must now be considered a key American counterterrorism resource.
January 16, 2011 - by Brian Fairchild

Many news outlets have commented on the Wikileaks phenomenon, but none to my knowledge have commented on how the official classified State Department cables displayed on Wikileaks will aid al-Qaeda and other Islamic terrorist groups in their war against us, and how, in a bizarre twist of fate, these documents should now be considered a key American counterterrorism resource.

First it is important to put the quality of intelligence in perspective. Intelligence comes in various forms, such as conversations intercepted by human sources, communications intercepted through technical devices, via the reports of a spy, by the revelations of a defector, and on and on.

For all intelligence collectors, however, the Holy Grail is to recruit a source that can provide complete copies of official classified documents. I spent a career recruiting foreign spies who I pushed to provide me with this exact type of documentary intelligence, and this is precisely the kind of intelligence that PFC Bradley Manning provided to Julian Assange and Wikileaks.

To put the volume of intelligence displayed on Wikileaks in perspective, in the war on terror, every time we capture an al-Qaeda lap top computer that contains a couple hundred tactical documents, our officials declare that we’ve uncovered a “treasure trove” of intelligence that will severely impact al-Qaeda and be a boon to our understanding of how the organization operates.

Now compare this to the 260,000 official State Department cables revealing both tactical and strategic policies by documenting specific conversations between foreign leaders and senior American officials such as the president’s national security advisors and military leaders like General David Petraeus, and you get a perspective on this truly massive hemorrhage.

To put the damage into perspective, the leaked cables cover key American policies that span the entire world. If we take a sample, however, of just the cables that address the Middle East, we find an embassy assessment stating that we cannot win against al-Qaeda in Pakistan, the dangers posed by the Muslim Brotherhood, the cooperation between Shia Iran and Sunni terrorist groups, our plans, actions, and intentions to contain Iran, our Middle Eastern regional counterterrorism strategy, our plans to monitor al-Qaeda in Africa, the physical vulnerabilities of crucial energy nodes, and our fears that Pakistani nuclear material will fall into terrorist hands.

Having been an intelligence insider, I can assure you that our key competitors around the world such as Iran, Russia, North Korea, China, and the like, will have their ministries of foreign affairs and ministries of intelligence pore over and analyze these documents for years to come.

There is no doubt that al-Qaeda is already hard at work analyzing these cables, too, and, if it just limits its analysis to cables from the Muslim countries, it will be able to make its operations more secure and largely negate some of our communications interception techniques, it will uncover the physical vulnerabilities of strategic energy nodes, and it will obtain information that will provide content for its propaganda machine to discredit our government and our Middle Eastern partners.

I will guarantee that in the near future you will see some of these secret cables prominently referred to on al-Qaeda videos and displayed in al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’s new Inspire magazine, and they will be exploited by Salafi-Jihadi mosques and organizations throughout the world for some time to come.

In an ironic twist, these publicly available classified cables, once considered compartmented information that could only be shared with other American officials on a strict “need to know” basis, must now be considered a key American counterterrorism resource.

This is true because a standing counterintelligence requirement in the ongoing analysis of al-Qaeda is to understand what it knows about us and how that knowledge might enable it to protect itself from our operations, support its ideological narrative, and help it choose targets.

As unpleasant as it is, these cables, while still officially classified, are now completely and utterly in the public domain and are being studied by our key adversaries.  As a result, it is vital that our own counterterrorism institutions and officers conduct a robust damage assessment by reviewing these cables through the enemy’s eyes, if only to be forewarned about what our enemies know about us and how they might utilize this knowledge to their advantage.

Unfortunately, just the opposite appears to be true. On December 4, the Office of Management and Budget circulated a memo to all federal agencies prohibiting them from accessing the Wikileaks material, and the Defense Department issued a similar statement to its contractors and employees.

The OMB memo stated:

Except as authorized by their agencies and pursuant to agency procedures, federal employees or contractors shall not, while using computers or other devices (such as Blackberries or Smart Phones) that access the web on non-classified government systems, access documents that are marked classified (including classified documents publicly available on the WikiLeaks and other websites)…

This prohibition not only takes all federal counterterrorism personnel out of the loop, but, by extension, all state and local police counterterrorism personnel too.

Moreover, this memo has had a chilling effect even on non-governmental organizations.

According to a Washington Post article titled “OMB:  Wikileaks off-limits to federal workers without clearance,” Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs sent an email that “urged students not to post links to the documents or make comments on social media Web sites,” because “engaging in these activities would call into question your ability to deal with confidential information, which is part of most positions with the federal government….”

While it is reprehensible that these cables have been leaked, it is equally true that this particular genie cannot be put back into the bottle. If our counterterrorism officials are the only ones left in the dark, they will be put at a dangerous disadvantage vis-a-vis al-Qaeda and its associates, and our country will be less safe as a result.

Brian Fairchild served as a career Operations Officer in the Central Intelligence Agency's Clandestine Service with twenty years of experience operating under official and non-official cover. In 1998, he testified before Congress on counterterrorism issues, and he is currently the Director of Intelligence Operations for the Intrepid Group. Since 9/11, he has taught over ten thousand law enforcement officers, intelligence officials, and military personnel about the Muslim Brotherhood and the global Jihad movement. The Intrepid Group provides video tutorials on these subjects on its website and YouTube channel.

 

[MarkOttawa]

The inside NY Times story, an assessment, and more from the chief leaker:

Dealing With Assange and the WikiLeaks Secrets
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/magazine/30Wikileaks-t.html?ref=todayspaper

...
Bill Keller is the executive editor of The New York Times. This essay is adapted from his introduction to “Open Secrets: WikiLeaks, War and American Diplomacy: Complete and Expanded Coverage from The New York Times,” an ebook available for purchase at
http://nytimes.com/opensecrets .

WikiLeaks unplugged, by Doyle McManus
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-mcmanus-column-wikileaks-20110130,0,5651051.column

Julian Assange: 'How do you attack an organisation? You attack its leadership'
As his court case looms, Julian Assange is facing a rising tide of hostility. In this exclusive interview he insists: 'We have not once, in four years of publishing, got it wrong'
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/jan/30/julian-assange-interview?INTCMP=SRCH

Mark
Ottawa

 

[HavokFour]

Bill Keller vs Wikileaks: Goodnight, Julian Assange, And Bad Luck​

;D

 

[Journeyman]

Bill Keller vs Wikileaks: Goodnight, Julian Assange, And Bad Luck

Best line in the article:

As with the leaks themselves, there’s very little in Open Secrets that we didn’t already know. American diplomats sometimes lie. Jullian Assange is a dick. Bears shit in the woods.

;D