Follow Up Letter to Glenn Greenwald on the Subject of Wikileaks: Who Are You Going to Believe? Me or Cass Sunstein?
Posted on January 3, 2011 by willyloman
by Scott Creighton
Glenn;
Again, I want to thank you for taking the time to address the
Open Letter and my subsequent emails on the subject. I will address your statements and questions you sent in the three emails at this point.
But first, a little relevant history…
In late 2006 when Wikileaks was formed, there was already a great deal of concern about the serious threat leaks may pose to the imperial agenda that the Bush regime was following. In 2004 the
Abu Ghraib photos went public, becoming the biggest story since Shock And Awe began and
Seymour Hersh was writing about them in the New Yorker. Then that same year, the
torture memos came out and the shit really hit the fan. In May of 2005, the
Downing Street Memos popped up. In the end, they probably set in motion the process that cost
Tony Blair his job. In early 2007
Hersh wrote about how the General Taguba was forced into retirement for exposing the efforts of Rumsfeld to squash the
Taguba Report and cover-up crimes of torture and abuse of detainees in his custody. It is not difficult to conclude that in the end Rumsfeld lost his job over leaks as well. There had been other damaging leaks as well at that point, but this list of some of the "biggies" should serve to make my point adequately.
The entire point of the Global War on Terror (Global Free Market Wars, as I call them) is to create an ever-changing, ever shifting, new global target as a pretext for invasion and occupation of foreign nations much like in previous decades when the "economic hitmen" would attempt to undermine the economies of targeted nations in order to allow the IMF and their Chicago School style "shock therapy" economic model to gain control.
Thanks to the Global War on Terror, these days all one has to do is claim there is a branch affiliate of al Qaeda operating in some country and off we go… examples… Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen… just to name a few.
There is a great deal of power and money at stake here and when you consider the fact that real leaks had already posed a serious problem and threat to that agenda before Wikileaks was even created, it only makes sense that someone would try to come up with a way to mitigate it.
In late 2006 Wikileaks was formed around the same time that intelligence agencies formed two other "Wikipedia" type systems for their own use. "Oogle" and "Intelipedia" were created in Sept. of 2006, about the same time Julian Assange was contacting people in the hacker world trying to put together a project he called "Wikileaks".
"The new tools include a federated search engine called Oogle and Intellipedia, a controversial intelligence data-sharing tool based on Wiki social software technology.
The intelligence community's use of social software has attracted a group of users and advocates known as the Intellipedians. Wiki allows users to post information and continually update it in response to events in a collective and collaborative fashion."
GCN
When first contacted by Assange to help with the project, John Young, already providing an established internet site for leakers with Cryptome, agreed to help out. But soon after Young began to suspect something was wrong with what Assange was trying to create. He pulled out and published the email chains.
"All the messages received were published.
My objections had been building, shown in later messages, after initial support. The finally fed-up turnaround occurred with the publication today of the $5 million dollar by July fund-raising goal see messages at the tail-end.
I called that along with a delay in offering a public discussion and critique forum and failure to provide a credible batch of leaked documents for public scrutiny a surefire indication of a scam. This is the exact technique used by snake oilers, pols
and spies. Requests to Cryptome to keep stuff quiet are regular fare and they always get published. Next up, the names and affiliations of the perps if they don't reveal themselves in an open forum."
John Young, Dec. 2006
As Young's suspicions began to reverberate through the hacker community, a funny thing happened… suddenly Wikileaks started getting positive press… in the main stream media. This of course is before they "leaked' anything. The purpose of that is clear… they were attempting to "control the narrative" about their start-up project.
"Instead of a couple of academic specialists,
Wikileaks will provide a forum for the entire global community to examine any document relentlessly for credibility, plausibility, veracity and falsifiability," its organizers write on the site's
FAQ page. "
They will be able to interpret documents and explain their relevance to the public. If a document is leaked from the Chinese government, the entire Chinese dissident community can freely scrutinize and discuss it…"
TIME Jan. 2007
Even Cass Sunstein, a man who would later write about
the need for "cognitive infiltration" of dissident groups and movements, would get into the act in
Feb. of 2007… this while the MSM was already telling the people that they shouldn't believe the "conspiracy theories" that Wikileaks (which still had not published ANYTHING) was a CIA operation…
"By March, more than one million leaked documents from governments and corporations in Asia, the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa and the former Soviet Bloc will be available online in a bold new collective experiment in whistle-blowing. That is, of course,
as long as you don't accept any of the conspiracy theories brewing that
Wikileaks.org could be a front for the CIA or some other intelligence agency."
TIME Jan. 2007
Isn't it odd Glenn, that a man who would later boast about the process of cognitive infiltration of dissident movements ,would be coming out in favor of a leak site prior to Wikileaks' first publication and even going so far as to attempt to dispel the growing concern that it might just be a
CIA Honey Pot? Especially after the intelligence agencies had just launched their own Intellipedia?
For more information on the roots of Wikileaks, try reading
this.
Personally, given the history of Wikileaks, when someone like Cass Sunstein mentions the buzz words "conspiracy theory" I tend to take notice. Much like when
Abe Foxman or
George W. Bush use them. It's a cheap ploy to limit rational discourse and critical thinking.
There is a bit of the history of Wikileaks.
Let's take a look at your arguments now…
Back to your question. You link me to your article titled "What Wikileaks Revealed to the World in 2010″. This is a collection of articles you have put together which supposedly show the value of Wikileaks as a truth revealing site.
I won't bother linking to you the many articles you left out which Wikileaks has also offered up to the world presenting various discredited state department friendly "truths" like.. North Korea providing missiles to Iran, Iran aiding the attacks on U.S. soldiers in Iraq, Pakistan aiding the attacks on U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, various implications that the people and leaders of the Arab world want the U.S. to "regime change" Iran… so forth and so on.
You left those particular gems out of the discussion and so will I.
But, I could in fact provide you with a list probably twice as long as yours with these discredited globalization friendly tidbits of misinformation.
The first one you list is the "Collateral Damage" video which shows a U.S. gunship firing on two journalists and their group. As I have already explained to you, that first big-time attention-getting "leak" is troubling in the sense that it does show civilians getting killed, but I think it was carefully chosen. That wasn't a rape or torture… it showed a group being fired upon, two members of which had Ak-47s, they were less than 6 blocks from a gunfight, and in the end it depicted U.S. soldiers saving the lives of two kids who were shot while they could not be seen inside the van. Why would they release that? Because it creates credibility for Wikileaks while it only really depicts something we already knew… civilians get killed in Iraq. And in that case, an ARMED group and the soldiers did what they could to save kids lives. Got it?
The next one you list is of soldiers gleefully talking about shooting those people. Do I really have to explain how pointless it is to say soldiers enjoy shooting "the terrorists"?
The next one is from Oct. 2010 and I suppose it ranks up there in your books because you skipped what looked like a developing chronological order.
This deals with the recent "leak" that claims that the U.S. looked the other way as Iraqis tortured civilians. Let's go back to all those real leaks and the Taguba Report. This "leak" claims that we aren't torturing folks, it's all those evil Iraqis doing it, the ones we have to get rid of. You know,
I wrote about this "leak" and how it was being misrepresented all across the desperate liberal blog-o-sphere.
I showed that in those cables they clearly stated that investigations were ongoing and that the victims (of Iraqi on Iraqi abuse) were being given the proper medical treatment.
Now, I could go on and on with this. But let us just say for argument, that you are not deliberately trying to mislead anyone, you are just doing what Cass Sunstein and many others back in the day knew you would… you are seeing what you want to see in the Wikileaks and ignoring the rest.
This is done on an individual, leak by leak, basis and it is done (as exemplified by your list of only the "leaks" that you consider useful and respectable by those of us on the dissident mainstream) by your part, in your list of "What Wikileaks Revealed in 2010″
You are cherry-picking the leaks Glenn. Not only are you cherry-picking just the leaks you think do us some good, but you are also cherry-picking the context and even the text of those leaks themselves.
Let's move on…
"Also, is depicting Julian Assange as a rapist and terrorist part of the big government plot to vest him with credibility?" Glenn Greenwald
"big government plot"? Starting to sound like we are moving toward using that "conspiracy theory" label, aren't we?
What do we actually know about this story, Glenn? Assange has admitted that he doesn't know where these "leaks" came from… Manning has never admitted to sending anything… and all we have, the ENTIRE story, comes from a guy you yourself have concluded is an FBI informant and of highly suspicious character. Now, you are even engaged in a fight with Wired to get them to release all of the suspect instant messages between Manning and Lamo because they refuse to do it.
"big government plot"? Seems to me that is just Lamo, another guy from Wired who was also busted by the FBI, and possibly a group at the NSA… how "big" is that?
But to answer your question… do you support rapists? Do you think rapists should go to jail? So why do you support Assange? Answer: the first story that came out was that the condom broke… remember? The story that is coming out to people like you and Amy Goodman and Michael Moore is that the whole thing is a set-up, right?
Now another part of the story comes out. It wasn't a broken condom, it was Assange holding a woman down and forcing himself on her and then doing about the same thing to another woman days later while she was sleeping. Is that rape? I call that rape. Now THAT is the story they put out to discredit him and ultimately justify his prosecution. Of course, you ignore that story or discredit it.
The point is, without threat of prosecution, we wouldn't be discussing any of this… so that is why the "big government plot" needed to create that story. To get legitimate reporters like you to spend all of your time focusing on Julian Assange rather than all the other stuff going on right now.
That's why Glenn.
"I think Julian is going to end up in prison, and I'll be interested in what you have to say then." Glenn Greenwald
Oh you haven't got to wait. I'll tell you right now… who cares?
How many Iraqi union leaders are in black sites right now? How many opposition party members? How about resistance members in Afghanistan? How many journalists have been disappeared in Mexico?
Julian is living in a mansion owned by a guy who's business has ties to George Soros (a man who had made billions off the speculation trade in all these countries that have been invaded and occupied in the Global Free Market Wars). He is collecting money to help pay his legal fees, at this time
he has collected 1.3 million dollars and only paid out 200,000 worth of fees. He is about
to cash in to the tune of another 1.3 or so million bucks… and at this point he is releasing some "leaks" at the rate of about 20 a day. All this time he is claiming to have the goods on various dirty little secrets, but he won't release any of them as long as he stays a free man living in the lap of luxury.
Meanwhile, the Palestinians are being attacked (while
Assange says he won't release embarrassing info about Israel for 6 months), Iraqis are still being put in black bags and renditioned, the war in Afghanistan has taken the lives of civilians at a record-setting pace, drones are killing more and more civilians in Pakistan, and the Global Free Market Wars are poised to spill over into still more nations.
You think putting Assange in jail proves one thing or the other?
You don't think patsy's get set up and imprisoned after their usefulness has come to an end? You should read a little bit about Manuel Noriega or Saddam Hussein before you try to make that claim to me.
Hell, even Pinochet eventually had to go.
Yes, they put their assets in prison from time to time. Doesn't mean they weren't assets.
Arundhati Roy is facing sedition charges in India. Why aren't you as concerned about her? She really is a journalist and there is absolutely no question about her legitimacy. Where are the endless articles about the injustice she faces on your website? How about Amy Goodman's?
In conclusion
Yes, I thank you for taking the time to answer my
Open Letter, but I have to tell you, it is I who am not convinced. You avoided many of the issues that I brought up in our last communication dealing with just the most recent developments in the Wikileaks psyop. You simply said you weren't convinced.
Well, hopefully I have provided some more information for you to consider. Take a look at
what Michel Chossudovsky put together just a little while ago.
I think you will find that there is more than ample reason to doubt Julian Assange's credibility when you look at the history of the organization, who supported it at first, what they have actually leaked (when you don't cherry-pick the articles and the texts of said same), and what Assange himself has been doing these last few months.
Fact is, Assange is hiding behind the leaks that he supposedly has. He is collecting large sums of money, and the Global Free Market Wars are still advancing… and whether you like to believe it or not, much of the old bullshit propaganda is being given a fresh coat of liberal appealing paint with this Wikileaks rebranding project.
I write this in the hope that you will take it into consideration. With a new congress coming into DC, the only way we can stop the passage of some draconian limitations on our internet freedoms is to expose what this Wikileaks project really is.
It won't matter whether or not you think Julian is a journalist. When he publishes something that ends up costing some CIA asset his life or freedom in Iran or Pakistan or India, the mood of the public will shift even farther to the right, and Joe Liebermann will be right there with another Patriot Act at the ready. And it won't be that long from now.
If you don't believe me, read Global Research's work on the matter… read writing from Pakistan, Iran, China, the UK, even Russia and the various other countries who have been saying Wikileaks is an operation for some time now.
The evidence is out there… Assange's recent behavior makes it clear. Now unless you would rather take Cass Sunstein's word on the matter, I hope this inspires a little further reading on the subject.
Sites like mine don't have long, so if you don't mind, I think I have given Julian's little psyop enough coverage for the day.
hock: