US Intell planned to destroy Wikileaks

[Ed Jewett]

Could he not just go through Tullamarine airport with an Icelandic one? Customs only check you on the way in don't they?

I'm not sure what they check in Australia. They started checking passports on the way OUT in the USA in 1999 because they wanted US passport holders to register some info about their destination and reason for trip etc., and something about airlines not wanting to be financialy liable for people barred on arrival. Of course if you have 2 passports, you get to choose which one to show.

Two passports? :2in1:

This makes me want to wax on endlessly about persona and self and personal groundedness and authenticity and the like, but in the interests of sanity, time and the reading public, I'lll refrain.

[Magda Hassan]

Could he not just go through Tullamarine airport with an Icelandic one? Customs only check you on the way in don't they?

I'm not sure what they check in Australia. They started checking passports on the way OUT in the USA in 1999 because they wanted US passport holders to register some info about their destination and reason for trip etc., and something about airlines not wanting to be financialy liable for people barred on arrival. Of course if you have 2 passports, you get to choose which one to show.

Two passports? :2in1:

This makes me want to wax on endlessly about persona and self and personal groundedness and authenticity and the like, but in the interests of sanity, time and the reading public, I'lll refrain.

Most people I know have at least two passports. Some of them have multi-nationality rights due to mixed ancestry. Some of them are even fine upstanding 'normal' people. Most of these people with multiple passports know exactly who they are and are perfectly psychologically integrated. It has much less to do with Jung than it does as to who you add up to be on paper for the bureaucracy data bases. Ask any Israeli Mossad agent :bandit:. Makes for smooth access to all the worlds trouble spots. And, more importantly, smooth exits. :burnout:

[Magda Hassan]

NEW YORK CITY--Federal agents appeared at a hacker conference Friday morning looking for Julian Assange, the controversial figure who has become the public face of Wikileaks, an organizer said.
Eric Corley, publisher of 2600 Magazine and organizer of The Next HOPE conference in midtown Manhattan, said five Homeland Security agents appeared at the conference a day before Wikileaks Editor in Chief Assange was scheduled to speak.
The conference program lists Assange--who has been at the center of a maelstrom of positive and negative publicity relating to the arrest of a U.S. serviceman and videos the serviceman may have provided to the document-sharing site--as speaking at 1 p.m. ET on Saturday.
"If he shows up, he will be questioned at length," Corley told CNET. Assange did not immediately respond to questions late Friday.
Corley announced on April 19 that Assange would be a keynote speaker. But by June 14, after news of the arrest of Army intelligence specialist Bradley Manning leaked, the conference was warning that Assange might remain outside of the United States for fear of being arrested on related charges.
One source close to Wikileaks indicated late Friday that it was still unclear whether Assange would show up in person or appear through a video conference (a third option would be for another Wikileaks representative to fill in). A conference security staffer said that after being told they needed search warrants to enter the event, at least two agents paid the $100 admission fee to get in.
"If they didn't have a search warrant, they'd have to pay to get in," said Corley, who also goes by the pen name Emmanuel Goldstein. "They did."
Assange has cancelled numerous public appearances in the United States in the last few months, or appeared through a video conference. But he did make a surprise appearance at the TED Global conference at Oxford University on Friday.
Manning was charged last week with sending classified information to a person not authorized to receive it and with obtaining "more than 150,000 diplomatic cables" from the State Department's computers.
In April, Wikileaks released a gritty video--which Manning allegedly sent to the organization--showing U.S. troops in Iraq destroying a vehicle that was preparing to rush a wounded Reuters journalist to the hospital. The Apache pilots appeared to mistake the Reuters news crew, who were holding cameras, for armed insurgents.
Manning is charged with two violations of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The charges could be heard by a court martial if a so-called Article 32 investigation, similar to a civilian grand jury hearing, decides there is enough evidence to proceed.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-20010861-83.html

[Ed Jewett]

Two passports?

Most people I know have at least two passports.

Yikes! I am then hopelessly stuck; I don't even have one, and not even one of those North American border crossing permit things...

I will have to swim to Bermuda, float down the Niagara to Canada, and go against the current on the Mexican-Aridzone horizontal conveyor belt.

But then that local guy Henry David someone-or-other said something about 'traveling much in Concord'.

[Ed Jewett]

Wanted by the CIA: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange

By Matthew Bell
Monday, 19 July 2010



There are not many journalists who, when you ask them if they are being followed by the CIA, say "We have surveillance events from time to time." Actually it's not a question I've ever asked before, and Julian Assange does not call himself a journalist.
But the answer is typical of this 41-year-old former computer-hacker: cryptic, dispassionate, and faintly self-important.
As the founder of Wikileaks – a website that publishes millions of documents, from military intelligence to internal company memos and has, in four years, exposed more secrets than many newspapers have in a century – Assange has become the pin-up of web-age investigative journalists. The US has wanted him for questioning since March, after he posed a video showing an American helicopter attack that left several Iraqi civilians and two Reuters journalists dead.
Understandably, he now avoids the US, and keeps his movements secret, though it's thought he operates out of Sweden and is spending time in Iceland, where a change in the law is creating a libel-free haven for journalists. But if the CIA spooks wanted him that badly, couldn't they have turned up, as a hundred adoring student journalists did, to hear him talk at the Centre for Investigative Journalism 10 days ago?
Perhaps it's just as well they didn't, as Assange is not a natural public speaker. He is more at home trawling data or decrypting the codes that mask it. His philosophy is that the more a government wants to keep something secret, the more reason to expose it. No journalist could argue with his essential belief in shining a light on malpractice, but shouldn't governments be entitled to keep some secrets? "Sure," he says when we speak after his talk, "That doesn't mean we and other press organisations should suffer under coercion."
What if publishing a document would threaten national security? "This phrase is so abused. Dick Cheney justified torture with it. Give me an example." What about the movement of US troops? Would he publish a document that jeopardised their safety? "We'd have to think about it." So that's a yes? "It's not a yes. If that fit into our editorial criteria – which it might, if it was an extremely good movement – then we'd have to look at whether that needed a harm minimisation procedure. We'd be totally happy to consider jeopardising the initiation of a war, or the action of war. Absolutely."
He may speak like a robot, and have a politician's knack at ducking straight answers, but in the flesh he could be a forgotten member of Crowded House, all ripped jeans and crumpled jacket, his distinguished white hair framing a youthful face. His grungy look ties in with his outsider status: he has a deep-rooted mistrust of authority. It has been speculated this comes from a youthful brush with the family courts after he divorced the mother of his son, though little is really known about his early life.
His obsession with secrecy, both in others and maintaining his own, lends him the air of a conspiracy theorist. Is he one? "I believe in facts about conspiracies," he says, choosing his words slowly. "Any time people with power plan in secret, they are conducting a conspiracy. So there are conspiracies everywhere. There are also crazed conspiracy theories. It's important not to confuse these two. Generally, when there's enough facts about a conspiracy we simply call this news." What about 9/11? "I'm constantly annoyed that people are distracted by false conspiracies such as 9/11, when all around we provide evidence of real conspiracies, for war or mass financial fraud." What about the Bilderberg conference? "That is vaguely conspiratorial, in a networking sense. We have published their meeting notes."
Assange likes to see Wikileaks as a neutral platform for distributing information, and fends off criticism by saying it always follows its openly stated policies. But no news organisation is free from personal input, as he reveals when talking of Bilderberg, a shadowy annual conference of the influential. "I understand the philosophical rationale for having Chatham House rules among people in power, but the corrupting nature, in the case of Bilderberg, probably outweighs the benefits. When powerful people meet together in secret, it tends to corrupt."
Spending time with Assange, it's hard not to start believing that dark forces are at work. According to him, everyone's emails are being read. For that reason, he encourages anyone planning to leak a document to post it the old fashioned way, to his PO Box. It's ironic that an organisation bent on blowing secrets is itself so secretive, but Wikileaks couldn't operate without reliable sources. Except that, amazingly, Wikileaks does not verify them. "We don't verify our sources, we verify the documents. As long as they are bona fide it doesn't matter where they come from. We would rather not know."
After we talk, he is off to a safe house for the night and after that, who knows? He never stays in one place more than two nights. Is that because the CIA wants to kill him? "Is it in the CIA's interest to assassinate me? Maybe. But who would do it?" Isn't he brave to appear in public? "Courage is an intellectual mastery of fear," he says. "It's not that you don't have fear, you just manage your risks intelligently."
What we wouldn't know without Wikileaks

Trafigura's super-injunction
When commodities giant Trafigura used a super-injunction to suppress the release of an internal report on toxic dumping in the Ivory Coast in newspapers, it quickly appeared on Wikileaks instead. Accepting that the release made suppression futile, Trafigura lifted the injunction.
The CRU's 'Climategate' leak
Emails leaked on the site showed that scientists at the UK's Climate Research Unit, including director Phil Jones, withheld information from sceptics
The BNP membership list
After the site published the BNP's secret membership list in November 2008, newspapers found teachers, priests and police officers among them. Another list was leaked last year. The police has since barred officers from membership.
Sarah Palin's emails
Mrs Palin's Yahoo email account, which was used to bypass US public information laws, was hacked and leaked during the presidential campaign. The hacker left traces of his actions, and could face five years in prison.





[The link below also includes a 20-minute TED Talk filmed in Oxford, England.]



Read more: http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/lifest...z0uCRzx31i

[Peter Presland]

Wanted by the CIA: Wikileaks founder Julian Assange

By Matthew Bell
Monday, 19 July 2010
His obsession with secrecy, both in others and maintaining his own, lends him the air of a conspiracy theorist. Is he one? "I believe in facts about conspiracies," he says, choosing his words slowly. "Any time people with power plan in secret, they are conducting a conspiracy. So there are conspiracies everywhere. There are also crazed conspiracy theories. It's important not to confuse these two. Generally, when there's enough facts about a conspiracy we simply call this news." What about 9/11? "I'm constantly annoyed that people are distracted by false conspiracies such as 9/11, when all around we provide evidence of real conspiracies, for war or mass financial fraud." What about the Bilderberg conference? "That is vaguely conspiratorial, in a networking sense. We have published their meeting notes."

The boldface bit is part of the reason I continue to have serious reservations about Assange. Like I've said before (on this thread I think), he is making major efforts at wikileaks/self promotion and I'm not altogether sure which takes precedence.

It seem John Young at Cryptome is still broadly in support - though with reservations - and in spite of publishing all the 'Wikileaks Insider" stuff.

These from JY in the comments section of a Wau-Holland foundation web site article:

The original purpose of Wikileaks remains exemplary so long as it fulfills its promises, (excluding Julian's initial aspiration to raise $5 million and the failure to induce outsiders to "wiki" the product). At present it is not doing that as well as it has in the past. The need for funds has led to a singular focus on publicity and neglect of the promise. This broadening of its base of public participation could lead to a restoration of Wikileaks as a genuine wiki with far greater numbers of persons taking part, open and accountable to contributors (it must avoid a takeover by self-serving censors like Wikipedia). More importantly, this base-broadening could also lead to giving up the spy-like characteristics of Wikileaks leadership that fosters suspicion that it is not what it claims to be a democratic enterprise, thus refusing the inevitable corruption of a copyrighted brand like that wholly controlled by the globe's spooks who have manage to raise millions upon millions by the villainous, secrecy-obsessed, anti-democratic scam. This worldwide institutional betrayal of the public by governmental, commercial and personal spies cannot be defeated by adopting the means and methods of authoritatives to conceal their their enriching operations, that only leads them to applaud their successful hegemony. Wikileaks should have no inside secrets needing to be leaked by insiders or sock puppeted by outsiders, it should not present itself as a singular enterprise above all others, thus inviting attack and incredulity, instead it should foster other ventures like itself by preparing to be supplanted not institutionalized. There will always be better means of transparency so long as those riding the crest do not kill newcomers out of fear of dying or, worse, not gaining a lifetime source of income. Shutting the fuck up and gracious suicide is to be considered when your time has come. Mea culpa.

And

Monetization of leaks, whether by government, commerce, non-profits, or individuals, has a long history, much longer than the free type which is a very recent development, thanks to the cheapness and ubiquity of the Internet.

Paying for leaks and stolen information (including forgeries and disinformation) is as venerable as spying itself, both feed and enrich one another. What is also new is transparency about leaks and spying, both of which customarily occur in secret, and in which deception and treachery are commonplace.

The best funding model for Wikileaks is to sell material it is given by contributors, and in some case paying for the leaks. WL has tried to auction material which is reported to have been unsuccessful, but there is no way to know for sure.

The monetization of the State Department cables and other not-yet-disclosed submissions is a powerful stimulus to do what has always been done, do it and keep it secret in order to game the bids and keep submissions coming for free, dressed in noble clothing of high purpose, exactly as spies do.

However, it will take a sophisticated operation to avoid being co-opted, corrupted, criminalized and/or destroyed by very lethal, ruthless and violent competitors.

Assange has hinted at these roilings, and anyone who has operated a freedom of information/journalism site or business or NGO has experienced overtures from vultures with hard to resist enticements.

Assange was reported to have said in a Guardian interview yesterday that he might leave Wikileaks, that it could survive without him though still benefiting from his drive. This could indicate he has had offers to break free of the reputable Wikileaks and to form a new venture along commercial or government models which pay very well, in particular as official spying has become increasingly privatized and lucrative.

Julian is a spectacular showman for the youngsters of the Internet era who are disgusted with the seniors.

Political office or spying for the global industrial spies Google, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Cisco, thousands of others admitting only to "customer data gathering."

Wikileaks has a decent market for its contributor data protected only at the moment by thinnest of veneers of a few unknown accessors, how thin is unknown due to lack of transparency, i.e., secrecy, a sure sign of treachery in the offing.

The 'Sabretache' comment is mine

[Peter Lemkin]

To all of those who would look with a jaundiced eye on the information and/or motive of Wikileaks, I ask them first take a ten-fold look at the information and/or motive of 'Western' Intelligence Apparatus.....I thinks Assage and Wikileaks comes out looking like 'angels' to the other named 'devils.... :bandit::top:

[Peter Presland]

To all of those who would look with a jaundiced eye on the information and/or motive of Wikileaks, I ask them first take a ten-fold look at the information and/or motive of 'Western' Intelligence Apparatus.....I thinks Assage and Wikileaks comes out looking like 'angels' to the other named 'devils.... :bandit::top:

Agreed.

But the points John Young makes (and I agree with) are:

1. Any model that relies on big bucks - and especially when accounting for those big bucks is not rigorously transparent - is vulnerable to co-option or other manipulation by 'The System'.

2. Any young man who seeks recognition and commensurate financial rewards from 'The System' - even if it is by exposing its darker side - is vulnerable to co-option, or other manipulation, by 'The System'. Although I concede that we all seek recognition from pour peers in one form or another - it's just that youngsters are particularly prone to the temptations that can result. IMHO anyway.

I would add that, in the case of WikiLeaks, number 2 is particularly apposite in view of his clearly naive and/or ingratiating statement about 9-11.

BTW - didn't thank you for the offer of help with WikiSpooks - it would be most welcome.

[Ed Jewett]

Wikileaks publishes Afghan war secrets

Updated 43 minutes ago
Secret war: Wikileaks has published some 200,000 pages of secret American military files about the war in Afghanistan (Reuters: Parwiz, File photo)

• Related Story: US sailors still missing in Afghanistan
  
• Related Link: Wikileaks home page
  

The White House has attacked online whistleblowing site Wikileaks after it published some 200,000 pages of secret American military files about the war in Afghanistan.
The files, published online by The Guardian, the New York Times and Germany's Der Spiegel, include details of 144 incidents in which Coalition forces have killed civilians.
The Guardian says the leaks show that troops killed hundreds of civilians in previously unreported incidents.
In one example cited by the British paper, French troops fired at a bus full of children, injuring eight.
A US patrol was involved in a similar incident that wounded or killed 15 passengers, and in 2007 Polish troops fired mortars at a village, apparently in a revenge attack, killing a wedding party which included a pregnant woman.
According to the New York Times they also "suggest that Pakistan, an ostensible ally of the United States, allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban."
Describing the talks as "secret strategy sessions," the newspaper said they "organise networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders."
The Guardian says the files revealed a secret black-ops unit which hunts down Taliban leaders for "kill or capture" without trial; how the US covered up evidence of surface-to-air missiles acquired by the Taliban; and how the Taliban have caused growing carnage with their roadside bombing campaign, killing more than 2,000 civilians to date.
US national security adviser James Jones says the publication of the documents puts the lives of soldiers and civilians at risk.
"The United States strongly condemns the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organisations which could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk and threaten our national security," he said in a statement.
"Wikileaks made no effort to contact us about these documents - the United States government learned from news organisations that these documents would be posted."
Much of the information is not new, but what has angered officials in Washington is the detail and the scope of the information.
The New York Times said it, along with the Guardian and Der Spiegel, had received the leaked material several weeks ago from Wikileaks, a secretive web organisation headed by Australian Julian Assange.
The news organisations agreed to publish their reports, based on the files "used by desk officers in the Pentagon and troops in the field when they make operational plans," on Sunday.
"Most of the reports are routine, even mundane, but many add insights, texture and context to a war that has been waged for nearly nine years," the Times said in a note to readers describing the leaks.
"Overall these documents amount to a real-time history of the war reported from one important vantage point - that of the soldiers and officers actually doing the fighting and reconstruction."
- ABC/wires
Tags: world-politics, unrest-conflict-and-war, terrorism, afghanistan, pakistan, united-states
First posted 46 minutes ago

[Ed Jewett]

WikiLeaks Drops 90,000 War Docs; Fingers Pakistan as Insurgent Ally

• By Spencer Ackerman
  
• July 25, 2010 |
  
• 7:47 pm |
  
• Categories: Af/Pak
  

Turns out “Collateral Murder” was just a warm-up. WikiLeaks just published a trove of over 90,000 mostly-classified U.S. military documents that details a strengthening Afghan insurgency with deep ties to Pakistani intelligence.
WikiLeaks’ release of a 2007 Apache gunship video sparked worldwide outrage, but little change in U.S. policy. This massive storehouse – taken, it would appear, from U.S. Central Command’s CIDNE data warehouse — has the potential to be strategically significant, raising questions about how and why America and her allies are conducting the war. Not only does it recount 144 incidents in which coalition forces killed civilians over six years. But it shows just how deeply elements within the U.S.’ supposed ally, Pakistan, have nurtured the Afghan insurgency. In its granular, behind-the-scene details about the war, this has the potential to be Afghanistan’s answer to the Pentagon Papers. Except in 2010, it comes as a database you can open in Excel, brought to you by the now-reopened-for-business WikiLeaks.
Now, obviously, it’s not news that the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligences has ties to the Afghan Taliban, the Haqqani network and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s Hezb-e-Islami. That’s something that pretty much every observer of the Afghanistan war and the Pakistani intelligence apparatus has known for the better part of a decade.
But as the early-viewing New York Times reports, WikiLeaks presents a new depth of detail about how the U.S. military has seen, for six years, the depths of ISI facilitation of the Afghan insurgency. For instance: a three-star Pakistani general active during the 80s-era U.S.-Pakistani-Saudi sponsorship of the anti-Soviet insurgency, Hamid Gul, allegedly met with insurgent leaders in South Waziristan in January 2009 to plot vengeance for the drone-inflicted death of an al-Qaeda operative. (Gul called it “absolute nonsense” to the Times reporters.)
Other reports, stretching back to 2004, offer chilling, granular detail about the Taliban’s return to potency after the U.S. and Afghan militias routed the religious-based movement in 2001. Some of them, as the Times notes, cast serious doubt on official U.S. and NATO accounts of how insurgents prosecute the war. Apparently, the insurgents have used “heat-seeking missiles against allied aircraft,” eerily reminiscent of the famous Stinger missiles that the U.S., Saudi Arabia and Pakistan provided to the mujahideen to down Soviet helicopters. One such missile downed a Chinook over Helmand in May 2007.

Typically, NATO accounts of copter downings are vague — and I’ve never seen one that cited the Taliban’s use of a guided missile. This clearly isn’t just Koran, Kalashnikov and laptop anymore. And someone is selling the insurgents these missiles, after all. That someone just might be slated to receive $7.5 billion of U.S. aid over the next five years.
That said, it’s worth pointing out that the documents released so far are U.S. military documents, not ISI documents, so they don’t quite rise to smoking-gun level.
Not that that’s so necessary. The ISI’s quasi-sponsorship of the Afghan insurgency is pretty much an open secret. Most Washington analysts take it for granted that at least some aspects of the Pakistani security apparatus retain ties to the Taliban and affiliated extremist groups as an insurance policy for controlling events inside Afghanistan. That’s why some thought it was a positive sign in February when the Pakistanis captured Mullah Baradar, a senior Afghan Taliban leader — including (cough) too-credulous journalists.
WikiLeaks has freaked out the White House, though, by clearly raising questions about whether Pakistani aid to the Afghan insurgency is far deeper than typically acknowledged — something that would raise additional questions about whether the Obama administration’s strategy of hugging Pakistan into severing those ties is viable. Retired Marine General Jim Jones, President Obama’s national security adviser, emailed reporters a long statement denouncing the leaks and pledging continued support for Pakistan.
“The United States strongly condemns the disclosure of classified information by individuals and organizations which could put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk, and threaten our national security,” Jones said in a statement. “Wikileaks made no effort to contact us about these documents – the United States government learned from news organizations that these documents would be posted. These irresponsible leaks will not impact our ongoing commitment to deepen our partnerships with Afghanistan and Pakistan; to defeat our common enemies; and to support the aspirations of the Afghan and Pakistani people.” So much for a shift in course.
Is there a silver lining to Pakistan’s relationship with the insurgents? On the one hand, it’s possible that the extent of those ties might amount to leverage over the insurgents to cut a deal with Hamid Karzai’s government to end the war. But there was a lot of talk about that when Baradar was captured, and none of it has panned out. And in the meantime, the first batch of expanded U.S. aid to Pakistan — $500 million worth — arrived on July 18. Who knows how much of that money will end up in the Afghan insurgents’ pockets.
We’ll have additional reports on this as well go through the trove, as will our sister blog, Threat Level. There’s stuff in here about the use of drones, the deadly Kunduz airstrike last year, and much, much more. In the meantime, tell us what you find in the WikiLeaks trove, either by leaving a note in the comments, or by dropping us a line. Either way, include the document number so we can keep track of it all.


Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/07/...z0ukXFzBBc