Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Pentagon targets #Wikileaks Whistblowers for exposing its dirty secrets | Examiner #CIA #ti #conspiracy

Pentagon targets Wiki Whistblowers for exposing its dirty secrets

  • March 27th, 2010 3:47 am ET

An urgent call went out today to the public for protection from U.S. State Department/CIA aggressive treatment of targeted individuals, WkiLeaks staff of the whistleblower Internet site. Julian Assange of WikiLeaks' felt so threatened, he tweeted that "if anything happened to them," it would be due to their plan to leak a decrypted video depicting an air-strike on civilians and journalists.

Australia's Special Broadcasting Service (SBS, reported that Assange said Thursday that he was followed by two CIA men who boarded his 2.15pm flight out of Reykjavik to Copenhagen and one WkiLeaks volunteer "was detained without explanation by Icelandic police for approximately 21 hours," Assange Tweeted,

Assange was traveling to speak at an investigative journalism conference in Norway and told SBS that "US sources told Icelandic state media that the US State Department was aggressively investigating a leak from the US Embassy in Reykjavik." 

"The next day, during the course of interrogation, the volunteer was shown covert photos of Assange outside a Reykjavik restaurant, Assange said. A production meeting for a video WikiLeaks was working on - allegedly documenting civilian kills by US pilots - had been held in the back room of that restaurant that week," reported SBS, providing the full text of Julian Assange's email explanation. ( click here.)

A  few hours later, SBS reported, "US Army spokesman Gary Tallman confirmed to AFP that the Department of Defence had compiled a report on WikiLeaks, after concerns were raised that the website posed a security threat to troops."

Following that, Norway's ABC s "confirmed WikiLeaks spying story" as Assange reported on Twitter (See: http://bit.ly/cD1ZE3) and Russia Today (RT) then reported on WikiLeak's recent events (See RT report below).

WikiLeaks vs Pentagon

The bold message from WikiLeaks was, "We have airline records of the State Dep/CIA tails. Don't think you can get away with it. You cannot. This is WikiLeaks."

Wikileaks' mission is bringing hidden information to light when it’s in the public interest, the way mainstream news used to be. Wikipedia outlines their greatest hits including Gauntanamo Bay procedure documents, scientology secrets, and net censorship lists.Whistleblowers with WikiLeaks have contributed some compelling information to some fractious global arguments.

Earlier, WikiLeaks Twitter feed had worrying content that is being circulated globally: "WikiLeaks to reveal Pentagon murder-coverup at US National Press Club, Apr 5, 9am; contact press-club@sunshinepress.org"

  • WikiLeaks is currently under an aggressive US and Icelandic surveillance operation. Following/photographing/filming/detaining
  • If anything happens to us, you know why: it is our Apr 5 film. And you know who is responsible.
  • Two under State Dep diplomatic cover followed our editor from Iceland to http://skup.no on Thursday.
  • One related person was detained for 22 hours. Computer’s seized.That’s http://www.skup.no
  • We know our possession of the decrypted airstrike video is now being discussed at the highest levels of US command.
  • We have been shown secret photos of our production meetings and been asked specific questions during detention related to the airstrike.
  • We have airline records of the State Dep/CIA tails. Don’t think you can get away with it. You cannot. This is WikiLeaks.

All of those Tweets came out in a rush. Then the following Tweets hours later show internet interference as typically reported by targeted individuals: UPDATE: “To those worrying about us–we’re fine, and will issue a suitable riposte shortly.” 8.22am NZ time. Then, another  "UPDATE: Just noticed that the first tweet quoted, “WikiLeaks to reveal Pentagon murder-coverup” is gone from the feed. Now I wish I’d linked to all of them individually. Anyway, it was definitely there, and I think Linda is right that it is this previously-referred-to video;" and then, "UPDATE: commenter eru found the missing tweet. It isn’t visible in the ordinary feed for some reason."

At 8:44, March 26, WikiLeaks issued the following Editorial: (emphases added)

Over the last few years, WikiLeaks has been the subject of hostile acts by security organizations. In the developing world, these range from the appalling assassination of two related human rights lawyers in Nairobi last March (an armed attack on my compound there in 2007 is still unattributed) to an unsuccessful mass attack by Chinese computers on our servers in Stockholm, after we published photos of murders in Tibet. In the West this has ranged from the overt, the head of Germany's foreign intelligence service, the BND, threatening to prosecute us unless we removed a report on CIA activity in Kosovo, to the covert, to an ambush by a "James Bond" character in a Luxembourg car park, an event that ended with a mere "we think it would be in your interest to...".

Developing world violence aside, we've become used to the level of security service interest in us and have established procedures to ignore that interest.

But the increase in surveillance activities this last month, in a time when we are barely publishing due to fundraising, are excessive. Some of the new interest is related to a film exposing a U.S. massacre we will release at the U.S. National Press Club on April 5.

The spying includes attempted covert following, photographing, filming and the overt detention & questioning of a WikiLeaks' volunteer in Iceland on Monday night.

I, and others were in Iceland to advise Icelandic parliamentarians on the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, a new package of laws designed to protect investigative journalists and internet services from spying and censorship. As such, the spying has an extra poignancy.

The possible triggers:

  • our ongoing work on a classified film revealing civilian casualties occurring under the command of the U.S, general, David Petraeus.
  • our release of a classified 32 page US intelligence report on how to fatally marginalize WikiLeaks (expose our sources, destroy our reputation for integrity, hack us).
  • our release of a classified cable from the U.S. Embassy in Reykjavik reporting on contact between the U.S. and the U.K. over billions of euros in claimed loan guarantees.
  • pending releases related to the collapse of the Icelandic banks and Icelandic "oligarchs".

We have discovered half a dozen attempts at covert surveillance in Reykjavik both by native English speakers and Icelanders. On the occasions where these individuals were approached, they ran away. One had marked police equipment and the license plates for another suspicious vehicle track back to the Icelandic private VIP bodyguard firm Terr. What does that mean? We don't know. But as you will see, other events are clear.

U.S. sources told Icelandic state media's deputy head of news, that the State Department was aggressively investigating a leak from the U.S. Embassy in Reykjavik. I was seen at a private U.S Embassy party at the Ambassador's residence, late last year and it is known I had contact with Embassy staff, after.

On Thursday March 18, 2010, I took the 2.15 PM flight out of Reykjavik to Copenhagen--on the way to speak at the SKUP investigative journalism conference in Norway. After receiving a tip, we obtained airline records for the flight concerned. Two individuals, recorded as brandishing diplomatic credentials checked in for my flight at 12:03 and 12:06 under the name of "US State Department". The two are not recorded as having any luggage.

Iceland doesn't have a separate security service. It folds its intelligence function into its police forces, leading to an uneasy overlap of policing and intelligence functions and values.

....Only a few years ago, Icelandic airspace was used for CIA rendition flights. Why did the CIA think that this was acceptable? In a classified U.S. profile on the former Icelandic Ambassador to the United States, obtained by WikiLeaks, the Ambassador is praised for helping to quell publicity of the CIA's activities.

Often when a bold new government arises, bureaucratic institutions remain loyal to the old regime and it can take time to change the guard. Former regime loyalists must be discovered, dissuaded and removed. But for the security services, that first vital step, discovery, is awry. Congenitally scared of the light, such services hide their activities; if it is not known what security services are doing, then it is surely impossible to know who they are doing it for.

Our plans to release the video on April 5 proceed.

We have asked relevant authorities in the Unites States and Iceland to explain. If these countries are to be treated as legitimate states, they need to start obeying the rule of law. Now.

— Julian Assange (editor@wikileaks.org)

 

eborah Dupré, B.S, M.S. and Post-Grad DipCont.ED, has been a human and civil rights advocate for over 25 years in the U.S., Vanuatu and Australia. Feel free to support her at www.DeborahDupre.com and by subscribing to Dupré's reports. She respectfully requests posting the link to this site (rather than entire article) unless republishing permission is granted, and welcomes emails: info@DeborahDupre.com. Dupre's recently released book, Operation H1N1: Vaccine Liberty or Death, with a comprehensive timeline of U.S. non-consensual human experimentation, is available at DeborahDupre.com.

 

Posted via email from ElyssaD's Posterous

1 comment:

  1. I think there are some glaring omissions in the Wikileaks releases – the massive Chinese economic investment in the Pakistani tribal regions – and known CIA support for the Baloch separatist movement. This includes the funding of Baloch separatists to be trained in bomb-making and other terrorist activities. Without these important details we are left with a simple demonization of Pakistan – with information available from the mainstream media. The whole thing is starting to look, feel, and smell like “limited hang-out” to me. Americans are getting restive because they know they aren’t being told the truth. So they are fed just a tiny bit of benign scandal, and that’s supposed to shut them up. The official narrative justifying the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan makes no sense whatsoever. I blog about this at http://stuartbramhall.aegauthorblogs.com/2010/11/28/afghanistan-and-the-road-runner/

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