WikiLeaks founder blasts Pentagon amid Afghan files row [Archive]

buglerbilly

07-10-10, 01:15 AM

Doc Of The Day: Military, Spooks Step Up War on Leakers

By Spencer Ackerman October 6, 2010 | 6:21 pm

Are you a soldier? Did you have a chat over beers to a friendly reporter the other night? Tell the journalist embedded in your unit what road you were going to drive down on one mission? Congratulations: you may have run afoul of an Army regulation against leaking classified information. Never mind the fact that the military classifies all kinds fo things that aren’t real secrets. Never mind the fact that the top officials in the military and intelligence fields who warn against the dangers of leaking are news-sieves themselves. (Check out Bob Woodward’s new book, if you don’t believe me.) They can leak, soldier, just not you.

On Monday, the Army issued what it billed as a “major revision” to its regulation about turning in snitches. (Kudos to Secrecy News for catching the change.) Mostly, it informs soldiers how to stay alert against the ever-present “threat of espionage, sabotage, subversion, and international terrorism” that the Army faces. But then Regulation 381-12 instructs Army personnel to rat out “known or suspected unauthorized disclosure of classified information to those not authorized to have knowledge of it, including leaks to the media.”

The service certainly has a lot of information that it justly needs to protect, from troop movements to the specifics of its weapons systems. But like the rest of the military and the government, it also has no problem over-using that “classified” stamp. General Stanley McChrystal’s 2009 Afghanistan strategy paper was initially classified, too. Its disclosure by Bob Woodward resulted in absolutely nothing problematic, unless you want to count the Obama administration’s momentary embarrassment.

Yet the regulation places leaking classified material in the same context as “contact with persons known or suspected to be members of or associated with foreign intelligence, security, or international terrorist organizations.” Even “suspected” disclosures are grounds for snitching. Chances are, it’s not going to be the men with stars on their shoulders and reporters’ numbers stored in their cellphones who get ratted out.

And it’s not just the Army. This morning in Washington, retired Lieutentant General Jim Clapper, the nation’s top intelligence official, paused his first public speech in his new job to rail against WikiLeaks’ recent disclosure of 77,000 frontline military reports from Afghanistan. Clapper said the mega-leak had a “very chilling effect on the need to share” information amongst spooks — and then proclaimed himself “ashamed” that anonymous senior intelligence officials “get their jollies talking to the media.”

Again, the intelligence community has lots of information it justifiably wants to keep secret. Most of what appears in the press, however, aren’t the crown jewels. It’s anonymous officials who describe (and spin) intelligence activities that are pretty much open secrets, as with this recent piece of ours about the CIA’s teams of Pashtuns that spot for the Pakistani drone strikes.

And however much material the Army overclassifies, the spooks far surpass it, hiding from public view even the names of contractors who guard its buildings. It’s more than a little self-interested of Clapper to demand the leaks get plugged: without them, we would know pretty much nothing about what the $75 billion annual intelligence budget actually buys. And — ahem — it’s also not like Clapper himself is averse to talking to reporters off the record.

Check out the Army’s revised information-security regulations for yourself:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/38843284/Army-Threat-Awareness-And-Reporting-Program
Army Threat Awareness And Reporting Program

It’s tempting to consider this a snapshot of the World That WikiLeaks Made. But the Army has waged a battle against its own soldiers for years to keep even mundane information out of public view. In 2007, one of the best milbloggers from Iraq, LT G of Kaboom, found himself taken away from his platoon after he blogged his criticisms of overly-bureaucratic higher headquarters. That same year, the Army instructed soldiers to clear blog posts and even emails through their superiors. Then it wound itself in knots trying to clarify what it meant. Even generals have found the Army’s excessive paranoia about soldier leaks online hard to handle. Major General Michael Oates, himself an occasional blogger, leveled to Danger Room last year that it was “blindingly obvious that these soldiers are using these social network systems,” despite the restrictions.

Still, that was long before WikiLeaks. These days, the Secretary of Defense is worrying aloud about the dangers of letting low-level soldiers see high-level information and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff says the radical anti-secrecy organization is awash in blood. Neither are exactly shy about candid, private discussions with reporters on sensitive topics.

The Pentagon even flirted with buying and destroying the first printing of an ex-defense intelligence officer’s memoir before reaching a deal with his publisher to black out large chunks of it. Maybe Tony Shaffer should consider himself lucky he wasn’t thrown in the brig. Then again, he was a lieutenant colonel.

Image: Northwestern University’s Library of World War II Posters

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/10/doc-of-the-day-military-spooks-step-up-war-on-leakers/#more-32648#ixzz11cxLV7TO

buglerbilly

15-10-10, 12:41 PM

Superbombs and Secret Jails: What to Look for in WikiLeaks’ Iraq Docs

By Spencer Ackerman October 15, 2010 | 7:00 am

The Afghanistan war logs were just the beginning. Coming as early as next week, WikiLeaks plans to disclose a new trove of military documents, this time covering some of the toughest years of the Iraq war. Up to 400,000 reports from 2004 to 2009 could be revealed this time — five times the size of the Afghan document dump.

It’s a perilous time in Iraq. Politicians are stitching together a new government. U.S. troops are supposed to leave by next December.

Pentagon leaders were furious over the Afghanistan documents, but the American public largely greeted them with yawns. Iraqis might not be so sanguine.

It’s hard to imagine Iraq will fall back into widespread chaos over the disclosures. But they can’t be good for the United States, as it tries to create a new postwar relationship with Iraq, or for the 50,000 U.S. troops and diplomats still over there.

Will 400,000 Secret Iraq War Documents Restore WikiLeaks’ Sheen?

After a brief quiescence, the secret-spilling website WikiLeaks is about to explode again onto the global stage with the impending release of almost 400,000 secret U.S. Army reports from the Iraq War, marking the largest military leak in U.S. history.

Measured by size, the database will dwarf the 92,000-entry Afghan war log WikiLeaks partially published last July. “It will be huge,” says a source familiar with WikiLeaks’ operations, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Former WikiLeaks staffers say the document dump was at one time scheduled for Monday, October 18, though the publication date may well have been moved since then. Some large media outlets were provided an embargoed copy of the database in August.

In Washington, the Pentagon is bracing for the impact. The Defense Department believes the leak is a compilation of the “Significant Activities,” or SIGACTS, reports from the Iraq War, and officials have assembled a 120-person taskforce that’s been scouring the database to prepare for the leak, according to spokesman Col. Dave Lapan.

“They’ve been doing that analysis for some time and have been providing information to Central Command and to our allies, so that they could prepare for a possible impact of the release [and] could take appropriate steps,” says Lapan. “There are … things that could be contained in the documents that could be harmful to operations, to sources and methods.”

Continue reading on Threat Level...

We don’t know what’s in the documents. But here’s what we’ll be looking to find in the trove — and some unanswered questions that the documents might address.

The Rise of Roadside Bombs

Iraq is more a war. It was a proving ground for today’s signature weapon: the improvised explosive device. Insurgents raided Iraq’s military weapons silos to jury-rig devices set off by a simple cellphone.

Later, they bent bomb casings into cones to form the deadlier Explosively Formed Projectile, essentially a bomb that shoots a jet of molten metal into and through an armored vehicle.

Conflicting reports credited the “superbombs” to Iran, or not. Look to the WikiLeaked documents for supporting evidence either way.

Early on, the military found that its jammers — devices emitting frequencies to block those believed to detonate bombs — didn’t work. Worse, rumor was was the jammers actually set the bombs off themselves.

We could be about to learn a lot more about how U.S. forces endured the first new bomb threat of the 21st century.

Abu Ghraib and Missing Jails

The Abu Ghraib detainee-abuse scandal was one of the worst strategic debacles in recent U.S. history. Aides to Gen. David Petraeus candidly said it inspired foreign fighters to join the Iraq insurgency.

Only one prison scandal came to light after Abu Ghraib: torture at the Special Ops facility known as “Camp Nama.” But journalists lost visibility into how the United States ran its detention complex in Iraq. Only in 2007, when Petraeus put Maj. Gen. Doug Stone in charge of rehabbing captured insurgents, did any sunlight return.

What happened for three years in the U.S. jails where tens of thousands of Iraqis were held?

Lost U.S. Guns

The Government Accountability Office reported in 2007 that the military had simply lost nearly 200,000 AK-47s and pistols it intended for Iraqi soldiers and police. Its documentation was a mess in 2004 and ‘05, when Petraeus ran the training mission. Many of those guns are believed to have made their way to the black market and to insurgents.

The leaks may shed some light on how thousands of guns fell off the back of a truck.

Ethnic Cleansing of Baghdad

Shiite death squads and Sunni insurgents each preyed on the other side’s civilians in 2005 and 2006. More than a million Baghdadis were displaced from their homes in a massive demographic shift between March 2006 and July 2007.

It’s never been clear how much the U.S. military knew about the cleansing. Low-level units watched it happen. And American psychological-operations troops certainly played on the religious splits to win local support.

But Gen. George Casey, then the top general in Iraq and now the Army’s chief of staff, has never answered questions about it. If the logs document the cleansing, he may have to speak up.

Drones

As much as the air war in Iraq became defined by the “Shock and Awe” bombing raids of its opening salvo, from the start there were at least ten types of unmanned planes the United States used for surveillance — from the Marines’ Dragon Eye to the Air Force’s iconic Predator.

But how did they prove their value to soldiers and Marines in Iraq? Gen. Petraeus says drones were crucial to the spring 2008 battle in Sadr City, finding targets for the troops below. And a secret task force used drone-fired missiles to kill bomb-planting insurgents.

What other spy gear was employed? Bob Woodward claims a “secret weapon” helped turned the war’s tide.

Could we see hints of it in the new WikiLeaks?

The Air War And More ‘Collateral Murders’

WikiLeaks makes no apologies for its antiwar agenda. Its Iraq and Afghanistan disclosures are designed to weaken support for both wars.

That’s why we should expect to see a lot more material like its gruesome April video showing an Apache helicopter killing people — including a Reuters photographer — who didn’t threaten its crew. The video suggests that other combat aircraft in the confusing urban environments of Iraq might have also engaged in similar mistargeting.

If there are accounts of civilian casualties from what used to be an intense, violent air war — including, perhaps, hidden military documentation about the so-called “Collateral Murder” incident — WikiLeaks is going to publish them.

Photo: Defense Department

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/10/superbombs-and-secret-jails-what-to-look-for-in-wikileaks-iraq-docs/#more-33169#ixzz12QVl4eB8

buglerbilly

15-10-10, 12:42 PM

Will 400,000 Secret Iraq War Documents Restore WikiLeaks’ Sheen?

By Kevin Poulsen and Kim Zetter October 15, 2010 | 7:00 am

After a brief quiescence, the secret-spilling website WikiLeaks is about to explode again onto the global stage with the impending release of almost 400,000 secret U.S. Army reports from the Iraq War, marking the largest military leak in U.S. history.

Measured by size, the database will dwarf the 92,000-entry Afghan war log WikiLeaks partially published last July. “It will be huge,” says a source familiar with WikiLeaks’ operations, who spoke on condition of anonymity. Former WikiLeaks staffers say the document dump was at one time scheduled for Monday, October 18, though the publication date may well have been moved since then. Some large media outlets were provided an embargoed copy of the database in August.

In Washington, the Pentagon is bracing for the impact. The Defense Department believes the leak is a compilation of the “Significant Activities,” or SIGACTS, reports from the Iraq War, and officials have assembled a 120-person taskforce that’s been scouring the database to prepare for the leak, according to spokesman Col. Dave Lapan.

Superbombs and Secret Jails: What to Look for in WikiLeaks’ Iraq Docs

The Afghanistan war logs were just the beginning. Coming as early as next week, WikiLeaks plans to disclose a new trove of military documents, this time covering some of the toughest years of the Iraq war. Up to 400,000 reports from 2004 to 2009 could be revealed this time — five times the size of the Afghan document dump.

It’s a perilous time in Iraq. Politicians are stitching together a new government. U.S. troops are supposed to leave by next December.

Pentagon leaders were furious over the Afghanistan documents, but the American public largely greeted them with yawns. Iraqis might not be so sanguine.

It’s hard to imagine Iraq will fall back into widespread chaos over the disclosures. But they can’t be good for the United States, as it tries to create a new postwar relationship with Iraq, or for the 50,000 U.S. troops and diplomats still over there.

We don’t know what’s in the documents. But here’s what we’ll be looking to find in the trove — and some unanswered questions that the documents might address.

“They’ve been doing that analysis for some time and have been providing information to Central Command and to our allies, so that they could prepare for a possible impact of the release [and] could take appropriate steps,” says Lapan. “There are … things that could be contained in the documents that could be harmful to operations, to sources and methods.”

The Iraq release comes at a crucial time for the 4-year-old WikiLeaks, which has been rankled by internal conflict, shaken by outside criticism and knocked off-message by a lingering sex-crime investigation of its founder, Julian Assange, in Sweden. At least half-a-dozen staffers have resigned from the organization in recent weeks, including key technical staff, according to four ex-staffers interviewed by Wired.com. A “scheduled maintenance” of the WikiLeaks website that began September 29 has stretched to more than two weeks.

The beleaguered Assange was cautious in a Sept. 30 public debate at City University in London, where he asked organizers to bar attending journalists and students from recording, photographing or videotaping his appearance.

The controversies dogging the site followed a string of triumphs: a series of high-profile leaks aimed at U.S. and NATO war efforts. In April, the site published a highly controversial classified video of a 2007 Army helicopter attack in Baghdad.

The attack killed two Reuters employees and an unarmed Iraqi man who stumbled onto the scene and tried to rescue one of the wounded. The man’s two children suffered serious injuries in the hail of gunfire. WikiLeaks titled the video “Collateral Murder,” and raised $150,000 from supporters in two days following its release.

Then in July, the site published the Afghan logs, generating headlines around the world. But WikiLeaks’ handling of that release garnered its first widespread criticism from ideological allies. Although the organization withheld 15,000 records from publication to redact the names of Afghan informants who might be at risk of Taliban reprisal, names of some collaborators were still found in the thousands of documents that were published.

Although there’s no evidence that anyone has suffered harm as a result of the names being exposed, WikiLeaks’ handling of the matter drew criticism from human rights organizations and the international free press group Reporters Without Borders, which accused the site of being reckless. Not surprisingly, the Pentagon was also displeased and issued formal demands that WikiLeaks “return” all classified documents in its possession.

Undaunted, Assange secretly inked deals with media outlets in several countries in August to provide them with embargoed access to the much larger database of Iraq War documents, according to ex-staffers. The agreements created strife inside WikiLeaks.

Former Icelandic WikiLeaks volunteer Herbert Snorrason told Wired.com last month that he was alarmed by the aggressive timetable for the release, which provided WikiLeaks’ volunteers too little time to redact the names of U.S. collaborators and informants in Iraq.

“The release date which was established was completely unrealistic,” said 25-year-old Snorrason. “We found out that the level of redactions performed on the Afghanistan documents was not sufficient. I announced that if the next batch did not receive full attention, I would not be willing to cooperate.”

Wired.com was not able to determine what, if any, portion of the Iraq database WikiLeaks plans to withhold from its website.

Another criticism behind the recent resignations from WikiLeaks is the charge that Assange has neglected hundreds or thousands of small, regionally important leaks submitted from around the world, in favor of headline-making leaks targeting the U.S. government. The Iraq War log, says former WikiLeaks spokesman Daniel Domscheit-Berg, would continue that focus. Although publication of the documents will likely garner praise from WikiLeaks supporters, it won’t fix the problems that are endemic to the organization, he says.

“It might distract from the issues at hand for a bit if it happens,” says Domscheit-Berg. “But it doesn’t change a thing about the situation. WikiLeaks is supposed to be more than those releases. I think it might rejuvenate WikiLeaks if WikiLeaks started to pump out all those others docs that are waiting.”

In addition to the potential impact publication of the war log will have on the U.S., NATO allies and the nascent Iraqi government, it could also jolt the pending court martial case against Army Pfc. Bradley Manning.

Bradley Manning (Facebook.com)

Manning, a 23-year-old former Army intelligence analyst, was arrested last May after confessing to a former hacker that he’d supplied WikiLeaks with classified videos and documents, including the “Collateral Murder” video, and a database of 260,000 State Department diplomatic cables.

It was Manning’s online chats with former hacker Adrian Lamo — who turned him in to authorities — that provided the first indication that WikiLeaks possessed the Iraq log. Manning described leaking a database of half-a-million reports from the Iraq War dated from 2004 through 2009, which he said included date stamps of events, latitude and longitude, and casualty figures.

The Army formally charged Manning with the “Collateral Murder” leak in July, and the Pentagon describes him as a “person of interest” in the Afghan war log leak, though Manning did not mention leaking a database of events from the Afghan war.

His attorney did not return a phone call for this story.

Manning is being held in solitary confinement in the Marine Corps brig at Quantico, Virginia. Assange has never confirmed that Manning was a source of leaked data to WikiLeaks, but has pledged financial assistance for Manning’s criminal defense, which supporters estimate could cost $100,000.

The non-profit Wau Holland Foundation in Germany, which manages the bulk of WikiLeaks’ contributions, confirmed to Wired.com that Assange has authorized the release of money for Manning’s defense, but did not provide any other details. In all, WikiLeaks has about $1 million in contributions in its coffers.

Top photo by Spc. Joshua E. Powell

Read More http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/10/wikileaks-iraq/#ixzz12QWbaZ8m

buglerbilly

19-10-10, 12:35 AM

Doc of the Day: WikiLeaks Didn’t Blow U.S.’ Afghan Intel Sources [Updated]

By Spencer Ackerman October 18, 2010 | 10:02 am

We’re still waiting for WikiLeaks to reveal hundreds of thousands of U.S. military documents on the Iraq war.1 But if the past is any prologue, the impact of the leak might be less severe than the military fears. Its last big military document dump didn’t botch the U.S.’s intelligence sources in Afghanistan, according to Defense Secretary Robert Gates.

Gates wrote to Carl Levin, the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, that a preliminary Pentagon review “has not revealed any sensitive intelligence sources and methods compromised” by WikiLeaks’ July release of 77,000 “tactical” military reports from Afghanistan. Gates penned his August 16 letter a few weeks after Admiral Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, accused the anti-secrecy organization of endangering the lives of U.S. troops and the Afghan civilians who work with them. You can read Gates’ full letter, first reported by the Associated Press on Friday — with Reuters and the New York Times soon after — below.2

But the military’s continued access to its Afghan intelligence sources “in no way discounts the risk to national security” from WikiLeaks, Gates added, which he said was likely to be “significant.” In a hint of what’s to come from the impending Iraq disclosures, Gates wrote that the Defense Department is developing unspecified “courses of action” to deal with “additional military documents [that] may be disclosed by WikiLeaks.”

As our sister blog Threat Level first reported, the Pentagon has assembled a huge 120-person team to go through its “Significant Activities” database to pre-determine what Iraq documents WikiLeaks might release. The material in the database, which the Pentagon believes WikiLeaks has accessed, covers insurgent attacks and U.S. responses.

Much as we’re hitting refresh in anticipation of the Iraq release, WikiLeaks’ website is still down. (“Undergoing scheduled maintenance,” it explains.) Threat Level reported last month that at least six WikiLeaks staffers have recently resigned, upset by the rapidity with which founder Julian Assange wants the Iraq documents released or the pre-release screenings provided to select media outlets. Some of those staffers considered an October 18 release deadline — today — inadequate for withholding the names of Iraqis who aided U.S. troops, a priority for the group after it saw widespread criticism for releasing the names of Afghans who did the same thing.

Gates wrote to Levin that he took “very seriously” reported threats from the Taliban to retaliate against those Afghans. CNN, citing an anonymous senior NATO source, reports that no Afghan named in WikiLeaks’ documents has required additional U.S. military protection.

Check out Gates’ letter below. You can also go here to read the July letter Levin sent to Gates about WikiLeaks that prompted the defense secretary’s assessment. And also check out Julian Assange from WikiLeaks responding to WIRED’s reporting on the Iraq documents via Twitter.

Letter here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/39590650/gateslevinltrwikileaks

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/10/doc-of-the-day-wikileaks-didnt-blow-u-s-afghan-intel-sources/#more-33426#ixzz12kxKt4lk

buglerbilly

23-10-10, 02:49 AM

WikiLeaks Releases 400K Iraq War Documents

October 22, 2010

Associated Press

LONDON - U.S. forces often failed to follow up on credible evidence that Iraqi forces mistreated, tortured and killed their captives as they battled a violent insurgency, according to accounts contained in what was purportedly the largest leak of secret information in U.S. history.

The documents are among nearly 400,000 released Friday by the WikiLeaks website in defiance of Pentagon insistence that the action puts the lives of U.S. troops and their coalition partners at risk.

Although the documents appear to be authentic, their origin could not be independently confirmed, and WikiLeaks declined to offer any details about them. The Pentagon has previously declined to confirm the authenticity of WikiLeaks-released records, but it has employed more than 100 U.S. analysts to review what was previously released and has never indicated that any past WikiLeaks releases were inaccurate.

The 391,831 documents date from the start of 2004 to Jan. 1, 2010, mostly by low-ranking officers in the field. In terse, dry language, they catalog thousands of battles with insurgents and roadside bomb attacks, along with equipment failures and shootings by civilian contractors.

The United States went to war in part to end the brutality of Saddam Hussein's regime, but the WikiLeaks material depicts American officers caught in a complicated and chaotic conflict in which they frequently could do little but report to their superiors when they found evidence that their Iraqi allies were committing their own abuses.

WikiLeaks offered The Associated Press and other news organizations access to a searchable database of redacted versions of the reports three hours prior to its general release Friday. A few news organizations, including the New York Times, Le Monde, The Guardian and Der Spiegel, were given access to the material far earlier.

WikiLeaks describes itself as a public service organization whose mission is to "protect whistle-blowers, journalists and activists who have sensitive materials to communicate to the public." In July, despite objections by the U.S. government, it posted almost 77,000 documents from the Afghan conflict on its website.

Following that release, WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange drew controversy for comments that he wished to expose war crimes. He also became the target of allegations of sexual misconduct in Sweden that he has denied.

The military has a continuing investigation into how the documents were leaked. An Army intelligence analyst stationed in Iraq, Spc. Bradley Manning, has been arrested in connection with the earlier release.

In Friday's release, names and other pieces of identifying information appeared to have been redacted but it was unclear to what extent WikiLeaks withheld names in response to Pentagon concerns that people could become targets of retribution.

Allegations of torture and brutality by Shiite-dominated security forces - mostly against Sunni prisoners - were widely reported during the most violent years of the war when the rival Islamic sects turned on one another in Baghdad and other cities. The leaked documents provide a ground's eye view of abuses as reported by U.S. military personnel to their superiors, and appear to corroborate much of the past reporting. They appeared to mostly be contemporaneous -- routine field accounts that junior officers in units deployed across Iraq sent to headquarters within Iraq during the course of the war.

The leaked documents include at least 300 reports from across Iraq with allegations of abuse. In a typical case from August 2006, filed by the 101st Airborne, U.S. forces discovered a murder suspect who claimed that Iraqi police hung him from the ceiling by handcuffs, tortured him with boiling water and beat him with rods.

The suspect, detained at the Diyala provincial jail, showed evidence of abuse, including bruises on his wrists, back, and knees. The 101st notified the office of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, and the case was closed, according to the documents.

In another case documented, a group of Iraqi detainees was turned over to American custody so badly injured they had to be hospitalized. The prisoners, whom American forces interviewed and photographed, told the Americans that one had been so badly abused that Iraqi forces may have left him to die.

In those cases as in many others in the documents, U.S. forces did not appear to pursue the matter because there was no allegation that coalition forces were involved. Many reports signed off with: "As coalition forces were not involved in the alleged abuse, no further investigation is necessary."

Other reports describe American attempts to halt abuse by Iraqi officers. Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell, who refused to discuss the documents on Friday, said U.S. troops are required to report any abuses they witness to their superiors and that U.S. policy has been to share that information with the Iraqi government "at the appropriate level."

U.S. diplomats and military commanders in Iraq have said in the past that U.S. and allied military forces in Iraq tried to deter abuse, although U.S. officials do not deny that torture or mistreatment has occurred. As a general policy, U.S. forces in Iraq were supposed to take reasonable action to stop or prevent abuse, and promptly report any incidents they witnessed or discovered.

Some of the reports are laconic, barely a line long: "Individual stated she was beaten and raped for not cooperating with IP (Iraqi police) investigator," one November 2007 report filed from Tikrit said.

Others offer more a more detailed description of the abuse - and evidence.

A U.S. military training team took pictures of the detainee they found covered in welts and bruises near Mosul in November 2007. The man, a member of the oil protection team, said he'd been arrested after discovering a bomb on top of his truck. When the Iraqi army group's commanding officer was confronted, he blamed it on an underling, informing the team that he would arrest the renegade soldier "immediately upon his return from vacation."

A "serious incident report" filed in December 2009 in Tal Afar said U.S. forces had obtained footage of about a dozen Iraqi army soldiers - including a major - executing a detainee. The video showed the bound prisoner being pushed into the street and shot, the Americans said. There was no indication of what happened to the video, or to the Iraqi major or his soldiers. The incident is marked "closed."

The release of the documents comes at a pivotal time for the U.S. in Iraq as the military prepares to withdraw all 50,000 remaining troops from the country by the end of next year. The U.S. military had as many as 170,000 troops in Iraq in 2007.

Violence has declined sharply over the past two years, but near-daily bombings and shootings continue, casting doubt on the ability of Iraqi forces to protect the people.

The situation has been exacerbated by growing frustration among the public over the failure of Iraqi politicians to unite and form a new government. Al-Maliki is struggling to remain in power since his Shiite alliance narrowly lost the March 7 vote to a Sunni-backed bloc led by rival Ayad Allawi.

© Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

buglerbilly

23-10-10, 06:28 AM

Beaten, Shocked, Eyes Gouged: Iraq Abuse, WikiLeaked

By Spencer Ackerman October 22, 2010 | 9:34 pm | Categories: Iraq

Torture was a signature feature of the state terror that Saddam Hussein inflicted on Iraq. The voluminous Iraq-war documents released by WikiLeaks today show that getting rid of Saddam didn’t eradicate the brutal tendencies of the revamped Iraqi security forces. Detainees were roughed up with pipes, knives, cables, electricity — even a cat in the face. Some suspects were so scared, they confessed to being terrorists, just so they could be shipped to the Americans.

WikiLeaks proved at least one thing through its release of nearly 400,000 U.S. military reports from the Iraq war: the brutalization of detainees continued years after the Abu Ghraib scandal, perpetrated largely by Iraqi police and soldiers whom the U.S. trained. In at least one case, Iraqi police even brawled with private security guards. While early press coverage of the WikiLeaked documents has zeroed in on the abuse, it’s barely scratched the surface.

Searching the WikiLeaks Iraq trove for incidents of reported detainee abuse results in literally thousands of accounts of brutality. Some of them involve U.S. troops allegedly inflicting harm upon detainees in their custody. A detainee held by coalition forces in southern Iraq said in February 2006 that a U.S. task force beat him to the point where he lost one of his eyes. “Capture photo depicts a bandage over his right eye, and injury to his right forearm,” a report reads.

Some of the more gruesome and unseemly accounts of abuse are the result of Iraqi security forces. In Anbar Province in 2005 — then the heart of the Sunni insurgency — Iraqi police threw a cat on a detainee’s face, threatened him with knives and beat him with cables; Iraqi National Guardsmen and even U.S. troops may have been involved. Baghdad cops may have also deprived detainees of medical treatment: one account describes detainees as “walking wounded,” showing visible “open sores”; it notes that some “detainees have died of disease in recent weeks.”

Detainees in Mosul in 2005 — just months after insurgents briefly overran U.S. and Iraqi forces to control the city in November 2004 — told U.S. troops that they confessed to being terrorists so they could be transferred to U.S. custody, a way to escape the beatings they received from Iraqi soldiers. That same year, a detainee questioned by Iraqi soldiers passed out, leading the soldiers to report that he was on drugs. They sent him to an Iraqi police station, where he never woke up. His death was classified as a drug overdose; a U.S. report says his body appeared not to have exhibited signs of abuse.

Cables show up in the documents as an implement of choice for the Iraqi security forces to discipline detainees. One Iraqi unit used “cables and water pipes” south of Baghdad to beat a detainee on the legs and buttocks. In Fallujah, another detainee reported that an Iraqi police captain beat him with a cable, leaving “dime-size” welts on his thigh. In Mosul, Iraqi police whacked three detainees with cables on the “back, chest and face” and “hung [them] by the wrist” until they confessed to terrorist acts.

Other Iraqi police techniques are even blunter. One Baghdad detainee said the police burned him with cigarettes, shocked him with electricity and beat him with a “stick to extract info.”

In one bizarre case, the Iraqi police in the southern port city of Umm Qasr came under apparently unprovoked attack from contractors from the now-disbanded Crescent Security Group in 2005. A Crescent employee “fired shots” at an Iraqi police patrol. When coalition forces came to investigate, the Crescent guard — his nationality isn’t identified — had a “minor cut to the nose and a bloodied mouth.” Iraqi cops claim the guard suffered the bruising during arrest, not in lock-up.

There are accounts of U.S. troops trying to stop the abuse. U.S. troops investigated an account of Iraqi national guardsmen beating a detainee in Mosul in 2005; it’s not clear what became of the incident. (The Iraqi National Guard was essentially dissolved and folded into the Iraqi Army in 2005.) Members of a U.S. brigade in Basra had to intervene after seeing Iraqi cops drag an Iraqi out of his car to beat him up in the street.

A statement that Geoff Morrell, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, emailed to reporters ahead of the WikiLeaks release called the documents “essentially snapshots of events, both tragic and mundane, and do not tell the whole story.”

The site WikiLeaks set up to allow readers to search through the documents is overloaded as of this writing. But a search earlier this afternoon just for abuse accounts from 2009 — the most recent year the documents cover — turned up over 90 largely-vague accounts. There are 50,000 U.S. troops still in Iraq with the primary residual mission to increase the Iraqi security forces’ competence, professionalism and obedience to the rule of law. The documents WikiLeaks revealed underscores just how massive their challenge is.

– With Adam Rawnsley

Photo: Army National Guard

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buglerbilly

24-10-10, 02:52 AM

Secret Iraq war files offer grim new details

By Greg Miller and Peter Finn
Washington Post Staff Writers

Saturday, October 23, 2010; 12:33 AM

A massive cache of secret U.S. field reports from the Iraq war provides grim new details about the toll of that conflict, indicating that more than 100,000 Iraqis were killed during a six-year stretch and that American forces often failed to intervene as the U.S.-backed government brutalized detainees, according to news organizations given access to the documents by the WikiLeaks Web site.

The nearly 400,000 records are described as offering a chilling, pointillist view of the war's peak years, documenting thousands of civilian deaths - including hundreds killed at checkpoints manned by U.S. soldiers - and the burgeoning role that American contractors came to play in the conflict.

But the logs are perhaps most disturbing in their portrayal of the Iraqi government that has taken control of security in the country as U.S. forces withdraw.

The documents, including some dated as recently as 2009, report the deaths of at least six detainees in Iraqi custody because of abuse, and cite hundreds of other cases in which prisoners were subjected to electric shock, sodomized, burned, whipped or beaten by Iraqi authorities, according to an account in the Guardian, a British newspaper that was among several news organizations given advance access to the logs.

The others included the New York Times, the Qatar-based al-Jazeera satellite television network, Germany's Der Spiegel magazine, the French newspaper Le Monde and the Channel 4 news program in Britain. WikiLeaks, an anti-secrecy group that uses servers in several countries, published the records on its Web site (WikiLeaks.org) Friday evening.

There appear to be no major revelations in the latest logs. Much like those WikiLeaks released earlier this year on the war in Afghanistan, the Iraq documents are mainly low-level field reports that reflect a soldier's-eye view of the conflict but do not contain the most sensitive secrets held by U.S. forces or intelligence agencies.

The Pentagon condemned the release but did not question the authenticity of the files.

"We deplore WikiLeaks for inducing individuals to break the law, leak classified documents and then cavalierly share that secret information with the world, including our enemies," said Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell. He said the military would not comment on the information contained in the records but stressed that the "reports are initial, raw observations by tactical units. They are essentially snapshots of events, both tragic and mundane, and do not tell the whole story."

Even so, the spilling of so many once-secret files into public view allows for a fine-grained examination of the war. The 391,832 files included in the release cover a period from the beginning of 2004 to the end of 2009, and are more than quadruple the number of records that WikiLeaks published on the war in Afghanistan.

WikiLeaks has not disclosed the source of the materials. But suspicion has centered on Pfc. Bradley Manning, 22, an Army intelligence analyst whom the military arrested this year, charging him with the downloading and transfer of classified material.

Although narrow in nature, the records provide new insights into the toll of the conflict. According to al-Jazeera, the documents show that the U.S. military kept a tally of Iraqi casualties, even while insisting that such statistics were not maintained.

The files indicate that 285,000 casualties were recorded, including at least 109,032 violent deaths, although reports suggested some double-counting. Of those, 66,081 were civilians, 23,984 were "enemy," 15,196 were members of the Iraqi security forces, and 3,771 were U.S. and allied service members.

The numbers correspond roughly to figures released by the Pentagon this year in response to a Freedom of Information Act request submitted by the Associated Press. Iraq Body Count, a London-based organization that has tracked civilian casualties, said it had identified 15,000 previously unrecorded deaths in the newly released files.

Beyond the broad outlines of the casualty counts, the records offer glimpses of the circumstances in often-heartbreaking detail.

The logs document the killing of as many as 681 civilians at checkpoints - "escalation of force incidents" in the military parlance - where troops fearing suicide bombers opened fire on often-confused drivers who did not know how to act when approaching soldiers, especially at night.

The Guardian reported that in September 2005, near Musayyib, south of Baghdad, two U.S. soldiers opened fire on a car when it continued to approach them after the driver ignored flashing lights and warning shots. A man and his wife were killed, and their 9- and 6-year-old children were wounded.

A month later, again at night, two children were killed in Baghdad when a female driver continued to approach a checkpoint after a single warning shot was fired.

The files also record the bloody toll of soldiers and civilians killed by insurgents' increasingly sophisticated use of roadside bombs: 31,780 deaths were attributed to improvised explosive devices.

The logs record numerous and often horrifying instances of torture and abuse by Iraqi military and police forces, many of which U.S. troops chose to ignore because of orders to refer such matters to senior Iraqi officers, according to the Guardian's reading of the documents.

In one case, in August 2009, a U.S. military doctor found "bruises and burns as well as visible injuries to the head, arm, torso, legs and neck" on the body of a man that police said killed himself.

In another case, in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, coalition forces reported that three Iraqi officers poured acid on the hands of a man and cut off some of his fingers. Two years after the event no arrests had been made, according to one of the documents.

The logs do record attempts by U.S. and coalition forces to stop the abuse by conducting spot-checks on Iraqi facilities where they found prisoners "covered in injuries," the Guardian reported.

But U.S. soldiers often could do little more than demand that the torture stop. An order, issued in June 2004, instructed troops to make an initial report but not to investigate breaches of the laws of war "unless directed by HQ," according to documents cited by al-Jazeera and the Guardian.

The records do not represent the first time that abuses by Iraqi authorities have been disclosed. In November 2005, U.S. troops discovered a Ministry of Interior-run prison in which more than 150 Sunni inmates were being held without charges. The prisoners were emaciated and several lifted up their shirts to show bloody whip marks where they had been beaten, according to U.S. officials who took photographs of the facility. News of the facility was leaked to U.S. and Iraqi newspapers, and U.S. commanders confronted then- Prime Minister Ibrahim al-Jafari about the facility. No punitive action was taken.

In 2007, Gen. David H. Petraeus, then the top commander in Iraq, put pressure on the Interior Ministry to replace virtually all of the battalion and brigade commanders in the Iraqi National Police, a force that had been repeatedly accused of killing and torturing Sunnis in Baghdad.

Revelations about rampant state-sanctioned torture could shape the political debate in Iraq amid protracted negotiations toward the formation of a government. Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is attempting to hold on to his post but has failed to get a simple majority in parliament on his side.

The logs accuse Iran of providing extensive, lethal support to Shiite militias in Iraq as part of an effort to weaken the standing of Sunnis in government and engage in a proxy campaign against the United States. The New York Times cited documents indicating that Iran's Quds Force collaborated with Iraqi extremists to encourage the assassination of Iraqi officials.

But some of news reports treated the claims with skepticism. The Guardian noted that sources for some of the reports on Iran were described as "untested or of low reliability."

WikiLeaks was founded in 2006 by a former computer hacker, Julian Assange. In contrast to the release of the Afghan documents, WikiLeaks redacted names and locations in what members said was a step to ensure there was no chance of exposing Iraqi civilians to reprisal.

The organization has undergone stresses of late. Several members have left in recent months, citing differences with Assange and the direction of the group. Assange is facing allegations in Sweden of rape and sexual harassment, which he has denied, saying the charges are part of a U.S.-orchestrated smear campaign.

millergreg@washpost.com finnp@washpost.com

Correspondent Ernesto Londono in Baghdad and staff writers Ellen Nakashima and Greg Jaffe and staff researcher Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.

buglerbilly

24-10-10, 06:04 AM

WikiLeaks Show WMD Hunt Continued in Iraq – With Surprising Results

By Noah Shachtman October 23, 2010 | 9:25 am

By late 2003, even the Bush White House’s staunchest defenders were starting to give up on the idea that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

But for years afterward, WikiLeaks’ newly-released Iraq war documents reveal, U.S. troops continued to find chemical weapons labs, encounter insurgent specialists in toxins, and uncover weapons of mass destruction.

An initial glance at the WikiLeaks war logs doesn’t reveal evidence of some massive WMD program by the Saddam Hussein regime — the Bush administration’s most (in)famous rationale for invading Iraq. But 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.

In August 2004, for instance, American forces surreptitiously purchased what they believed to be containers of liquid sulfur mustard, a toxic “blister agent” used as a chemical weapon since World War I. The troops tested the liquid, and “reported two positive results for blister.” The chemical was then “triple-sealed and transported to a secure site” outside their base.

Three months later, in northern Iraq, U.S. scouts went to look in on a “chemical weapons” complex. “One of the bunkers has been tampered with,” they write. “The integrity of the seal [around the complex] appears intact, but it seems someone is interesting in trying to get into the bunkers.”

Meanwhile, the second battle of Fallujah was raging in Anbar province. In the southeastern corner of the city, American forces came across a “house with a chemical lab … substances found are similar to ones (in lesser quantities located a previous chemical lab.” The following day, there’s a call in another part of the city for explosive experts to dispose of a “chemical cache.”

Nearly three years later, American troops were still finding WMD in the region. An armored Buffalo vehicle unearthed a cache of artillery shells “that was covered by sacks and leaves under an Iraqi Community Watch checkpoint. “The 155mm rounds are filled with an unknown liquid, and several of which are leaking a black tar-like substance.” Initial tests were inconclusive. But later, “the rounds tested positive for mustard.”

In WikiLeaks’ massive trove of nearly 392,000 Iraq war logs, there are hundreds of references to chemical and biological weapons. Most of those are intelligence reports or initial suspicions of WMD that don’t pan out. In July 2004, for example, U.S. forces come across a Baghdad building with gas masks, gas filters, and containers with “unknown contents” inside. Later investigation revealed those contents to be vitamins.

But even late in the war, WMDs were still being unearthed. In the summer of 2008, according to one WikiLeaked report, American troops found at least 10 rounds that tested positive for chemical agents. “These rounds were most likely left over from the [Saddam]-era regime. Based on location, these rounds may be an AQI [Al Qaeda in Iraq] cache. However, the rounds were all total disrepair and did not appear to have been moved for a long time.”

A small group — mostly of the political right — has long maintained that there was more evidence of a major and modern WMD program than the American people were lead to believe. A few Congressmen and Senators gravitated to the idea, but it was largely dismissed as conspiratorial hooey.

The WMD diehards will likely find some comfort in these newly-WikiLeaked documents. Skeptics will note that these relatively small WMD stockpiles were hardly the kind of grave danger that the Bush administration presented in the run-up to the war.

But the more salient issue may be how insurgents and Islamic extremists (possibly with the help of Iran) attempted to use these lethal and exotic arms. As Spencer noted earlier, a January 2006 war log claims that “neuroparalytic” chemical weapons were smuggled in from Iran.

That same month, then “chemical weapons specialists” were apprehended in Balad. These “foreigners” were there specifically “to support the chemical weapons operations.” The following month, an intelligence report refers to a “chemical weapons expert” that “provided assistance with the gas weapons.” What happened to that specialist, the WikiLeaked document doesn’t say.

Photo: Air War College

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/10/wikileaks-show-wmd-hunt-continued-in-iraq-with-surprising-results/#more-33820#ixzz13FXLf9Dm

buglerbilly

24-10-10, 11:46 AM

Iraq's Maliki: Opponents will use U.S. leaks against him

By Ernesto Londoo
Washington Post Foreign Service

Sunday, October 24, 2010

BAGHDAD - Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Saturday that his opponents are using leaked classified U.S. military reports to discredit his administration as he struggles to secure a second term in office.

Maliki's government also said in a statement in response to the trove of documents released Friday night by the whistleblower group WikiLeaks that it would investigate newly disclosed shootings by employees of the American security company formerly known as Blackwater.

"We need to take these documents into consideration in order to achieve justice for our citizens," the statement said.

Referring to details of cases in which U.S. forces had killed Iraqi civilians, the statement said the U.S. military's "permissive" rules of engagement had led to a "point of crisis" between the two countries.

The documents show that U.S. soldiers killed at least 700 Iraqi civilians in situations where the troops felt threatened.

They also suggest that U.S. soldiers were ordered to refrain from formally investigating cases of inmate abuse by Iraqi police and soldiers.

While the nearly 400,000 documents disseminated by WikiLeaks have not produced major revelations, Iraqi politicians are likely to seize on newly disclosed details for political gain as negotiations over the formation of a new government drag on.

Neither Maliki nor Ayad Allawi, his main rival in the March 7 parliamentary elections, has been able to form a coalition large enough to govern.

Jamal al-Battikh, a leader in Allawi's Iraqiya alliance, said security agencies under Maliki's control are to blame for the sort of inmate torture detailed in the leaked files.

"In our dialogue with all the other blocs, we have demanded the disbandment of the security agencies that were causing violations of human rights," he said. "These kinds of security agencies are causing all the harm."

Some Sunni leaders said the information in the reports detailing torture in Iraqi prisons was a vindication of claims they have been making for years.

"These releases haven't brought anything new to us, because for four or five years we have been calling for these practices to stop," said Omar al-Jubouri, a Sunni politician. "Maybe they will give more credibility to what we have been saying, because now the Pentagon confirms it while before they were just citizens' claims that were denied."

Baghdad residents interviewed Saturday did not show much interest in the leaks, saying the little they have heard about them on television sounded like old news.

"I only saw the subtitles," Adnan Mehdi, 62, said while sitting outside an electronics shop in downtown Baghdad. "We're used to violence. We don't care anymore about what happens."

Across town, in the predominantly Sunni neighborhood of Dora, Khattab Musli, 23, said government forces will continue to be heavy-handed, with or without U.S. intervention, regardless of who prevails politically.

"Right now, we have the law of the jungle," he said. "The strong will eat the weak."

In London, meanwhile, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange heralded the release of the documents as a major step toward accountability in the Iraq war. He also strongly defended the whistle-blowing Web site against criticism from the Pentagon and elsewhere that the disclosures represent a security risk.

"This disclosure is about the truth," he said at a news conference.

John Sloboda, co-founder of Iraq Body Count, a London-based organization that has kept the most comprehensive tally of Iraqi civilian deaths since the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, said the new documents pointed to at least 15,000 "previously undisclosed" civilian deaths in addition to the 107,000 in the group's database.

Correspondent Anthony Faiola in London and special correspondents Aziz Alwan and Jinan Hussein contributed to this report.

buglerbilly

25-10-10, 11:08 AM

Ares

A Defense Technology Blog

How Wikileaks Exposes a New Mission for the Infantry

Posted by Paul McLeary at 10/24/2010 12:27 PM CDT

Given some of the explosive, and some not so explosive, revelations about security contractors, detainee abuse, Iranian involvement, etc. contained in the Wikileaks document dump on Friday afternoon, quite a lot is bound to get overlooked. One of the things I’ve long wondered about is what happens when an Unmanned Air Vehicle crashes in a combat zone – and how prevalent are crashes?

Scanning through the leaked documents over the weekend, it’s interesting to note a new mission that UAVs have helped to invent for infantrymen – UAV recovery. The relevant documents tell the tale of Quick Reaction Forces and patrols being sent out, or rerouted from ongoing missions, to try and recover or locate UAVs that had gone down. In report after report, often unidentified unmanned assets—the only models consistently named are catapult-launched RQ-7 Shadow, the RQ-2 Pioneer, and the hand-launched RQ-14 Dragon’s Eye—lose contact with their ground controllers and go missing, and grunts are sent out the gate to see what they can find. It’s a new mission set for the infantry not seen in previous conflicts, but given the expense and the technologies onboard the aircraft, one that is obviously considered important enough by commanders to put their soldiers’ lives at risk.

Not surprising to note that while American troops are eager to get their assets back, Iraqis are just as anxious to get their hands on these pieces of high-tech gear that fall from the sky. One report from April 2005 notes that after a UAV crashed in a baghdad backyard, it was picked up by a black car before U.S troops could arrive at the scene.

Another from later that month says while the UAV had been recovered, the "camera pod had been stolen."

And from February of that year, another report details how a UAV crashed in a residential neighborhood, and when American forces arrived, they were told that they are too late—a white car has already picked the wounded bird up and driven off with it in their trunk.While most crashed UAVs were probably the smaller variants, some of the big boys occasionally go down as well. One report from February 2005 details a crashed Predator that appears to have been armed:

THE PILOTS OBSERVED A SECONDARY EXPLOSION BUT COULD NOT CONFIRM THAT THE ___ HAD COOKED OFF. TF -___ IS EN ROUTE ___ THE CRASH SITE. AT ___ THE PATROL HAS VISUAL ON CRASH SITE, BUT ARE NOT APPROACHING UNTIL FIRE HAS GONE OUT. ___ EOD IS ON SITE.

There are several other reports of armed Predators going down, and from what we can tell, they were always recovered, and their Hellfire missiles destroyed.

buglerbilly

25-10-10, 01:51 PM

Wheelbarrow Rockets, Remote-Control Suicide Vests and Captured Drones: WikiLeaks Exposes Insurgent Tech

By Spencer Ackerman and Adam Rawnsley October 25, 2010 | 7:00 am

It was billed as a war between low-tech insurgents and the high-tech U.S. military. But the WikiLeaks war logs from Iraq reveals that the insurgents were sophisticated and tech-savvy, too — embedding cameras in suicide vests, turning trucks into rocket-launchers, and deploying a variety of missiles to menace U.S. troops.

It shouldn’t be so surprising, considering that lots of Iraqi insurgents came out of Iraq’s huge Saddam-era military, or that some had help from elite Iranian agents. But here’s an overview of some of the more ingenious, lesser-known innovations in asymmetric warfare that insurgents developed during the Iraq war to neutralize the U.S.’s conventional advantages.

The Truck- and Wheelbarrow-Based Rocket Launcher. How to turn a truck into a rocket system: first, lease a Toyota. In October 2004, just outside Fallujah, Iraqis were observed mounting a “homemade rocket launcher” onto a “small white Toyota pickup.” A High-Mobility Artillery Rocket System this wasn’t. But each rocket tube within the truck contained multiple rockets — and it wasn’t the only one. Southwest of a Marine observation post, the truck met up with another makeshift mobile rocket-launcher and attempted to take the post out in tandem.

Within weeks, the Marines invaded the city for what became known as the Second Battle of Fallujah. But that didn’t stop the advance of improvised mobile rocket launchers. In May 2005, outside nearby Ramadi, troops investigating incoming rocket fire found a “wheelbarrow… with modified rocket launchers welded on the underside.” The wheelbarrow-based rockets were apparently launched remotely: the system was connected to a battery “wired to a phone-base station.” Two months later, an Iraqi was detained on suspicion of modifying dump trucks to launch rockets.

Encrypted Communications. Several insurgent groups maintained an impressive amount of operational secrecy and tactical discipline, often keeping U.S. snoops at bay. A clue as to how came on June 11, 2009, when U.S. and Iraqi troops at a hospital outside of Baghdad uncovered a “historical” cache of communications equipment used by the Mahdi Army, one of the hardest-core Shiite militias. Amplifiers, tuners and radio telegraph adapters were somewhat antiquated but looked factory-fresh.

The report of the find indicated that Mahdi Army leaders had real capabilities for directing their forces from long distances: “This equipment could be used to conduct long range, encrypted communications, indicating a high level [Mahdi Army/splinter force command-and-control] capacity.” All the gear was “designed for ground or vehicle mounting;” the report suspects Iranian forces provided it to the militia “as part of a sophisticated foreign intelligence project.” Ominously, the report concludes that the find “seems to corroborate the thesis that [redacted] is seeding [redacted] with resources to become a future [redacted].”

Missiles, Missiles, Missiles. Some insurgent missiles came from Iran, like the Misagh-1, a knock-off of a Chinese surface-to-air missile. Others had more surprising provenances: a blue truck pulled over northeast of Baghdad in 2005 ferried a U.S. Hellfire missile — the same kind that Predator drones fire– to insurgent fighters.

That’s the tip of the iceberg. Insurgents in 2004 possessed shoulder-fired missiles, probably the SA-7, presumably to bring down U.S. helicopters — something al-Qaeda’s local affiliate claimed to have done to an Apache ‘copter using a surface-to-air missile in Mosul in 2006. A raid in 2005 in Ramadi turned up “USSR surface to air missiles” in addition to 57-mm rockets. Anti-tank surface-to-surface missiles were discovered outside Ramadi in 2006. French-made surface-to-surface missiles were found in nearly the same spot the following year.

Drones in the Hands of Insurgents — and Iranians. The WikiLeaks documents indicate that insurgents and militiamen had some success in bringing down U.S. unmanned spy planes — and many others fell victim to mechanical failure. In February 2006, a report went out that a Shadow drone had crashed in northeast Baghdad, sending U.S. and Iraqi forces racing to recover the sophisticated surveillance and targeting platform. They were too late: locals reported that militants loyal to radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr had nabbed the drone.

A different document, from February 2009, confirmed a Danger Room report that a U.S. jet shot down an Iranian drone in Iraqi airspace. “This is the first time we have seen a foreign UAV [unmanned aerial vehicle] involved in a cross-border incident,” the report reads, noting that its flight path indicates a deliberate incursion into Iraq. Whoever wrote the report urged caution in following up, since “it is potentially a volatile political matter.”

The Burglar-Alarm Explosive. Chances are, your house’s burglar alarm operates by using a passive infrared sensor to detect the motion of an intruder, given away by his body heat. Danger Room has reported in the past that insurgents use that same passive-infrared system to trigger improvised explosive devices to blow up when targets approached. WikiLeaks’ document trove confirms it: a 2006 roadside bomb in Kirkuk consisted of seven component explosives using passive infrared to initiate its boom. So was a bomb made of a bunch of mortars placed in the median of a road near Samarra in 2007. No burglar stood at risk of getting blown up for trying to steal your grandmother’s jewelry.

The Battering Ram-Equipped Car Bomb. Just outside Baghdad in July 2005, Iraqi police killed insurgents driving in a vehicle — apparently a Chevy Blazer — that plowed through multiple barriers and slammed into a police station. As it turned out, the car was rigged with 600 lbs. of homemade explosives — and had a “modified battering ram mounted on the front end.” The police station may not have been its ultimate destination. A report on the ramming car bomb reads that the compound insurgents chose as its ultimate destination was a “religious center.”

Camera-Equipped, Remote-Controlled Suicide Vests. Insurgents didn’t necessarily trust the people they rigged to explode. In November 2006, a U.S. military report warned that some explosive-lined vests were equipped with cameras broadcasting imagery back to insurgent cells and a “secondary detonation device” that could be activated remotely. The idea behind the camera, first unearthed by the Guardian, was to ensure that the suicide bomber had satisfied his superiors that he’d reached a position of maximum potential damage before blowing up. And if he lost his nerve, the report warned, “the observer can detonate the device remotely.” Some of these contraptions were constructed out of U.S. military surplus uniforms.

Versions of those kinds of attacks were put into place earlier that year. In February 2006, the military discovered a plot in Baghdad to conduct a multiple suicide attack during a Shiite holiday (judging from the time of year, probably Ashura or Arbaeen). Three terrorists “who were not brave enough to detonate the vests themselves” would wear suicide jackets rigged to explode remotely, with some kind of unspecified guidance system allowing their ultimate controllers to know when the suicide bombers had reached their destination. (Another could be manually detonated by pulling two cords linked to the explosive system, “similar to an aircraft life vest.”)

The Video-Game Controller Bomb. A Marine battalion operating in Anbar Province in May 2005 found a cache of weapons in a “subterranean room” of a house near Khalidiyah. Much of its contents were unexceptional: rocket-propelled grenades, cordless radios, various fuses. But then there were less familiar items: a satellite-TV remote and a “video game remote,” presumably a wireless controller. As it turned out, elsewhere in Anbar in 2004, a different unit discovered a weapons cache containing spools of wire for a homemade bomb, cases of signal flares and a “video game remote control.” It’s unclear if any bombs resulted from a very dangerous game.

Acid and Bio-Enhanced Bombs. There have been occasional scares in Iraq of insurgents creating impromptu chemical weapons, as in 2007, when insurgents blew up a tanker carrying chlorine to whip up a gas attack. And as Noah Shachtman reported Saturday, insurgents obtained Gulf War-era dessicated chemical-weapons rounds, not to mention their successful importation of “neuroparalytic” chemicals from Iran. But it didn’t take sophisticated chemicals for insurgents to trick out their bombs.

On August 26, 2005, a roadside bomb left “red stuff everywhere” after it detonated under a U.S. patrol driving on a road southeast of Balad; one of the troops initially appeared to suffer “burns from touching the substance.” As it turned out, no one was wounded, contrary to initial reports, but Explosive Ordnance Division specialists determined the substance was “acid or a phosphorus” intended to burn U.S. troops. The next month in Ramadi, U.S. troops discovered a “possible IED factory” that. Inside: potassium, glycerin and unspecified “seeds”(Castor, maybe?) that could be turned into a “very toxic biological” agent. Not exactly the hallmarks of a low-tech insurgency.

Photo: USAF; U.S. Marine Corps; U.S. Army

Read More http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/10/wheelbarrow-rockets-remote-control-suicide-vests-and-captured-drones-wikileaks-exposes-insurgent-tech/all/1#ixzz13NGztMcY

buglerbilly

27-10-10, 11:46 PM

Hidden Bases, Secret Raids: WikiLeaks Reveals CIA’s Iraq Ops

By Adam Rawnsley October 27, 2010 | 12:53 pm

From the start, we all knew that Afghanistan was the CIA’s war. The spy agency spearheaded the initial push into the country after 9/11, and to this day it runs bases (and pays off strongmen) that keep the war effort running.

But in Iraq, the CIA’s role has never quite been that clear. Thanks to WikiLeaks’ release of nearly 392,000 documents from the war, we’ve now got a bit of better sense of how the Agency operated in Iraq. And it wasn’t just furtively meeting with informants, or secretively wooing enemies. The documents show an active “OGA” (an acronym for “Other Government Agency,” usually a reference to the CIA) acting as a paramilitary force — raiding insurgent hideouts, hunting for mysterious militants and getting caught up in roadside shootouts. The Agency even appeared to have its own base, near the town of Ramadi.

In early 2004, the WikiLeaked documents show, “OGA” also participated in Operation Strike Fury, a raid against a suspected safe-house in Mosul that detained “possible members of a terrorist group suspected of planning suicide-bombing attacks.” Northeast of Baghdad, the Agency participated in cordon and search operations against a suspected bomb-maker’s home, seizing cellphones and electrical equipment. In Husaybah, “OGA” agents joined a cordon in the Market Street area, looking for insurgents supporting mortar attacks.

“OGA” employees did just launch attacks — they came under attack, too. One report from 2004 recounts a platoon northeast of Tikrit encountering a car full of self-described OGA personnel carrying an individual shot in the thigh from recent small arms fire. Another document describes an “OGA” convoy which had its rear vehicle disabled by an insurgent ambush “while returning from a mission.”

“OGA” employees came under friendly fire, as well.

In one incident, a report details how “OGA improperly tried to enter FOB [Forward Operating Base] Freedom in Mosul” by approaching the base’s gate too fast in a vehicle and failing to respond to the guard’s requests. The hasty moves earned the driver a shot through the radiator.

Military officials seem to have used the “OGA” label to apply to CIA contractors, as well. One report from June 2007 suggests references an OGA next to the description “Aegis.” Aegis, a contracting firm, had the largest contract for private security and intelligence work in Iraq at the time.

Wikileaks garnered much criticism for placing Afghan intelligence sources at risk by publishing their names and other identifying information in its previous Afghanistan war logs. The documents, by contrast, are heavily redacted; no information about the specific identity of Iraqi intelligence sources is yet apparent.

However, the Iraq documents do disclose general information about the location of at least one potential intelligence facility where an “Other Government Agency” received Iraqi informants. The map data in a handful of documents as recently as August 2009 pinpoint “OGA” personnel entering and exiting a single U.S. military-guarded facility west of Ramadi. There, “OGA informants” were “directed to the vehicle search area [of the facility] to meet OGA.”

When asked about that base, a U.S. intelligence official e-mailed, “CIA does not comment, as a rule, on speculation about what may or may not be an Agency facility.”

There’s one last bit of minor intrigue about Other Government Agencies in the Wikileaks documents: the question of why the person with “blonde hair [and] green eyes” spotted by an “OGA” in a market and heading south towards Haditha in “blue or black car” aroused the Agency’s interest.

Photo: Special Operations Command

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buglerbilly

18-11-10, 12:55 PM

Sweden requests arrest of Wikileaks boss

November 18, 2010 - 9:49PM

A Swedish prosecutor says she has requested the arrest of Julian Assange, the Australian founder of whistleblower website WikiLeaks, to face charges of rape and sexual molestation.

"I request the District Court of Stockholm to detain Mr Assange in his absence, suspected of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion," Swedish director of prosecutions Marianne Ny said in a statement in English.

"The reason for my request is that we need to interrogate him. So far, we have not been able to meet with him to accomplish the interrogations."

The Stockholm court was set to hold a hearing at 2pm (2400 AEDT) on Thursday on whether to order Assange's detention, which according to Swedish media would allow authorities to issue an international warrant for his arrest.

"Due to the on-going investigation and the parties involved, the prosecutor cannot at the moment give more information concerning the suspicions or which investigation matters have been conducted," the prosecution authority's statement said.

A warrant was first issued for Assange's arrest on August 20 by another prosecutor, but was withdrawn just hours later.

Ny, head of the department that oversees prosecution of sex crimes, re-opened the rape probe against the 39-year-old on September 1, but did not request his detention and allowed him to leave Sweden.

Assange has hinted the allegations against him could be part of a "smear campaign" aimed at discrediting his website, which is locked in a row with the Pentagon over the release of secret US documents about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

US intelligence services "are probably very happy now," he said in an interview with AFP in September, adding however that "mentioning their involvement is for now only speculation".

WikiLeaks last month published an unprecedented 400,000 classified US documents on the Iraq war and posted 77,000 secret US files on the Afghan conflict in July.

As for the two women at the centre of the Swedish rape and sexual molestation probe, whose names have not been made public, Assange admitted in the September interview with AFP that he had met them both, but refused to say if he had sex with either of them, calling it "a private matter".

Two days before the allegations against Assange were made public in August, he had applied for a work and residency permit in Sweden, where some of Wikileaks' servers are situated, but his application was turned down on October 18.

Assange moves around a lot, and his whereabouts remained unclear on Thursday.

He last spoke publicly in Geneva on November 4, when he said he was considering requesting asylum and basing his website in neutral Switzerland.

WikiLeaks also said last week it had registered its first known legal entity in Iceland - a business that so far has no office or activity.

© 2010 AFP

buglerbilly

26-11-10, 01:26 PM

WikiLeaks release: US briefs No 10 over 'embarrassing' diplomatic files

The Government has been briefed by US authorities about the expected release of sensitive diplomatic files on whistle-blower website WikiLeaks, Downing Street has confirmed.

12:03PM GMT 26 Nov 2010

Reports suggest that the files could include hundreds of cables relating to UK interests, and might include revelations about secret intelligence sources and practices.

Washington is braced for the release within days of thousands of documents on the website, which has previously published secret details of allied military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.

''These revelations are harmful to the US and our interests,'' said State Department spokesman PJ Crowley last night. ''They are going to create tension in relationships between our diplomats and our friends around the world.''

Prime Minister David Cameron's spokesman this morning declined to discuss the nature of any confidential communications which may have been obtained by WikiLeaks.

The spokesman said: ''Obviously, the Government has been briefed by US officials, by the US ambassador, as to the likely content of these leaks.

''I don't want to speculate about precisely what is going to be leaked before it is leaked.''

It is thought that the documents may include reports from officials in Washington and diplomatic posts around the world about issues on which the UK and US have collaborated closely, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Washington could be embarrassed by the publication of candid and forthright assessments of foreign governments made by its officials.

WikiLeaks has not been specific about the timing of any release, which is widely expected to happen this weekend.

Mr Crowley warned that publication could erode trust in the US as a diplomatic partner.

''When this confidence is betrayed and ends up on the front pages of newspapers or lead stories on television or radio, it has an impact,'' he said.

The State Department ''has known all along'' that WikiLeaks possesses classified documents, but it was not possible to predict exactly what information would be made public and what impact it would make, he said.

''We wish this would not happen, but we are obviously prepared for the possibility that it will,'' he said.

buglerbilly

28-11-10, 12:19 PM

WikiLeaks gets warning from State Department: Documents' release would have 'grave consequences'

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, November 28, 2010; 1:11 AM

The State Department legal adviser on Saturday warned WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange that the expected release of approximately 250,000 secret State Department documents would have "grave consequences" and place at risk the lives of journalists, human rights activists and soldiers.

The letter, released by the State Department late Saturday night, comes as U.S. officials have in recent days warned foreign governments that the documents could expose sensitive information and harm relations with the United States. The documents are expected to be released this weekend.

The letter, written by Legal Adviser Harold Hongju Koh, was apparently in response to a request by Assange for information on any individuals who may be "at significant risk of harm" by the disclosure of the documents. Koh wrote that the Obama administration will "not engage in a negotiation regarding the further release or dissemination of illegally obtained U.S. Government classified materials."

According to the letter, the State Department has been in contact with representatives of The New York Times, The Guardian newspaper of Britain and Der Spiegel of Germany, each of which has already received the WikiLeaks documents. Koh urged Assange to not publish the materials and destroy all copies.

Their release would place at risk ongoing military operations, including those aimed at stopping terrorists and human traffickers, and could harm relations among countries that work together "to confront common challenges from terrorism to pandemic diseases to nuclear proliferation that threaten global stability," he wrote.

The State Department has prepared for the possible release by reviewing thousands of diplomatic cables and "assessing the potential consequences of the public release of these documents," spokesman P.J. Crowley said last week.

Crowley said the consequences to American interests could be severe. The cables, for instance, could reveal that senior government officials in other countries are the sources of embarrassing information about the inner workings of those governments, thus making it more difficult for the State Department to obtain such intelligence in the future.

WikiLeaks has bedeviled the Obama administration with a series of damaging revelations about U.S. policy overseas. In July, it released more than 70,000 military reports on the war in Afghanistan and in October nearly 400,000 reports on the Iraq war.

WikiLeaks has not disclosed the source of the materials. But suspicion has centered on Pfc. Bradley Manning, 22, an Army intelligence analyst whom the military arrested this year, charging him with the downloading and transfer of classified material.

buglerbilly

29-11-10, 12:11 AM

WikiLeaks releases 250,000 secret documents

November 29, 2010 - 11:04AM

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ... compared to Hitler. Photo: AP

The controversial WikiLeaks website has released 1442 previously secret United States government documents that mention Australia.

The cables represent just a small percentage of more than a quarter of a million confidential US cables detailing a wide array of potentially explosive diplomatic episodes

One document shows what was going behind the scenes at the 2007 APEC meeting in Sydney.

Advertisement: Story continues below The previously classified secret document outlines discussions between the US and China about an arms shipment headed from North Korea to Iran that was passing through Beijing on its way to the Middle East.

The document, classified secret, sends an order for "urgent action" on North Korea sending arms to Iran via Beijing.

"In September, during their meeting at the APEC summit in Sydney, Australia, President [George] Bush discussed with Chinese President Hu [his] strong concerns relating to the ongoing trans-shipment via Beijing of key ballistic missile parts from North Korea to Iran's missile program," the cable reports.

Most of the documents leaked focus on diplomatic relations between the US and Middle East states.

Saudi king urged attack on Iran

The cables include descriptions of a tense nuclear stand-off with Pakistan, the bazaar-like bargaining over the repatriation of Guantanamo Bay detainees, a Chinese government bid to hack into Google and Saudi King Abdullah quoted as saying the United States should strike Iran to halt its nuclear program, telling it to "cut off the head of the snake".

They also detail plans to reunite the Korean peninsula after the North's eventual collapse, according to The New York Times, one of a handful of international media outlets that gained early access to the documents on Sunday, US time.

The cables detail fresh suspicions about Afghan corruption, Saudi donors financing al-Qaeda and the US failure to prevent Syria from providing a massive stockpile of weapons to the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon since 2006.

They also contain potentially embarrassing comments on world leaders, referring to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as "Hitler", and describing Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as an "alpha male", London's Daily Telegraph said.

They include closed-door remarks that could stoke scandal, including Yemen's President telling a top US general: "We'll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours", when discussing secretive US strikes on al-Qaeda in his country, and a description of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi as always being attended by a "voluptuous blonde" Ukrainian nurse.

Most of the 251,287 cables - many of which are marked "classified" but none "top secret" - date back to 2007, but the release also includes cables going back as far as 1966, The New York Times said.

The whistle-blower website's chief Julian Assange said earlier on Sunday the release of the US documents would cover "every major issue", as governments braced for damaging revelations.

"Over this last month much of my energy and activities have been spent preparing for the upcoming release of a diplomatic history of the United States," Mr Assange said.

"Over 250,000 classified cables from US embassies all around the world, and we can see already in the past week or so that the United States has made movements to try to disarm the effect that this could have."

Denial of service attack

WikiLeaks's new site, known as Cablegate, was struggling on Monday morning under the expected huge traffic along with a denial of service attack from a hacker carrying the handle of the3ester (pronounced: The Jester), a source familiar with Twitter and WikiLeaks said.

One document talks of political matters in Zimbabwe and describes Australia as a "rock solid" ally of the US.

The confidential document from the US embassy in Harare gives a detailed update on the tenuous situation in the southern Africa nation.

Signed by US ambassador Christopher W. Dell, the cable talks of the difficulties of change in a country run by dictator Robert Mugabe.

"To give the devil his due, he is a brilliant tactitian (sic) and has long thrived on his ability to abruptly change the rules of the game, radicalize the political dynamic and force everyone else to react to his agenda," the cable says.

Mr Dell goes on to outline the unlikely possibility of quick and large change in Zimbabwe.

"Rock solid partners like Australia don't pack enough punch to step out front and the United Nations is a non-player."

Release reckless and dangerous: White House

The White House immediately slammed the release as a "reckless and dangerous action" that would put lives at risk around the world.

"To be clear - such disclosures put at risk our diplomats, intelligence professionals, and people around the world who come to the United States for assistance in promoting democracy and open government," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said in a statement.

"These documents also may include named individuals who in many cases live and work under oppressive regimes and who are trying to create more open and free societies."

Mr Gibbs added that US President Barack Obama supported "responsible, accountable, and open government at home and around the world", but said: "This reckless and dangerous action runs counter to that goal."

US officials in recent days have raced to contain the fall-out by warning more than a dozen countries, including key allies Australia, Britain, Canada, Israel and Turkey.

Late on Saturday, Washington ruled out negotiating with WikiLeaks, saying it possessed the cables in violation of US law.

In a letter to Mr Assange and his lawyer that was released to the media, the US State Department also said the planned leak would endanger the lives of "countless innocent individuals".

"We will not engage in a negotiation regarding the further release or dissemination of illegally obtained US government classified materials," State Department legal adviser Harold Koh wrote.

US officials said this was in response to a letter Mr Assange had sent to the State Department on Friday in which he had tried to address concerns that the planned release placed individuals at risk.

"As far as we are aware, and as far as anyone has ever alleged in any credible manner whatsoever, no single individual has ever come to harm as a result of anything that we have ever published," Mr Assange said on Sunday.

The State Department said in its letter to Mr Assange that WikiLeaks would also "place at risk ongoing military operations" as well as "traffickers in human beings and illicit arms, violent criminal enterprises and other actors that threaten global security".

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told reporters on Sunday that his government had not been warned by the Americans about any specific sensitive materials.

British officials said some information might be subject to voluntary agreements between the government and the media to withhold sensitive data governing military operations and the intelligence services.

The Sunday Times of London quoted one government official as warning that British citizens in Muslim countries could be targeted in a violent backlash over any perceived "anti-Islamic" views expressed.

Russia's respected Kommersant newspaper has said the documents include US diplomats' conversations with Russian politicians and "unflattering" assessments of some of them.

Turkish media said they included papers suggesting that Ankara helped al-Qaeda in Iraq and that Washington helped Iraq-based Kurdish rebels fighting against Turkey.

US officials have not confirmed the source of the leaks, but suspicion has fallen on Bradley Manning, a former army intelligence agent arrested after the release of a video showing air strikes that killed civilian reporters in Iraq.

WikiLeaks argues that the first two document dumps - nearly 500,000 US military incident reports from 2004 to 2009 - shed light on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Sweden recently issued an international warrant for Mr Assange's arrest, saying he is wanted for questioning over allegations of rape and sexual molestation.

Saudi Arabia and other Arab governments sided with Israel in urging the US to stop Iran from developing a nuclear bomb, according to a New York Times account of 250,000 classified US embassy cables released by WikiLeaks, the non-profit website.

The documents also show the US has expanded the traditional role of the State Department to include intelligence and data gathering overseas, potentially blurring the distinction between statecraft and spying, the newspaper said in articles published online.

"I can't provide veracity of anything WikiLeaks has released to the media," Nicole Thompson, a State Department spokeswoman, said, adding the agency's policy was to not comment on specific leaked materials.

"It's reprehensible for any person to leak classified information because of the risk that it puts to so many individuals, so many international relationships," she said.

AFP, Bloomberg, AAP and Simon Mann

buglerbilly

29-11-10, 02:23 PM

WikiLeaks's unveiling of secret State Department cables exposes U.S. diplomacy

By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, November 29, 2010; 12:07 AM

I'm astonished at the depth of info thats being divulged. I know Intelligence needs to have open access to as much as possible BUT the apparent lack of partitioning of some of this highly confidential data is deeply alarming to lil' ol' civvie like me! There is intelligence and intelligence, and some of this stuff should lie in Confidential files for access by only a few people............ Political decisons and discussions have little to do with catching Terrorists

A vast treasure trove of secret State Department cables obtained by the Web site WikiLeaks has exposed the inner workings of U.S. diplomacy, as well as bluntly candid assessments by American diplomats, according to news organizations granted advance access to the more than 250,000 confidential documents.

The documents suggest U.S. diplomats were ordered to engage in low-level spying by obtaining foreign diplomats' personal information, such as frequent-flier and credit card numbers, presumably to better track their movements.

The cables also expose the sensitive diplomacy involved in winning sanctions against Iran; U.S. officials' attempts to remove highly enriched uranium from Pakistan; and new information on how North Korea is believed to have aided Tehran's weaponry program, giving it advanced missiles that could allow it to strike Moscow and major Western European cities.

Many of the insights gleaned from the documents are not surprising by themselves. Newspapers, for instance, have long reported that Arab nations are privately much more concerned about Iran's nuclear program than they admit publicly, and the cables document such concerns.

Still, such analysis rarely has the imprimatur of a U.S. government document, and the cables quote Arab officials by name expressing concerns they have not expressed in public.

One cable asserts that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia repeatedly asked the United States to "cut off the head of the snake"- presumably meaning to attack Iran's nuclear program - while there was still time. Another quotes a senior Saudi official as warning that if Iran is not stopped, gulf Arab states would develop their own nuclear weapons.

Even when the documents merely confirm foreigners' suspicions, they could be embarrassing for the Obama administration. In cables drafted by U.S. diplomats, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is described as an "alpha-dog," Afghan President Hamid Karzai is "driven by paranoia," and German Chancellor Angela Merkel allegedly "avoids risk and is rarely creative."

Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi is accompanied everywhere by a "voluptuous blonde" Ukrainian nurse. Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, "appears increasingly to be the mouthpiece of Putin" in Europe after receiving "lavish gifts" and lucrative energy contracts and the involvement of a "shadowy," Russian-speaking Italian intermediary.

The documents reveal how U.S. embassies have relied on foreign government officials for insight into policy. The German magazine Der Spiegel reported that Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg "tattled on his colleague," German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle, "telling the U.S. ambassador that Westerwelle was the real barrier to the Americans' request for an increase in the number of German troops in Afghanistan."

WikiLeaks granted advance access to a number of news organizations, including Der Spiegel, the New York Times, the Guardian newspaper in Britain, El Pais in Spain and Le Monde in France. Those outlets began publishing reports on the cables on their Web sites Sunday afternoon.

While most of the cables appear to have been drafted over the past several years - including some as recently as February - others reach as far back as 1966.

Some of the cables, according to the Times, disclosed information long rumored but never confirmed: U.S. diplomats offered various countries incentives, such as a meeting with President Obama or even millions of dollars, in exchange for accepting detainees from the Guantanamo Bay prison. China's Politburo directed the intrusion into Google's computer systems in that country. U.S. and South Korean diplomats have discussed how to handle the potential collapse of North Korea.

U.S. reaction

The Obama administration had dispatched envoys around the world to warn foreign governments that the pending release of the information could be damaging to relations, with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton personally calling a number of her counterparts.

Diplomats fear that the disclosure of the cables - many of which were not intended to be declassified for 20 years or more - will chill unvarnished conversations with foreign governments.

"By its very nature, field reporting to Washington is candid and often incomplete information," White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said in a statement. "It is not an expression of policy, nor does it always shape final policy decisions."

"Nevertheless," he added, "these cables could compromise private discussions with foreign governments and opposition leaders, and when the substance of private conversations is printed on the front pages of newspapers across the world, it can deeply impact not only US foreign policy interests, but those of our allies and friends around the world."

WikiLeaks posted a limited number of the cables on a Web site, cablegate.wikileaks.org. It said it planned to release more than a quarter-million documents in stages over the next few months. The files are classified at various levels, with 133,887 marked unclassified, 101,748 marked confidential and 15,652 marked secret, according to the site.

Although WikiLeaks has not disclosed the source of the materials, suspicion has centered on Pfc. Bradley Manning, 23, an Army intelligence analyst now in military custody.

The military arrested Manning this year, charging him with the downloading and transfer of classified material.

WikiLeaks was founded in 2006 by a former computer hacker, Julian Assange, and has released two other major tranches of secret U.S. documents - one about the war in Afghanistan, the other about the war in Iraq.

The organization has come under stress since then, with several members quitting after citing differences with Assange and the direction of the group. Additionally, Assange is facing allegations in Sweden of rape and sexual harassment, which he has denied, saying the charges are part of a U.S.-orchestrated smear campaign.

On Sunday, lawmakers from both parties condemned WikiLeaks's distribution of the cables. Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, denounced what he called "a reckless action which jeopardizes lives by exposing raw, contemporaneous intelligence." He said that such information "should remain confidential to protect the ability of the government to conduct lawful business with the private candor that's vital to effective diplomacy."

'Enormous' harm

Jeffrey H. Smith, a former CIA general counsel, condemned WikiLeaks's dissemination of documents and echoed calls for Assange's prosecution.

"It just makes my blood boil," Smith said. "The harm it's going to do is just enormous. These are confidential discussions among some of our best allies."

He cited a discussion, contained in one of the cables, between Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and Gen. David H. Petraeus in which Saleh indicates he will cover up the U.S. role in missile strikes against al-Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen. "We'll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours," Saleh tells Petraeus.

"What's that going to do to our ability to have him help us in Yemen?" Smith said.

Perhaps the most damaging revelation was the fact that diplomats had been ordered in recent years to expand their information collection from political reporting to include personal information on foreign dignitaries.

U.S. officials disputed suggestions that American diplomats were asked to spy under the instructions provided in the cables, which were signed - as all cables from headquarters are - by the secretary of state, in these cases either Condoleezza Rice or Clinton. The cables were sent to embassies in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Latin America and the U.S. mission to the United Nations.

"Our diplomats are just that, diplomats. They represent our country around the world and engage openly and transparently with representatives of foreign governments and civil society," said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley. "Through this process, they collect information that shapes our policies and actions. This is what diplomats, from our country and other countries, have done for hundreds of years."

A senior U.S. intelligence officer, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to be identified, said: "No one should think of American diplomats as spies. But our diplomats do, in fact, help add to our country's body of knowledge on a wide range of important issues. That's logical and entirely appropriate, and they do so in strict accord with American law."

Staff writer Ellen Nakashima and staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

buglerbilly

29-11-10, 02:27 PM

With better sharing of data comes danger

By Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writer

Monday, November 29, 2010; 12:08 AM

The release of a huge tranche of U.S. diplomatic cables has laid bare the primary risk associated with the U.S. government's attempt to encourage better information-sharing: Someone is bound to leak.

The U.S. intelligence community came under heavy criticism after Sept. 11, 2001, for having failed to share data that could have prevented the attacks that day. In response, officials from across the government sought to make it easier for various agencies to share sensitive information - effectively giving more analysts wider access to government secrets.

But on Sunday, the Web site WikiLeaks, which had previously released sensitive U.S. documents about the wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq, once again proved that there's a downside to better information-sharing.

"One of the consequences [of 9/11] is you gave a lot of people access to the dots," said Jeffrey H. Smith, a former CIA general counsel. "At least one of the dots, apparently, was a bad apple."

While WikiLeaks has not identified the source of the more than 250,000 cables, suspicions have centered on an Army private, Bradley Manning, 23, who was also the suspected source of the military intelligence documents from Iraq and Afghanistan.

In a series of chats with an online companion, Manning said this spring that "*someone* i know" - apparently a coy self-reference - had gained access to 260,000 State Department cables from embassies and consulates around the world "explaining how the first world exploits the third, in detail."

"Hilary Clinton [sic], and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning, and finds an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format to the public," he said, according to logs of the chats given to The Washington Post.

Manning's attorney, David Coombs, declined to comment Sunday but has previously said he has no knowledge of whether his client leaked documents.

In recent weeks, senior administration officials have warned that the WikiLeaks disclosures could affect the balance of weighing the "need to know" versus the need to protect sensitive material, sources and methods.

The director of U.S. national intelligence, James Clapper, has said he believes the WikiLeaks releases will have a "chilling effect" on information-sharing.

"We have to do a much better job of auditing what is going on on any [intelligence community] computer," he said this month. "And so if somebody's downloading a half-million documents . . . we find out about it contemporaneously, not after the fact."

To prevent further breaches, the Pentagon announced Sunday it had ordered the disabling of a feature on its classified computer systems that allows material to be copied onto thumb drives or other removable devices.

The Defense Department will limit the number of classified systems from which material can be transferred to unclassified systems. It will also require that two people be involved in moving data from classified to unclassified systems.

Such efforts "should have been done long ago before any of this happened," said Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists. The rush to knock down so-called "stove-piping" without hardening operational security "was asking for trouble," he said.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), vice chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, called the Pentagon's new security measures "Cyber 101." He questioned a database design that would allow an intelligence analyst in Baghdad - where Manning was stationed - access to State Department cables. "How would this help him do his job in Baghdad?"

The military relies on Siprnet, or Secret Internet Protocol Network, to transmit classified operational information securely and outside the commercial Internet.

A former senior intelligence official said that over the past decade access to Siprnet has ballooned to about 500,000 or 600,000 people, including embassy personnel, military officials from other countries, state National Guard officials and Department of Homeland Security personnel. That is partly in response to calls for data-sharing and partly because agencies such as the State Department wanted a way to communicate classified information without going to the expense of setting up their own network, said the former official, requesting anonymity because Siprnet's size and uses are considered a sensitive matter.

He said that the answer to network breaches is not to restrict access but to improve the vetting of personnel by strengthening the clearance process.

"The fact that you've got someone exfiltrating information doesn't mean you've got a technical problem," he said. "You've got a human problem."

The Pentagon has been on notice for several years that its database security was at risk. After WikiLeaks in 2007 posted a series of leaked military documents about tactics used in the battle of Fallujah in Iraq and alleged human rights violations at Guantanamo Bay prison, an analyst at the Army Counterintelligence Center wrote a classified report concluding that WikiLeaks posed a potential operational and information security threat.

The "possibility that current employees or moles within DoD or elsewhere are providing sensitive or classified information to WikiLeaks cannot be ruled out," the analyst, Michael Horvath, wrote in the February 2008 report. He recommended the military enhance training on proper handling of classified information and on how to detect and report on an insider threat. But according to a military source, no action was taken on his report.

While Aftergood welcomed the Pentagon's newly announced security measures, he said they do not address the problem of overclassification. "A more discriminating approach to classifying information would yield a smaller volume of information requiring protection, making it easier to protect," he said.

Simon Jenkins, a British journalist who writes a column for the Guardian, wrote in a blog Sunday that the recent leaks "have blown a hole" in the framework by which governments guard their secrets. "Words on paper can be made secure, electronic archives not," he said.

In the future, he added, "the only secrets will be spoken ones. Whether that is a good thing should be a topic for public debate."

buglerbilly

30-11-10, 01:50 AM

Holder Says WikiLeaks Under Investigation

November 29, 2010

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The Justice Department will prosecute anyone found to have violated U.S. law in the leaks of classified government documents by online whistleblower WikiLeaks, Attorney General Eric Holder said Monday.

"This is not saber-rattling," said the attorney general, who declared that the Obama administration condemns the leaks.

Holder said the latest disclosure, involving classified State Department documents, puts at risk the security of the nation, its diplomats, intelligence assets and U.S. relationships with foreign governments.

"To the extent that we can find anybody who was involved in the breaking of American law, who put at risk the assets and the people I have described, they will be held responsible; they will be held accountable," Holder said at a news conference on another topic. He called the WikiLeaks probe "an active, ongoing criminal investigation."

© Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

buglerbilly

30-11-10, 02:00 AM

WikiLeaks Reveals Everybody’s Christmas List: The World Wants Drones

By Adam Rawnsley November 29, 2010 | 1:51 pm

Black Friday has passed, but the holidays are upon us and shopping days are increasingly few. Having a hard time finding the perfect gift for that tiny emirate hoping to psych out Iran or the large NATO ally looking to fight terrorism in Iraq? Fortunately for you, WikiLeaks has revealed the number one item atop seemingly everybody’s wish list: drones.

Only a select few close American allies have the export-restricted Predator B (a.k.a. MQ-9 Reaper) armed drones, but that hasn’t stopped countries from the United Arab Emirates to Turkey from pestering & pleading with America to sell them the shiniest new toy, the WikiLeaks document show.

The United Arab Emirates, a tiny nation of 5 million already protected by a U.S. military presence in the country, has been looking to purchase only the latest and greatest military technology for a while now, outbuying Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Taiwan to become the American military’s top buyer last fiscal year. The WikiLeaks documents show that in 2007, UAE officials pressed then Air Force chief of staff General Michael Moseley and then Central Command chief General John Abizaid during official visits to sell them the armed Predator B drone as part of their shopping spree.

When told they might have to wait for a review of the Missile Technology Control Regime’s (MTCR) control list, the voluntary international agreement the United States uses to restrict the sale of missile technologies, including armed drones, the UAE demanded to be the first kid on the block with a Predator B. Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, warned that Iran doesn’t have to wait for any damned MTCR because it’s making its own drones. ”That’s why we need it first . . . give me Predator B,” Zayed told Gen. Abizaid.

Ever since Turkey began attacking terrorists from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) across the border in Iraq, the United States has been keen to keep Turkey from taking matters into its own hands and outright invading Iraq. To do that, the military has been providing the Turks with intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance from its drones in northern Iraq — and got the Turks hooked on them. In a meeting with Defense Secretary Bob Gates, Turkish Chief of the Turkish General Staff General Ilker Basbug cited the American drone assistance as key to their fight against the PKK and needled Gates about Turkey’s outstanding and “urgent” request for the armed Predator B drone to make up for the decreasing U.S. presence in Iraq.

Gates has told the Turks that the administration supports the sale of armed Predator drones to Turkey, in addition to other unarmed surveilance drones. But, again, there’s a waiting list. With growing concerns in Congress about Turkey’s orientation towards political Islam, its relatively warmer relationship with Iran and colder relationship with Israel following the Turkish flotilla incident, the State Department has warned that the purchasing process promises to be “long and complex.”

Whether it’s Tickle Me Elmo or the first Nintendo Wiis, there’s always a waiting list for the newest toys, drones included.

Photo: Defense.gov

buglerbilly

30-11-10, 02:03 AM

Blocked! WikiLeaks Shows How Iran’s Air Defense Deal Died [Updated]

By Spencer Ackerman November 29, 2010 | 11:00 am | Categories: Rogue States

For two years, U.S. diplomats and Israeli leaders steadily implored Russia not to sell Iran a powerful anti-aircraft missile that both feared could turn air strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities into a fiasco. Stopping the sale of the S-300 missile, an issue obscure to all but obsessive observers of the region, became a secret test for American diplomacy at the highest levels.

“For better or for worse,” John Beyrle, the U.S. ambassador to Russia cabled back to Washington in February 2009, “the delivery of S-300’s have become a barometer of our bilateral relations.”

It turned out to be a positive indicator. In September, Russian officials announced the cancellation of a years-old agreement to sell Iran a potentially game-changing air defense system. The Iranians have been crying foul ever since, vowing to take Russia to court over the end of an arms transfer worth an estimated $800 million. But it’s hardly a mere financial issue. The S-300 can shoot down enemy aircraft from up to 200 kilometers away, making it a system that “scares every Western air force,” in the words of defense analyst Dan Goure.

No wonder the U.S. and Israel worked aggressively to stop the sale — an effort whose scale is detailed in the diplomatic cables released on Sunday by the anti-secrecy organization WikiLeaks. Almost as soon as the Obama administration came into office, diplomats in the Mideast were ordered to turn regional fears of Iran into pressure on Russia not to follow through on the missile sale.

“Washington would like these governments to immediately and directly raise this issue with their Russian counterparts,” reads a February 2009 instruction from Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton to ambassadors in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Gulf states. Playing on their political and military relationships with Moscow, Mideastern leaders could argue “such a transfer could significantly enhance Iran’s air defense capability; increase regional instability; and reward Iran at a time when Iran is undermining security with its nuclear pursuits and support for terrorism.” If possible, the U.S. should get Mideast leaders to argue that “they cannot have a close political-military relationship with Russia, while Russia strengthens the hand of Iran.”

Regional allies appeared to need little convincing. The chief of staff of the United Arab Emirates’ military requested Patriot missile batteries from the U.S. that month, since he feared that the S-300 sale would cause Israel to bomb Iran, touching off a wide-ranging Iranian response against Gulf states like the UAE perceived to “help Israel.” He added, “I don’t trust the Russians, I’ve never trusted the Russians or the Iranians.” In October, Bahrain’s crown prince asked a senior U.S. Air Force officer about the S-300 transfer. Observing the turmoil in Iranian politics following the fraud-riddled presidential election, he warned, “We are still a ways away from knowing whether force is necessary.”

In Moscow, the S-300s became a constant source of intrigue between U.S. diplomats and their Russian counterparts — as did Russia’s view of Iran’s existing missile capabilities. During a December 2009 security meeting in Moscow, senior Russian defense officials played down Iran’s ability to develop a ballistic missile with a 2,000-mile range. Iran “lacks appropriate structural materials for long-range systems,” they said, proffering a similarly laid-back view of North Korea’s missile threat. (U.S. intelligence now believes that North Korea transferred 19 ballistic missiles to Iran with a 2,000-mile range.) While the U.S. delegation opted to emphasize its points of agreement with the Russians on both countries’ threats, the Russians saw Iranian missiles as a “challenge” but “no threat.”

From the U.S. perspective, Russia’s military and security services were pressing President Dmitry Medvedev to deliver the S-300 to Iran, but “as much for financial reasons as for political or foreign policy considerations,” Beyrle assessed in February 2009. Russian sensitivities couldn’t allow the U.S. to actively tell Moscow not to sell Iran the missiles. But that didn’t mean that the Russians couldn’t be swayed. That April, the U.S. cheered when Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told senators visiting Moscow that the S-300 deal was on the shelf “for the moment” while Russia tested its new relationship with Washington.

In December 2009, Beyrle reported “increasing frustration with Iran” in Moscow. Senior Iranian officials were increasingly vocal with the Russians in demanding the missiles, reminding that they “already paid a considerable amount towards delivery of the system and they expected fulfillment of the contract.” Yet a Russian foreign ministry representative punted, saying the decision would be “made at the Presidential level” — and suggesting nothing was final.

That opening helped the Israeli government work different angles to stop the deal. In December 2009, Moscow began talking with Israel about a possible quid pro quo. According to a top Israeli official, the Russians wanted Israeli unmanned planes, recognizing “development gaps” in their own drones, and floated a possible Israeli-Russian drone sale “in exchange for canceling the S-300 sale to Tehran.”

Then, in February 2010, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu arrived in Moscow with a different bargaining chip: potential resumed Israeli arms deals with Georgia, which has close military ties to Israel — including selling them surveillance drones — and with which Russia fought a 2008 war. Both he and Medvedev denied that they were actually talking about a quid pro quo. But an Israeli diplomat in Moscow told U.S. officials Netanyahu “believes that Russia has taken ‘all aspects of regional stability’ into account when taking decisions on the S-300s” and had personal “trust in Medvedev” on the sale.

In September, Russia and Israel announced a $100 million deal to send 36 spy drones to Moscow. That same month, Russia canceled the S-300 deal, citing new United Nations Security Council sanctions on Iran — sanctions that Russia voted to impose in June 2010, after intense U.S. courting. Israel hasn’t sold Georgia any new drones.

To be sure, there’s no WikiLeaked cable yet released claiming U.S. and Israeli pressure stopped the S-300 sale. Maybe one will emerge when WikiLeaks releases more documents. More likely, the U.S. and Israeli efforts helped Russia decide on its own that its relationship with a global superpower and a regional giant were more important than an irritant like the S-300. Still, the documents indicate that both countries put a full-court-press on Russia over the powerful anti-aircraft missile, and reaped a big diplomatic victory.

Update 12:27 p.m.: Corrected the S-300’s range.

Photo: Novosti

buglerbilly

30-11-10, 02:07 AM

This was posted on the 28th and reported on DiD under the title "Closing the Barn Door........."

Officials Condemn Leaks, Detail Prevention Efforts

By Jim Garamone

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, Nov. 28, 2010 – Government officials condemned the publication of hundreds of thousands of sensitive, classified State Department cables by WikiLeaks today.

The website published the documents that detail private U.S. diplomatic discussions with foreign governments. The cables are candid reports by diplomats and, seen by themselves, can give an incomplete picture of the relationship between the United States and the foreign governments, White House officials said.

The cables are not expressions of policy, nor do they always shape final policy decisions. “Nevertheless, these cables could compromise private discussions with foreign governments and opposition leaders, and when the substance of private conversations is printed on the front pages of newspapers across the world, it can deeply impact not only U.S. foreign policy interests, but those of our allies and friends around the world,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said in a press release.

“To be clear, such disclosures put at risk our diplomats, intelligence professionals, and people around the world who come to the United States for assistance in promoting democracy and open government,” he continued.

The release of the documents may risk the lives of diplomats and friends living under repressive regimes. The United States stands for responsible, open government at home and around the world, Gibbs said.

“This reckless and dangerous action runs counter to that goal,” he said. “By releasing stolen and classified documents, Wikileaks has put at risk not only the cause of human rights but also the lives and work of these individuals. We condemn in the strongest terms the unauthorized disclosure of classified documents and sensitive national security information.”

Today’s posting is the third WikiLeaks publication of sensitive U.S. documents. The last publication included military and intelligence reports from Afghanistan, and another contained similar documents from Iraq. Newspaper and magazine journalists in the United States and Europe received and reviewed the documents from WikiLeaks and have written stories on their content.

The Pentagon has put in place methods to minimize such thefts of classified materials.

“It is now much more difficult for a determined actor to get access to and move information outside of authorized channels,” Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said in a written statement following publication of news articles on the documents today.

The theft of the materials traces to the lack of sharing of information and intelligence prior to and after the Sept.11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The commission studying the environment at the time found that agencies weren’t sharing enough information with each other. While stopping short of saying better sharing could have prevented the attacks, the 9-11 Commission pointed this out as a weakness that needed to be closed.

Federal officials responded by working to push out more information and intelligence in an effort to strike a balance between the “need to know” and the need to “share to win.”

“Departments and agencies have taken significant steps to reduce those obstacles, and the work that has been done to date has resulted in considerable improvement in information-sharing and increased cooperation across government operations,” Whitman said.

The effort backfired in that it made it easier for individuals or groups inside the process to steal the information. DOD responded by putting in place policies to prevent such occurrences, while still giving information and intelligence to the people who need it most – those confronting the realities of terrorism.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates ordered two reviews of information and intelligence sharing in August.

The review called on DOD systems to disable all “write” capability for removable media on classified computers to mitigate the risks of personnel moving classified data to unclassified systems, Whitman said.

The reviews also direct DOD organizations to have a limited number of systems authorized to move data from classified to unclassified systems, he said.

DOD organizations are also implementing two-person handling rules for moving data from classified to unclassified systems to ensure proper oversight and reduce chances of unauthorized release of classified material, Whitman said.

DOD is also taking a page from credit card companies which monitor patterns and detect suspicious or anomalous behavior. Some 60 percent of DOD’s classified net is now using a host-based security system – an automated way of controlling the computer system with a capability of monitoring unusual data access or usage. The department is speeding deployment to the rest of the classified system, Whitman said.

In addition, the department is conducting security oversight inspections in forward-deployed areas, undertaking vulnerability assessments of DOD networks and improving awareness and compliance with information protection procedures.

U.S. Central Command, for example, has increased insider threat training for its intelligence professionals and
started multidiscipline training between traditional security, law enforcement and information assurance at all echelons.

The command also has established insider threat working groups to address the Wikileaks incident and prevent reoccurrence.

buglerbilly

30-11-10, 11:39 AM

Foreign governments say WikiLeaks revelations undercut relations with U.S.

By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service

Tuesday, November 30, 2010; 12:55 AM

Diplomats and government officials around the world lamented Monday the massive leak of U.S. diplomatic cables, and many predicted it would undercut their ability to deal with the United States on sensitive issues.

The State Department cables, dumped into the public domain by the WikiLeaks organization, embarrassed the Obama administration in foreign capitals and raised the possibility that the United States will have a much tougher time collecting critical information, even from allies.

Carne Ross, a former British diplomat, said it is hardly news that countries spy on one another. "More harmful is the reality that U.S. cables can be publicized in this devastating manner," he said. "Diplomats may think twice before sharing confidences with U.S. diplomats - at least until WikiLeaks is forgotten."

That may not be anytime soon. This week's disclosures are just the latest wave of documents the organization has released this year, following earlier batches from the Iraq and Afghan wars. Collectively, the releases have forced foreign officials to wonder whether the United States can be trusted with secrets.

The revelations, and the manner in which they emerged, were all the more damaging because U.S. officials have taken the lead in emphasizing the need for cybersecurity. At the United States' urging, cybersecurity was singled out at a NATO summit in Lisbon last week as one of the top priorities to guarantee security of alliance members in the years ahead.

"The next time I hear an American speech about cybersecurity, I am going to make a lot of unpleasant noises," said Francois Heisbourg, a former French diplomat and defense official now at the Foundation for Strategic Research in Paris.

Adding to the sour mood internationally is the extent to which U.S. diplomats have been tasked with activities traditionally associated with intelligence-gathering, including collecting personal and financial information from their sources.

Under a broad 2009 State Department directive, American diplomats are instructed to gather detailed biographical information, including business cards; cellphone, pager and fax numbers; e-mail listings; Internet or Intranet handles; credit-card and frequent flier account numbers; and work schedules.

In a statement, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley denied that American diplomats had been instructed to conduct espionage: "Our diplomats are just that, diplomats. They represent our country around the world and engage openly and transparently with representatives of foreign governments and civil society."

But around the world Monday, foreign leaders and analysts suggested that that job has become more difficult.

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said the WikiLeaks disclosures will make it harder for American diplomats to be honest in their assessments of political situations abroad and will inspire more caution among foreign leaders when they are dealing with U.S. officials.

"It's clear this will happen," he told the Association of Tel Aviv Journalists.

"Diplomacy is built on secrecy," he added. "Journalism is built on revelations. And the result of what happened with WikiLeaks, in my view, is that it will be harder for you to do your work and it will be harder for us to do our work.''

In an example of the potential for diplomatic teeth-grinding, Netanyahu jumped on the report that King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia had suggested the United States should attack Iran's nuclear installations. This was proof, he said, that Arab countries along the Persian Gulf share Israel's determination to prevent President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's government in Tehran from developing nuclear weapons.

But in Tehran, Ahmadinejad shrugged off King Abdullah's reported comments, suggesting they were concocted by the United States to sow trouble between Iran and its fellow Muslim neighbors.

Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari called the release of the diplomatic cables damaging and said the timing was "terrible" because it comes as Iraqi leaders are trying to overcome their rivalries and suspicions to form a coalition government.

Last week, James F. Jeffrey, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, called the impending release of the cables an "awful impediment to my business, which is to be able to have discussions in confidence with people."

Pakistan, a key U.S. ally, not only decried the fact that confidential U.S. reporting was released to the public but also questioned the accuracy of what the American diplomats sent back to Washington. Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit said in a statement that Islamabad was particularly upset by reports that the Saudi king had made disparaging comments about Pakistan's president.

A senior Pakistani official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said the revelation of the diplomatic cables "will only feed further paranoia" about U.S. designs in Pakistan.

"Friends of the U.S. will become extra careful about what they say to U.S. diplomats and what information they share," the official said. "The WikiLeaks explosion of cables comes at a time when some officials in Pakistan had started overcoming their distrust of U.S. diplomats and started talking frankly. . . . Even when there are no major secrets revealed, the WikiLeaks cables embarrass a lot of people for making comments in private that they would never make in public."

In neighboring Afghanistan, President Hamid Karzai's spokesman, Waheed Omer, dismissed the importance of the leaks. He told a news conference that officials in Kabul were not surprised by what they read and did not expect the revelations to affect the conduct of U.S.-Afghan relations and the war against the Taliban.

Omer's comments were in some ways surprising because one of the cables from the U.S. Embassy in Kabul described Karzai as "extremely weak" and easily influenced.

'Bad blood'

Anger flared in India, meanwhile, over the news that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton dismissed India as a "self-appointed front-runner" for a permanent U.N. Security Council seat.

"Obviously this is going to create bad blood between India and the U.S.," said Brajesh Mishra, a former national security adviser.

(Here we go "hysterical children" time again with India.........."how dare she say the truth...........")

The revelation that attracted the most attention in Moscow involved an American diplomat's reference to Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as the "alpha-dog."

"That would probably flatter him," Fyodor Lukyanov, editor of the magazine Russia in Global Politics, said on the Echo Moskvy radio station.

The French Foreign Ministry called the WikiLeaks release "irresponsible" and said it violated international law concerning the secrecy of communications between embassies and their home bases. A spokesman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity in line with French practice, said the revelations "harm the resolution of issues essential for the security and stability of international relations and place people's safety at risk."

The ministry declined to confirm caustic comments attributed in the cables to Jean-David Levitte, President Nicolas Sarkozy's senior national security aide. In a conversation with a visiting U.S. official, one cable reported, Levitte described President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela as crazy and said Iran under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's leadership is fascist.

At the United Nations, diplomats expressed dismay over the release with top U.N. nuclear weapons inspectors and Austria's former envoy to Tehran, Michael Postl, a Farsi speaker and one of the few Western diplomats who maintained cordial relations with top Iranian officials, including Ahmadinejad's chief of staff and prominent opposition leaders. "He is burned," said one official.

The spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Steffan Seibert, said the government in Berlin regrets the revelation of secret cables because they could endanger Western interests in the Middle East and elsewhere. But he said it will have little impact on U.S.-German relations despite comments painting Merkel as an uninspired leader.

"The German-American relationship is mature," Seibert said at a regular briefing. "It has grown so robust over the decades, it is such a deep friendship based on shared values that it will not be seriously damaged by this."

Correspondents Leila Fadel in Baghdad, Karin Brulliard in Islamabad, Janine Zacharia in Jerusalem, Anthony Faiola in Berlin, Sudarsan Raghavan in Nairobi, Thomas Erdbrink in Tehran, Joshua Partlow in Kabul and Will Englund in Moscow, special correspondent Rebecca Omonira-Oyekanmi in London and staff writer Colum Lynch at the United Nations contributed to this report.

buglerbilly

30-11-10, 11:45 AM

WikiLeaks founder could be charged under Espionage Act

By Ellen Nakashima and Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writers

Tuesday, November 30, 2010; 12:13 AM

Federal authorities are investigating whether WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange violated criminal laws in the group's release of government documents, including possible charges under the Espionage Act, sources familiar with the inquiry said Monday.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said the Justice Department and Pentagon are conducting "an active, ongoing criminal investigation.'' Others familiar with the probe said the FBI is examining everyone who came into possession of the documents, including those who gave the materials to WikiLeaks and also the organization itself. No charges are imminent, the sources said, and it is unclear whether any will be brought.

Former prosecutors cautioned that prosecutions involving leaked classified information are difficult because the Espionage Act is a 1917 statute that preceded Supreme Court cases that expanded First Amendment protections. The government also would have to persuade another country to turn over Assange, who is outside the United States.

But the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the inquiry is rapidly unfolding, said charges could be filed under the act. The U.S. attorney's office in Alexandria - which in 2005 brought Espionage Act charges, now dropped, against two former pro-Israel lobbyists - is involved in the effort, the sources said.

The Pentagon is leading the investigation and it remains unclear whether any additional charges would be brought in the military or civilian justice systems. Pfc. Bradley Manning, an Army intelligence analyst suspected of being the source of the WikiLeaks documents, was arrested by the military this year.

Holder was asked Monday how the United States could prosecute Assange, who is an Australian citizen. "Let me be very clear," he replied. "It is not saber rattling.

"To the extent there are gaps in our laws," Holder continued, "we will move to close those gaps, which is not to say . . . that anybody at this point, because of their citizenship or their residence, is not a target or a subject of an investigation that's ongoing." He did not indicate that Assange is being investigated for possible violations of the Espionage Act.

Although the Justice Department has taken the position that media organizations could be prosecuted for printing leaked classified information under the legislation, that prospect is unlikely because of official aversion to running afoul of the First Amendment, experts said. Indeed, the Justice Department has never brought such a case, they said.

"Whenever you're talking about a media organization, the department is going to look very closely to ensure that any prosecution doesn't undermine the valid First Amendment functioning of the press," said Kenneth Wainstein, former assistant attorney general in the national security division.

But when it comes to Assange, Jeffrey H. Smith, a former CIA general counsel, said: "I'm confident that the Justice Department is figuring out how to prosecute him."

Smith noted that State Department general counsel Harold H. Koh had sent a letter to Assange on Saturday urging him not to release the cables, to return all classified material and to destroy all classified records from WikiLeaks databases.

"That language is not only the right thing to do policy-wise but puts the government in a position to prosecute him," Smith said. Under the Espionage Act, anyone who has "unauthorized possession to information relating to the national defense" and has reason to believe it could harm the United States may be prosecuted if he publishes it or "willfully" retains it when the government has demanded its return, Smith said.

But, said former federal prosecutor Baruch Weiss, that statute raises difficulties of its own. "How do you prove that a particular cable about secret negotiations with Russia was dangerous to national security? You have to disclose more classified information to explain to the jury the damage brought about by the disclosure," he said.

Perhaps the most significant issue is the Constitution's protection of people's right to speak freely and to exchange ideas.

"If the government were to prosecute the person who received and disseminated the classified information - as opposed to the individual who leaked it from within the government - mainstream media would express the concern that they could face prosecution for reporting information they routinely receive from government insiders," Wainstein said.

Fundamentally, Weiss said, the WikiLeaks case "is not about the disclosure of troop movements to al-Qaeda or giving the recipe for the plutonium bomb to North Korea. This is the widespread publication of information that is important in determining the future policy of the United States, that could be very important for people in assessing how well our government is doing its job. It's a good example of the problems created by the First Amendment clashing with criminal law, the law protecting national defense information."

All the experts agreed that it may be difficult for the United States to gain access to Assange, who apparently has avoided traveling to the country. Most nations' extradition treaties exempt crimes viewed as political. "I can imagine a lot of Western allies would view this not as a criminal act, but as a political act," said Weiss, who was on the legal team that defended the two former pro-Israel lobbyists.

Assange's legal pursuers are not confined to the United States. The International Criminal Police Organization issued an arrest warrant this month for Assange, who is wanted in Sweden on suspicion of rape and sexual harassment. Interpol, which is based in Lyon, France, said it had received the warrant from Swedish police, according to wire service and newspaper reports.

Assange has proclaimed his innocence and suggested the accusations are part of a U.S.-orchestrated smear campaign to undercut WikiLeaks' prestige.

In addition to vowing to hold WikiLeaks to account, the administration also instituted new measures to try to prevent leaks.

Office of Management and Budget Director Jacob J. Lew instructed government departments and agencies to ensure that users of classified information networks do not have broader access than is necessary to do their jobs, and to restrict the use of removable media such as CDs or flash drives on such networks.

OMB, the federal Information Security Oversight Office and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence will evaluate aid the agencies in their efforts to strengthen classified information security, Lew said.

The White House move in turn comes a day after the Pentagon announced similar steps to bolster network security following a review ordered by Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in August.

"Protecting information critical to our nation's security is the responsibility of each individual who is granted access to classified information," Lew said in his memo. "Any unauthorized disclosure of classified information is a violation of our law and compromises our national security."

But lawmakers and national security experts have chided the administration for not moving long ago to shore up network security. The U.S. military has been investigating Manning for months because of suspicions that he passed large amounts of classified material to WikiLeaks.

"There's been a great deal of attention paid to this issue for a long time and a lot of work has been done," White House spokesman Tommy Vietor said. "It's an ongoing process."

nakashimae@washpost.com markonj@washpost.com

buglerbilly

01-12-10, 08:28 AM

Assange's mother doesn't want son to be 'hunted down and jailed'

Glenda Kwek

December 1, 2010 - 4:59PM

The mother of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says she doesn't want her son to be "hunted down and jailed", after international police organisation Interpol issued an arrest request this morning.

The Australian was added to the organisation's "wanted" list for alleged sex crimes committed in Sweden this year as his activist website continued its US diplomatic cables leaks.

Christine Assange, who lives on the Sunshine Coast, told ABC Radio she was "very distressed" about the news.

"He's my son and I love him and obviously I don't want him hunted down and jailed.

"I'm reacting as any mother would - I'm distressed," she said, adding that "a lot of stuff that's written about me and Julian is untrue" when asked about whether she had moved to Queensland from Melbourne to escape media attention.

Mr Assange is suspected of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion, after an investigation by Swedish prosecutors into his encounters with two women in Sweden in August.

The arrest request, called a "Red Notice", is "not an international arrest warrant" but means Mr Assange could be arrested and extradited to Sweden from any country if local authorities act on it.

"Many of Interpol's member countries consider a Red Notice to be a valid request for provisional arrest," Interpol said on its website.

Mr Assange, 39, is contesting the warrant in a Swedish appeals court.

He has denied the accusations, with his British lawyer Mark Stephens saying last month that they were "false and without basis".

Ecuador withdraws invitation to Assange

Ecuador's Deputy Foreign Minister Kintto Lucas yesterday offered Mr Assange asylum in his country saying that "we are ready to give him [Mr Assange] residence in Ecuador, with no problems and no conditions".

But today, the country's President Rafael Correa backtracked on the offer, saying "there has been no formal offer to the director of WikiLeaks".

"That was a personal remark by the Deputy Foreign Minister; he did not have my authorisation," the President said.....................EDITED..............

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/assanges-mother-doesnt-want-son-to-be-hunted-down-and-jailed-20101201-18fw7.html

buglerbilly

01-12-10, 10:33 AM

Pentagon Boss Is Not Sweating WikiLeaks

By Spencer Ackerman November 30, 2010 | 10:06 pm

If Defense Secretary Robert Gates had anything to say about WikiLeaks’ unauthorized disclosure of U.S. diplomatic dispatches, it was this: everybody calm down.

WikiLeaks’ release of the often-undiplomatic diplomatic cables isn’t a “meltdown” or a “game-changer” for American foreign policy, an exasperated Gates intoned at a Pentagon press conference this afternoon. “Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward? Yes,” he continued. “Consequences for U.S. foreign policy? I think fairly modest. ”

That’s classic Gates. When WikiLeaks released an earlier cache of purloined U.S. documents — thousands of frontline military reports about Afghanistan — Admiral Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, angrily suggested the transparency group had the blood of U.S. troops and Afghan civilians on its hands. Seated beside Mullen in July, Gates explained that the information-security breach meant the Pentagon would have to reevaluate its approach to pushing high-level intelligence out to a level where any potentially-disgruntled servicemember could access it.

Gates’ message this time around was that despite the leak — which, as our sister blog Threat Level first reported, happened months ago — new Pentagon security precautions were showing promise. About sixty percent of U.S.-based military computers now have an “automated capability” to register improper access. Servicemembers can’t copy material on secure military networks to CDs or DVDs, Gates said. (Pfc. Bradley Manning allegedly spirited away sensitive material on a CD-RW labeled “Lady Gaga.”) And the military has “longer-term efforts under way” to identify anomalies in who’s viewing what, “sort of like credit card companies do.”

It’s not that Gates didn’t find the forced transparency annoying. He dug up a John Adams quote: “How can a government go on, publishing all of their negotiations with foreign nations, I know not.”

But from his perspective, WikiLeaks won’t significantly disrupt U.S. foreign policy, because it doesn’t have the power to change basic geopolitical calculations. “Some governments deal with us because they fear us, some because they respect us, most because they need us,” Gates said. “We are still essentially, as has been said before, the indispensable nation.”

Photo: DoD

buglerbilly

01-12-10, 11:02 AM

After the commonsense approach from Mr Gates, I now present the Extremist view from Others (who should know better)........

WikiLeaks: Bradley Manning 'should face death penalty'

Bradley Manning should face the death penalty, a former Pentagon official has claimed, as anger intensified in America against those thought to be responsible for leaking sensitive documents to whistle-blower website WikiLeaks.

By Nick Collins 9:30AM GMT 01 Dec 2010

KT McFarland said Pvt Manning, who is in prison accused of passing a quarter of a million sensitive papers to WikiLeaks, should face charges of treason and executed if found guilty.

Pvt Manning, whose family live in Pembrokeshire, is currently accused of transferring classified data and “delivering national defence information to an unauthorised source", but McFarland called for the charges to be raised.

Writing on the Fox News website, Ms McFarland, who held national security posts under the Nixon, Ford and Reagan governments, said: "It's time to up the charges. Let's charge him and try him for treason. If he's found guilty, he should be executed."

She also called for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to face terror charges, claiming: "He’s waging cyberwar on the United States and the global world order. Mr. Assange and his fellow hackers are terrorists and should be prosecuted as such."

Former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee backed the calls for those responsible for the leaks to face the death penalty.

He said: "Whoever in our government leaked that information is guilty of treason, and I think anything less than execution is too kind a penalty.

"Any lives they endangered, they’re personally responsible for and the blood is on their hands.”

The comments came as an adviser to Stephen Harper, the Canadian prime minister, suggested a different solution to the international diplomatic crisis – assassinating Mr Assange.

Prof Tom Flanagan said Barack Obama should “put out a contract and maybe use a drone or something” to rid the world of Mr Assange.

As the anchor on the CBC news programme warned him that his comments were “pretty harsh stuff”, Prof Flanagan responded that he was “feeling very manly today”.

He rounded off his interview by claiming the leak of the documents could "conceivably lead to war," adding: “I wouldn’t feel unhappy if Assange disappeared.”

Prof Flanagan was speaking on Tuesday evening, after the second day of WikiLeaks revelations from US State Department documents.

Interpol has issued a “Red Notice” alert for Mr Assange, in relation to two rape charges issued by Swedish police.

buglerbilly

01-12-10, 11:32 AM

Experts question North Korea-Iran missile link from WikiLeaks document release

By John Pomfret and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers

Wednesday, December 1, 2010; 12:19 AM

On Oct. 10, to celebrate its 65th anniversary as a one-party state, North Korea unveiled a new missile in the type of military parade that for decades has been a hallmark of authoritarian regimes. The North Koreans call the missile the Musudan.

The Musudan is now playing a starring role in reports this week prompted by WikiLeaks' release of U.S. diplomatic cables. One of the documents says that Iran has obtained 19 of the missiles from North Korea, prompting news reports suggesting that the Islamic republic can hit targets in Western Europe and deep into Russia - farther than Iran's existing missiles can strike.

The problem, however, is that there is no indication that the Musudan, also known as the BM-25, is operational or that it has ever been tested. Iran has never publicly displayed the missiles, according to experts and a senior U.S. intelligence official, some of whom doubt the missiles were ever transferred to Iran. Experts who analyzed Oct. 10 photographs of the Musudan said it appeared to be a mock-up.

The snapshot provided by the cable illustrates how such documents - based on one meeting or a single source - can muddy an issue as much as it can clarify it. In this case, experts said, the inference that Iran can strike Western Europe with a new missile is unjustified.

The 19-page document, labeled "secret," summarized a Dec. 22, 2009, meeting between 15 U.S. and 14 Russian officials who gathered as part of a bilateral program to monitor missile threats from Iran and North Korea. The two sides clashed repeatedly and agreed occasionally. The Russians claimed the Iranian missile program was not as much of a threat as the Americans feared and argued that the BM-25 might not even exist, dubbing it a "mysterious missile." Americans at the meeting acknowledged never seeing the new missile in Iran.

According to experts who are familiar with the Iranian program, the Americans and the Russians came to the meeting with competing agendas. The Americans were intent on emphasizing the Iranian threat because of their fears about Iran's alleged nuclear weapons programs and their support for a multibillion-dollar missile defense shield that is a priority of the Obama administration. The Russians focused on playing down the threat because they opposed the missile shield and because of their embarrassment that Russian technology was showing up in North Korean and Iranian missile systems.

At one point, the U.S. side said it believed the BM-25 "was sold to Iran by North Korea." The American team cited news reports as proof. But the main news source on the issue, a story by the German newspaper Bild Zeitung in 2005, quoted German intelligence sources as saying only that Iran had purchased 18 kits made up of missile components for the BM-25 from North Korea - not 19 of the missiles themselves.

"The U.S. side does not firmly say we have evidence that the BM-25 is in Iran," said Michael Elleman, a missile expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, referring to the discussion described in the document. "They don't present anything. I was a little surprised that they didn't come out more definitely."

"If you're claiming that there's a missile that can reach Western Europe from Iran, then you should be able to produce evidence," said Theodore Postol, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor and a former Pentagon official. "But they can't. The Iranians love to show photographs of what they have because part of their game is to appear bigger than they are. There is no reason for the Iranians to keep it secret. I am kind of surprised at the American side's assertions."

A senior U.S. intelligence official said Tuesday that he was unaware of any sale of a complete BM-25, although there was probably a transfer of kits.

"There has been a flow of knowledge and missile parts" from North Korea to Iran, he said, "but sale of such an actual missile does not fully check out."

The presence of those "missile parts" explains why the Russians were also on edge and eager to deny that the BM-25 was real.

"References to the missile's existence are more in the domain of political literature than technical fact," the document quoted the Russian delegation as saying. "In short, for Russia, there is a question about the existence of this system."

But there is evidence that the origin of the Musudan was Soviet. According to missile experts and U.S. officials, a large quantity of Soviet naval ballistic missile parts were shipped to North Korea during the Soviet collapse of the 1990s. Russia has never acknowledged this transfer, Postol and Elleman said, because it would tarnish Russia's reputation as a country that claims to have never sold technology that could be used in an intercontinental ballistic missile.

Over time, however, parts that appeared to be from the ballistic missiles - known as the R-27 and in the West as the SS-N-6 - began showing up on North Korean and Iranian missile systems, according to U.S. officials quoted in the document and to Postol. When Iran launched a satellite in February 2009, experts noticed a steering engine on the Iranian Safir rocket that was the same as one that appeared on the R-27.

Postol said that other components from the R-27 that have surfaced in recent years went unmentioned by the Americans in the meeting described in the secret document. For example, when North Korea apparently tested its Taepodong-2 missile last year, Postol said, the evidence was strong that the rocket's second stage was from an R-27, potentially boosting its range above 2,500 miles.

North Korea also began building a variant of the R-27 that they call the Musudan. Postol said the program hasn't gotten very far. In the October parade, it showcased the missile on top of launcher. It was about six feet longer than the original R-27.

"But they were mock-ups," he said. "So it's unclear what it can do. It's not a weapon yet."

That, he said, was at least three to five years away.

pomfretj@washpost.com pincusw@washpost.com

buglerbilly

01-12-10, 10:12 PM

Counterterrorism Chief Doesn’t See Info Freeze From WikiLeaks– Yet

By Spencer Ackerman December 1, 2010 | 1:42 pm

It’s not just Defense Secretary Robert Gates. The head of the National Counterterrorism Center also took a measured response to this week’s ongoing disgorgement of U.S. diplomatic cables cables from WikiLeaks, saying that a much-predicted halt in intelligence sharing has yet to manifest itself.

After giving a speech to a Washington think tank on Tuesday about the mutating terrorist threat, Michael Leiter, the director of the U.S.’s central counterterrorism hub, told reporters it was “too early to tell” whether intelligence analysts were ceasing to share information with each other out of concern that classified material will end up in the hands of the radical transparency group. In October, Leiter’s boss, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, said that earlier document dumps from WikiLeaks were “big yellow flags” for intelligence agents, and predicted a “chilling effect” on analysts’ cooperation.

Leiter said that Clapper was right to sound the alarm, but so far, analysts weren’t clamming up. The counterterrorism community is in “a relatively healthy place on information sharing,” Leiter said, since it’s had to work since 9/11 to strike a greater balance between passing data on between different agencies’ analysts and safeguarding top-secret material. Non-intelligence agencies of the government haven’t had the pressure of high-profile commissions or congressional hearings asking them why they had kept this-or-that critical memo bottled up within a particular office.

But the National Counterterrorism Center is also more of a one-way system than some other agencies. Its analytic side consists of about 300 intelligence analysts from across the various spy services, each of whom pass along terrorism-related information for synthesis at the center. But they “don’t send all of it back out” to the component agencies, Leiter clarified, citing the “risks” of having critical counterterrorism information leak out.

Still, Leiter didn’t match Gates’ annoyed-but-unphased tone on WikiLeaks yesterday. He associated himself with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who blasted WikiLeaks on Monday for waging what she called “an attack on the international community.” Leiter said WikiLeaks made it harder to have “candid conversations” with foreign counterterrorism allies, and worried about the disclosures potentially “endanger lives.”

So far, the anticipated intelligence freeze remains hypothetical. But Leiter said he and other senior officials would “certainly reevaluate where information is going.”

[I]Photo: Kentucky Department of Homeland Security

buglerbilly

01-12-10, 10:49 PM

WikiLeaks, hammered by attacks, loses Amazon host

By Chris Lefkow Updated 8:24 AM Thursday Dec 2, 2010

WASHINGTON - Amazon, after coming under fire for hosting WikiLeaks, booted it from its servers on Wednesday, prompting the whistleblower website to shift to Web-hosting services in Europe.

"This morning Amazon informed my staff that it has ceased to host the WikiLeaks website," Senator Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said in a statement.

"I wish that Amazon had taken this action earlier based on WikiLeaks' previous publication of classified material," the independent senator from Connecticut said.

WikiLeaks, in a message on its Twitter feed @wikileaks, said: "WikiLeaks servers at Amazon ousted. Free speech the land of the free - fine our dollars are now spent to employ people in Europe."

The WikiLeaks website was sluggish and periodically unavailable on Wednesday but it was not immediately clear if this was due to its hosting issues or if it had again come under cyberattack as in previous days.

Lieberman said Amazon's decision to cut off WikiLeaks "is the right decision and should set the standard for other companies WikiLeaks is using to distribute its illegally seized material."

WikiLeaks on Sunday began publishing the first batch of more than 250,000 US diplomatic cables the website is believed to have obtained from a disaffected US soldier.

Amazon is a major provider of Web-hosting services, renting out space on its computer servers to customers around the world. It has not responded to repeated requests from AFP for confirmation that it was hosting WikiLeaks.

But Jon Karlung, chairman of the Swedish firm Bahnhof, which also hosts some WikiLeaks documents, said Tuesday that the WikiLeaks website featuring the US diplomatic cables was being primarily hosted by the Seattle-based Amazon.

Lieberman urged any other company hosting WikiLeaks to "immediately terminate its relationship with them."

"WikiLeaks' illegal, outrageous, and reckless acts have compromised our national security and put lives at risk around the world," Lieberman said.

"No responsible company - whether American or foreign - should assist WikiLeaks in its efforts to disseminate these stolen materials," he said.

"I will be asking Amazon about the extent of its relationship with WikiLeaks and what it and other Web service providers will do in the future to ensure that their services are not used to distribute stolen, classified information," Lieberman added.

The global police agency Interpol has issued a global wanted notice for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on suspicion of rape, on the basis of a Swedish arrest warrant. Assange, a 39-year-old Australian believed to be in hiding in Europe, has denied the charges.

WikiLeaks said Sunday and again on Monday that it was the target of distributed denial of service, or DDoS, attacks aimed at shutting down or slowing the website.

Classic DDoS attacks occur when legions of "zombie" computers, normally machines infected with viruses, are commanded to simultaneously visit a website, overwhelming servers or knocking them offline completely.

On Monday, a computer hacker known as the "Jester" claimed responsibility for temporarily taking down the WikiLeaks website on Sunday.

Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at computer security firm F-Secure, said he believed the "Jester," who has targeted Islamic jihadist websites in the past, had the ability to carry out the attack on WikiLeaks.

"He's demonstrated previously that he is capable of launching effective denial-of-service attacks, and he's claimed the responsibility for this one as well," Hypponen said. "He has the capability and the motive."

- AFP

Riđđu

03-12-10, 12:54 PM

Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at computer security firm F-Secure, said he believed the "Jester," who has targeted Islamic jihadist websites in the past, had the ability to carry out the attack on WikiLeaks.

Oh my, now even some Finnish geeks are involved. I accidentally found myself surfing the Wikileaks site and there wasn´t much news for people already living in the real world. My favorite leaked document was this:

C O N F I D E N T I A L MOSCOW

SUBJECT: A CAUCASUS WEDDING

Summary

1. Weddings are elaborate in Dagestan, the largest autonomy in the North Caucasus. On August 22 we attended a wedding in Makhachkala, Dagestan’s capital: Duma member and Dagestan Oil Company chief Gadzhi Makhachev’s son married a classmate. The lavish display and heavy drinking concealed the deadly serious North Caucasus politics of land, ethnicity, clan, and alliance. The guest list spanned the Caucasus power structure — guest starring Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov — and underlined just how personal the region’s politics can be. End Summary.

2. Dagestani weddings are serious business: a forum for showing respect, fealty and alliance among families; the bride and groom themselves are little more than showpieces. Weddings take place in discrete parts over three days. On the first day the groom’s family and the bride’s family simultaneously hold separate receptions. During the receptions the groom leads a delegation to the bride’s reception and escorts her back to his own reception, at which point she formally becomes a member of the groom’s family, forsaking her old family and clan. The next day, the groom’s parents hold another reception, this time for the bride’s family and friends, who can “inspect” the family they have given their daughter to. On the third day, the bride’s family holds a reception for the groom’s parents and family.

Father of the Groom

3. On August 22, Gadzhi Makhachev married off his 19 year-old son Dalgat to Aida Sharipova. The wedding in Makhachkala, which we attended, was a microcosm of the social and political relations of the North Caucasus, beginning with Gadzhi’s own biography. Gadzhi started off as an Avar clan leader. Enver Kisriyev, the leading scholar of Dagestani society, told us that as Soviet power receded from Dagestan in the late 1980s, the complex society fell back to its pre-Russian structure. The basic structural unit is the monoethnic “jamaat,” in this usage best translated as ”canton” or “commune.” The ethnic groups themselves are a Russian construct: faced with hundreds of jamaats, the 19th century Russian conquerors lumped cantons speaking related dialects together and called them “Avar,” “Dargin,” etc. to reduce the number of “nationalities” in Dagestan to 38. Ever since then, jamaats within each ethnic group have been competing with one another to lead the ethnic group. This competition is especially marked among the Avars, the largest nationality in Dagestan.

4. As Russian power faded, each canton fielded a militia to defend its people both in the mountains and the capital Makhachkala. Gadzhi became the leader from his home canton of Burtunay, in Kazbek Rayon. He later asserted pan-Avar ambitions, founding the Imam Shamil Popular Front — named after the great Avar leader of mountaineer resistance to the Russians — to promote the interests of the Avars and of Burtunay’s role within the ethnic group. Among his exploits was a role in the military defense of Dagestan against the 1999 invasion from Chechnya by Shamil Basayev and al-Khattab, and his political defense of Avar villages under pressure in Chechnya, Georgia and Azerbaijan.

5. Gadzhi has cashed in the social capital he made from nationalism, translating it into financial and political capital — as head of Dagestan’s state oil company and as the single-mandate representative for Makhachkala in Russia’s State Duma. His dealings in the oil business — including close cooperation with U.S. firms — have left him well off enough to afford luxurious houses in Makhachkala, Kaspiysk, Moscow, Paris and San Diego; and a large collection of luxury automobiles, including the Rolls Royce Silver Phantom in which Dalgat fetched Aida from her parents’ reception. (Gadzhi gave us a lift in the Rolls once in Moscow, but the legroom was somewhat constricted by the presence of a Kalashnikov carbine at our feet. Gadzhi has survived numerous assassination attempts, as have most of the still-living leaders of Dagestan. In Dagestan he always travels in an armored BMW with one, sometimes two follow cars full of uniformed armed guards.)

6. Gadzhi has gone beyond his Avar base, pursuing a multi-ethnic cadre policy to develop a network of loyalists. He has sent Dagestani youths, including his sons, to a military type high school near San Diego (we met one graduate, a Jewish boy from Derbent now studying at San Diego state. He has no plans to enter the Russian military). Gadzhi’s multi-ethnic reach illustrates what the editor of the Dagestani paper “Chernovik” told us: that in the last few years the development of inter-ethnic business clans has eroded traditional jamaat loyalties.

7. But the Avar symbolism is still strong. Gadzhi’s brother, an artist from St. Petersburg, ordered as a wedding gift a life-sized statue of Imam Shamil. Shamil is the iconic national symbol, despite his stern and inflexible character (portrayed in Tolstoy’s “Hadji-Murat” as the mountaineers’ tyrannical counterpart to the absolutist Tsar). Connection with Shamil makes for nobility among Avars today. Gadzhi often mentions that he is a descendant on his mother’s side of Gair-Bek, one of Shamil’s deputies.

The Day Before

8. Gadzhi’s Kaspiysk summer house is an enormous structure on the shore of the Caspian, essentially a huge circular reception room — much like a large restaurant — attached to a 40-meter high green airport tower on columns, accessible only by elevator, with a couple of bedrooms, a reception room, and a grotto whose glass floor was the roof of a huge fish tank. The heavily guarded compound also boasts a second house, outbuildings, a tennis court, and two piers out into the Caspian, one rigged with block and tackle for launching jet skis. The house filled up with visitors from all over the Caucasus during the afternoon of August 21. The Chair of Ingushetia’s parliament drove in with two colleagues; visitors from Moscow included politicians, businessmen and an Avar football coach. Many of the visitors grew up with Gadzhi in Khasavyurt, including an Ingush Olympic wrestler named Vakha who seemed to be perpetually tipsy. Another group of Gadzhi’s boyhood friends from Khasavyurt was led by a man who looked like Shamil Basayev on his day off — flip-flops, t-shirt, baseball cap, beard — but turned out to be the chief rabbi of Stavropol Kray. He told us he has 12,000 co-religionists in the province, 8,000 of them in its capital, Pyatigorsk. 70 percent are, like him, Persian-speaking Mountain Jews; the rest are a mixture of Europeans, Georgians and Bukharans.

9. Also present was XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX. He was reserved at the time, but in a follow-up conversation in Moscow on August 29 (please protect) he complained that Chechnya, lacking experts to develop programs for economic recovery, is simply demanding and disposing of cash from the central government. When we pressed him on disappearances, he admitted some took place, but claimed that often parents alleged their children had been abducted when in fact their sons had run off to join the fighters or — in a case the week before — they had murdered their daughter in an honor killing. We mentioned the abduction of a widow of Basayev, allegedly to gain access to his money. XXXXXX said he had not heard of the case, but knew that Basayev had had no interest in wealth; he may have been a religious fanatic, but he was a “normal” person. The fighters who remain are not a serious military force, in XXXXX view, and many would surrender under the proper terms and immunities. He himself is arranging the immunity of a senior official of the Maskhadov era, whose name he would not reveal.

10. During lunch, Gadzhi took a congratulatory call from Dagestan’s president, Mukhu Aliyev. Gadzhi told Aliyev how honored he would be if Aliyev could drop in at the wedding reception. There was a degree of tension in the conversation, which was between two figures each implicitly claiming the mantle of leadership of the Avars. In the event, Aliyev snubbed Gadzhi and did not show up for the wedding, though the rest of Dagestan’s political leadership did.

11. Though Gadzhi’s house was not the venue for the main wedding reception, he ensured that all his guests were constantly plied with food and drink. The cooks seemed to keep whole sheep and whole cows boiling in a cauldron somewhere day and night, dumping disjointed fragments of the carcass on the tables whenever someone entered the room. Gadzhi’s two chefs kept a wide variety of unusual dishes in circulation (in addition to the omnipresent boiled meat and fatty bouillon). The alcohol consumption before, during and after this Muslim wedding was stupendous. Amidst an alcohol shortage, Gadzhi had flown in from the Urals thousands of bottles of Beluga Export vodka (“Best consumed with caviar”). There was also entertainment, beginning even that day, with the big-name performers appearing both at the wedding hall and at Gadzhi’s summer house. Gadzhi’s main act, a Syrian-born singer named Avraam Russo, could not make it because he was shot a few days before the wedding, but there was a “gypsy” troupe from St. Petersburg, a couple of Azeri pop stars, and from Moscow, Benya the Accordion King with his family of singers. A host of local bands, singing in Avar and Dargin, rounded out the entertainment, which was constant and extremely amplified.

10. The main activity of the day was eating and drinking — starting from 4 p.m., about eight hours worth, all told — punctuated, when all were laden with food and sodden with drink, with a bout of jet skiing in the Caspian. After dinner, though, the first band started an informal performance — drums, accordion and clarinet playing the lezginka, the universal dance of the Caucasus. To the uninitiated Westerner, the music sounds like an undifferentiated wall of sound. This was a signal for dancing: one by one, each of the dramatically paunchy men (there were no women present) would enter the arena and exhibit his personal lezginka for the limit of his duration, usually 30 seconds to a minute. Each ethnic group’s lezginka was different — the Dagestani lezginka the most energetic, the Chechen the most aggressive and belligerent, and the Ingush smoother.

Wedding Day 1

11. An hour before the wedding reception was set to begin the “Marrakech” reception hall was full of guests — men taking the air outside and women already filling a number of the tables inside, older ones with headscarves chaperoning dozens of teenaged girls. A Dagestani parliamentarian explained that weddings are a principal venue for teenagers — and more importantly their parents — to get a look at one another with a view to future matches. Security was tight — police presence on the ground plus police snipers positioned on the roof of an overlooking apartment block. Gadzhi even assigned one of his guards as our personal bodyguard inside the reception. The manager told Gadzhi there were seats for over a thousand guests at a time. At the height of the reception, it was standing room only.

12. At precisely two p.m. the male guests started filing in. They varied from pols and oligarchs of all sorts — the slick to the Jurassic; wizened brown peasants from Burtunay; and Dagestan’s sports and cultural celebrities XXXXXXX presided over a political table in the smaller of the two halls (the music was in the other) along with Vakha the drunken wrestler, the Ingush parliamentarians, a member of the Federation Council who is also a nanophysicist and has lectured in Silicon Valley, and Gadzhi’s cousin Ismail Alibekov, a submariner first rank naval captain now serving at the General Staff in Moscow. The Dagestani milieu appears to be one in which the highly educated and the gun-toting can mix easily — often in the same person.

13. After a couple of hours Dalgat’s convoy returned with Aida, horns honking. Dalgat and Aida got out of the Rolls and were serenaded into the hall, and into the Makhachev family, by a boys’ chorus lining both sides of the red carpet, dressed in costumes aping medieval Dagestani armor with little shields and swords. The couple’s entry was the signal for the emcee to roll into high gear, and after a few toasts the Piter “gypsies” began their performance. (The next day one of Gadzhi’s houseguests sneered, “Some gypsies! The bandleader was certainly Jewish, and the rest of them were blonde.” There was some truth to this, but at least the two dancing girls appeared to be Roma.)

14. As the bands played, the marriageable girls came out to dance the lezginka in what looked like a slowly revolving conga line while the boys sat together at tables staring intently. The boys were all in white shirts and black slacks, while the girls wore a wide variety of multicolored but fashionable cocktail dresses. Every so often someone would shower the dancers with money — there were some thousand ruble notes but the currency of choice was the U.S. hundred dollar bill. The floor was covered with them; young children would scoop the money up to distribute among the dancers.

15. Gadzhi was locked into his role as host. He greeted every guest personally as they entered the hall — failure to do so would cause great insult — and later moved constantly from table to table drinking toasts with everyone. The 120 toasts he estimated he drank would have killed anyone, hardened drinker or not, but Gadzhi had his Afghan waiter Khan following him around to pour his drinks from a special vodka bottle containing water. Still, he was much the worse for wear by evening’s end. At one point we caught up with him dancing with two scantily clad Russian women who looked far from home. One, it turned out was a Moscow poet (later she recited an incomprehensible poem in Gadzhi’s honor) who was in town with a film director to write the screenplay for a film immortalizing Gadzhi’s defense of Dagestan against Shamil Basayev. By 6 p.m. most of the houseguests had returned to Gadzhi’s seaside home for more swimming and more jet-skiing-under-the-influence. But by 8 the summer house’s restaurant was full once more, the food and drink were flowing, the name performers were giving acoustic renditions of the songs they had sung at the reception, and some stupendously fat guests were displaying their lezginkas for the benefit of the two visiting Russian women, who had wandered over from the reception.

The Wedding — Day 2: Enter The Man

16. The next day’s reception at the Marrakech was Gadzhi’s tribute to Aida’s family, after which we all returned to a dinner at Gadzhi’s summer home. Most of the tables were set with the usual dishes plus whole roast sturgeons and sheep. But at 8:00 p.m. the compound was invaded by dozens of heavily armed mujahedin for the grand entrance of Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov, dressed in jeans and a t-shirt, looking shorter and less muscular than in his photos, and with a somewhat cock-eyed expression on his face. After greetings from Gadzhi, Ramzan and about 20 of his retinue sat around the tables eating and listening to Benya the Accordion King. Gadzhi then announced a fireworks display in honor of the birthday of Ramzan’s late father, Ahmat-Hadji Kadyrov. The fireworks started with a bang that made both Gadzhi and Ramzan flinch. Gadzhi had from the beginning requested that none of his guests, most of whom carried sidearms, fire their weapons in celebration. Throughout the wedding they complied, not even joining in the magnificent fireworks display.

17. After the fireworks, the musicians struck up the lezginka in the courtyard and a group of two girls and three boys — one no more than six years old — performed gymnastic versions of the dance. First Gadzhi joined them and then Ramzan, who danced clumsily with his gold-plated automatic stuck down in the back of his jeans (a houseguest later pointed out that the gold housing eliminated any practical use of the gun, but smirked that Ramzan probably couldn’t fire it anyway). Both Gadzhi and Ramzan showered the dancing children with hundred dollar bills; the dancers probably picked upwards of USD 5000 off the cobblestones. Gadzhi told us later that Ramzan had brought the happy couple “a five kilo lump of gold” as his wedding present. After the dancing and a quick tour of the premises, Ramzan and his army drove off back to Chechnya. We asked why Ramzan did not spend the night in Makhachkala, and were told, “Ramzan never spends the night anywhere.”

18. After Ramzan sped off, the dinner and drinking -- especially the latter -- continued. An Avar FSB colonel sitting next to us, dead drunk, was highly insulted that we would not allow him to add “cognac” to our wine. “It’s practically the same thing,” he insisted, until a Russian FSB general sitting opposite told him to drop it. We were inclined to cut the Colonel some slack, though: he is head of the unit to combat terrorism in Dagestan, and Gadzhi told us that extremists have sooner or later assassinated everyone who has joined that unit. We were more worried when an Afghan war buddy of the Colonel’s, Rector of the Dagestan University Law School and too drunk to sit, let alone stand, pulled out his automatic and asked if we needed any protection. At this point Gadzhi and his people came over, propped the rector between their shoulders, and let us get out of range.

Postscript: The Practical Uses of a Caucasus Wedding
--------------------------------------------- --------
19. Kadyrov’s attendance was a mark of respect and alliance, the result of Gadzhi’s careful cultivation -- dating back to personal friendship with Ramzan’s father. This is a necessary political tool in a region where difficulties can only be resolved by using personal relationships to reach ad hoc informal agreements. An example was readily to hand: on August 22 Chechnya’s parliamentary speaker, Dukvakha Abdurakhmanov, gave an interview in which he made specific territorial claims to the Kizlyar, Khasavyurt and Novolak regions of Dagestan. The first two have significant Chechen-Akkin populations, and the last was part of Chechnya until the 1944 deportation, when Stalin forcibly resettled ethnic Laks (a Dagestani nationality) there. Gadzhi said he would have to answer Abdurakhmanov and work closely with Ramzan to reduce the tensions “that fool” had caused. Asked why he took such statements seriously, he told us that in the Caucasus all disputes revolve around land, and such claims can never be dismissed. Unresolved land claims are the “threads” the Russian center always kept in play to pull when needed. We asked why these claims are coming out now, and were told it was euphoria, pure and simple. After all they had received, the Chechen leadership’s feet are miles off the ground. (A well-connected Chechen contact later told us he thought that raising nationalistic irredentism was part of Abdurakhmanov’s effort to gain a political base independent from Kadyrov.)

20. The “horizontal of power” represented by Gadzhi’s relationship with Ramzan is the antithesis of the Moscow-imposed “vertical of power.” Gadzhi’s business partner Khalik Gindiyev, head of Rosneft-Kaspoil, complained that Moscow should let local Caucasians rather than Russians -- “Magomadovs and Aliyevs, not Ivanovs and Petrovs” -- resolve the region’s conflicts. The vertical of power, he said, is inapplicable to the Caucasus, a region that Moscow bureaucrats such as PolPred Kozak would never understand. The Caucasus needs to be given the scope to resolve its own problems. But this was not a plug for democracy. Gadzhi told us democracy would always fail in the Caucasus, where the conception of the state is as an extension of the Caucasus family, in which the father’s word is law. “Where is the room for democracy in that?” he asked. We paraphrased Hayek: if you run a family as you do a state, you destroy the family. Running a state as you do a family destroys the state: ties of kinship and friendship will always trump the rule of law. Gadzhi’s partner agreed, shaking his head sadly. “That’s a matter for generations to come,” he said.

BURNS

buglerbilly

03-12-10, 02:02 PM

WikiLeak: Pakistanis ‘Sabotage’ U.S. Mercs, Gear, Diplos

By Spencer Ackerman December 2, 2010 | 4:27 pm

Whatever the Pakistani government’s secret collusion with the U.S. on drone strikes, it doesn’t mind screwing with American officials and contractors stationed there. A WikiLeaked diplomatic cable from February 2010 cites repeated instances of Pakistani security personnel seizing U.S. diplomats’ cars, shutting down counterterrorism programs and “sabotaging” deals with their security contractors.

Despite $400 million in U.S. cash for Islamabad’s counterinsurgency efforts, local Pakistani security officials shut down an “Anti-Terrorism Assistance” training program at Pakistan’s Sihala Police Academy. Though the cable doesn’t mention it, rumors abounded at Sihala that the U.S. used the police academy to spy on a nearby nuclear installation. Distrust of the U.S. runs deep enough to delay the importation of “equipment for Pakistani law enforcement agencies,” reads Ambassador Anne Patterson’s February 19, 2010 briefing for an impending visit from FBI Director Robert Mueller.

Patterson’s staff face more passive-aggressive obstacles from their Pakistani hosts. Roadblocks impede the expansion of the embassy in Islamabad. Not only does Pakistan slow-roll U.S. diplomats’ visa applications, but the security forces delay “import permits for armored vehicles” in a city that extremists enjoy bombing. It’s not much better when diplomats manage to get out on the roads. Pakistani officials are known for “harassing Embassy personnel by stopping and detaining Embassy vehicles.”

And while some of that harassment abates after diplomats register their protests, Patterson writes, “we expect we will have to continue to push back against such impediments for the foreseeable future.”

At least one instance of what Patterson cites as harassment put diplomats’ lives at risk. The Pakistanis are “sabotaging our contract with DynCorp International to provide enhanced protective support for Consulate General Peshawar personnel,” she writes. That appears to be a reference to a minor scandal in September 2009, when Pakistani police raided a DynCorp subcontractor, Inter-Risk, and turned up dozens of illicit guns.

The raid set up a furor of Pakistani media speculation that DynCorp was secretly taking action against terrorist targets in Peshawar through Inter-Risk. Both the company and State deny that, saying instead that insurgent violence in the city requires a heavily armed force to protect its diplomats. Patterson urged the Interior Ministry in March 2009 to issue State’s bodyguards special permits for high-caliber weapons, the Washington Times reported, as the violence was “harming our ability to administer and expand the programs we would like to expand.”
Even after the Inter-Link raid, State stood by DynCorp, and the company retains its contract in Pakistan. A DynCorp spokeswoman declined to comment on whether Pakistan attempted any other “sabotage” of its contract.

Patterson’s brief to Mueller is one of a number of cables WikiLeaks exposed revealing the persistent chasm of trust between the U.S. and Pakistan, not just on mutual efforts against terrorists, but on Pakistan’s nuclear program, its human-rights abuses, and many other issues. That trust gap persists despite a recent five-year, $7.5 billion U.S. civilian aid package to Pakistan and a brand-new $2 billion military-aid package.

The U.S. ambassador attributes all that to distrust in the Pakistani military and intelligence services about “U.S. intentions and objectives” in the region, especially Washington’s perceived favoritism toward India. Indeed, an earlier WikiLeaks document dump implicated elements within the Pakistani security sector as providing aid and comfort to insurgents and terrorists. And U.S. foreign-service officers lingering at Islamabad’s police checkpoints while their cars get impounded have to bear that burden.

Photo: Pakistan’s Inter Services Public Relations

buglerbilly

05-12-10, 03:21 AM

Australia has abandoned me

Steven Swinford and Danny Kemp

December 5, 2010

WHISTLEBLOWING website founder Julian Assange has broken cover to accuse the Australian government of abandoning him to attacks by the US government.

From a location in England the Queensland-born Mr Assange questioned what it meant to be an Australian citizen. As the WikiLeaks chief waited for his likely arrest so British authorities could extradite him to Sweden over allegations of rape and sexual molestation - which he denies - he said he missed his country ''a great deal''.

''However, during the last weeks the Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, and the Attorney-General, Robert McClelland, have made it clear that not only is my return impossible but that they are actively working to assist the United States government in its attacks on myself and our people,'' Mr Assange wrote in The Guardian.

''This brings into question what does it mean to be an Australian citizen - does that mean anything at all? Or are we all to be treated like David Hicks at the first possible opportunity merely so that Australian politicians and diplomats can be invited to the best US embassy cocktail parties.''

It was revealed Mr McClelland has also ordered a taskforce of Australian soldiers, intelligence officers and officials to investigate whether Mr Assange and his organisation had breached any Australian laws. ''The publication of this kind of information is incredibly irresponsible and reprehensible,'' Mr McClelland said.

Mr Assange's outburst came as he revealed he had sent the politically sensitive US diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks to 100,000 people and they would be released en masse if the website was brought down.

He said the cables had been copied in encrypted form and would be automatically published online if ''something happens to us''. On Friday, WikiLeaks was forced to move to a Swiss internet address after its website came under a cyber attack.

And he said he had boosted his security after receiving death threats amid the storm unleashed by his site's publication of 250,000 secret US cables.

Scotland Yard and security services know Mr Assange's location, believed to be in south-east England, but have been unable to arrest him because Swedish authorities failed to fill out the arrest warrant correctly.

Swedish prosecutors sent another file containing the missing details.

Mr Assange's lawyer, Mark Stephens, linked the arrest warrant to ''sophisticated'' efforts to take down the website.

Agence France-Presse; Telegraph, London

Raven22

05-12-10, 04:46 AM

I think Mr Assange needs to sit down and have a long hard think about who abandoned who.

Gubler, A.

05-12-10, 07:02 AM

I think Mr Assange needs to sit down and have a long hard think about who abandoned who.

Interesting that he referred to David Hicks. They are both convicted criminals with certain public denial issues about their wrong doings.

Deks

05-12-10, 04:39 PM

Arguable. Regardless though, the information that I've seen suggests that it would be nigh on impossible to charge him with a crime under any current australian law, which makes gillard look like a complete idiot.

The swedish rape case is an interesting one, too. Apparently, if during consensual sex the condom breaks that can be classified in some way as sexual assault - or at least that's what they're trying to argue.

Agree or not with his means and methods, but this is an abuse of the legal system under any measure.

Gubler, A.

05-12-10, 10:29 PM

Arguable. Regardless though, the information that I've seen suggests that it would be nigh on impossible to charge him with a crime under any current australian law, which makes gillard look like a complete idiot.

Assange was convicted years ago of multiple hacking offences.

The swedish rape case is an interesting one, too. Apparently, if during consensual sex the condom breaks that can be classified in some way as sexual assault - or at least that's what they're trying to argue.

The original charge sheet said he refused to have a STD test and then had sex without protection with his partner who refused consent at the time. The problem with this case because some see Assange as a 'freedom' fighter all sorts of BS is being circulated to reframe his actions as not despicable and illegal.

Deks

07-12-10, 01:10 AM

buglerbilly

07-12-10, 02:22 AM

1. That has nothing to do with it at present.
2. That's not the information that I've seen.

His actions aren't in any way illegal, in spite of how others may like them to be. Those disclosing the information in the first place is of course another story.

-Deks

Unless my take on American Law is wrong, if you knowingly print or make public something you know has been obtained ilegally then you are compounding, and part of, a criminal offence esspecially with State or Defense documents. There is no journalistic defense in such cases............IF the Law doesn't exist in this form then it needs to change.

buglerbilly

07-12-10, 03:02 AM

National Security Secrecy: How the Limits Change

December 6th, 2010 by Steven Aftergood

On December 3, I participated in an interesting, somewhat testy discussion about Wikileaks on the show Democracy Now along with Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com, who is a passionate defender of the project. The ultimate victory of Wikileaks (or something like it) is guaranteed, Mr. Greenwald suggested, so any criticism of it is basically irrelevant.

“We can debate WikiLeaks all we want,” he said, “but at the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter, because the technology that exists is inevitably going to subvert these institutions’ secrecy regimes. It’s too easy to take massive amounts of secret [material] and dump it on the internet…. And I think that what we’re talking about is inevitable, whether people like Steven Aftergood or Joe Lieberman or others like it or not.”

This seems like wishful thinking. It is true that Wikileaks offers the most direct public access to the diplomatic cables and other records that it has published, most of which could not be obtained any time soon through normal channels. But instead of subverting secrecy regimes, Wikileaks appears to be strengthening them, as new restrictions on information sharing are added and security measures are tightened. (Technology can be used to bolster secrecy as well as subvert it.)

In fact, Wikileaks may deliberately be attempting, in a quasi-Marxist way, to subvert secrecy by provoking governments to strengthen it. But please try this in your own country first.

It was ordinary political advocacy, not leaks, that produced reversals of longstanding U.S. government secrecy policies this year on nuclear stockpile secrecy and intelligence budget secrecy. It was also political advocacy, not leaks, that led to the declassification of more than a billion pages of classified records since 1995. Obviously, much more remains to be done, and the tools available to transparency advocates are not as powerful as one would wish. Leaks that serve the public interest have their honored place; more would be welcome. Advocacy may fail, and often does. Nothing is inevitable, as far as I know. But so far it is still politics, not the subversion or repudiation of politics, that has produced the greater impact on U.S. secrecy policy. (The calculation may well be different in other countries.)

The susceptibility of secrecy policy to political action was discussed in a paper I wrote on “National Security Secrecy: How the Limits Change” (pdf). It will appear in the forthcoming Fall 2010 issue of the journal Social Research that is devoted to the topic of “Limiting Knowledge in a Democracy.”

Edited...........read far more here in the Comments section especially.............

http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/2010/12/limits_change.html

Gubler, A.

07-12-10, 04:47 AM

1. That has nothing to do with it at present.

You responded “arguable” after I had called him a convicted criminal, which until you receive a pardon you stay so for life. Considering his conviction was for computer hacking – breaking into private networks and stealing information – it has great relevance to his present capers.

2. That's not the information that I've seen.

Well there’s your problem there. There is no shortage of idiots from the right or left willing to either demonise or beatify Assange and plenty of information being published about this case equally baseless. That the primary source for most news reporting on this rape case is Assange’s lawyer is even more bullshit.

Go back to August before the US Embassy Cable releases and you can see the facts on this case. Two women, both separately, complained that Assange had been what we might call “date raped” by Assange after he refused to wear a condom and continued with sex after they said no. Also that he refused to have a STD test which apparently is a crime in Sweden when the request is made by someone you’ve had sex with. While these allegations may be false they are a long way from the kind of crap that is being suggested by Assange apologists.

His actions aren't in any way illegal, in spite of how others may like them to be. Those disclosing the information in the first place is of course another story.

That’s not true in the slightest. There is the issue of did Assange provide technical assistance or make a request for the information – which is under investigation and more than possible – in which case he would be an accessory to the theft. Also publishing private information, not just stealing it is very much illegal in most jurisdictions.

Chunder

07-12-10, 10:15 AM

That’s not true in the slightest. There is the issue of did Assange provide technical assistance or make a request for the information – which is under investigation and more than possible – in which case he would be an accessory to the theft. Also publishing private information, not just stealing it is very much illegal in most jurisdictions.

Precedent. Did Robert Novak face any charges? He Claimed not. Did he reach a deal with the prosecution? He claimed not. It also depends where he made the request for information. If he did it on foreign soil, on a foreign server... then I'd say he has more than a fair chance. Who contacted whoom, who crossed what line.

buglerbilly

07-12-10, 11:11 AM

WikiLeaks founder arrested in London

December 7, 2010 - 9:41PM

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has been arrested by officers from Scotland Yard's extradition unit.

The 39-year-old Australian was held when he attended a central London police station by appointment.

Assange was arrested at 9.30am (2030 AEDT) on Tuesday and was due to appear before a district judge at the City of Westminster Magistrates' Court later in the day.

Police said he had been arrested on a Swedish warrant.

"Officers from the Metropolitan Police Extradition Unit have this morning arrested Julian Assange on behalf of the Swedish authorities on suspicion of rape," a Metropolitan Police spokesman said.

"Julian Assange, 39, was arrested on a European Arrest Warrant by appointment at a London police station at 9.30am.

"He is accused by the Swedish authorities of one count of unlawful coercion, two counts of sexual molestation and one count of rape, all alleged to have been committed in August 2010.

"Assange is due to appear at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court today."

AFP

buglerbilly

07-12-10, 11:20 AM

WikiLeaks: US Attorney General taking 'significant' action against Julian Assange

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said on Monday the Obama administration was considering using laws in addition to the U.S. Espionage Act to possibly prosecute the release of sensitive government information by WikiLeaks.

Mr Assange is expected to hand himself in to police, possibly as early as Tuesday Photo: AP

7:00AM GMT 07 Dec 2010

"That is certainly something that might play a role, but there are other statutes, other tools at our disposal," Mr Holder told reporters.

The Espionage Act dates back to 1917 and was focused on making it illegal to obtain national defence information for the purpose of harming the United States. Mr Holder described the law as "pretty old" and lawmakers are considering updating it in the wake of the leak.

WikiLeaks has released to news outlets and on the internet hundreds of internal U.S. diplomatic messages, some of which contained classified information that embarrassed the Obama administration and foreign governments.

Some legal experts have said it would be difficult for the Obama administration to prosecute WikiLeaks or its founder Julian Assange, who is an Australian citizen, for espionage.

Other parts of U.S. law make it easier to prosecute people for unauthorised disclosure of certain classified information. Mr Assange and WikiLeaks, however, could argue they are akin to a news organisation protected by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

Mr Holder also said that he authorised a number of unspecified actions as part of the criminal probe the Justice Department is conducting into the WikiLeaks matter.

"I authorised just last week a number of things to be done so that we can get to the bottom of this and hold people accountable," Mr Holder said. He repeatedly refused to elaborate whether that would include search warrants.

"I personally authorised a number of things last week and that's an indication of the seriousness with which we take this matter and the highest level of involvement at the Department of Justice," he said.

He also declined to say whether the Obama administration could try to shut down the WikiLeaks site. The organisation has had to switch to overseas web hosting services after Amazon.com last week terminated their arrangement.

"I don't want to get into what our capabilities are," Mr Holder said. "We are looking at all the things we can do to try to stem the flow of this information."

buglerbilly

07-12-10, 01:04 PM

WikiLeaks and the trouble with transparency

By Richard Cohen, Washington Post

Monday, December 6, 2010; 8:00 PM

The first WikiLeaks moment occurred on Jan. 17, 1998. It was then that Matt Drudge reported that Bill Clinton had had an affair with a White House intern. The story, though, was not Drudge's. It was Michael Isikoff's. His employer, Newsweek, had delayed publication. Drudge went with it - which is to say that he reported that Newsweek had the story. It took another four days for the so-called mainstream media to catch up - a story in The Post confirmed it all. How late! How pitiful!

Now we have the New York Times publishing major parts of the recent cache of documents that it received not from WikiLeaks and its thoroughly contemptible founder, Julian Assange, but from the Guardian, a British newspaper. Assange, it appears, was chagrined by a hard-hitting Times profile of himself. But he also might have resented the Times' meddling with the earlier release of about 90,000 military documents. We won't know until WikiLeaks' internal cables are leaked.

What the Clinton scandal and the WikiLeaks disclosures have in common is a sad collapse of the mainstream media's gatekeeper role. Newsweek presumably had good reasons to postpone publication of Isikoff's story - reasons that Drudge did not share. The Times had good cause to parse the WikiLeaks cache - lives could be in danger - but Assange launched them into cyberspace anyway, not caring if American interests were damaged. In fact, that might have been the whole point.

The natural reaction is to want to pop Assange in some way, possibly by indicting him for violating the totally impractical Espionage Act of 1917 or, in the superheated imaginations of some, by declaring him a terrorist and targeting him for something irrevocable. The trouble with any of this is that you inevitably get entangled with the Times and other newspapers such as The Post, which also has devoted considerable space and talent to the stories. They all enabled Assange to reach a wider audience - raise your hand if you actually visited his Web site - and moreover gave him what amounts to a journalistic Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval: See, this stuff is important.

The challenge is to keep the cure from doing less damage than the disease. Sure, some world leaders have been discomforted by what has been reported - Saudi King Abdullah should use Yiddish when he wants to speak candidly - but so far as we know no bodies have hit the floor with a sickening plop. In fact, it could be argued that the leaks in any Bob Woodward book are of greater consequence and importance than those served up by WikiLeaks. And when it comes to sheer nihilistic journalism, I refer you to the Rolling Stone story that cost Gen. Stanley McChrystal his command and his career. The article contained nothing of real value concerning policy or a disagreement with President Obama. Yet McChrystal, who survived many a brush with the enemy, was brought down by a clear shot in the back.

Governments, like married couples, are entitled to their secrets - from us, from the kids and from the neighbors. Total transparency produces total opaqueness. If everything's open, no one says anything. If you want to know why there is no document detailing exactly when George W. Bush decided to go to war in Iraq, it's because of something Dick Cheney once said: "I learned early on that if you don't want your memos to get you in trouble someday, just don't write any." On Iraq, he and Bush followed that rule.

One of the juvenile joys of being a journalist used to be knowing what others didn't - the vaunted story behind the story. "You newspapermen know everything," Claudette Colbert tells Fred MacMurray in "The Gilded Lily." No more. Now, everything sees the light of day and media organizations like Gawker, journalism's own little cesspool, pay for such scoops as pictures allegedly sent by Brett Favre to a young lady of his passing acquaintance. This is not what Jefferson had in mind when he championed freedom of the press.

The WikiLeaks brouhaha will pass. Diplomats will once again be indiscreet at cocktail parties and rat out one another in the same way some people marry repeatedly, each time forever. The only thing worse than indiscretion is efforts to punish the miscreants by eroding the core constitutional right to publish all but the most obvious and blatant national security secrets. The government has to get better at keeping secrets. Muzzle the leakers - but not the press.

cohenr@washpost.com

Redcoat

07-12-10, 01:11 PM

he's also starting to sound increasingly paranoid.

It is not Paranoia when people really are out to get you

ADMk2

07-12-10, 01:38 PM

Unless my take on American Law is wrong, if you knowingly print or make public something you know has been obtained ilegally then you are compounding, and part of, a criminal offence esspecially with State or Defense documents. There is no journalistic defense in such cases............IF the Law doesn't exist in this form then it needs to change.

One wonders about this seeing as there is little evidence that he a) received/possessed this information inside American jurisdiction or b) that there is little to no evidence that he published it from within American jurisdiction. It would seem that unless it can be proven that he counselled or procured the person/s to commit this offence in the United States, well I'm no international law expert, but as he did all this in Sweden allegedly, I wonder exactly how he could be prosecuted succesfully within America? Virtually every offence mechanics I have ever seen that relate to acts done or omissions made outside the prosecuting jurisdiction, provide a defence of an intention to cause an effect WITHIN that jurisdiction. By only putting the material on a Swedish based website, he could well argue that lack of intent...

Even with the Gabe Watson issue, Alabama Prosecutors had to "pull a swifty" to create a VERY tenuous link to the death in Queensland waters as having been conceived and planned within Alabama (and that is from a close friend of mine - Adrian Braithewaite, the solicitor who represented Watson in Queensland) to be even able to establish to a Grand Jury that they had jurisdiction over the offence.

My point seems further supported with the case of "thepiratebay.org". They most definitely are receiving unlawfully obtained material from within the United States (or are at least making it publicly available) on the Internet. They HAVE been prosecuted in Sweden for such activities. Unsuccessfully...

buglerbilly

07-12-10, 02:15 PM

It is not Paranoia when people really are out to get you

Who'd want to get such a demure, mild, unassuming little prick like him? :doh

buglerbilly

07-12-10, 02:21 PM

One wonders about this seeing as there is little evidence that he a) received/possessed this information inside American jurisdiction or b) that there is little to no evidence that he published it from within American jurisdiction. It would seem that unless it can be proven that he counselled or procured the person/s to commit this offence in the United States, well I'm no international law expert, but as he did all this in Sweden allegedly, I wonder exactly how he could be prosecuted succesfully within America? Virtually every offence mechanics I have ever seen that relate to acts done or omissions made outside the prosecuting jurisdiction, provide a defence of an intention to cause an effect WITHIN that jurisdiction. By only putting the material on a Swedish based website, he could well argue that lack of intent...

Even with the Gabe Watson issue, Alabama Prosecutors had to "pull a swifty" to create a VERY tenuous link to the death in Queensland waters as having been conceived and planned within Alabama (and that is from a close friend of mine - Adrian Braithewaite, the solicitor who represented Watson in Queensland) to be even able to establish to a Grand Jury that they had jurisdiction over the offence.

My point seems further supported with the case of "thepiratebay.org". They most definitely are receiving unlawfully obtained material from within the United States (or are at least making it publicly available) on the Internet. They HAVE been prosecuted in Sweden for such activities. Unsuccessfully...

I agree its a rats nest in Law and I'm sure there are a whole bunch of Lawyers out there salivating and going pre-orgasmic over the thought of any Law case. It'll be interesting to see what eventually happens and what changes to US Law this leads to.

buglerbilly

07-12-10, 03:09 PM

Wikileaks Dilemma: How Does A Nation Fight A Superempowered Person?

08:27 GMT, December 7, 2010

In his justifiably famous book The Lexus and the Olive Tree, author Thomas Friedman coined the phrase of superempowered individual. Friedman was referring specifically to Osama bin Laden, who was able to use a combination of ideological appeal, mass communications and modern technology to perpetrate violence on a geographic and physical scale once reserved for nation states alone. Add the possibility of access to weapons of mass destruction or the creation of a virus that could interfere with critical computer systems and the dividing line between superpower and superempowered individual is becoming blurred.

It can be argued that Osama bin Laden’s power was effectively countered by that of the United States. Yes, bin Laden has not been captured and on occasion transmits self-serving and somewhat pathetic videos. But Al Qaeda has been driven from Iraq and Afghanistan and its leaders in Pakistan and Yemen are being continuously hunted. Al Qaeda now relies on the likes of teenagers with explosives in their underwear to conduct their terrorist attacks. While not killed or captured bin Laden does not appear to have much of his superpowers left. After nine years of fighting the global war on terror, the U.S. military and intelligence community have gotten pretty good at combating the type of threat posed by Al Qaeda.

The first truly superempowered individual may well be Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks. He is superempowered in part because he needs so little in the way of organization, resources or capabilities. By its very nature the Net or the Cloud abhors the need to occupy specific locations. Assange has no need for anything approximating territory, except perhaps for a safe house in the event Sweden ever comes up with a valid arrest warrant. The cost of storage and bandwidth is now so low as to be of negligible importance to all but the most inveterate movie or music collectors. Operating in cyberspace requires little specialized knowledge or materials, certainly as compared to bomb making.

While he lacks the power attributes of a nation state or even or a terrorist group like Al Qaeda, Assange knows how to play the game. Responding to attacks on his web site and to threats against him personally, Assange warned that in the event of a serious attack against either Wikileaks or himself personally he would release at an unpredicted time all the documents in his possession. In this manner he is practicing deterrence via the threat of massive retaliation. Assange also warned that he had one hundred mirror sites ready to release the documents if Wikileaks was taken down, thereby practicing a form of deterrence through objective denial.

One reason that Assange has power is because the United States has not yet figured out a way to deal with the threat he poses. Assange occupies an anomalous position vis-à-vis U.S. law being neither a U.S. citizen nor, technically, a spy. Given statements Assange has made regarding possession of documents from a major financial institution he might even qualify for protection under the U.S. whistleblower statute. He operates in cyberspace which, unlike Waziristan, the alleged current home of bin Laden, is relatively immune from attack. He is not seeking to make money from his activities, so interdicting his site does not pose a significant threat. In fact, while the U.S. government opposes his current activities it could feel differently if the documents Assange was leaking were generated by the regime in Teheran or by the mandarins in Beijing.

The U.S. is developing powerful cyber capabilities to deal with cyber threats posed by states and criminal or terrorist organizations. There is now an array of private companies large and small such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, General Dynamics and ManTech that possess an array of capabilities for traditional cyber offensive and defensive missions. Addressing the problem posed by superempowered individuals in cyberspace who have little to lose and not much more to gain in traditional terms will challenge even the best of these as well as the institutions of the U.S. government.

----
Daniel Goure, Ph.D.
Early Warning Blog

buglerbilly

07-12-10, 03:45 PM

You're either with us, or you're with WikiLeaks

By Marc A. Thiessen

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton got one thing right last week - she described WikiLeaks' disclosure of hundreds of thousands of classified documents as "an attack." Indeed, it was the third such attack in five months that WikiLeaks has launched against the United States and its international partners. WikiLeaks itself has described its struggle in military terms. Founder Julian Assange recently posted a Tweet from one of his supporters declaring: "The first serious infowar is now engaged. The field of battle is WikiLeaks. You are the troops."

Like the war on terror, we have been attacked in this new cyber war in ways we did not anticipate. Over the past decade, the U.S. government has spent billions to stop foreign adversaries from remotely penetrating our computer networks for sabotage. Instead of trying to break through these defenses, Assange pioneered a new form of cyber sabotage. He found someone who allegedly penetrated our classified systems from within, downloaded America's secrets onto a Lady Gaga CDand gave them to Assange, who then disseminated this stolen information across the world.

Assange has made clear he intends to continue posting stolen classified information and has effectively dared the United States and the world to try and stop him. He recently announced through his lawyer that if he is arrested, he will unleash a "thermonuclear device" of completely unexpurgated government files. Think about that: Assange has threatened America with the cyber equivalent of thermonuclear war.

If WikiLeaks is treating this as a war in cyberspace, America should do the same. The first step is to rally a coalition of the willing to defeat WikiLeaks by shutting down its servers and cutting off its finances. WikiLeaks' most recent disclosures - which exposed not only America's secrets but also those of other nations - seem to have awakened others to the threat the group poses.

In recent days, WikiLeaks has had trouble staying online - in part because governments have been pressuring companies to stop hosting WikiLeaks. In the United States, Amazon.com kicked WikiLeaks off of its servers after an aide to Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, complained. Another U.S. provider, EveryDNS.net, kicked WikiLeaks off as well, and PayPal.com cut off the account WikiLeaks had been using to collect donations.

In France, Industry Minister Eric Besson said the government would force a French company, OVH SAS, to stop hosting WikiLeaks, declaring, "France cannot host Internet sites that violate the secrets of diplomatic relations and endanger people protected by diplomatic secrecy." Other countries should be encouraged to follow suit.

As WikiLeaks is driven from the cyber territory of responsible countries, it will seek refuge elsewhere on the Internet, setting up operations in nations where it believes it will receive protection. Governments that provide WikiLeaks with virtual safe havens should be told in no uncertain terms: "You are either with us, or you are with WikiLeaks." If they refuse to shut WikiLeaks down on their territory, action should be taken to drive WikiLeaks from those safe havens.

Last week, a Pentagon spokesman confirmed that the United States does in fact have the offensive capabilities in cyberspace to take down WikiLeaks, but that the Obama administration chose not to use them. This failure to act prompted a patriotic hacker who goes by the name th3j35t3r (the Jester) to attack WikiLeaks himself, repeatedly taking down its Web site.

If "one guy with a laptop" can shut down WikiLeaks even temporarily, imagine what the 1,100 cyber-warriors at U.S. Cyber Command could do. While the United States sits on the sidelines, the New York Times reported Saturday that WikiLeaks had come under assault "from armies of zombie computers in Europe, Russia and Asia." This flood of attacks creates the perfect cover for the United States to deliver the coup de grace to WikiLeaks secretly, with no fingerprints, if it chose to do so.

Some say attacking WikiLeaks would be fruitless. Really? In the past year, the Iranian nuclear system has been crippled by a computer worm called "Stuxnet," which has attacked Iran's industrial systems and the personal computers of Iranian nuclear scientists. To this day, no one has traced the origin of the worm. Imagine the impact on WikiLeaks's ability to distribute additional classified information if its systems were suddenly and mysteriously infected by a worm that would fry the computer of anyone who downloaded the documents. WikiLeaks would probably have very few future visitors to its Web site.

WikiLeaks represents a new and unprecedented cyber threat that cannot be ignored or wished away. Just as terrorism allows small groups of individuals to wreak destruction on a scale that was once the province of nation-states, information technology allows small actors such as Julian Assange to wreak previously unimagined destruction on U.S. national security through cyberspace. This is a threat that requires aU.S. response. Hillary Clinton is right - WikiLeaks has attacked America. The only question is: Will America return fire?

Marc A. Thiessen, a visiting fellow with the American Enterprise Institute, is the author of the book "Courting Disaster." He writes a weekly column for The Post.

buglerbilly

07-12-10, 03:47 PM

Judge denies WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange bail

By CASSANDRA VINOGRAD and RAPHAEL G. SATTER
The Associated Press

Tuesday, December 7, 2010; 10:38 AM

LONDON -- A British judge jailed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange on Tuesday, ordering the leader of secret-spilling website behind bars as his organization's finances came under increasing pressure.

Assange showed no reaction as Judge Howard Riddle denied him bail in an extradition case that could see him sent to Sweden to face allegations of rape, molestation and unlawful coercion.

Assange denies the accusations and has pledged to fight the extradition, while a spokesman for his organization said the U.S. diplomatic secrets would keep on flowing - regardless of what happened to the group's founder.

"This will not change our operation," Kristinn Hrafnsson told The Associated Press ahead of Assange's hearing. As if to underline the point, WikiLeaks released a cache of a dozen new diplomatic cables, its first publication in more than 24 hours.

Assange appeared at before City of Westminster Magistrates' Court in London after turning himself in to Scotland Yard earlier Tuesday, capping months of speculation over an investigation into alleged sex crimes committed in Sweden over the summer.

Assange and his lawyers claim that the accusations stem from a "dispute over consensual but unprotected sex" in Sweden in August, and have claimed the case has taken on political overtones. Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny has rejected those claims.

Riddle asked the 39-year-old Australian whether he understood that he could consent to be extradited to Sweden. Assange, dressed in a navy blue suit, cleared his throat and said: "I understand that and I do not consent."

The decision to fight the extradition could be difficult. Extradition experts say that European arrest warrants like the one issued by Sweden can be tough to beat, barring mental or physical incapacity. Even if the warrant was defeated on a technicality, Sweden could simply issue a new one.

Assange's website, meanwhile, came under increasing financial pressure Tuesday - with both Visa and MasterCard saying they would block payments to the controversial website.

In a statement e-mailed to The Associated Press, Visa Inc. said it was taking steps "to suspend Visa payment acceptance on WikiLeaks' website pending further investigation into the nature of its business and whether it contravenes Visa operating rules."

MasterCard sent a similar statement, saying it would suspend payments "until the situation is resolved."

The move chokes off two important funding avenues for WikiLeaks, a loosely knit group of activists who rely on individual donations to fund their operations.

PayPal Inc., a popular online payment service, has already cut its links to the website, while Swiss authorities closed Assange's bank account on Monday, freezing several tens of thousands of euros, according to his lawyers.

WikiLeaks is still soliciting donations through bank transfers to affiliates in Iceland and Germany, as well as by mail to an address at University of Melbourne in Australia.

Deks

08-12-10, 01:59 AM

Background on the rape allegations.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1336291/Wikileaks-Julian-Assanges-2-night-stands-spark-worldwide-hunt.html

Short version: He slept with both of them consensually, and they got pissed when they discovered each other.

Gubler, A.

08-12-10, 02:50 AM

Short version: He slept with both of them consensually, and they got pissed when they discovered each other.

Total bullshit.

Long version (from the charge sheet):

Two counts of sexual molestation (refusal to wear a condom during sex), one count of unlawful coercion (having sex with one of the women by exploiting the fact that she was asleep) and one count of rape (he had held a woman's arms and forced open her legs so he could have sex with her) involving two women in Sweden in August.

The relationship between the two women has been one of support with the older woman testifying to assist the younger one and both of them fronting the police station together. Hardly a case of jilted lovers seeking revenge.

The representation of this rape case as something trivial by the right and as politically motivated by the left is mutually disgusting.

Milne Bay

08-12-10, 03:14 AM

This whole thing is getting a bit carried away.
There are charges to be faced and defended.
This is called a trial.
Out of a trial comes a finding of guilt or innocence.
I suggest we all wait for the results of the trial before passing judgement.
Anyone ever heard of the Lindy Chamberlain case?
MB

ADMk2

08-12-10, 07:46 AM

I great line I heard once, "everyone is innocent until proven guilty, no matter how guilty they are..."

Chunder

08-12-10, 11:23 PM

buglerbilly

10-12-10, 03:27 AM

Anger at 'slave trader' Assange: WikiLeaks loyalists decide to break away

Asher Moses

December 10, 2010 - 2:02PM

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his former right-hand man, Daniel Domschelt-Berg aka. Daniel Schmitt. Photo: Flickr.com/andygee1

A number of WikiLeaks defectors, including founder Julian Assange's former right-hand man, plan to launch a rival site on Monday after accusing Mr Assange of behaving like "some kind of emperor or slave trader".

With WikiLeaks itself vowing to press on with its leaking regardless of the fate of Mr Assange, it seems that any attempts by US politicians to stop the leaks will be futile.

The new site, Openleaks, will launch on Monday, respected Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter reported. Like WikiLeaks, it will allow whistleblowers to leak information to the public anonymously. However, Openleaks won't host the documents itself, instead acting as an intermediary between whistleblowers and other groups including media organisations.

Several WikiLeaks members abandoned the site following perceived autocratic behaviour by Mr Assange. They said he failed to consult them on many decisions and put himself front and centre of everything WikiLeaks did.

Some members were also concerned that the Swedish rape allegations against Mr Assange were damaging the organisation's reputation. Dagens Nyheter reported that insiders were sabotaging the site earlier this year in order to convince Mr Assange to step down.

The new site, one member said, would be "democratically governed by all its members, rather than limited to one group or individual".

"We broke from WikiLeaks because a few ex-WikiLeaks members have been very unhappy with the way Assange was conducting things," said former WikiLeaks member and key player in the new site, Herbert Snorrason.

'You're not anyone's king or god'

The most high-profile defector is Daniel Domschelt-Berg, who went by the name Daniel Schmitt at WikiLeaks and served as one of its only public faces aside from Mr Assange.

Mr Domschelt-Berg resigned from the organisation this year after WikiLeaks released almost 400,000 classified US documents relating to the Iraq war. He, and other WikiLeaks members, felt Mr Assange released the documents too early without taking the time to properly redact names of US collaborators and informants in Iraq.

"You are not anyone's king or god," Mr Domschelt-Berg told Mr Assange in an online chat, a transcript of which was obtained and published by Wired.com.

"And you're not even fulfilling your role as a leader right now. A leader communicates and cultivates trust in himself. You are doing the exact opposite. You behave like some kind of emperor or slave trader."

Mr Assange shot back, saying he was suspending Mr Domschelt-Berg for a month and that if he wanted to appeal, "you will be heard on Tuesday".

Mr Domschelt-Berg instead resigned and will now be a key player in the new site.

Got a problem? Piss off

Mr Snorrason also left after he challenged Mr Assange's decision to suspend Mr Domschelt-Berg. Mr Assange responded saying: "I am the heart and soul of this organisation, its founder, philosopher, spokesperson, original coder, organiser, financier and all the rest. If you have a problem with me, piss off."

Mr Domschelt-Berg is writing a tell-all book on his three years at WikiLeaks, titled Inside WikiLeaks: My Time at the World's Most Dangerous Website.

In an interview with German newspaper Der Spiegel Mr Domschelt-Berg criticised WikiLeaks for focusing too much on the US and said the new site would have a far broader focus.

Ben Laurie, a data security expert who advised WikiLeaks before it launched in 2006, said the site had opened a Pandora's box of leaking and, even if it was taken out, the idea would live on.

"The concept is not going to die. It's really hard to keep things shut down if they want to stay up," he said.

"Look at everything else people would like not to happen online - phishing, spam, porn. It's all still there."

World leaders support Assange

Meanwhile, Mr Assange remains remanded in custody in Britain pending proceedings to extradite him to Sweden to face sex crime allegations.

Revelations embarrassing to governments all over the world, divined from the hundreds of thousands of US State Department cables leaked by Mr Assange, continue to be published by media organisations.

Vladimir Putin has led a growing band of international leaders voicing support for Mr Assange, describing his detention in Britain as "undemocratic".

*Cough* *splutter* Putin would know about being undemocratic now wouldn't he! :jerkit

The Russian Prime Minister's broadside came as hackers escalated their cyber war on opponents of the whistleblower website, setting their sights on Amazon.com.

The move appeared to be part of a developing tit-for-tat cyber conflict targeting companies in reprisal for withdrawing from doing business with WikiLeaks. Amazon last week booted WikiLeaks off its servers, saying the company had violated its terms of service.

Visa, Mastercard and PayPal earlier suffered disruption to their websites in retaliation for their decision to stop accepting payments for the whistleblower.

Dutch police have arrested a 16-year-old who they say admitted to staging attacks on the Visa and Mastercard sites.

- with wires

Gubler, A.

10-12-10, 03:38 AM

No one gains from this 'rape-rape' defence of Julian Assange

The unlikely alliance between leftwingers and the misogynists of the Wikiblokesphere is worrying and does nothing to help the WikiLeaks cause

Libby Brooks
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 9 December 2010 16.00 GMT

The arrest of Julian Assange has escalated to a new pitch of intensity a controversy already beyond precedent. The arrest of the WikiLeaks founder over sexual offences allegedly committed in Sweden this summer was already fiercely contested. But in the 48 hours since he was remanded in custody in London pending extradition proceedings, those denouncing his prosecution as malicious and politically motivated have grown angrier and ever more profuse. An unlikely coalition has formed around Assange and, whether explicitly or implicitly, against his two accusers.

The veteran journalist John Pilger, who – along with filmmaker Ken Loach and charity fundraiser Jemima Khan – offered bail sureties to the court, dismissed the charges as a "political stunt". The author and activist Naomi Wolf condemned the women for "using feminist-inspired rhetoric and law to assuage what appear to be personal injured feelings". Human rights champion Bianca Jagger tweeted about one of the complainant's supposed links with the CIA. In a letter to the Guardian, the British campaigning organisation Women Against Rape queried "the unusual zeal with which Julian Assange is being pursued".

These models of leftwing and liberal opinion find themselves, intentionally or otherwise, shoulder to shoulder with a motley assemblage of conspiracy theorists and internet attack dogs that has been mauling the characters of Assange's accusers since their complaints were first lodged in August. Barely established online niceties regarding the discussion of sexual assault cases were overturned: the women's personal photographs, CVs and blogposts have been dredged for evidence of sexual deviance, mental instability and vengeful intent. Claes Borgström, the women's lawyer, told the Guardian yesterday that his clients were "the victims of a crime, but they are looked upon as the perpetrators".

In circumstances as volatile and globally significant as this, it is practically impossible not to see these charges in conjuction with the broader political accusations levelled at Assange and his website. The alacrity with which the British justice system has pursued this warrant when it is so notoriously slow to respond to similar complaints made by its own citizens doesn't deserve to pass without comment and, as Women Against Rape noted in their letter, there is an ignoble tradition dating back to the racist lynch mobs of the American Deep South of using sex crime allegations to furnish political agendas that have nothing to do with women's safety.

But Assange's status as embattled warrior for free speech is taken as giving permission – by those on the left as well as right – to indulge in the basest slut-shaming and misogyny. It's terrifying to witness how swiftly rape orthodoxies reassert themselves: that impugning a man's sexual propriety is a political act, that sexual assault complainants are prone to a level of mendacity others are not (and, in this case, deserving of the same crowd-sourced scrutiny afforded leaked diplomatic cables), that not all forms of non-consensual sex count as "rape-rape".

The latter phrasing comes courtesy of Whoopi Goldberg, who coined the term last autumn in a defence of film director Roman Polanski, then facing extradition to the US after his arrest in Switzerland over a 32-year-old statutory rape charge. It feeds the narrative that consent is so difficult to prove in cases where the victim knew her attacker, or was drugged or drunk, and the violation so much lesser, that the only crimes worth prosecuting involve violent strangers in dark alleys. It also underlies the assumption that a man's good behaviour in public life somehow neutralises bad behaviour in private, thus recasting the domestic assaults of footballers like George Best and Paul Gascoigne as indecorous, rather than violently criminal.

By this measure, rape allegations against a maverick internet provocateur are diminished in the context of his crusade for truth instead of, albeit unpalatably, being capable of existing alongside it.

In defence of Assange, the Wikiblokesphere has fixed on the details of the cases available in the public domain, in particular consent to intercourse only with a condom, as proof of a spurious "non-rape-rape" charge. In fact what is significant about the Swedish system is not that it employs a broader definition of rape than in other countries – it doesn't – but that prosecutions are based not on consent but whether a complainant's "sexual integrity" has been violated. In addition, alleged victims can instruct their own lawyers, who often seek second opinions after an initial dismissal, which may offer a rather more pedestrian explanation for why the cases have been re-opened now.

The speed with which this latest episode in the WikiLeaks saga has been reduced to weary tropes about honeytraps, castrating feminists and undeserving victims is depressing. In an apparent plea to haul the debate back from the soup of smear and counter-smear, Naomi Klein argued that "defending WikiLeaks is not the same as defending rape". But the fact that the defence of Assange has spawned such naked and vitriolic misogyny should be of concern to all women and men who find it as distasteful and counter to the pursuit of truth as the attacks on WikiLeaks itself.

buglerbilly

10-12-10, 05:58 AM

Excellent article by Libby Brooks..........bravo!

Unicorn

10-12-10, 09:26 AM

Vladimir Putin has led a growing band of international leaders voicing support for Mr Assange, describing his detention in Britain as "undemocratic".

That should last about as long as it takes for Wikileaks to start publishing leaks from inside the Kremlin, then we shall see how far Mr Putin's recently discovered passion for whistle blowers extends.

Unicorn

Gubler, A.

10-12-10, 12:24 PM

He has an interesting take on the nature of democracy. If it is “undemocratic” to arrest Assange then by using basic liner equations Putin therefore thinks that being engaged in democracy makes it OK for you to rape Swedish women…

Deks

10-12-10, 11:44 PM

Gubler, A.

11-12-10, 12:43 AM

Whilst I agree 100% with the sentiment of the Libby Brooks article, the amount of information available surrounding the alleged rape would lead any reasonable person to believe that the whole thing was a beat up from the beginning; malicious, political, or otherwise. It's interesting to see well renowned feminists siding with Assange as well.

There is more than enough information available about the rape allegations to show that it is far more than just the split condom issue. Unfortunately certain reporting in the English speaking world established the rape allegations as two jilted lovers complaining over split condoms. It is in fact very different circumstances and a lot more than just that.

However this reporting was enough for plenty of people to make up their mind on false and incomplete information. As to the many “feminists” siding with Assange they are all doing so on the USA being their greater enemy than a single rapist.

Any reasonable person reading the actual compliant and how it was lodged would conclude that this is a very serious charge. Assange may be found not guilty of the offences but he deserves to be on trial. If there is physical evidence of bruising on the wrists of one of the alleged victims combined with their testimonies it is very likely he will be convicted.

I have posted in this thread more than enough about the actual compliant lodged against Assange. If you don’t bother reading it and insist that this is just split condoms, jilted lovers then I can only conclude that there is something seriously wrong with you. And I’m talking to you “Deks”.

buglerbilly

12-12-10, 05:09 AM

WikiLeaks is delinquent and anti-democratic

The website's insistence that it is a voice of open ‘freedom of expression’ is simply absurd, argues Janet Daley.

Unaccountable: aside from Julian Assange, WikiLeaks' staff remain shadowy figures Photo: GETTY

By Janet Daley, UK Daily Telegraph

9:00PM GMT 11 Dec 2010

We are entering an unprecedented age of free speech, right? For the first time in human history, the state will no longer have control over information, right? Democracy is about to come to its full fruition, with the triumph of bottom-up power over top-down domination, right?

Wrong. The frenzied hyperbole generated by the latest WikiLeaks episode – an anarchic, but so far remarkably ineffectual, spasm of delinquency – seems peculiarly weak in its understanding of the basic concepts with which its rhetoric is larded. It is, in fact, the precise opposite of what its apologists claim it to be: with its unilateral programme of revealing confidential information, which it boasts is unstoppable and accountable to no one, it is profoundly anti-democratic.

In its self-contradictory maintenance of its own untraceable operations, it effectively declares itself to be the only agency in the world that is entitled to secrecy. Its insistence that it is somehow a voice of open and transparent “freedom of expression” is simply absurd: there is no issue here of any individual or group openly expressing an opinion that would otherwise have been suppressed. The only opinion that is implicitly conveyed by WikiLeaks’ exposures is the boringly prosaic anti-Americanism of the average Guardian comment writer.

All that WikiLeaks has done, as its name suggests, is to publish stolen documents that were purloined by a malcontent within the US defence network. As it happens, the leaked material has been almost entirely unsurprising, apart from one rather spectacular own goal in WikiLeaks terms: it turns out that a number of Gulf states have been urging the US to strike at Iran before it succeeds in producing nuclear weapons, and that the US has been resisting this pressure. This tends to undermine both the image of America as trigger-happy warmonger and the idea that the entire Muslim world is united in hatred and distrust of the Great Satan.

But there was one document that did include information of a sensational kind: a list of soft targets (places that could be expected to be less well-protected) that the US considered vital to its national security. Many of these were non‑military, including European centres for the manufacture of smallpox vaccine.

The blameless employees of these organisations, who had no say whatever in the publication of their firms’ identities and functions, and who now find themselves sitting ducks for amateur terrorists, may be doubtful about the new kind of democracy that WikiLeaks proposes to spring on the world. The claim by its spokesmen that this information was already “in the public domain” is neither here nor there. It has never been offered up in such a readily accessible form (for that is what the “information revolution” is all about, isn’t it?) and with such an extravagant flourish of publicity (because that is what WikiLeaks is all about).

So there is nothing democratic about this at all. It is an arrogant, defiant provocation of international conventions by a tiny handful of unidentifiable people that involved no consultation or popular mandate. Who are they? Apart from their self-publicising editor, Julian Assange, they are nameless and faceless. To whom could a society or an electorate – even if it was overwhelmingly opposed to such actions – protest or present its arguments?

If, as it claims, WikiLeaks has set in motion mechanisms for further disclosures that cannot be disabled, then the peoples and elected governments of all countries are powerless against it. Where is the democracy in this? Whose freedom has been enhanced? Who elected WikiLeaks and to whom is it answerable?

You might say, as presumably the WikiLeaks people would if they broke cover, that by giving people information about what their governments (or, more specifically, their governments’ diplomats) are saying in private, they are empowering the electorate. Knowing about what goes on behind the scenes can enable voters to make more knowledgeable choices.

In principle, this is obviously true: it is what investigative journalism has always been about. Which is why there is nothing new about the WikiLeaks phenomenon. It was simply presented with a huge mass of undifferentiated material by a peculiarly irresponsible source and it chose to publish it in a technologically immediate form.

The fact that it consists virtually entirely of things that were said rather than things that were done has two kinds of significance. One is that private conversations, even when they are not at the level of the diplomatic communiqué, are generally considered to be no-go areas for journalists, because it is recognised that professional life of any kind would be virtually unsustainable without the possibility of confidential communication. The other is that a very different degree of importance attaches to what is said than to what is done. An indiscreet remark or observation is in a different league from a dishonest or disreputable act.

What is it precisely that the ideologues of the great information revolution are arguing? That no one has a right to confidentiality in any sphere of public life – apart from WikiLeaks’ staff, of course, and their internet comrades in the Anonymous network who wreak vengeance on any website that threatens WikiLeaks’ power? What about the lawyer-client relationship, which has privileged confidentiality in the eyes of the law? It might be of considerable public interest to see the correspondence between defendants and their lawyers in terrorist trials, for example. Would WikiLeaks publish such material if it got its hands on it? For that matter, would it be willing, as a matter of public interest, to publish all the communications between Julian Assange and his lawyer?

Finally, is the power of the disseminated word so very novel? The state has not been “in control” of information for hundreds of years, probably not since Gutenberg invented the printing press and produced his Bible, which helped make the Protestant Reformation possible. The 18th-century pamphleteers who inspired the French and American revolutions, the 19th-century manifestos that motivated the modern ideological movements, and the samizdat publications under the Soviet Union all managed to cry freedom in their own ways and to spread their messages to huge effect. What is available now is the technology to make that dissemination instantaneous. Perhaps that also helps to make it mindless.

buglerbilly

12-12-10, 05:28 AM

Leaker not worthy of martyrdom

By Paul Holmes, NZ Herald

6:00 PM Sunday Dec 12, 2010

I suppose they'll kill him. Julian Assange. I would if I were them, all those intelligence organisations and secret boys who find themselves at the mercy of a lone operator becoming a world folk hero among the cyber hoodlums.

If they don't kill him then those big old powerful countries will work out ways to confine him in a very dark hole for a very long time.

The Swedes have already pulled a very unsavoury trick of requesting the British extradite him to Stockholm to be tried for rape and unlawful sex, charges John Pilger says, - oh yes, he's got Pilger on his side, and Jemima Goldsmith, for heaven's sake - a Swedish official investigator has already thrown out. He's suggesting what the Swedes are doing is political. You don't say, John.

They can be nasty and secretive, those Swedes. We know that from the Stieg Larsson books. There's some real dark stuff in those.

We may think of Sweden as irrelevant. It isn't. Sweden is a wealthy country that plays a big game.

He's a funny looking bloke, Julian Assange, and he has a rather flash surname for a bloke who grew up in Townsville. He has a strange baby face. And he's just hacked into a quarter of a million secret cables.

One of them already has the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin squealing. This one has a report to some American officials that Putin's Russia is a Mafia state with everyone on the take at every level, in for a cut.

Even Putin seems to have a great deal of wealth and a connection to an ex-KGB mate with an oil supply company who might have cut him in on the action. Putin was so mad about it all he went straight on Larry King.

I don't know why Putin was so mad. Everyone knows the Mafia run Russia.

I mean, I don't really know why anyone is so upset with the revelations so far. It's just flash gossip.

But the Americans want Assange for espionage, for stealing secrets. They take very unkindly to espionage. Really, it is hard to imagine Assange seeing the light of day for many a year by the time he's served time in probably half a dozen jurisdictions.

Julian's mother lives in Noosa and she is hot to trot about it all. Christine Assange says that "democracy is on trial" with what's happening to her son. No, Christine,

I think Julian's the one on trial and will be for a very long time. What he and his cohorts have done is steal a quarter of a million secret files and cables in which officials and diplomats speak more than frankly about each other and those people don't like that stuff getting out.

Who knows, really, what will happen. There are inevitable comparisons between Assange and Daniel Ellsberg, the American military analyst who, in 1971, released the Pentagon Papers, a stack of material about American decision-making during the Vietnam War. And God knows, the war was still cooking.

But he was a national of the country he offended. Assange has upset the entire world. They'll all soon be scrapping over him.

I'm sure the best way to have handled it would have been simply to smile in a good human fashion and get on with it. Anything but make him a martyr, which is now surely what will happen.

buglerbilly

12-12-10, 11:46 AM

WikiLeaks' advocates are wreaking 'hacktivism'

By Ian Shapira and Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writers

Sunday, December 12, 2010; 12:01 AM

In England, a 26-year-old advertising agency employee caters to multinational clients but on the side has been communicating with a secretive band of strangers devoted to supporting WikiLeaks.

Halfway around the world, a 24-year-old in Montana has used a publicly available - and, according to security experts, suddenly popular software program called Low Orbit Ion Cannon with the goal of shutting down Web sites of WikiLeaks' perceived enemies.

Since releasing a vast cache of diplomatic cables this month, the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks has been the focus of intense criticism: for divulging classified materials, embarrassing the U.S. government and potentially endangering lives. But it has also engendered the frenzied support of an expanding and loosely defined global collective that seems intent on speaking out - and in some cases waging war on WikiLeaks' behalf.

The most prominent of those groups is known as Anonymous, which this past week sought to disable the Web sites of several U.S. companies as part of what it called Operation Payback.WikiLeaks has also drawn the support of traditional civil rights organizations and advocacy groups, which see the controversy surrounding WikiLeaks as an important test of U.S. commitment to freedom of the Internet.

Several groups have expressed dismay over recent statements by U.S. politicians suggesting that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should be branded an international terrorist or perhaps even assassinated. In a series of ads to be published in U.S. newspapers this week, the Australian activist group GetUp calls on Washington to "stand up for our shared democratic principles of the presumption of innocence and freedom of information."

But it is the activities of Anonymous and its members that have caused the greatest stir online. In addition to launching "denial of service" attacks on various Web sites, the group's members have issued open letters in support of WikiLeaks and sought to drum up support for Assange as Time magazine's "Person of the Year." (By Sunday, he was in the No. 1 spot in Time's poll, with nearly 400,000 votes.)

When contacted through Twitter, Anonymous members said in recent days they have been driven by fears of civil rights intrusions and totalitarian futures.

"Whether the fear is logical or not, I see a lot of aspects of George Orwell and Aldous Huxley's dystopias coming into play in a lot of the U.S. government's policies," said the Montana man, who said he was a staffer at a group home for mentally disabled adults.

The man, who declined to be named because he said he feared arrest, compared the attacks on U.S. companies' Web sites - known to some as "hacktivism" - to earlier versions of civil protests: "It was like the sit-ins during the 1960s when you had college students taking up space in restaurants."

Now, Anonymous is helping a wider audience comb through the WikiLeaks documents in a new campaign called Operation Leakspin. On the social media Web site Reddit, the Montana member of Anonymous said he helps moderate a "sub-Reddit" section where users sift through various leaked State Department cables. Reddit users post comments, vote on which cables are the most revelatory and click back to WikiLeaks' site to view the entire cable.

The Montana man said Reddit allows the Anonymous movement, whose members chat with one another on hard-to-find servers and in instant message rooms, to influence a broader readership.

"Rather than putting these cables on our own server, we're making it more available to everyone. We got everyone's attention with the distributed denial of service attacks, so now we're looking more at what's in the leaks," he said. "The call now is to stop the attacks. I didn't do much of those. I wasn't one of the people who thought it was necessary, but what I think doesn't matter. The majority has to think it."

It's unclear how many people consider themselves as part of the Anonymous movement. Various Twitter groups seemingly affiliated with the organization provide rough estimates of its influence: Anonops has nearly 10,000 followers; Operation Leakspin has more than 1,300 followers; Anonymous Operations has about 1,200 followers.

The group achieved some infamy two years ago when WikiLeaks published the private emails of former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and said it received the files from Anonymous.

Anonymous members meet on other Web sites, whose addresses are publicized on Twitter or elsewhere. They issue announcements on www.anonops.blogspot.com , featuring information about the locations and times of upcoming demonstrations supporting Assange in London or at a local courthouse.

"PROTEST!" reads one headline on the Web site, announcing a demonstration on Tuesday outside the Westminster Magistrates' Court in London. "Julian Assange will be appearing at court for a bail hearing please come and make your voice heard!"

On anonymousfreedom.org , members urge people to go on Reddit and focus on particular countries: "We are, at the moment, particularly interested in china and iran!" the site says, directing people to cables between the State Department and overseas embassies regarding sales of Chinese sales of weapons to Iran; or to Kenya against Somalia.

In England, the 26-year-old ad agency employee said he communicates with fellow Anonymous members on hard-to-find Internet Relay Chat rooms where hundreds of users can talk to one another without disclosing their identities. The movement, he said, is inspired by many literary sources, including science fiction writer Isaac Asimov and his "Foundations" series about the future.

"The whole Asimov series is about the lack of transparency, but after time, everything becomes clear," he said. "A lot of the people in Anonymous have grown up with the Internet and see a future where the Internet is cut back, where we have no net neutrality, and there are different tiers of service and it isn't free to all.''

The English member of Anonymous guided a Post reporter to a chat room of fellow members who had nicknames like "steerpike," "pheadanon" and "Grommell."

There, on a collaborative site called Piratepad.net, Anonymous members tapped out their reasons for defending WikiLeaks. "We've seen the power the Internet can have in organizing the masses," one member said. "Look at the protests in Iran. I fight for wikileaks because I don't want to live in a future where people cannot talk about dissent without attracting the notice of government bouncers in black suits."

Another person revealed a more ulterior motive in the Piratepad chat room: "The most important result from doing these attacks is the media exposure," the Anonymous member wrote. "It does provide somewhat of a rush, and it is very empowering to note how many people are passionate about their freedom. We are here for exposure, period, NOT damage."

shapirai@washpost.com warrickj@washpost.com

Deks

12-12-10, 05:04 PM

Wow, they're a bit slow on that one, has been going on for weeks; the software itself has been around for ages.

Chunder

13-12-10, 08:15 AM

I have posted in this thread more than enough about the actual compliant lodged against Assange. If you don’t bother reading it and insist that this is just split condoms, jilted lovers then I can only conclude that there is something seriously wrong with you. And I’m talking to you “Deks”.

The allegation of Rape is almost akin to murder. Suffice to say, that getting opinions one or other, without facing trial & competent defence should be kept in the head either one way or the other. Having seen compelling doco's of rapists walking free and others alleged rapists being interred for years before being released on behalf of the person that originally made the allegation - it's the best course to take. Too serious a game to playing "I told you so"

Just today Over 7 years after the murder of her 2 day old daughter, some Olympic water polo player has been unanimously sentenced by jury. Wendy Chamberlain went to the donk for a crime she didn't commit, Malat is still silent about other murders despite his guaranteed internment.

A complaint is a complaint, and police have a job to do. Every Australian should be however, making sure that Assange is delivered the consular assistance he is entitled to.

buglerbilly

13-12-10, 09:01 AM

A complaint is a complaint, and police have a job to do. Every Australian should be however, making sure that Assange is delivered the consular assistance he is entitled to.

Who actually said he wouldn't get Consular assistance? Assange and his people INTIMATED it.

It's not based on fact ............

Chunder

13-12-10, 12:41 PM

Who actually said he wouldn't get Consular assistance? Assange and his people INTIMATED it.

It's not based on fact ............

Assange and his people originally said they wouldn't seek it - using Gitmo as an excuse. They didn't say they weren't getting it or offered it AFAIR. There is a world of difference. Scrutiny on the consular protections entitled to the passport holder,should be number one in the public eye right now. Who is to thank for this.

Well IMO one could start with the P.M and Att. Gen.

Rudd is already saying that it's His & His decision alone whether to terminate the protection of the passport as (on what grounds, he is still yet go go to trial for an offence he is entitled to consular assistance for!). Gillard / McClelland in words to this effect have called Assanges' actions illegal - murmurs of passport termination have followed (in relation to the leaks, NOT the rape).

To put it mildly it looks bad when your foreign minister (former prime minister) says he hasn't done anything wrong (he's the guy with the Authority), and so does the Prime minister before that - in relation to wiki leaks (NOT) the rape case. You can see, that Rudd (which is very important) has to remain as impartial as a Magistrate in providing that assistance (I believe he is doing a good job at present) What assistance he provides, will partially be based from advice from the Att. General or depts he is responsible for with an eye to taking action on that advice. Hence the Att. Gen frankly has committed the dumbest act in Political servitude (by passing Judgement / character reference on Assange before trial)

That seems to be the problem, Assange is asserting it's a plot to get him, the mob is out speculating. The Law needs to be there to make sure he faces charges & is fairly represented to make the consular assistance airtight.

Gillard, and McClelland, have complicated the situation. They are sitting in the Federal parliament, under the Constitution, overseeing departments responsible for discharging those laws. The first fucking consideration when making statements, is not to stroke you allies ego, or your own belief, it's to consider the law and it's fundamental tenants, that you have the privilege to influence.

It's not to Characterise on the global stage, especially from the Att. Gen, before trial by a randomly selected Jury under guidance from the magistrate. The Attorney General of all people should know this. Instead, all they have achieved, is the appearance of Dogging your own citizen to the mob. I find that scary - extremely scary. Now the accused is beyond doubt that the Govt is out to slap him at the soonest possible opportunity - and the Mob is with him.

So the Dillema is this. The Accused wasn't seeking consular assistance, before Gillard commented. Gillard comments, the Att. Gen. comments. The Accused is paranoid anyway. Paranoia reaffirmed, Rudd has to then discharge his responsibilities, with the relevant recommendations, as impartially as a Magistrate would (Not particularly an enviable position with your PM and Att. Gen. commenting). Some of that information, likely coming from the Att. Genera - and convince the Public he is doing his best to provide that support.

What a monumental stuff up by the P.M & Attorney General. When thinking about it, they couldn't have possibly managed to make it worse for themselves. Thats' before we even get to the publics personal opinion (But of course, that was ALWAYS Canberras intention to comment early)!

TBH I think Assange has problems, mentally & with Ego. Those are two things that make for a very public trial. That makes consular assistance very important IMO - hence stressing the point.

What a stuff up.

buglerbilly

14-12-10, 12:28 AM

We have the right to secrecy

December 14, 2010

If Julian Assange had been accused of sex crimes after attending, say, the CIA Christmas party, it would be understandable if suspicion arose as to a possible frame-up. However, the allegations against the prominent WikiLeaks founder have been made by two Swedish women who - as Assange told the reporters John F. Burns and Ravi Somaiya of The New York Times in October - were once among his ''fans''.

Still, many people believe what they want to believe - that's what conspiracy theories are all about.

So it came as no surprise when Annie Guest reported on the ABC's PM last Friday that protesters at a rally in Brisbane ''all seemed in agreement of a conspiracy behind Assange's charges''. The demonstrators came equipped with a sign quoting John Pilger - perhaps Australia's best known conspiracy theorist.

Judge Howard Riddle, who heard Sweden's case for extradition in London last week, came to a different conclusion. He said the case was ''not about WikiLeaks''. The judge added that ''it is an allegation in another European country of serious sexual offences alleged to have occurred on three separate occasions and involving two separate victims''.

That's the point. Australians travelling overseas are advised to act in accordance with local laws. It may be that Sweden's laws on sexual assault are unreasonable.

And it may be that some judges in Britain are too reluctant to grant bail due to concerns about an accused absconding. In time these matters will be resolved in the European judicial systems.

Meanwhile, Assange is entitled to receive assistance from Australia's diplomatic representatives - which is occurring.

So, what's the problem?

If Assange were just another Australian backpacker travelling in Sweden, his case would have raised scant attention in the media, and it is impossible to imagine that any protests would have been organised in his support. But Assange is in the news because WikiLeaks has taken on the United States over its military role in the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan and is in the process of making public hundreds of thousands of US diplomatic cables.

Then there is Assange's obsession with self-promotion. For example, this month The New York Times Style Magazine published a large colour portrait of the WikiLeaks founder, fashionably unshaven, along with a sympathetic profile. Assange has become something of a hero to self-hating Westerners who believe their governments are at best corrupt and at worst murderous.

Needless to say, there are no stylistic portraits of 23-year-old Bradley Manning, who is in US military detention facing the prospect of half a century in prison for providing the US cables to Assange and his supporters. Profiles of Manning suggest he is a troubled and confused young man who has been used by WikiLeaks in its campaign against the US.

In an article in The Australian last Wednesday Assange presented himself as the person who invented the idea of using ''internet technologies in new ways to report the truth''. In doing so he resorted to a cliche, accusing the Gillard government of ''trying to shoot the messenger because it doesn't want the truth revealed''.

Assange went on to assert that ''not a single person, as far as anyone is aware, has been harmed'' by revelations by WikiLeaks. This is a heroic and self-serving assumption which trusts that autocratic nations will not act against their citizens who have been named as supporters of the West by WikiLeaks.

As L. Gordon Crovitz pointed out in last Tuesday's Wall Street Journal, WikiLeaks is not really about the free flow of information leading to the truth but, rather, an attack on the information technologies of Western governments which will severely constrict their ability to operate. This is evident in Assange's essays titled Conspiracy as Government and State and Terrorist Conspiracies - both of which are available on the internet.

The profiles of Assange by Raffi Khatchadourian in The New Yorker in June, by Burns and Somaiya in The New York Times in October and by Stuart Rintoul and Sean Parnell in last Saturday's Weekend Australian tell a common tale. The WikiLeaks founder, who was born in 1971, is very much a product of the hippie-intelligentsia that inhabited the likes of Byron Bay and Magnetic Island, where Assange spent time in his youth.

Assange's mother, Christine, railed against authority - including the authority of democratically elected governments. This is the familiar hippie scenario where government is the enemy - except when it is providing taxpayer-funded education, health and welfare services. Assange was brought up to oppose authority. This he has done for much of his life - except now when he is attempting to rely on the authority of British law to prevent his extradition to Sweden.

Julia Gillard and Barack Obama have acted correctly in upholding the right of democratic governments to conduct confidential discussions with their appointed diplomats and to make some decisions in secret at a time when there are external and internal threats to national security.

President Obama has described the dumping of documents as ''deplorable'' and the Prime Minister has depicted the act of acquiring the material as illegal.

For her part, Gillard has been the recipient of predictable criticism from the Greens (Adam Bandt, Bob Brown), the independent MP Andrew Wilkie and sections of the Labor Left. Last week a collective of academics and civil libertarians - including the American intellectual Noam Chomsky - fired off an angry protest to Gillard telling her to speak up for ''democratic principles and the rule of law''.

Strange - since the rule of law entails that judicial proceedings should proceed independent of the executive arm of government. This suggests the Assange fan club believes that there should be one law for the WikiLeaks founder and another one for everyone else.

Gerard Henderson is the executive director of the Sydney Institute.

Deks

14-12-10, 04:42 AM

Deks

16-12-10, 07:35 AM

Scanned through it, nothing there that I could find apart from some assertions by yourself. Feel free to point out if I've missed it/them, though.

Gubler, A.

16-12-10, 08:02 AM

Scanned through it, nothing there that I could find apart from some assertions by yourself. Feel free to point out if I've missed it/them, though.

Yeah just stuff I made up... This was what was read out in Court in the UK from the Swedish Warrant:

•rape charge: that Assange had held Ardin down, forcibly parted her legs, and had sex with her
•ofredande charge: that Assange had had unsafe sex with her, despite her earlier statement that she was most opposed to the practice, thereby violating her sexual integrity
•ofredande charge: that Assange had pushed his erect penis into Ardin’s back, thereby violating her sexual integrity
•sexual assault charge: that Assange had had unsafe sex with Wilen while she was sleeping

Perhaps the best summary and timeline of events in relation to this rape are collated here:

http://www.crikey.com.au/2010/12/13/rundle-timeline-of-assanges-visit-to-sweden-and-events-that-followed/

buglerbilly

17-12-10, 01:46 PM

Congress Hears WikiLeaks Is ‘Fundamentally Different’ From Media

By Kim Zetter December 16, 2010 | 5:07 pm | Categories: WikiLeaks

The Justice Department would have no problem distinguishing WikiLeaks from traditional media outlets, if it decides to charge WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange with violating the Espionage Act, a former federal prosecutor told lawmakers Thursday.

“By clearly showing how WikiLeaks is fundamentally different, the government should be able to demonstrate that any prosecution here is the exception and is not the sign of a more aggressive prosecution effort against the press,” said Kenneth Wainstein (pictured at right), former assistant attorney general on national security, during a House Judiciary Committee hearing about WikiLeaks and the Espionage Act on Thursday.

The hearing was the first to publicly address WikiLeaks. It consisted of testimony from legal scholars and attorneys as well as former Green Party presidential candidate and consumer advocate Ralph Nader. Testimony focused primarily on whether the 1917 Espionage Act should be revised to make it easier to prosecute recipients of classified information.

But Wainstein’s remarks, coming from a former prosecutor, hint at arguments the Justice Department is likely to make if it proceeds with prosecuting Assange under the existing Espionage Act.

Wainstein was addressing the strong First Amendment challenges that would arise if the government prosecutes Assange for publishing classified information. Free-press defenders say if WikiLeaks can be charged with espionage for publishing such information, there is no reason why a similar prosecution couldn’t be lodged against other news organizations for publishing similarly classified or sensitive information.

But Wainstein said that WikiLeaks has shown itself to be fundamentally different in three ways and is therefore vulnerable to prosecution.

While traditional media outlets focus on publishing newsworthy information to educate the public, WikiLeaks focuses on obtaining and disclosing any official secrets. The media also gather news about sensitive areas of government operations through investigative reporting, he said, while WikiLeaks uses encrypted digital drop boxes to encourage disclosures of sensitive government information and circumvent laws prohibiting such disclosures.

The media also typically limit disclosures only to sensitive information that specifically relates to a particular story deemed to be of public importance, Wainstein said. WikiLeaks, however, releases troves of documents with little or no regard for their relevance.

In his written statement to the committee (.pdf), Wainstein also cited Assange’s oft-quoted remark that he “enjoy[s] crushing bastards” as evidence that his release of sensitive information is “more personal rather than simply a public-minded agenda.” Furthermore, WikiLeaks’ distribution of an encrypted “insurance” file, containing secrets that would be revealed if anything happens to Assange, “reflects a willingness to use his leaked documents for extortion and personal protection rather than simply to advance the values of transparency and public awareness,” Wainstein argued.

Washington’s hand-wringing over WikiLeaks comes as the organization continues to publish from its leaked trove of 250,000 U.S. State Department cables. Unlike earlier releases, the cables are appearing slowly — only 1,600 have been published thus far — and each cable has been read by a journalist, with some names of U.S. diplomatic sources redacted.

Some of the witnesses at the hearing pointed out that many of the cables published so far have contained information that should not have been classified and took aim at the government’s routine over-classification of documents.

“The suppression of information has led to far more loss of life, jeopardization of American security, and all the other consequences now being attributed to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange,” Nader said.

Gabriel Schoenfeld, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, indicated that as a result of so much secrecy, leaks to the press had become one of the primary ways for the public to be kept informed about what its government is doing.

He criticized WikiLeaks, however, for being reckless in the releasing of what he called LMD – “leaks of mass disclosure.” Such leaks are “so massive in volume and indiscriminate” that it becomes difficult to assess the overall level of harm they might cause, he said.

Talk also turned to the so-called Shield Act, which Congress has been mulling as an amendment to the Espionage Act. The amendment would make it illegal to publish the names of informants who provide information to the military and intelligence agencies.

However, Geoffrey Stone, a law professor at the University of Chicago Law School, said the amendment, as it currently stands, would be unconstitutional if applied to nongovernment persons, as it would suppress their right to free speech.

Photo: Kenneth Wainstein
Courtesy National Criminal Justice Reference Service

buglerbilly

17-12-10, 01:51 PM

WikiLeaks: Julian Assange fears he is subject of an 'illegal investigation'

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has claimed that there could be an "illegal investigation" being carried out into him.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange celebrates as he prepares to address the media outside the High Court in central London yesterday. Photo: AFP/GETTY

1:26PM GMT 17 Dec 2010

Speaking on his first day under house arrest, the 39-year-old Australian said he had not been provided with any evidence relating to claims he sexually assaulted two women.

He was let out of prison on Thursday after a judge ruled he should be released ahead of Swedish extradition proceedings in the new year.

Bail conditions require Mr Assange to remain in the country until the extradition hearing next year and he is now staying at Ellingham Hall, a country retreat on the Norfolk/Suffolk border owned by Vaughan Smith, the founder of London's Frontline club.
Speaking from the grounds of the mansion, he claimed certain institutions were "engaged in what appears to be, certainly a secret investigation, but appears also to be an illegal investigation.

"We can see that by how certain people who are allegedly affiliated with us were contained at the US border and had their computers seized, and so on."

Asked if he was facing a US conspiracy, Mr Assange said: "I would say that there is a very aggressive investigation, that a lot of face has been lost by some people, and some people have careers to make by pursuing famous cases, but that is actually something that needs monitoring.

"We've seen the Swedish government, let's not say the government, a Swedish prosecutor in these representations to the British Government and British courts said he needed not to provide a single shred of evidence."

Mr Assange reiterated that he had spent 10 days in solitary confinement at Wandsworth Prison, south west London, and had still not been presented with "a single piece of evidence".

He claimed his organisation had been attacked primarily not by governments, but by banks in Dubai, Switzerland, the US and the UK and added that WikiLeaks is continuing to release information about the banks.

He added: "Over 85 per cent of our economic resources are spent dealing with attacks, dealing with technical attacks, dealing with political attacks, dealing with legal attacks, not doing our journalism. And that, if you like, is a tax upon quality investigative journalism.

"An 85 per cent tax rate on that kind of economic activity. Whereas people who are producing celebrity pieces for Vanity Fair have much lower tax rates."

Mr Assange said that he had support from a "large Washington law firm" and from "colleagues in California" but called for more help.

He said: "We need more, and not just at a reactive level."

After emerging from the High Court in London, Mr Assange vowed to "continue his work and protest his innocence".

Assange believes further leaked information relating to the sexual assault claims are to be made public later today. He has also indicated that the US is preparing to indict him on espionage charges.

A spokeswoman for the US Department of Justice would confirm only that there is "an ongoing investigation into the WikiLeaks matter".

Assange is wanted in Sweden for alleged sex offences, which he denies. His lawyers have accused the Swedish authorities of waging a "vendetta" against him.

Earlier this week at City of Westminster Magistrates' Court he was granted bail pending the bid to extradite him.

But the whistleblower remained in prison while the authorities challenged his release at the High Court in London, arguing that there was "a real risk" he would abscond.

However, on Thursday Mr Justice Ouseley released Assange after rejecting submissions that the risk he posed made it impossible to set him free.

The judge said his cooperation with police suggested he was not "a person who is seeking to evade justice" and accepted offers by Assange's supporters to stump up £200,000 as a cash deposit and a number of other sureties.

buglerbilly

22-12-10, 07:33 AM

Rape accusers in a 'tizzy' after cops 'bamboozled' them: Assange

December 22, 2010 - 10:17AM

Julian Assange feels he has been unjustly persecuted.

"They know not what they do 'cos they are only women"........................you sexist pig! Bamboozled by Police my arse...........the prick still doesn't understand or accept that he has done anything wrong........

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said the Swedish women who have accused him of sexual assault had got into a "tizzy" about the possibility they had caught a sexually transmitted disease from him.

Assange told the BBC that one account of what happened in August - the month at the centre of allegations against him - was that the two women had panicked when they found out they had both slept with him and went to police who "bamboozled" them.

He insisted he was fighting a Swedish extradition warrant because he believes "no natural justice" would occur in Sweden.

Alleged victims ... Anna Ardin, left, and Sofia Wilen.

"There are some serious problems with the Swedish prosecution," he said in an interview from the mansion of a wealthy supporter in eastern England where he must stay as part of his bail conditions.

Sweden wants Britain to extradite the 39-year-old Australian to face questioning over allegations from two women that he raped one of them and sexually assaulted the other in Stockholm in August.

Assange said he was used to attention from women but would not reveal how many women he had slept with.

"A gentleman certainly doesn't count," he said. "I've never had a problem with women. Women have been extremely helpful and generous with me and put up with me, assisting me in my work, caring for me, loving me and so on. That's what I'm used to."

Assange claimed that the Swedish authorities had asked that his Swedish lawyer be "gagged", adding that his offers to be interviewed by video link or by Swedish officials in Britain had been rejected.

"I don't need to be at the beck and call of people making allegations," he said.

"I don't need to go back to Sweden. The law says I... have certain rights, and these rights mean that I do not need to speak to random prosecutors around the world who simply want to have a chat, and won't do it in any other standard way."

He said that one account of what occurred in August was that after having discovered they had each had sex with him, they had got into a "tizzy", or a panic, about the possibility of sexually transmitted diseases.

As a result, he said, the women had gone to the police for advice "and then the police jumped in on this and bamboozled the women".

WikiLeaks has enraged Washington by releasing thousands of US diplomatic cables and US Vice President Joe Biden described Assange as a "hi-tech terrorist".

US officials are believed to be considering how to indict Assange for espionage.

In an interview with The Times on Tuesday, Assange compared WikiLeaks' "persecution" to that endured by Jews in the US in the 1950s.

Assange also confirmed that WikiLeaks was holding a vast amount of material about Bank of America which it intends to release early next year.

"We don't want the bank to suffer unless it's called for," Assange told The Times. "But if its management is operating in a responsive way there will be resignations," he said, without giving details about the material.

Shares in Bank of America have fallen amid speculation that it was a WikiLeaks target.

AFP

buglerbilly

22-12-10, 02:38 PM

CIA’s WikiLeaks Task Force: WTF, Indeed

By Spencer Ackerman December 22, 2010 | 9:33 am | Categories: Info War

It can set up mirrored sites. It can bounce from server to server. But whatever impact WikiLeaks continues to have on the U.S. government after dumping tens of thousands of military reports and diplomatic cables, the CIA’s WikiLeaks Task Force is watching, studying, learning. It’s literally a WTF operation.

Actually, what makes it a WTF operation isn’t just the task force’s acronym. It’s the WTF’s mandate: not to launch any subterfuge against the radical disclosure entity — that would be a job for NSA, most likely, or maybe Saturday Night Live — but rather to study its disclosure’s impact on the CIA’s ability to recruit snitches and retain the trust of spy agencies worldwide.

According to the Washington Post’s Greg Miller, it takes an entire task force to determine that CIA came out of the WikiLeaks saga with minimal exposure. While WikiLeaks appeared to show CIA operations in Iraq, its biggest-hyped disclosure was a boring piece of analysis on homegrown terrorism. The Pentagon and the State Department can only wish they had such limited breaches.

Score one for the CIA’s distaste for sharing information. It didn’t participate in the government-wide SIPRNet secret internet that allowed an Army private like Bradley Manning to allegedly put hundreds of thousands of State Department cables on a Lady Gaga CD. While the Defense Department is rushing to ban thumb drives, an ex-CIA official tells Miller that if he ever put a thumb drive into his work computer, “there would probably be a little trap door under my chair.” For all the carping about CIA’s reluctance to share information from earnest think-tankers and angry congressional panels, here’s an enormous information-security upside.
That’s partially the result of an institutional culture of secrecy. But CIA’s also had a lot of early experience with cyber-insecurity. In 1995, then-Director John Deutch put classified information on his home computer, which his AOL account left vulnerable to cookies, malware or phishing – though a CIA inquiry found no harm was done. More seriously, in what might be the biggest reply-all-FAIL of all time, a CIA agent accidentally emailed the agency’s entire spy network inside Iran in 2004, allowing a double agent to identify and then neutralize all the CIA’s snitches.

And the CIA might not WikiLeak, but it leaks like a sieve. In his first public speech as director of national intelligence, Jim Clapper said that President Obama was pissed at “widely quoted amorphous and anonymous senior intelligence officials who get their jollies from blabbing to the media.” All those are WTF moments — though, as a reporter, I’m not complaining — but chances are they’re not going to merit their own task force.

Photo: CIA

buglerbilly

23-12-10, 02:05 PM

The truth lies trapped in a web of intrigue

December 24, 2010

A murky situation ... Julian Assange outside a police station this week in Britain, where he is on bail. Photo: Reuters

This sexual and political drama has more mysteries than any thriller, writes Guy Rundle in London.

Whatever prompted Naomi Wolf to defend Julian Assange by penning a satirical article for The Huffington Post titled ''Julian Assange Captured by World's Dating Police'', one assumes she is now regretting it. Ditto Michael Moore's ex cathedra statements on whether the sex crime allegations made against the WikiLeaks founder constituted rape or not: ''His condom broke during consensual sex. This is all a bunch of hooey as far as I'm concerned.''

Two weeks ago, when he was on remand in Wandsworth prison, it was broadly accepted that the man responsible for humiliating and challenging great powers across the world had been railroaded by a series of accusations relying on scorned female fury.

But now people more critical of the ethereal 39-year-old former hacker have hit back, as tabloid articles and a long piece in The Guardian detail the allegations against him blow by blow. The tabloid pieces in Sweden's Expressen and Britain's Mail on Sunday seemed more interested in his sexual encounters that were unquestionably consensual than in the criminal accusations. It is the report from The Guardian, one of WikiLeaks' publishing partners, that may do him more damage. Yet even this assessment is more interesting for what it left out - stories of influence, tampering, shadowy establishments and hidden agendas that leave the late Stieg Larsson out in the cold.

The story begins in early August, with the first complainant, Miss A, a woman now universally acknowledged as Anna Ardin, a rising star in the Social Democratic Party and an organiser of Assange's speaking engagement in Stockholm. Ardin had put up Assange in her apartment and organised a crayfish party for him, a traditional Swedish summer get-together attended by journalists and the leaders of Sweden's libertarian anti-censorship Pirate Party.

Assange and Ardin had begun a sexual relationship but, according to Nick Davies in The Guardian report, Ardin had told two friends that the sex had been ''violent''; Assange had pinned down her arm to prevent her applying a condom. She had let him stay in her apartment, but not her bed.

Unbeknown to her, Assange was also seeing Sofia Wilen, a photographer who, by her own account to police, had become a little obsessed with Assange after seeing him on TV. Though she had told him she never had unsafe sex, she said she had woken to find him having sex with her without a condom. According to her account to prosecutors, they joked about pregnancy, had breakfast and returned to Stockholm by train, with Wilen paying for the tickets - as she had paid days earlier for the cinema, the meal and the train out.

On the Wednesday, August 18, Wilen rang Ardin, whom she did not know, to find out where Assange was. They compared notes and, on Friday, August 20, went to Klara police station to inquire how they could force Assange to take a test for sexually transmitted infections. Fifteen minutes into the interview the police decided to ask the duty prosecutor to open a rape investigation.

Though it would be months before it began to be adjudicated in The Huffington Post, the case became murky and mysterious from the get-go. Wilen's experience had been the basis for the rape accusation, Ardin's for two misdemeanour accusations. The senior prosecutor threw out the rape accusation, leaving a case barely worth pursuing.

But then Claes Borgstrom entered the scene. Battered and feisty, a real-life Kurt Wallander, Borgstrom is both a celebrity lawyer and a major figure in the Social Democratic Party, its gender equality spokesman. He petitioned the appeals prosecutor, Marianne Ny, to revive the accusations. When she did, in early September, there were four accusations, not three, the most serious being a new one - that of violent sexual coercion of Ardin.

The new accusation created a substantial difference between the first and later account of events to the police. It was at this time that material began to disappear from the internet. Two tweets were removed from Ardin's Twitter feed in early September - one saying ''Julian wants to go to a crayfish party, anyone around'' and another from the crayfish party Ardin organised for him that night ''2am - sitting outside with the most exciting, interesting people in the world'', both tweets sent in the 24 hours after the alleged violent sexual encounter took place.

Simultaneously, two items disappeared from blogs written or co-written by Ardin: a record of events making no mention of a violent sexual encounter, and a ''7-step guide to revenge'' on ex-lovers. All four deleted items were retrieved from internet caches by Swedish bloggers.

One of those who retrieved the deleted material was Goran Rudling, an activist involved in a campaign to revise Sweden's 2005 Sex Crimes Act, which he believes has rendered the law unworkable. No fan of Assange, whom he describes as a ''villain - he wants to make himself more important by saying there is a conspiracy to get him'', Rudling nevertheless points out that the investigation of his case has been hamstrung by a routine disregard for the proper procedures.

''There is, for example, no full record of the first interviews, written or audio/video. So we don't know what questions were asked, or how they were answered,'' Rudling says. ''The arrest warrant was issued before the interview proper had even begun, and one of the complainants was only interviewed the next day, by telephone.''

Why was a warrant for a serious allegation issued so quickly? One possibility is so that it could be leaked in time for the afternoon news, especially to the right-wing tabloid Expressen, which painted such a harsh picture of Assange that it prompted Ardin to give an interview to the rival paper Aftonbladet the next day, in which she said that ''Assange is not violent and we do not fear him … this is about someone who has problems with women''.

It is this quote that has become a headache for Borgstrom, since it contradicts Ardin's later claims. Questioned about this by reporters, Borgstrom replied that said the women ''weren't jurists - they don't know what rape is''. This claim was shaky. As gender equality officer at Uppsala University, Ardin had issued a new edition of the student union's gender equality procedures, including a guide to legal recourse.

By now, however, attention had turned to Borgstrom and the passion with which he was pursuing the case. His decision to take the case had been met with bemusement by many as his party was on the verge of contesting the September general election, one it lost badly.

When the Social Democrats were last in power, Borgstrom had helped draft the 2005 Sex Crime Act, which had made it possible to charge people with what has become known as ''sex by surprise''. Since losing power in 2006, his party has claimed that the ruling centre-right coalition has done nothing to give the new laws any force. Opponents of the law contended that it was unworkable, prompting investigations into matters that would be reduced to two conflicting stories in court and open to misuse for reputation damage and revenge.

Crucially, the 2005 law had gone beyond simple notion of consent and elaborated the idea of ''violation of sexual integrity'' and non-financial ''sexual exploitation'' - that is, psychological or situational manipulation. It thus became possible to charge someone with a sex crime even if consent was present throughout, a feature of at least two, and possibly all four, of the accusations against Assange.

The accusations against him occurred at a highly charged time, as the centre-right government received an exhaustive review of the law. The review had been prompted by bitter struggle between those who said it was unworkable - people drawn from the left and right - and those on the centre-left, feminists and greens who argued that the justice system should be further transformed to overcome the low conviction rate it achieved.

One of the players in the debate had been Gothenburg's crime development unit, a department of the prosecutor's office responsible for exploring new modes for the development of sex crime legislation, and headed by the appeals prosecutor Marianne Ny.

Does this add up to a possible hidden agenda? Yes and no. Unlike the experience of Larsson's character Lisbeth Salander, Sweden has less explicit corruption than a lot of countries. What it does have is a suffocatingly tight political elite, much of it grouped around the Social Democratic Party, which has huge cultural power even in opposition.

Some, such as the law blogger Marten Schultz, are impatient with Assange's repeated claims of especially bad treatment, arguing that the most surprising decision from the prosecutors was the second one, stating that Assange was not a suspect - without carrying out any investigation.

Others, such as Christian Engstrom, a Pirate Party member of the European Parliament, suggest that it would be difficult for Assange to get a fair trial in Sweden, as the judge and ''lay examiners'' who assess each case are appointed by the political parties in proportion to their numbers in parliament. ''Usually Swedish justice works well,'' he argues. ''But in cases like Julian's everything goes strange.''

His chief of staff, Henrik Alexandersson, is more forthright, saying that as Assange has antagonised all major parties ''there is no chance of him getting a fair trial''.

Few cases in recent times have been so argued about on the basis of so much misinformation. Even Davies's account in The Guardian has been criticised as one-sided by a WikiLeaks associate in Sweden who was one of several people who tried to mediate between Assange and Ardin, before she went to the police. ''I would say that it is simply the case for the prosecution,'' he says. ''The police record contains Assange's early interview with the police on the 'misconduct' [accusations], yet none of that has been included.''

Assange has at no time been charged with any crime. His arrest warrant was issued in relation to questions the prosecutors' office wishes him to answer regarding the accusations. Assange is next due in court in Britain on January 11 for the beginning of his extradition hearing.

The WikiLeaks associate suggests the case may never come to trial, noting that ''one of the complainants has refused to sign off on her statement''. Even if that proves to be the case, Julian Assange has entered history, though it remains to be seen whether in triumph or tragedy.

Days of his life

August 20 Julian Assange is accused of the rape and sexual assault of Sofia Wilen and of ofredande (''unfreedom'' - a misdemeanour crime under Swedish law) in relation to Anna Ardin. The accusations are leaked to the tabloid Espressen.

August 21 Stockholm's chief prosecutor withdraws the arrest warrant for Assange, saying she sees no description of rape or assault. An investigation into the ofredande accusation stands.

August 31 Police in Stockholm question Assange and formally tell him of the allegation against him. He denies the accusations.

September 1 Marianne Ny, an appeals prosecutor, reopens an investigation into rape in relation to Ardin.

November 18 An arrest warrant is issued in Sweden for Assange to answer questions from the prosecutor.

November 30 Interpol issues a ''red notice'' for Assange's detention.

December 6 A European arrest warrant is issued.

December 7 Assange gives himself up to British police. The Crown Prosecution Service reads out four accusations: rape: that Assange had held Ardin down, forcibly parted her legs and had sex with her; ofredande: that Assange had unsafe sex with Ardin, thereby violating her sexual integrity; ofredande: that Assange had pushed his erect penis into Ardin's back, thereby violating her sexual integrity; sexual assault: that Assange had had unsafe sex with Wilen while she was sleeping.

December 16 Assange is released on bail of £200,000 ($308,000) plus several sureties. An initial extradition hearing is set for January 11. The substantive hearing will begin in early February.

buglerbilly

24-12-10, 04:50 AM

US Army launches WikiLeaks probe

Nancy A Youssef of McClatchy Newspapers

December 24, 2010 - 2:59PM

WASHINGTON - The US Army has launched a wide-ranging investigation into how a private suspected of downloading thousands of secret reports and diplomatic cables and handing them over to WikiLeaks was able to do so and whether other soldiers should face criminal charges in the case.

An army official familiar with the investigation told McClatchy newspapers that the six-member task force has been given until February 1 to complete a report that will look at everything from how Private Bradley Manning was selected for his job and trained to whether his superiors missed warning signs that he was downloading documents he had no need to read.

The army confirmed the investigation, but wouldn't release details.

Advertisement: Story continues below The report could change how the army - the largest distributor of government security clearances - grants access to government documents as well as lead to recommendations of charges against soldiers who worked with Manning and may have been aware of his activities.

Manning was working as an intelligence specialist in Baghdad during 2009 and the early months of 2010 when he allegedly downloaded hundreds of thousands of classified documents.

Those documents reached WikiLeaks - army officials have said they're not certain how - and have been published by the website in four separate bursts that began in April with the release of a video showing an army helicopter firing on civilians in Baghdad, killing two Reuters news agency employees.

The website also released tens of thousands of documents related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan before the current, ongoing publication of hundreds of thousands of US State Department cables, which began on November 28.

Manning allegedly downloaded the documents while pretending to listen to music by Lady Gaga on headphones, a cover story, investigators say, to explain the sound of the computer's CD drive whirring as he copied the files.

He's being held in solitary confinement at the Quantico Marine Base in Virginia on charges that could lead to a 52-year prison sentence.

Some human rights groups charge that Manning is being mistreated, with no ability to exercise or access to news.

The Defense Department has denied the claims.

Army Lieutenant General Robert Caslen Jr, the commander of the Army General Command and Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, will lead the study, which was ordered by John McHugh, the Army secretary.

"Lt Gen Caslen has a very broad investigative mandate and he has been assured of the co-operation of both the Department of the Army and the US Central Command as he proceeds. Lt Gen Caslen's investigation will not interfere nor conflict with the ongoing criminal investigation," Army spokesman Lt Col Christopher Garver said in a statement prepared in response to questions from McClatchy.

No other service branch is conducting a similar investigation, but the army findings could lead to changes throughout the military. With more than 800,000 uniformed personnel, the Army issues more security clearances than any other government organisation.

The US Justice Department also is conducting an investigation into whether to bring charges against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, though such a prosecution faces a number of challenges, including the apparent difficulty prosecutors are having tying Assange directly to Manning.

Manning, now 23, reportedly isn't co-operating with investigators, and Defense Department officials who have been briefed on the case said according to their most recent information, now months old, that no direct tie has been established between Manning and Assange.

© 2010 AAP

buglerbilly

24-12-10, 04:57 AM

Assange says he could be killed in US jail

December 24, 2010 - 11:59AM

The only reason there'd be a "high chance" is because he is such a mouthy, obnoxious little prick and people would want the peace his non-existence would bring.............his paranoia and media manipulation continues.............

WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange says there is a "high chance" he would be killed in a US jail if he were to be extradited from Britain on espionage charges.

The Australian is on bail in Britain fighting a bid by Sweden to extradite him over sex assault claims, but Washington is believed to be considering how to indict him over the leaking of thousands of US diplomatic cables.

Assange told The Guardian it would be "politically impossible" for Britain to send him across the Atlantic, adding that the government of Prime Minister David Cameron would want to show it had not been "co-opted" by Washington.

"Legally the UK has the right to not extradite for political crimes. Espionage is the classic case of political crimes. It is at the discretion of the UK government as to whether to apply to that exception," he said.

He said US authorities were "trying to strike a plea deal" with Bradley Manning, the US army soldier suspected of providing WikiLeaks with the cables.

Assange added that if the United States succeeded in getting him extradited from Britain or Sweden, then there was a "high chance" of him being killed "Jack Ruby-style" in an American prison.

Ruby, a nightclub owner, shot dead Lee Harvey Oswald at a police station in Dallas, Texas days after Oswald was arrested for the assassination of US President John F Kennedy in 1963.

Ruby's alleged links to organised crime sparked conspiracy theories about his involvement in an overall plot surrounding the assassination of Kennedy.

Assange has previously said that he and other WikiLeaks staff have received death threats since the website began to release a cache of about 250,000 secret US State Department cables in November.

The 39-year-old has been staying at a friend's country mansion in eastern England since his release from jail last week on strict bail conditions that include reporting to police daily and wearing an electronic tag.

A court in London is due to hold a full hearing on the Swedish extradition request starting February 7.

© 2010 AFP

Deks

24-12-10, 01:50 PM

The only reason there'd be a "high chance" is because he is such a mouthy, obnoxious little prick and people would want the peace his non-existence would bring.............his paranoia and media manipulation continues.............

Wow, are you serious?

Not sure if it was posted here but finally got to read the police report summary, what an arse! Doesn't change anything though :)

buglerbilly

24-12-10, 02:01 PM

Wow, are you serious?

No I wrote that to pass the time of day..................:doh

Deks

25-12-10, 12:43 AM

No I wrote that to pass the time of day..................:doh

Ah fair enough, I thought you may respond with some reasoning into your thoughts though.

For myself, I haven't yet decided whether on balance wikileaks is a good thing or not. I'm certainly not calling for the julian assanges head over and above anyone else in that particular arena. ;)

buglerbilly

25-12-10, 01:48 AM

I thought my views on Mr Assange were very clear: -

1) Personally, I think he's an obnoxious little prick who's ego is only matched by his inability to keep his zip up..........this doesn't only refer to the Swedish instances............

2) He's of a left-wing "society" that believes TOTALLY in its own supreme correctness ensuring that the rest of us mere mortals have our outlooks and beliefs modified to understand that THEY are always right.........IF you've never dealt with such vermin, then undoubtedly this will sound strange to you BUT I've had to deal with it, understand the type and still have difficulty being polite when discussing the same.

3) WikiLeaks, as a group, I have no problem with IN THEORY. However, taking the current example as a case in point, we still are in the very early days of how we handle Cyber Leaks where people ILLEGALLY download masses of information NOT business info but State, Defence and Political "secrets"; to then say this puts no one at risk 'cos they've read it OR "its your fault cos you didn't read the STOLEN info we have in our possession to verify what or who was at risk" defies description in its banal rigtheous naivety and blatant stupidity. Equally, to ignore the Global political impact such disclosures can creat is also naive and stupid.

4) Do I want to live in a society where all matters are open to disclosure as a right? Nope I do NOT...........it's idealistic and almost moronic to beleve that this will somehow ensure either equality, justice or peace in this World. I most certainly do not want other people knowing what I do or say in every instance, I value my privacy far more than that and make no mistake, being allowed to leak State secrets is only a skip and a jump away from no one have any rights to privacy as privacy, by definition, could be viewed as having "secrets".

gf a.k.a. ROBOPIMP

29-12-10, 01:03 AM

with Bug on this.

Assange is a teenage anarchist masquerading as an adult. this notion that the general public are entitled to see the absolute workings of the State because we're citizens and vote the govt in is absolute nonsense - it undermines the nature of how diplomacy is done - and for foerks sake, if he doesn;t think that he's put local afghanis at risk, then he's a complete moron.

granted we've been giving riding instructions on not to comment on wikileaks in the open press, but geezuz wept, some of this nonsense he promotes as evidence of how our governments are undermining democracy is plain rubbish

his integrity got challenged as soon as Pilger bankrolled him.. :) Gods gift to anti-americanism (Pilger)

Redcoat

29-12-10, 04:49 PM

Sad case the man is what my history teacher in pre PC days used to call an intellectual spastic one aspect of his brain is highly developed but when it comes to the rest he is clearly inadequate . he lacks any sort of understanding of the complex inter related dangerous world in which he lives and is socially inadequate to boot. In other circumstances he would be despised and or pitied but because of what he has done he has aroused powerful enemies and some dubious friends amongst the woolly liberals of the world who like to believe that the world is lovely when the truth is that their liberties depend on the fact that more realistic men watch out for them and other nasty rough men are prepared to suffer hardship and maybe death whilst visiting unspeakable violence on the real enemies of liberty.

However he has been naughty and naiivity is no defence and now he must have his bottom smacked because he is a naughty boy and to discourage others

buglerbilly

31-12-10, 02:14 AM

Wired journalists deny cover-up over WikiLeaks boss and accused US soldier

Pair with access to transcript of comments by Bradley Manning deny they could help prosecution against Julian Assange

Paul Lewis guardian.co.uk, Thursday 30 December 2010 21.18 GMT

Bradley Manning, accused of leaking classified reports to WikiLeaks. Photograph: Associated Press

Two journalists with access to a secret transcript of comments by Bradley Manning, the US soldier accused of leaking confidential material to whistleblowing website WikiLeaks, have denied speculation that the material could potentially help a prosecution against Julian Assange.

The pair, from Wired magazine, said there was nothing "newsworthy" in unpublished internet chat logs between Manning and Adrian Lamo, a former hacker who claims to have discussed the leak with the young intelligence officer and later tipped off the FBI.

Wired.com claimed a scoop in June when it obtained a transcript of the chats and published excerpts in which Manning, 23, appeared to confess to being the source of classified material handed to WikiLeaks, which was founded by Assange.

However, in recent days the journalists have found themselves at the centre of an increasingly acrimonious spat with critics who accuse them of withholding crucial information about the largest leak of military data in history.

The dispute has centred on the 75% of the transcript Wired has not published, claiming the information would infringe Manning's privacy or compromise sensitive military information.

Amid reports that federal prosecutors want to establish that Assange "encouraged or helped" Manning to leak the material in order to make him a co-conspirator, Wired has found itself under pressure to reveal more about the unpublished chats.

Over the past month, Lamo has made fresh claims about the soldier's relationship with Assange.

Suggesting that Assange was more than a passive recipient of the leaks, Lamo has claimed that WikiLeaks either provided Manning with a special FTP server to prioritise his leak or arranged a physical drop-off in the United States. But he admits his claims are based on memory, as the hard drive that contained his copy of the full chat transcript was taken by the FBI. Apart from US law officials, the Wired journalists are the only individuals known to have copies of the full chat.

"The chats Wired has but is withholding – and about which they are refusing to comment – are newsworthy in the extreme," Glenn Greenwald, one of Wired's fiercest critics, wrote on Monday.

The following day Evan Hansen, editor-in-chief of Wired.com, and Kevin Poulsen, the journalist who obtained the web chats, published a response to what they said were Greenwald's personal and unfounded attacks. Today both told the Guardian they had reviewed the unpublished transcripts in the last 24 hours. They concluded there was no discussion shedding new light on the relationship between Manning and Assange.

"If I were a prosecutor, everything I would be looking at [in seeking to mount a case against Manning or Assange] would be in the published record," Hansen said. "We're trying to get the news out there that is relevant to the public. If there was something like that in the unpublished [chat logs] we would have made that public six months ago."

Poulsen also said that there was nothing "newsworthy" in the parts of the transcript they had decided to hold back, adding that nothing "of substance" about Manning's relationship with Assange had been kept secret.

"We have discussions in the newsroom, at every major turn in the Manning case, about whether it is now appropriate to publish the complete logs," he said. "And so far we have concluded it isn't."

Assange is fighting extradition to Sweden, where he faces unrelated allegations – which he denies – of sexual misconduct with two women. Although there is no evidence of an imminent indictment from the US. Assange has said his greatest fear is extradition to the US, where he believes federal prosecutors are "trying to strike a plea deal" with Manning so that he can be charged as a co-conspirator.

The material allegedly leaked by Manning is said to include more than 250,000 confidential diplomatic cables, redacted versions of which have been published by the Guardian and other media outlets over the last two months.

buglerbilly

31-12-10, 10:10 AM

WikiLeaks cable dump reveals flaws of State Department's information-sharing tool

By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer

Friday, December 31, 2010; 12:00 AM

Before the infamous leak, the 250,000 State Department cables acquired by anti-secrecy activists resided in a database so obscure that few diplomats had heard of it.

It had a bureaucratic name, Net-Centric Diplomacy, and served an important mission: the rapid sharing of information that could help uncover threats against the United States. But like many bureaucratic inventions, it expanded beyond what its creators had imagined. It also contained risks that no one foresaw.

Millions of people around the world now know that the State Department's secret cables became the property of WikiLeaks. But only recently have investigators understood the critical role played by Net-Centric Diplomacy, a computer initiative that became the conduit for what was perhaps the biggest heist of sensitive U.S. government documents in modern times.

Partly because of its design but also because of confusion among its users, the database became an inadvertent repository for a vast array of State Department cables, including records of the U.S. government's most sensitive discussions with foreign leaders and diplomats. Unfortunately for the department, the system lacked features to detect the unauthorized downloading by Pentagon employees and others of massive amounts of data, according to State Department officials and information-security experts. The result was a disastrous setback for U.S. diplomatic efforts around the globe.

"This was as bad as it gets," said Patrick F. Kennedy, undersecretary of state for management, referring to the diplomatic fallout. "We had, over the course of many years, built up a huge amount of faith and trust. That's ruptured now, all over the world."

U.S. officials and security analysts describe the leak as a cautionary tale, one that underscores flaws in security for secret government data while also exposing a downside to the U.S. government's enthusiastic embrace of information-sharing in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Investigations into the attacks concluded that government agencies had failed to share critical information that could have helped uncover the Sept. 11 plot. Because of that lapse, Congress tasked the Office of the Director of National Intelligence with pressuring key government agencies - including the Pentagon, the Homeland Security Department and the State Department - to find ways to rapidly share information that could be relevant to possible terrorist plots and other threats.

The State Department, with its hundreds of diplomatic posts worldwide, was already making tens of thousands of classified cables available to intelligence and military officials with secret security clearances. But in 2005, the DNI and the Defense Department agreed to pay for a new State Department computer database that could allow the agency's cables to flow more easily to other users throughout the federal government.

"It was consistent with the concept of needing to share information after September 11th," said State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley. "We were asked to do it, and the Pentagon paid for it."

Plagued by user errors

Net-Centric Diplomacy was launched in 2006 and tied into a giant Defense Department system known as the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network, or SIPRnet. Soon, nearly half a million government employees and contractors with security clearances could tap into the diplomatic cables from computer terminals around the globe.

The State Department's new database quickly garnered praise as a model of interagency collaboration. The database was named a finalist for an Excellence in Government award in 2006. The following year, then-Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte, whose agency led the push for information-sharing, congratulated State Department officials for making their secret cables "available in a timely, user-friendly way."

"The State Department's commitment shows the way for other agencies," Negroponte wrote in a Jan. 29, 2007, letter to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

The flaws did not become apparent until much later. One of biggest problems: Sensitive cables were often dumped willy-nilly into the database regardless of whether they belonged there, according to two department officials familiar with the internal procedures for data storage.

Thousands of cables and other documents pass through Foggy Bottom daily, and to ensure that they are routed properly, each is assigned a code or codes, similar to a Zip code. One such six-letter code - SIPDIS - flags a computer to route the document to the Net-Centric database, allowing it to be viewed by intelligence officers and military personnel worldwide.

In practice, embassy employees added the code word SIPDIS by rote, often without fully understanding what it meant, said one of the department officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the subject.

"It wasn't clear what was to be shared or not shared," the official said. "So you end up with a cable in the database that contains embarrassing stuff about [German Prime Minister Angela] Merkel. Is that the kind of stuff that a war fighter really needs to see?"

Limited oversight

A few State Department officials expressed early concerns about unauthorized access to the database, but these worries mostly involved threats to individual privacy, department officials said. In practice, agency officials relied on the end-users of the data - mostly military and intelligence personnel - to guard against abuse.

The department was not equipped to assign individual passwords or perform independent scrutiny over the hundreds of thousands of users authorized by the Pentagon to use the database, said Kennedy, the undersecretary of state.

"It is the responsibility of the receiving agency to ensure that the information is handled, stored and processed in accordance with U.S. government procedures," he said.

To prevent illegal intrusion, the State Department has long maintained safeguards that make it difficult for an individual to download sensitive information onto a portable device such as a flash drive or compact disc. But Kennedy acknowledged that the department had no means of overseeing practices by other agencies using its data.

U.S. investigators suspect that Bradley Manning, an Army private stationed in the Persian Gulf, downloaded the 250,000 State Department cables to compact discs from a computer terminal in Kuwait. He then allegedly provided the files to WikiLeaks, which shared them with newspapers and posted hundreds of them online.

In the wake of the leak, State Department officials cut off outside access to Net-Centric Diplomacy pending a review. Some secret documents are still being made available to other agencies through a different network designed to handle highly classified data, Kennedy said.

Although it is perhaps small comfort, the disclosures could have been worse. In May, the Obama administration's top intelligence officer asked the State Department to expand the amount of material available to other agencies through Net-Centric Diplomacy.

In a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, then-Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair urged that the database include not only cables but also e-mails between State Department officials. Such a move would "ensure that critical information will reach the necessary readers across the government," Blair wrote.

Clinton refused.

Gubler, A.

04-01-11, 12:20 AM

Hardly the Pentagon Papers of our era Paul Monk

From: The Australia
January 04, 2011 12:00AM

THE single most important reference point in the debate over the WikiLeaks case is the leaking of the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times, in 1971, by Daniel Ellsberg.
Those who see Ellsberg as a hero tend to see Julian Assange as one. Those critical of Assange tend to denounce what he has done for the same reasons and in the same language that Henry Kissinger used in 1971, when he described his old Harvard University colleague Ellsberg as "the most dangerous man in America".

Ellsberg himself has come out in support of Assange. But the differences between the Ellsberg and Assange cases are more important than the similarities. Ellsberg was a Harvard-educated economist who did his PhD on decision-making under uncertainty and worked at the highest levels of classification for the Rand Corporation and the Pentagon in the 1960s. He worked with a sense of patriotism and vocation. His job, as he saw it, was to help the US government think well and learn efficiently at the highest levels on matters of strategy and security.

Like many senior US officials, including the secretary of defence, Robert McNamara, he slowly came to the conclusion that the Vietnam War was a seriously misconceived, inefficient and ultimately immoral exercise in futility. In 1967, he was a member of a team of 30 analysts assigned by McNamara to review the whole history of decision-making that had led to the mess in Vietnam. The Pentagon Papers were the papers assembled and written by this team. Ellsberg leaked them four years later because he believed the lessons they laid out had not been learned and that the only way to help the republic overcome the problem was to take them to the most reputable newspaper in the country and inject them into public debate.

In Papers on the War, in 1972, Ellsberg wrote: "The urgent need to circumvent the lying and the self-deception was, for me, one of the 'lessons of Vietnam'; a broader one was that there were situations - Vietnam was an example - in which the US government, starting ignorant, did not, would not, learn. There was a whole set of what amounted to institutional 'anti-learning' mechanisms working to preserve and guarantee unadaptive and unsuccessful behaviour: the fast turnover in personnel; the lack of institutional memory at any level; the failure to study history, to analyse or even record operational experience or mistakes; the effective pressures for optimistically false reporting at every level, for describing 'progress' rather than problems or failure, thus concealing the very need for change or for learning. Well, helping the US government learn - in this case, learn how to learn - was something, perhaps, I could do; that had been my business."

Compare this with Assange's outlook, in essays written in 2006 under the titles "State and Terrorist Conspiracies" and "Conspiracy as Governance." Describing the US government as an authoritarian conspiracy, he declared that his strategy was to disrupt its ability to share information and thus disable the functioning of the "conspiracy". He wrote, as if this constituted a profound insight into the workings of government: "We can marginalise a conspiracy's ability to act by decreasing total conspiratorial power until it is no longer able to understand, and hence respond effectively to its environment . . . An authoritarian conspiracy that cannot think efficiently cannot act to preserve itself."

In other words, Assange set out not to help the US government learn, but to prevent it from learning, from "thinking" effectively at all. He wants to cripple it.

The difference between these two points of view or objectives could hardly be greater. But ironically, the leaks show that the US government is not an "authoritarian conspiracy" at all. They show, notably in the case of relations with the Arab states of the Middle East, an American government served by generally candid diplomats, trying to keep its balance and think its ways through a devilishly challenging set of problems, chief among them how to dissuade the theocratic and dangerously anti-Semitic regime in Iran from developing nuclear weapons. They show nuance and scruple, not authoritarian conspiracy. They show honest assessments of world leaders such as the corrupt and domineering former KGB thug Vladimir Putin, or the corrupt and irresponsible Italian leader Silvio Berlusconi. Moreover, as Robert Gates, heir to McNamara, has pointed out, the leaks were possible precisely because the US government had been trying to circulate more information to more of its civil servants in order to facilitate learning. That was Ellsberg's agenda. Assange wants to prevent just such learning.

A good deal in the cables has been interesting, but that would surely be a frivolous criterion for assessing whether they were justified. In making such an assessment, we should weigh up several overriding considerations.

First, has there been a clear matter of public interest of an urgent nature that the leaks address, which might outweigh the possible harm they could cause? Second, do the leaks provide us with finished analysis laying out the judgments of senior officials, thus allowing us to assign responsibility for some misdeed or major error? Third, was the intention of those who leaked the material morally responsible, in the sense of a careful and discriminating judgment about the good intended?

The answers to each of these questions would appear to be "No". One imagines it was for these reasons that Larry Sanger, founder of Wikipedia, which is designed to help people learn and to do good, wrote to Assange and his colleagues, saying, "Speaking as Wikipedia's co-founder, I consider you enemies of the US, not just the government, but the people".

The problem, in short, is not leaks, but civic responsibility. Efforts to hold government to account and to understand the business of diplomacy need to bear this in mind and to design strategies that enhance responsibility in government, rather than simply trying to sabotage standard operating procedures.

Paul Monk is a former senior intelligence analyst, whose PhD was a study of US counter-insurgency strategy during the Cold War. He runs an open registration seminar on conspiracy theory and critical thinking.

buglerbilly

06-01-11, 10:54 AM

From today's UK Guardian...........

The day Julian Assange threatened to sue The Guardian over the US embassy cables story

The WikiLeaks US embassy cables revelations caused a world-wide sensation. But the story behind their publication turns out to be just as sensational too.

It transpires that the partnership between the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and The Guardian was anything but straightforward.

According to a Vanity Fair article by Sarah Ellison, there were rows, legal threats and a series of shocks before the newspaper was able to publish what she calls "one of the greatest journalistic scoops of the last 30 years."

She has reconstructed a blow-by-blow account of the twists and turns of the strained relationship between The Guardian - and other papers, including the New York Times - and Assange.

He emerges as an enigmatic, erratic and high-handed individual whose changes of mind and mood bedevilled the process of publishing the documents.

Assange is now under police bail in Britain, facing extradition to Sweden for questioning about claims of sexual assault. But Ellison's report sticks only to his dealings with The Guardian.

She tells how The Guardian's Nick Davies and Ian Traynor made the original contact with Assange in June last year. From that sprang the first revelatory cache of military logs of the war in Afghanistan.

The Guardian, having brought the New York Times on board, then got its first inkling of the difficulties it might have with Assange. Without consulting the paper, Assange arranged for Germany's Der Spiegel to join the partnership.

It also became clear that there was a major difference between the ethos of the newspapers and that of WikiLeaks. While the papers' editors were not prepared to publish anything that might lead to reprisals, WikiLeaks was happy to allow the names of Afghan civilians to be posted on its website.

Assange did not favour redaction. Ellison quotes The Guardian's investigations editor, David Leigh, as saying:

"We were starting from: 'Here's a document. How much of it shall we print?' Whereas Julian's ideology was, 'I shall dump everything out and then you have to try and persuade me to cross a few things out.' We were coming at it from opposite poles."

By this time, WikiLeaks colleagues noted that Assange was "becoming increasingly autocratic and dismissive." So did The Guardian.

Just before publication of the Afghan logs, a furious Davies was shocked to discover that Assange had unilaterally given the database to Channel 4.

Next came the war logs relating to the war in Iraq, and Assange sprang yet another surprise on The Guardian by demanding that the Bureau of Investigative Journalism should have access to the material.

This meant a delay in publishing. Leigh agreed to that, but only if Assange would gave the paper another batch of documents - the so-called "package three" - which was the highly sensitive US embassy cables.

According to Leigh, Assange told him: "You can have package three tonight, but you have to give me a letter signed by the Guardian editor saying you won't publish package three until I say so." Assange got his letter

Meanwhile, there were continuing problems of WikiLeaks's refusal to redact as The Guardian started its Iraq war logs publication on 23 October amid what Ellison refers to as "a growing sense of unease among the media outlets, both with one another and with Assange."

The NY Times went so far as to publish a critical profile of Assange in which it quoted his anonymous former colleagues as speaking of his "erratic and imperious behaviour, and a nearly delusional grandeur."

The Guardian then discovered that a former WikiLeaks volunteer had leaked "package three" to the freelance journalist, and freedom-of-information campaigner, Heather Brooke.

Leigh, having invited Brooke to join The Guardian team, realised that by obtaining the data from a source other than Assange, the paper was released from its promise to wait for Assange's green light to publish.

Leigh passed on the documents to Der Spiegel and the NY Times, and the three titles were poised to publish on 8 November. With seven days to go, Assange and his lawyer stormed into the office of Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger and threatened to sue.

Rusbridger, Leigh and executives from Der Spiegel then spent a marathon session with Assange, his lawyer and another WikiLeaks member, Kristin Hrafnsson, before "an uneasy calm" was restored.

Ellison writes of that crucial meeting in detail:

"Assange was pallid and sweaty, his thin frame racked by a cough that had been plaguing him for weeks. He was also angry, and his message was simple: he would sue the newspaper if it went ahead and published stories based on the quarter of a million documents that he had handed over to The Guardian just three months earlier...

"Rusbridger somehow kept all parties at the table — a process involving a great deal of coffee followed by a great deal of wine. Ultimately, he agreed to a further delay, allowing Assange time to bring in other media partners, this time France's Le Monde and Spain's El País."

In the end, The Guardian and the other four papers were able to publish, thus sparking a hugely critical response from the US administration, which is seeking ways to prosecute Assange.

But, as we have seen, it had been a rocky road for The Guardian way before it faced up to that controversy. Ellison writes:

"When I asked Rusbridger if he had any regrets about the way his paper handled the cables or the way it worked with WikiLeaks, he said, "No," but his response was so tentative that it seemed to reveal how fragile the project was in his mind.

"I think given the complexity of it all, touch wood, as I speak at the moment, it is remarkable it has gone so well. Given all the tensions that were built into it, it would have been surprising to get out of it without some friction, but we negotiated it all quite well."

Source: Vanity Fair

buglerbilly

28-01-11, 06:14 AM

WikiLeaks rival goes live as editors turn on Assange

Asher Moses

January 28, 2011 - 12:52PM

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his former right-hand man, Daniel Domschelt-Berg aka. Daniel Schmitt. Photo: Flickr.com/andygee1

The breakaway leaking site formed by several WikiLeaks defectors has gone live early, ironically after the design of the site was leaked.

OpenLeaks, created by WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's former right-hand man, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, promises to be a more democratic organisation than WikiLeaks and plans to work with other organisations, including media, to release documents publicly, as opposed to publishing them itself.

The world has known about OpenLeaks since late last year, when it was revealed that Mr Domscheit-Berg and Mr Assange had fallen out. Chat logs showed Mr Domscheit-Berg accusing Mr Assange of being autocratic and behaving like "some kind of emperor or slave trader", failing to consult his team on important decisions.

Advertisement: Story continues below Swedish press had reported at the time that the OpenLeaks launch was imminent but it has evidently been a harder task than first imagined.

This week, long-time leak site Cryptome, which was launched a decade before WikiLeaks in 1996, published virtually the entire contents of the then hidden OpenLeaks website. That forced the site to go live in an "alpha" version, but organisers say they don't expect to begin leaking documents until the second half of the year.

Mr Domscheit-Berg has labelled Mr Assange a control freak and this was highlighted recently by a profile in Vanity Fair, which details the now fractured relationship between The Guardian newspaper and Mr Assange.

Mr Assange reportedly threatened to sue The Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger if he published documents leaked by WikiLeaks before Mr Assange was ready.

The New York Times executive editor Bill Keller is another media heavyweight who has fallen out with Mr Assange, describing him in a new feature article as "elusive, manipulative and volatile".

"We regarded Assange throughout as a source, not as a partner or collaborator, but he was a man who clearly had his own agenda," Keller wrote.

The falling out between Mr Assange and some of his biggest media partners could play into the hands of OpenLeaks.

"OpenLeaks considers itself a non-profit community and service provider for whistleblowers and organisations, media, and individuals who engage in promoting transparency," the site said.

"OpenLeaks will not accept or publish documents on its own platform, but rather create many "digital dropboxes" for its community members, each adapted to the specific needs of our members so that they can provide a safe and trusted leaking option for whistleblowers."

On its FAQ page, OpenLeaks said it saw itself as not a competitor but a "complementary project" to WikiLeaks, arguing the fact that it was not involved in direct editing or releasing of documents meant it was "a mere conduit between the whistleblower and an organisation of their choice".

However, in an interview conducted late last year, an OpenLeaks member took a veiled swipe at Mr Assange by saying that OpenLeaks would be "democratically governed by all its members, rather than limited to one group or individual".

"There are two major parts to the process of leaking: submission of material and publication of it," OpenLeaks said.

"By concentrating on the submission part we attain two desirable goals: 1) increasing the security for all parties involved, 2) improving scalability by minimising bottlenecks and reducing complexity in our organisation."

Mr Domscheit-Berg resigned from WikiLeaks after it released almost 400,000 classified US documents relating to the Iraq war. He and other WikiLeaks members felt Mr Assange released the documents too early without taking the time to edit names of US collaborators and informants in Iraq properly.

"You are not anyone's king or god," Mr Domscheit-Berg told Mr Assange in an online chat, a transcript of which was obtained and published by Wired.com.

"And you're not even fulfilling your role as a leader right now. A leader communicates and cultivates trust in himself. You are doing the exact opposite. You behave like some kind of emperor or slave trader."

Mr Assange shot back, saying he was suspending Mr Domscheit-Berg for a month and that if he wanted to appeal, "you will be heard on Tuesday".

Domschelt-Berg instead resigned and began working on OpenLeaks. He is writing a tell-all book on his three years at WikiLeaks, titled Inside WikiLeaks: My Time at the World's Most Dangerous Website.

Australian journalist Andrew Fowler is also writing a book on Mr Assange, a biography dubbed The Most Dangerous Man in the World. It is due for release later this year and the movie rights have already been snapped up.

This week, five people in Britain, including three teenagers, were arrested for allegedly carrying out cyber attacks on major companies including Visa and MasterCard in retaliation for them cutting off WikiLeaks. One of those arrested had reportedly given interviews to the BBC about his involvement in Anonymous, a loose-knit group of online troublemakers who co-ordinated the attacks.

buglerbilly

29-01-11, 01:04 AM

Probe: Army Warned Not to Deploy Manning

January 28, 2011

McClatchy-Tribune Information Services

WASHINGTON -- Investigators have concluded that Army commanders ignored advice not to send to Iraq an Army private who is now accused of downloading hundreds of thousands of sensitive reports and diplomatic cables that ended up on the WikiLeaks website in the largest single security breach in American history, McClatchy Newspapers has learned.

Pfc. Bradley Manning's direct supervisor warned that Manning had thrown chairs at colleagues and shouted at higher-ranking Soldiers in the year he was stationed at Fort Drum, N.Y., and advised that Manning shouldn't be sent to Iraq, where his job would entail accessing classified documents through the Defense Department's computer system.

But superior officers decided to ignore the advice because the unit was short of intelligence analysts and needed Manning's skills, two military officials familiar with the investigation told McClatchy Newspapers.

The commanders hoped they could address Manning's discipline problems in Iraq, the officials told McClatchy, but then never properly monitored him. The result was a "comedy of errors" as one commander after another assumed someone else was addressing Manning's problems, one official said. Both officials spoke anonymously because they weren't authorized to discuss the investigation.

Investigators are now considering whether they should recommend disciplinary action against at least three officers in Manning's chain of command. Investigators must submit their findings to Army Secretary John McHugh by Tuesday.

It's the second time in just over a year that Army practices have come under intense internal scrutiny after a major security failing. A similar probe after an Army psychiatrist allegedly opened fire on fellow Soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, in November 2009, killing 13, also focused on how superiors failed to take action despite signs that Maj. Nidal Hasan, who had exchanged e-mails with a radical Yemeni-American cleric, was seriously disaffected and might turn violent.

That probe, which the Pentagon has yet to make public, resulted in 47 recommendations for changes in Army procedures, including granting supervisors better access to personnel records and imposing better screening for threats from Internet sources. Although none of Hasan's supervisors have been disciplined, they still could face charges or administrative actions, Army officials have said.

The findings in the Manning investigation likely will renew concerns that commanders once again refused to address signs of a troubled Soldier because they needed his skills to deploy a fully staffed unit to Iraq or Afghanistan. It could also lead to changes in how commanders deal with discipline problems or decide when not to deploy someone.

Deploying Soldiers who in earlier years might have been left behind wasn't a problem exclusive to Manning's unit but a systemic issue during the height of the Iraq war, as commanders found themselves scurrying to cobble together units to deploy.

An Army report into the service's high suicide rate concluded in July that military commanders had become so focused on training troops for deployment that they no longer had the time to address issues such as alcoholism, prescription drug abuse and even violence, and instead hoped they'd disappear in combat.

Army commanders declined to comment on the record about the Manning investigation or the Hasan probe, saying they didn't want to interfere in cases where criminal charges are pending. Manning is being held at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Va., facing eight charges that could result in a 52-year prison sentence. Hasan is awaiting court-martial on murder charges in Texas that could result in the death penalty.

Gen. Peter W. Chiarelli, the vice chief of staff of the Army, admitted last summer when the 350-page report titled "Health Promotion, Risk Reduction and Suicide Prevention" was released that attention to disciplinary issues had waned during the rush to get troops to war.

"We prioritized, I think, the way you would want us to do, and that is to fight our nation's wars and to be ready and tactically sound to go and do the mission we were given by the country," he said then. Now, with the U.S. scheduled to have all troops out of Iraq by the end of the year, "It's time for the Army to take a hard look at itself, to sit down and say, 'OK, what are those things that came lower on our priority list that we need to reinstitute, reinforce and start doing to get at this problem?' "

Chiarelli said then that it would be fair "to say that, because of everything that we're doing, we have not paid the attention we need to on high-risk behavior."

Investigators looking at Manning's case found that while the military had followed procedures in giving Manning a security clearance, more questions should have been asked about whether he should retain it once he displayed disciplinary problems.

A central Defense Department agency, Defense Security Service, issues the clearances based on the Soldier's job, need-to-know government secrets and a background check. Higher-level clearances also may include interviews by DSS. The length of time the clearance is in effect depends on the job and the level of access given.

At one point, Manning, who joined the Army in 2007, saw a mental health specialist, officials said, but it's unclear what came of that meeting. Iraq was his only deployment. He was deployed to Iraq in 2009 and served there until he was arrested in May, shortly after the first WikiLeaks posting in April.

Army Lt. Gen. Robert Caslen Jr., the commander of the Army General Command and Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., has led the wide-ranging investigation. Investigators made several trips to Fort Drum, where Manning was stationed before deploying to Iraq, and conducted scores of interviews. The findings could become part of the evidence presented at Manning's court-martial.

Manning allegedly downloaded the documents while pretending to listen to music by Lady Gaga on headphones, a cover story, investigators say, to explain the sound of the computer's CD drive whirring as he copied the files.

Some human rights groups charge that Manning is being mistreated, with no ability to exercise or receive visitors and that at times, he's deprived of his eyeglasses. The Defense Department has denied these claims and another that Manning was improperly placed on suicide watch for two days as punishment. The Pentagon this week named a new detention commander but insisted the change was a long-planned change of command.

Manning, 23, isn't cooperating with investigators, and prosecutors still don't know how the hundreds of thousands of documents and files he allegedly downloaded reached WikiLeaks, which has posted them on its website in four separate bursts that began in April with the release of a video showing an Army helicopter firing on civilians in Baghdad, killing two Reuters news agency employees.

The website also released tens of thousands of documents related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan before the current, ongoing publication of hundreds of thousands of State Department cables. That release began on Nov. 28.

© Copyright 2011 McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

ARH v.3.1

29-01-11, 08:18 AM

Manning allegedly downloaded the documents while pretending to listen to music by Lady Gaga on headphones...

This alone should have seen him shot on sight.

buglerbilly

29-01-11, 10:47 AM

I couldn't agree more Andrew..............:abovelol

Pfc. Bradley Manning's direct supervisor warned that Manning had thrown chairs at colleagues and shouted at higher-ranking Soldiers in the year he was stationed at Fort Drum, N.Y., and advised that Manning shouldn't be sent to Iraq, where his job would entail accessing classified documents through the Defense Department's computer system.

But superior officers decided to ignore the advice because the unit was short of intelligence analysts and needed Manning's skills, two military officials familiar with the investigation told McClatchy Newspapers.

One would have thought that this should have had the little prick on charges but obviously the Intelligence community in the US Army is FAR too smart for that...............:shakehead

buglerbilly

30-01-11, 10:26 PM

Bradley Manning copied secret documents thanks to lack of safeguards, book claims

An astonishing security lapse allegedly allowed an American soldier to pass hundreds of thousands of secret documents to the Wikileaks website, a new book will reveal.

Bradley Manning is suspected of leaking thousands of Iraq War documents to Wikileaks Photo: AP

By Gordon Rayner,, Chief Reporter 5:59PM GMT 30 Jan 2011

The army private who is accused of downloading the material in Iraq had “unrestricted access” to millions of classified documents “with virtually no supervision or safeguards”, according to a publication obtained by The Daily Telegraph.

The authors, David Leigh and Luke Harding, of The Guardian, name Specialist Bradley Manning, the soldier being held in a US military jail, as the alleged source of the information which was passed on to The Guardian by WikiLeaks.

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has repeatedly refused to confirm that Mr Manning was the source of the information.

Last night Alan Rusbridger, the editor of the Guardian, defended the decision to name Mr Manning as the source of the material, saying it was a matter of record that the soldier had openly admitted to being the source of the data.

Mr Manning, 23, was charged last year with the unauthorised disclosure of classified material and faces a jail term of several decades if he is tried and convicted.

The book also discloses that Mr Assange wore a wig and dressed as a woman as he tried to evade the media after the release of the US embassy cables last November.

The Guardian and WikiLeaks previously worked closely together to release the sensitive American documents but the website is now accusing the newspaper of betrayal over its decision to go public with information about their relationship.

The website and the Guardian stopped co-operating following a disagreement over the handling of the story.

WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy, which is published this week, devotes two chapters to the means by which Mr Manning leaked hundreds of thousands of documents to WikiLeaks, including US diplomatic cables and military logs relating to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

At Camp Hammer, 40 miles east of Baghdad, the army intelligence worker was issued with two US laptops, one connected to the US State Department and Department of Defense, the other connected to the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System, through which secret communications were sent.

“From his first day at Hammer, he was puzzled by the lax security,” the authors write. “The door was bolted with a five-digit cipher lock, but all you had to do was knock on the door and you’d be let in.” The soldier is said to have downloaded hundreds of thousands of documents on to computer CDs labelled “Lady Gaga”.

He is alleged to have turned to WikiLeaks because he had been impressed by its release of 500,000 pager messages intercepted on the day of the September 11 attacks on New York in 2001, which “made him feel comfortable that he, too, could come forward to WikiLeaks without fear of being identified”.

buglerbilly

31-01-11, 04:24 AM

'He's like a smelly bag lady': New York Times turns on Julian Assange in scathing new book

By Daily Mail Reporter

Last updated at 11:11 PM on 30th January 2011

Julian Assange: Well-educated but described as 'dishevelled, like a bag lady walking in off the street'

One of Julian Assange's media collaborators, the New York Times, will turn on him tomorrow in a new book that brands him 'smelly' and a 'freak'.

The new title says Mr Assange, 39, has 'a bit of Peter Pan in him' and describes the WikiLeaks founder as erratic.

The Guardian is also expected to strongly criticise the hacker in their own new book about dealings with him in two co-ordinated releases.

Journalists who have dealt with Assange describe him as a man who skips around like a child, doesn't always wash and is sensitive and volatile.

Bill Keller, executive editor of the New York Times, reveals that one reporter told him that Assange's behaviour had been very strange.

'He was alert but dishevelled, like a bag lady walking in off the street, wearing a dingy, light-coloured sport coat and cargo pants, dirty white shirt, beat-up sneakers and filthy white socks that collapsed around his ankles,' he wrote.

'He smelled as if he hadn't bathed for days.'

Mr Assange is described as extremely intelligent and well educated - but is also branded arrogant and thin-skinned.

Mr Keller wrote that the erratic WikiLeaks boss stunned reporters when he began skipping after a formal meal, the Independent on Sunday reported.

He explained: 'One night, when they were all walking down the street after dinner, Assange suddenly started skipping ahead of the group... (two journalists) stared, speechless.

'Then just as suddenly, Assange stopped, got back in step with them and returned to the conversation he had interrupted.'

Relations with the 39-year-old became rocky at times - and three journalists believe they had their own computers hacked into after a falling out.

Mr Assange's dealings with the New York Times became tense after they published the Iraq War Diaries.

More leaks? Julian Assange is handed two CD cases full of files about tax evaders by former banker Rudolf Elmer who is now behind bars

The WikiLeaks founder thought the newspaper censored too much information at the request of the White House although its editors insisted that they did it to ensure lives were not put at risk.

The new revelataions are being published tomorrow in an e-book titled Open Secrets: WikiLeaks, War and American Diplomacy.
Mr Assange, who is currently out on bail and living in a Norfolk mansion, faces a two-day extradition hearing on February 7 and 8 over sex assault charges in Sweden.

The Guardian will publish WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy tomorrow.

Another book will be published by one of Assange's own workers next month which will be titled Inside WikiLeaks: My Time at the World's Most Dangerous Website.

Mansion arrest: Julian Assange at Ellingham Hall which is the bail house he has been living at since he was let out of custody before Christmas. He is wanted in Sweden on sex assault charges

The 304-page effort has been written by Daniel Domscheit-Berg, who was the co-founder of the whistle-blowing which started in 2006.

An advanced copy of the publicity blurb said: 'The fact that a project this powerful is under the sole control of someone with Julian Assange’s personality structure is a tangible danger to informants and collaborators.

‘Our trust was abused, we were threatened, misled and intentionally kept in the dark. It is not for nothing that many who have quit refer to him as a “dictator” . . .

‘Justified, even internal, criticism – whether about his relations with women or the lack of transparency in his actions – is either dismissed with the statement, “I’m busy, there are two wars I have to end” or attributed to the secret services’ smear campaigns.’

Domscheit-Berg has set up his own website OpenLeaks which is supposed to be more transparent.

Bradley Manning, who allegedly supplied the army diary files, and Rudi Elmer, an ex-banker who has reportedly given files on tax evaders to WikiLeaks are both in jail.

Mr Elmer was arrested by police in Zurich after apparently giving Mr Assange two CDs in London reputedly containing the details of up to 2,000 well known tax evaders.

The list includes 40 politicians and various celebrities – and the names could be published within days once they are verified.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1351927/Hes-like-smelly-bag-lady-New-York-Times-turns-Julian-Assange-scathing-new-book.html#ixzz1CaETzA6h

ARH v.3.1

31-01-11, 07:41 AM

At least he looks less like a phedophile with the new haircut.:anon

buglerbilly

31-01-11, 07:45 AM

Nah the haircut was done to make him look like an innocent little boy............the problem is his basic arrogance, pomposity and feral nature bursts thru at every opportunity............haircut or not.

buglerbilly

31-01-11, 11:09 AM

Julian Assange compares Wikileaks to US Founding Fathers

Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, has likened the values of the whistle-blowing website to those of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America.

By Peter Hutchison 8:03AM GMT 31 Jan 2011

Delusions of grandeur needs to be added to his list of stupidity.............

In a CBS interview with 60 Minutes aired on Sunday night Mr Assange, who is currently under US criminal investigation over the leaking of hundreds of thousands of secret military reports and diplomatic cables, also denied that he was motivated by a dislike of America.

“Our founding values are those of the US revolution,” Mr Assange told Steve Kroft. “They are those of people like [Thomas] Jefferson and [James] Madison," he added.

Mr Assange, 39, described members of Wikileaks as "free press activists" and said the website did not have a political agenda.

"It's not about saving the whales. It's about giving people the information they need to support whaling or not support whaling," the Australian said.

"That is the raw ingredient that is needed to make a just and civil society. And without that you're just sailing in the dark."

Mr Assange insisted that Wikileaks was playing "inside the rules" and "operated just like any US publisher operates".

He also disclosed that a plan exists to release a deluge of secret documents should Wikileaks be permanently shut down.

Mr Assange said his group had a "system whereby we distribute encrypted backups of things we have yet to publish".

"There are backups distributed amongst many, many people, 100,000 people, and all we need to do is give them an encrypted key and they will be able to continue on," he said.

The Wikileaks founder said the key would only be released as a last resort.

"If a number of people were imprisoned or assassinated, then we would feel that we could not go on, and other people would have to take over our work, and we would release the keys," he said.

Mr Assange refused to discuss future publishing plans and laughed when asked about possible plans to release information on Bank of America, refusing to confirm or deny them.

"We have all these banks squirming, thinking maybe it's them," he said.

"When you see abusive organisations suffer the consequences as a result of their abuse, and you see victims elevated ... that's a very pleasurable activity to be involved in."

Mr Assange claimed in an interview with Forbes magazine in late November that a "megaleak" by the website would target a major US bank early this year.

He has previously said that he has a treasure trove of documents on Bank of America, the largest US bank, whose shares tumbled more than three per cent on November 30 shortly after the Forbes interview was released.

Mr Assange refused to discuss the Swedish sex crimes allegations, which he denies, that have him largely confined to a house in the British countryside on bail pending extradition proceedings.

buglerbilly

02-02-11, 01:43 AM

Gillard says she won't make Assange's legal problems go away

February 2, 2011 - 12:13PM

There's nothing we can do ... Julia Gillard Photo: Ben Rushton

Prime Minister Julia Gillard says she cannot - and will not - make Julian Assange's legal problems go away.

But she says the WikiLeaks founder, like any Australian citizen, is welcome to return home once they do.

Mr Assange, in London fighting an extradition order to Sweden where he awaits sexual assault charges, has appealed to Ms Gillard to help him return to Australia.

Wanted man ... Julian Assange. Photo: Reuters

"There's not anything we can, or indeed, should do about that," Ms Gillard told Austereo today.

"They are charges and they've got to be worked through proper process."

Mr Assange would like to return to Australia immediately, but Ms Gillard said it was not the fault of the Australian government that he couldn't.

"I don't go around issuing invitations to come to Australia, you are entitled to be here unless there is some legal obligations keeping him overseas."

Mr Assange's mother has lashed out at the Prime Minister, labelling her a sycophant of the United States which is trying to pursue legal action over the WikiLeaks revelations.

Ms Gillard, who has echoed the view that Mr Assange should be charged, denied she was under the thumb of the US.

"I haven't got any heat in that sense," she said.

Ms Gillard sought to distinguish between the "moral force" of a whistleblower and the action of WikiLeaks in making public hundreds of thousands of classified US documents.

Whistleblowing put Watergate into the public eye, she said.

"That is conduct I can understand. WikiLeaks is something else.

"It's not about making a moral case, it's really about all of this information and just putting it up there and whatever happens happens.

"It's an irresponsible thing to do."

AAP

buglerbilly

02-02-11, 04:01 AM

Mental health specialist recommended WikiLeaks suspect not be deployed to Iraq

By Greg Jaffe and Ellen Nakashima
Washington Post Staff Writers

Tuesday, February 1, 2011; 10:47 PM

A mental health specialist recommended that the Army private accused of leaking classified material to the anti-secrecy Web site WikiLeaks not be deployed to Iraq, but his immediate commanders sent him anyway, according to a military official familiar with a new Army investigation.

The recommendation by the specialist at Fort Drum, N.Y., did not disqualify Pfc. Bradley E. Manning from being sent to Iraq. The final decision on whether a soldier is fit to go to a war zone rests with his immediate commanders.

But an Army investigation has concluded that the commanders' decision not to heed the specialist's advice and their failure to properly discipline Manning may have contributed to one of the most high-profile classified military network breaches in decades, the military official said.

Manning, 23, an intelligence analyst, has been accused of downloading classified State Department and Pentagon files onto his personal computer. Last summer, he was charged with transmitting classified material to an unauthorized person.

The Army investigation, which is separate from an ongoing criminal inquiry, found that Manning's immediate supervisors did not follow procedures for overseeing the secure area where the classified information was kept, greatly increasing the risk of a security breach, the official said.

The investigation, which was conducted by Lt. Gen. Robert L. Caslen, the senior Army commander at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., was ordered by top Pentagon officials to determine how the breach occurred and whether broader institutional failings allowed Manning to allegedly download the documents.

Caslen is expected to relay his findings to the Army secretary this week and to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates in mid-February, military officials said.

"There were serious leadership failures within the unit chain of command and gross negligence in the supervision of Pfc. Manning in Iraq," said a second official who is familiar with the Army probe.

The defense officials were not authorized to speak about the inquiries. An Army spokesman declined to comment on the criminal investigation of Manning or on Caslen's investigation of how the leak took place.

Manning lived in Potomac before joining the Army in 2007. The military was facing a shortage of intelligence analysts in Iraq when he was deployed there in 2009.

The internal Army investigation did not fault Manning's recruitment to the Army or the initial decision to grant him a security clearance, said the official familiar with the probe.

"Something happened in his personal life after he joined the Army," the official said.

A source familiar with Manning's mental health records indicated that the stress that led the soldier to seek help was caused primarily by a faltering personal relationship.

At Fort Drum, Manning balled up his fists and screamed at higher-ranking soldiers in his unit, said the official familiar with the Army inquiry. In Iraq, a master sergeant who supervised Manning was so concerned about the private's mental health that he disabled Manning's weapon in December 2009, the private's attorney, David E. Coombs, previously said. Also in Iraq, in May 2010, Manning was demoted a rank for assaulting a fellow soldier, the Army said.

If the concerns in the report are accurate, "this clearly demonstrates the failure of the Army to take care of the soldier," Coombs said.

The master sergeant charged with overseeing Manning's day-to-day activities kept extensive records of the private's alleged outbursts and shortcomings as a soldier, but did not discipline him properly or compel him to get help, said the military official familiar with the non-criminal Army investigation. "He wrote memos and kept records, but that is no replacement for positive leadership," the official said.

The investigation, some aspects of which were previously reported by McClatchy Newspapers, also concludes that Manning's company commander should have taken more decisive action following the soldier's disciplinary issues at Fort Drum and in Iraq. It is not clear whether the final version of the report will recommend disciplinary action against Manning's immediate commanders or the sergeants who oversaw him on a daily basis.

The Army investigation faulted Manning's immediate supervisors for running a lax Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility, or SCIF, an area that holds computers capable of accessing the classified Internet system used by the Pentagon and State Department. Soldiers were allowed to bring compact discs into the area to listen to music, military officials said. Manning allegedly used such discs to download classified information, they said.

The faulty security at the classified facility in Baghdad is likely to be raised by the defense in a prospective court-martial. If proper security procedures had been in place, the acts Manning is accused of committing would have been impossible, the second official said.

Manning attested to the lax security in online chats that he reportedly had with Adrian Lamo, a former computer hacker in whom Manning allegedly confided last May.

At one point, Lamo asked Manning why the server that contained classified material was not secure, according to a copy of the chat logs Lamo shared with Wired.com.

Manning replied: "You had people working 14 hours a day . . . every single day . . . no weekends . . . no recreation . . . people stopped caring after 3 weeks . . . there was no physical security."

He added: "Weak servers, weak logging, weak physical security, weak counter-intelligence, inattentive signal analysis . . . a perfect storm."

Manning is confined in a Marine detention facility at Quantico, Va., awaiting a possible trial.

jaffeg@washpost.com nakashimae@washpost.com

buglerbilly

06-02-11, 11:59 AM

Julian Assange's battles threaten to overshadow WikiLeaks' work

By Anthony Faiola
Washington Post Staff Writer

Sunday, February 6, 2011; 12:46 AM

LONDON - A gaggle of journalists recently gathered at a London press club, eagerly awaiting Julian Assange. After embarrassing the U.S. government with a cache of secret cables, he was about to stand beside a Swiss whistleblower whose data could expose the inner workings of tax havens and the dodgers who love them.

But before Assange arrived, the moderator issued a plea to the media: Please refrain from any questions "about Swedish girls."

The incident at London's Frontline Club illustrated how the 39-year-old Australian has struggled in recent weeks to keep the emphasis on WikiLeaks and its explosive disclosures even as he fights a personal battle against sexual assault allegations in Sweden. That battle will bring Assange to a London courtroom Monday for the start of an extradition hearing that will crystallize the WikiLeaks dichotomy.

On one side, there is WikiLeaks the organization, whose expanding mission is being credited with everything from striking fear in the hearts of tax evaders to helping fan the flames of protest in the Arab world. On the other is Assange himself, its controversial leader whose personal character is threatening to overshadow the organization's work.

Even as he remains partly confined to the gilded cage of a friend's Georgian mansion for the duration of his legal battle, Assange is more combative than ever, his complex relationship with the media becoming increasingly stormy. Assange's bond has soured with two of the news organizations with which he once allied himself, the New York Times and the Guardian. This week, two journalists from the Guardian published a book that at times depicts Assange as callous and single-minded. His embittered former No. 2, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, is also going to press this month with his own tell-all book.

And then there are the allegations against him. Although his two-day hearing will focus more on the technicalities of extradition, insiders expect a fairly detailed account of the allegations lodged by two Swedish women. Those allegations - Assange is wanted only for questioning, and no charges have been filed - came in August after he visited Sweden. During that trip, he had what all sides agree was initially consensual sex with the two women. But both women say the encounters later became non-consensual.

Assange's defense argues that some of the allegations - including that he continued having sex after a condom broke despite the protests of his partner and that he had sex with a woman while she was asleep - would not be classified as high crimes in Britain and, therefore, are not extraditable offenses.

Assange "takes these allegations very seriously," said Jennifer Robinson, one of his attorneys.

"He insists he is innocent and that this was consenting sex between adults," Robinson said. "The box ticked is rape, but Swedish rape law is different than Britain rape law, which is based on consent."

In a December interview with the BBC, Assange, who did not respond to requests for an interview for this article, seemed to dismiss the allegations. After later coming in contact with each other, the women, he said, probably "found out that they were mutual lovers of mine and they had unprotected sex and they got into a tizzy about whether there was a possibility of sexually transmitted diseases."

He added that it was a "ridiculous thing to go to the police about."

Assange's attorneys have also suggested the allegations are politically motivated, part of an elaborate conspiracy involving Stockholm and Washington that would ultimately lead to his extradition to the United States.

But while U.S. officials are probing possible charges, none has been filed against him. Additionally, legal scholars say any U.S. bid for extradition would probably be easier to carry out if Assange were still in Britain, a nation that maintains a far more sweeping extradition treaty with the United States than Sweden does.

Although the hearing is scheduled to conclude Tuesday, experts say the case could drag on for months.

"In terms of timing, he could be here until the summer," said Joshua Rozenberg, a British legal analyst. The judge "is likely to wait two to three weeks to issue his verdict in writing because he knows all are watching. Then, either party can, and almost certainly will, appeal the decision to the High Court."

In the meantime, the spotlight continues to shine on Assange. In the new book "WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy," for instance, Guardian journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding recount an exchange with Assange in July at a Moroccan restaurant in London. When pressed by journalists to redact the names of informants mentioned in Afghan war documents then about to be released by WikiLeaks, Assange initially refused.

"Well, they're informants," he said, according to the journalists' account. "So, if they get killed, they've got it coming to them. They deserve it."

Although Assange later agreed to redactions, the incident gave the journalists pause.

"Silence fell around the table," Leigh said in an interview. "We were astonished that Julian could be so callous but also so naive. Not redacting those names didn't begin to grapple with the complexities of life in Afghanistan. He didn't seem to get that."

But Assange, who has signed a book deal of his own, remains unbowed. "You are in a very beneficial position if you can be martyred without dying," he told BBC 4.

faiolaa@washpost.com Special correspondent Karla Adam contributed to this report.

buglerbilly

16-02-11, 11:44 AM

Duplicate entry

buglerbilly

16-02-11, 11:45 AM

WikiLeaks, free speech and Twitter come together in Va. court case

By Dana Hedgpeth
Washington Post Staff Writer

Wednesday, February 16, 2011; 12:00 AM

An odd confluence of important issues came together in a federal courtroom in Alexandria on Tuesday: the criminal investigation of WikiLeaks, free speech and social networking.

It all stemmed from the government's attempts to get personal information from the Twitter accounts of three people linked to the WikiLeaks probe. Their lawyers argued that the data - screen names, mailing addresses, telephone numbers, credit card and bank account information, and Internet protocol addresses - are protected by the First Amendment. Prosecutors said the request is a routine part of their criminal probe.

It was the opening salvo in what experts expect to be a long and difficult investigation of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and others suspected of disclosing thousands of classified documents on the anti-secrecy Web site.

Tuesday's arguments went to the heart of a larger debate about WikiLeaks - whether the posting of the documents was free speech or a violation of national security. They also provided a high-profile test of outdated rules about what data the government can seize in the new world of social networking.

In the courtroom, John Keker, a lawyer representing one of the Twitter clients, said the users' data would give the government a map of people tied to WikiLeaks and essentially halt free speech online. He noted how social networking sites have been used in Egypt and Tunisia, where citizens have pushed for government changes, and suggested that such a broad request by the U.S. government in this case would put a stop to that.

John Palfrey, a Harvard law professor not associated with the case, said the government is using 18th-century arguments with 21st-century technology.

"These are not new arguments, but they're being used in a really interesting and important way that has a twist to them in light of social media," he said.

New details of probe

Until now, there has been little public evidence of the government's criminal investigation of WikiLeaks, a probe Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced in late November.

Information began to come out last week after U.S. Magistrate Judge Theresa Carroll Buchanan granted a motion from the three Twitter clients to unseal some filings in the case. Tuesday's hearing was the first public debate in the criminal investigation of Assange and others.

Court documents reveal that the government has asked for personal Twitter information from Assange; Bradley Manning, the Army private who is suspected of supplying classified material to the Web site; Birgitta Jonsdottir, a former WikiLeaks activist who is also a member of Iceland's Parliament; and two computer programmers, Rop Gonggrijp, a Dutch citizen, and Jacob Appelbaum, an American.

On Tuesday, defense lawyers tried to convince Buchanan that she should overturn her December ruling that ordered Twitter to disclose its clients' data, as well as unseal documents in the case, including requests from prosecutors to get information from other technology companies.

Aden Fine, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union who represents Jonsdottir, said that his client and the two others apparently have been "swept up into the government's investigation of WikiLeaks" and that the government's requests shouldn't be granted, nor should it be done using sealed documents.

But prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney's Office of the Eastern District of Virginia disagreed, saying in court that their request to Twitter was routine and that releasing documents in the case would damage their investigation of WikiLeaks. It's unclear whether Twitter even collects all the information requested by the government.

'It is not about politics'

After the hour-long hearing, Buchanan said she would take the case "under consideration." She is expected to issue a written order and opinion.

Keker argued that turning over the Twitter customers' information would also violate the Fourth Amendment, which protects against warrantless searches.

But Buchanan questioned whether Keker was exaggerating the amount of information that her Dec. 14 order allowed the government to get.

"What they're seeking is location data and timing data," Buchanan said. The government is not seeking data that would reveal the content of Twitter messages.

John Davis, an assistant U.S. attorney in Alexandria, said the government's request was routine.

"This is a standard - as this court knows well - investigative measure used in criminal investigations every day of the year all over the country," Davis said. "This is not about association rights. It is not about politics. It is about facts and evidence."

In court papers, defense lawyers accuse the government of "snooping because of what the have said and because of who they know."

Manning has been accused by the military of leaking a video that showed two U.S. helicopters in Iraq firing at people on the ground in 2007. Jonsdottir was one of the producers of an edited version of the video.

The defense lawyers' argument that the government's request violates the First Amendment is, legal experts say, a new twist in fighting data-seizure in the world of social networking sites.

The number of court orders and subpoenas from authorities demanding that technology companies and telecommunications firms turn over information about their clients is rapidly growing. But the rules protecting personal information are spotty and not up to date with Internet technology. Experts say they were meant to deal with telephone records, not such evolving technology as e-mails and tweets.

Chris Calabrese, a lobbyist for the ACLU in Washington, said the laws pertaining to accessing communications date back to 1986

"It is pre-www. We're using tools for accessing information on e-mail, social networking sites that were never contemplated," he said.

A spokesman for Twitter recently said the company had no comment on WikiLeaks, but he pointed to a Jan. 28 blog post. It said that the company's "position on freedom of expression carries with it a mandate to protect our users' right to speak freely and preserve their ability to contest having their private information revealed."

[I]Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

buglerbilly

24-02-11, 12:48 PM

Julian Assange must be extradited, judge rules

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should be extradited to Sweden for alleged sex offences, a judge has ruled.

2:48AM GMT 24 Feb 2011

District Judge Howard Riddle rejected the defence's claims that their client could not get a fair trial because of media coverage and even comments by the country's Prime Minister in Parliament.

The 39-year-old Australian faces three charges of sexually assaulting one woman and one charge of raping another during a week-long visit to Stockholm in August.

During a two-and-a-half-day extradition hearing earlier this month at Belmarsh Magistrates' Court in south London, Assange's lawyers argued that if he were sent to Sweden he would be likely to face a ''secret'' trial held behind closed doors.

They have also claimed extradition would breach his human rights and say he could ultimately be taken against his will to the United States and executed.

Assange now has one week to appeal to the High Court. He denies committing any offences and his supporters claim the criminal inquiry and extradition request are unfair and politically motivated.

buglerbilly

24-02-11, 03:10 PM

Julian Assange attacks European arrest warrant after extradition ruling

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has criticised the European arrest warrant system after a judge ruled he should be extradited to Sweden to face sex offence charges.

2:41PM GMT 24 Feb 2011

The 39-year-old Australian is accused of sexually assaulting one woman and raping another during a week-long visit to Stockholm in August.

Julian Assange said in an interview that he had signed deals for his autobiography worth more than one million pounds Speaking outside Belmarsh Magistrates' Court in south-east London today following the ruling, he said he had ''always known'' he would have to appeal against the decision.

Earlier District Judge Howard Riddle had dismissed the argument that the whistleblower would not receive a fair trial, despite a certain amount of negative publicity surrounding the case.

This publicity includes allegedly damaging comments said to have been made by the Swedish prime minister about Assange.

Judge Riddle said: ''The defence refer to the alleged denigration of the defendant by the Swedish prime minister.

''For this reason and other reasons it is said Mr Assange will not receive a fair trial.

''I don't accept this was the purpose of the comment or the effect.''

Point by point, he rejected the various other arguments made by Assange's lawyers against his extradition.

Contrary to what they had claimed during a two-and-a-half-day hearing earlier this month, he said that:

:: The prosecutor who issued the European arrest warrant for Assange was qualified to do so;

:: The warrant was issued for the purpose of prosecution and not simply for questioning;

:: The crimes Assange is accused of are extradition offences;

:: There is no reason to believe the judges who will hear the case in Sweden will be prejudiced by the swirl of bad publicity surrounding the former hacker;

:: The fact that the evidence in the case is likely to be heard in private, in keeping with Swedish custom, does not mean the trial will be unfair or in breach of human rights.

Assange has had to shell out a huge sum to defend himself so far, with the cost of translating material alone amounting to more than £30,000, his lawyer, Mark Stephens, said.

"That's a cost the prosecution should be bearing," he added. "The prosecution should be translating everything into a language he understands."

Assange was given bail on the same conditions as before.

At today's hearing, Lady Caroline Evans and Professor Patricia David told the court they were prepared to stand £20,000 surety for him.

Others who have offered financial guarantees against him skipping bail include Frontline Club founder Vaughan Smith at whose country house he has been staying.

Any appeal against the extradition ruling must be lodged in the next seven days.

buglerbilly

02-03-11, 04:56 AM

Julian Assange 'Jewish conspiracy' comments spark row

Ian Hislop writes in Private Eye that Assange accused him, the Guardian and Index on Censorship, before withdrawing claim

Ben Quinn guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 1 March 2011 22.22 GMT

Julian Assange has alleged conspiracy by journalists. Photograph: Rex Features

Julian Assange has blamed a number of journalists for a "Jewish" conspiracy against his whistleblowing website, WikiLeaks, according to the editor of Private Eye, Ian Hislop.

In the latest issue of the satirical magazine, Hislop writes that Assange called him on 16 February to complain about an article on Israel Shamir, a WikiLeaks associate in Russia who has denied the Holocaust and has published a string of antisemitic articles.

"He said that I and Private Eye should be ashamed of ourselves for joining in the international conspiracy to smear WikiLeaks," Hislop writes. "The piece was an obvious attempt to deprive him and his organisation of Jewish support and donations, he said angrily, and he knew perfectly well who had written it. He then named a Fleet Street hack who had nothing to do with it."

Hislop adds that Assange went on to claim that Private Eye was "part of a conspiracy led by the Guardian which included journalist David Leigh, editor Alan Rusbridger and John Kampfner from Index on Censorship – all of whom 'are Jewish'".

"I pointed out that Rusbridger is not actually Jewish, but Assange insisted that he was 'sort of Jewish' because he was related to David Leigh (they are brothers-in-law)," writes Hislop.

"When I doubted whether his Jewish conspiracy would stand up against the facts, Assange suddenly conceded the point. 'Forget the Jewish thing'."

Assange denied the allegations in a statement , saying: "Hislop has distorted, invented or misremembered almost every significant claim and phrase. In particular, 'Jewish conspiracy' is completely false, in spirit and in word.

"It is serious and upsetting. Rather than correct a smear, Mr Hislop has attempted, perhaps not surprisingly, to justify one smear with another in the same direction.

"WikiLeaks promotes the ideal of "scientific journalism" – where the underlaying evidence of all articles is available to the reader precisely in order to avoid these type of distortions. We treasure our strong Jewish support and staff, just as we treasure the support from pan-Arab democracy activists and others who share our hope for a just world."

A judge ruled last week that Assange should be extradited to Sweden to answer accusations of rape and sexual assault, bringing to an close the first stage of what is still likely to be a lengthy legal battle.

Assange, who has been fighting extradition since being arrested in Britain in December, must face interrogation in Sweden on the sex assault claims, ruled chief magistrate Howard Riddle, rejecting arguments that the prosecutor seeking his extradition had behaved illegally and was unqualified to issue a warrant, and that he would not receive a fair trial.

His solicitor, Mark Stephens has insisted that he was "still hopeful that the matter will be resolved in this country. We still remain very optimistic about our opportunities on appeal."

buglerbilly

03-03-11, 02:50 AM

Bradley Manning may face death penalty'

Aiding the enemy' among 22 new charges brought against US soldier held in solitary confinement

Ed Pilkington in New York The Guardian, Thursday 3 March 2011

Bradley *Manning’s detention in solitary confinement has been criticised by human rights organisations including Amnesty. Photograph: AP

Bradley Manning, the US soldier who has spent 10 months in solitary confinement on suspicion of having transmitted a huge trove of state secrets to WikiLeaks, now faces a possible death penalty.

The intelligence specialist, who is being held in the maximum security jail on Quantico marine base in Virginia, has been handed 22 additional military charges as part of his court martial process.

They come on top of initial charges of having illegally obtained 150,000 secret US government cables and handing more than 50 of them to an unauthorised person that carried a possible sentence of up to 52 years in prison.

Manning's lawyer, David Coombs, said that the most serious of the new charges was the Article 104 offence of "aiding the enemy". The charge carries a potential death sentence.

The charge involves "giving intelligence to the enemy", which is defined as "organised opposing forces in time of war but also other hostile body that our forces may be opposing such as a rebellious mob or a band of renegades". Such an enemy could be civilian or military in nature.

The charge sheet, like the original set of accusations, contains no mention by name of the enemy to which the US military is referring.

It could be WikiLeaks itself, which the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, has accused of launching an "attack on America". Or it could be a reference to enemy forces in Afghanistan.

A report by NBC News said Pentagon officials emphasised that some WikiLeaks material contained names of informants and others working with US forces whose lives could have been put in danger.

According to Coombs, the 22 new charges were preferred by Manning's commanding officer after he made his own assessment of possible offences in the case. Under the court martial procedure, a provisional hearing, known as an Article 32, will be held in late May or early June when final charges to be laid against Manning will be decided. At that stage it will be known for certain whether the private faces a possible death sentence in the court martial itself.

Manning is accused of being the single source of many sensational WikiLeaks disclosures of US state secrets, some of which were published alongside the Guardian and other papers round the world. They include aerial footage of a US military attack on civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan war logs and thousands of US embassy cables.

He is being held in Quantico in conditions that have elicited protests from numerous organisations, including his own supporter networks and Amnesty International. The UN is investigating whether his treatment, which includes being held in his 6ft by 12ft cell for 23 hours a day, amounts to torture.

Manning is being kept on a "prevention of injury" watch which requires him to be held on his own and viewed every five minutes, despite prison psychiatrists' opinion that he is not a danger to himself.

David House, a researcher at MIT who is one of very few people to have visited Manning in prison, told the Firedoglake news website that the "aiding the enemy" charge was similar to Richard Nixon's heavy-handed treatment of Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers. Nixon called Ellsberg "the most dangerous man in America" and said he was "providing aid and comfort to the enemy".

"Today we see the Obama administration continuing the legacy Nixon started by declaring whistleblowers as enemies of the state. It is a sad and dangerous day for transparency advocates everywhere," House said.

What cobblers! Arrant nonsense mouthed by another Left-wing Political idiot..............."let's tell everyone everything"...........what kind of parallel universe do these people live in? Manning is mentally disturbed in my opinion, he's a whack job that should have never been allowed access to what he did access, and I don't for a minute believe he did this out of some altruistic reason(s).

Do I believe the US Army will give him the Death penalty? Get real! There is no way this is going to be done, not least because no one wants to see the little prick become a Martyr for the anti-establishment cause espoused by Assange and others...........

buglerbilly

15-03-11, 01:04 AM

Ambushed Gillard goes on the offensive

March 15, 2011 - 10:50AM

It's ridiculous that the Prick was even allowed on the programme, fuckin ABC is just as bad as the BBC, self-righteous Left Wingers devoid of any grip on reality and pompous in their own sense of importance..............

Appearing via the Internet on ABC's Q&A program, Julian Assange asks the Prime Minister a cryptic question.

The last time Julia Gillard went on the ABC's Q&A program, it was during the election campaign.

The campaign had been a disaster but that night, Gillard gave arguably her best performance so far and helped arrest the slide by lifting morale.

Last night's performance was not as good but it was solid.

Under all manner of pressure, she opted for attack. She took on Julian Assange and Alan Jones, said knocking off Kevin Rudd was the right thing to do, and gave the most saleable explanation yet for why she broke her no carbon tax promise.

"When I said during the election campaign there would be no carbon tax, I didn't intend to mislead people," she said.

It was fault of the Greens and independents, she reasoned.

Had the Parliament not been hung, Labor would have moved straight to an emissions trading scheme, she said, which would not have constituted a broken promise.

However, because of the need to carry the Greens and independents, it was necessary to start the scheme as a de facto carbon tax, by fixing the price of carbon for three to five years before moving to a full trading scheme where the market set the price.

"If you find that you're blocked on your normal route driving home, do you just sit there and say, 'Gee, I'm never going to see my home again', or do you find a different way through? I want us to have an emissions trading scheme, I found a different way through," she said.

That won her a genuinely spontaneous round of applause, of which there were not many last night.

Q&A has become a bellwether for politicians. Rudd could do no wrong when he first went on. His last appearance when his popularity was on the slide was difficult to watch, such was the audience hostility.

It was nowhere near that hostile last night.

There was even a measure of sympathy when she was confronted by Assange via video and accused of swapping information with "foreign powers" regarding Australians associated with WikiLeaks.

Gillard dismissed the claim and re-emphasised her disdain for what Assange had done, saying it had no moral purpose.

She implied Assange was trying to big note himself by saying no one in the US last week had raised Assange with her.

Controversial but defiant.

Her swing at Jones was probably the boldest move of the night. In a sense, she had nothing to lose there. Jones and his listeners would never vote for her but there's little to be gained by riling him.

She said she went on Jones's radio program after the climate change announcement because "I'm not going to let people spew nonsense uncontested". She listed such nonsense as denying climate change and promotion carbon dioxide as a good gas.

Gillard and her government are in a world of trouble. She probably didn't win any new votes last night but she wouldn't have lost any either.

Phillip Coorey is Chief Political Correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald

buglerbilly

12-04-11, 03:46 AM

Bradley Manning case sparks UN criticism of US government

UN torture representative suggests White House stalling his private meeting with American soldier

Ewen MacAskill in Washington

guardian.co.uk, Monday 11 April 2011 20.42 BST

Bradley Manning, who is accused of leaking classified cables to WikiLeaks. Photograph: AP

A senior United Nations representative on torture, Juan Mendez, issued a rare reprimand to the US government on Monday for failing to allow him to meet in private Bradley Manning, the American soldier accused of being the WikiLeaks source and held in a military prison. It is the kind of censure the UN normally reserves for authoritarian regimes around the world.

Mendez, the UN special rapporteur on torture, said: "I am deeply disappointed and frustrated by the prevarication of the US government with regard to my attempts to visit Mr Manning."

Manning's supporters claim that the US is being vindictive in its treatment of Manning, who is held at the marine base at Quantico, Virginia, in conditions they describe as inhumane.

Mendez told the Guardian: "I am acting on a complaint that the regimen of this detainee amounts to cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment or torture … until I have all the evidence in front of me, I cannot say whether he has been treated inhumanely."

Mendez said the vast majority of states allowed for visits to detainees without conditions. But the US department of defence would not allow him to make an "official" visit, only a "private" one. An official visit would mean he meets Manning without a guard. A private visit means with a guard. Also, anything the prisoner says could be used in a court-martial.

Mendez said his mandate was to conduct unmonitored visits. He had met representatives from the state department and the Pentagon on Friday and learned their decision over the weekend.

Although he was prepared to meet Manning with a guard present, he would continue to press for an unmonitored visit.

"I am insisting the US government lets me see him without witnesses. I am asking [the US government] to reconsider," Mendez said.

Colonel Dave Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, said: "We cannot, under Quantico brig practice, guarantee the UN special rapporteur an unmonitored visit. At Quantico, such a guarantee is only reserved for attorney-client communications. As in the federal prison system, and for security reasons, the department of defence does not guarantee unmonitored communications with confinees except for privileged communications or in other special circumstances not present here."

He added that there was a lot of misinformation about Manning and insisted he was not in solitary confinement.

"There is no such thing at Quantico. PFC Manning is in maximum security, which does not affect the type of cell he is in. He occupies the same type of single-occupancy cell that a medium security confinee at Quantico would occupy, in the same general area of the brig that a medium security confinee may occupy. Except for a brief period about a month ago, and for reasons of Manning's own physical safety, Manning does not sleep naked. Nor is Manning awakened every five minutes by brig personnel. These facts are simply not true.

"Manning is allowed to receive visitors, receive and send mail, watch TV, exercise outside his cell, and visit with doctors and mental health providers."

buglerbilly

20-04-11, 02:49 AM

Bradley Manning to be moved from Virginia to Kansas

WikiLeaks suspect to be moved to Fort Leavenworth after storm of protest at his treatment in Quantico military prison

Ed Pilkington in New York

The Guardian, Wednesday 20 April 2011

The US soldier accused of downloading hundreds of thousands of state secrets and passing them to WikiLeaks is to be moved from the military prison where he has been held for the past 10 months after international protests that he is being held in conditions amounting to torture.

US officials quoted by AP said that Bradley Manning is to be moved from the military brig in Quantico marine base in Virginia to Fort Leavenworth in Kansas. He was arrested last year in a US base outside Baghdad where he had been working as an intelligence analyst and has since been charged with passing classified information to an unauthorised party.

The charges relate to the posting by WikiLeaks of a trove of state secrets, including US embassy cables first published by the Guardian in tandem with other newspapers.

In Quantico, Manning has been held in solitary confinement under a "prevention of injury order" which, his lawyer has argued, amounts to an unjustified form of coercion ahead of his court martial. In recent weeks he has been stripped of his clothes at night and left wearing only a smock.

Campaigners who have demanded an end to the mistreatment of Manning in jail are sceptical about the move to Fort Leavenworth. The Democratic congressman Dennis Kucinich, who has raised the case on Capitol Hill, said "nothing the department of defence has done so far with respect to PFC Manning provides any assurance that his basic human and constitutional rights are being protected. Any move does not change the fact that he has been held under conditions which may constitute cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the 8th amendment of the US constitution."

In its Twitter feed, WikiLeaks said there was no guarantee of better treatment for Manning in Fort Leavenworth and that access to the prisoner would still be limited to his lawyer and family.

In the past days the outcry about Manning's conditions has grown. The UN rapporteur on torture, Juan Mendez, criticised the US government for refusing him permission to visit Manning in private.

Many of America's most respected constitutional lawyers signed a joint letter denouncing Manning's treatment as unconstitutional and possibly illegal.

Jeh Johnson, the Pentagon's general counsel, told reporters at a hastily announced briefing at the Pentagon: "Given the length of time he's been in pretrial confinement at Quantico ... and given what the likely period of pretrial confinement in the future ... we reached the judgment this would be the right facility for him."

buglerbilly

29-04-11, 03:33 AM

Bradley Manning no longer held in solitary confinement, Pentagon says

Soldier now detained among medium-security inmates at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas as he awaits court martial

Ed Pilkington in New York

The Guardian, Friday 29 April 2011

Bradley Manning, the US soldier accused of leaking classified cables to WikiLeaks, is no longer being held in solitary confinement and is now being allowed to move among other military prisoners, according to the Pentagon.

Reporters were allowed to view the kind of accommodation in which Manning is currently being detained, at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, after he was moved earlier this month from Quantico marine base in Virginia as he awaits court martial.

His treatment in Virginia– which included 23 hours in his cell and being stripped down to a smock at night – was widely condemned by human rights groups including Amnesty International and the UN rapporteur on torture, who subsquently launched an investigation into conditions.

Manning is now detained among other medium-security inmates also awaiting military trial, according to Associated Press, which took part in a media tour of his new accommodation. The move implies that Manning has been cleared as a suicide risk, as any detainee deemed a risk of suicide would be held on their own.

It has long been a complaint of Manning's lawyer, David Coombs, that the advice of psychiatrists at his old prison in Quantico was ignored. Records show that mental health professionals regularly assessed him and found him to be no risk to himself, but Manning was kept on a "prevention of injury" order, which required him to be segregated from other inmates.

Reporters were told that Manning will, in future, be housed alongside another 10 or so prisoners, all of whom are awaiting trial. AP said he will have his own cell, wear standard prison clothing and have open access to a communal area except overnight.

With concern receding about the way Manning is being treated, the focus is now likely to swing towards the trial. No date has yet been sent for the court martial, though it is understood that the first subpoenas have been sent out for acquaintances of Manning to appear before a grand jury investigating the charges.

Manning faces multiple counts relating to the leaking of hundreds of thousands of documents and videos to WikiLeaks, which include the Iraq and Afghan war logs, and the US embassy cables disclosing secret diplomatic intelligence from around the world.

Last week President Obama was accosted by Manning supporters at a fundraising event in San Francisco. The president spoke to one supporter and reportedly said: "He broke the law."

The supporters interpreted Obama's words as referring to Manning, and have complained that by declaring the suspect guilty the president has destroyed the chance of a fair trial.

buglerbilly

30-04-11, 02:53 PM

Army: Manning Fit to Stand Trial

April 30, 2011

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - The intelligence analyst suspected of illegally passing government secrets to the WikiLeaks website has been found competent to stand trial, the Army said Friday.

Army spokesman Gary Tallman says a panel of experts completed its medical and mental evaluation of Pfc. Bradley Manning on April 22, and informed Army officials Friday of the conclusion.

Tallman says no date has been set yet for the initial court hearing, and added that the evaluation board's findings "have no bearing on the guilt, innocence, or any potential defenses of the accused."

Manning's case is under the jurisdiction of the Army's Military District of Washington.

The Army private is suspected of obtaining hundreds of thousands of classified and sensitive documents while serving in Iraq and providing them to the website. He faces about two dozen charges, including aiding the enemy. That charge can bring the death penalty or life in prison.

Manning was transferred from a Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Va., last week to a new facility at Fort Leavenworth prison in Kansas.

He passed the lengthy physical and psychiatric evaluation given to new inmates there and received final clearance Thursday to live alongside other inmates, according to the facility's commander Lt. Col. Dawn Hilton.

He had been held at Quantico for the eight months after his arrest, and the conditions of his incarceration triggered protests and international inquiries.

At Quantico, Manning had to surrender his clothes at night and was required to wear a military-issued, suicide-prevention smock. Manning's attorney and supporters said that was unnecessary and argued his living conditions, including his isolation from other inmates, were inhumane.

Pentagon officials consistently said he was being held under appropriate conditions given the seriousness of the charges against him.

But they acknowledged that Quantico was not designed to hold pre-trial detainees for long periods of time.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

buglerbilly

11-05-11, 03:59 AM

I hear fuck-knuckle Ass has just got an Award for Peace from some left-wing, pathological-hatred-of-the-West foundation or another...............perhaps I misunderstood "peace" and will most likely read it as "PIECE" when I see it in print............

(Piece as in piece-of-ass...........)

buglerbilly

11-05-11, 11:28 AM

Julian Assange awarded Australian peace prize

WikiLeaks founder receives the Sydney Peace Foundation's gold medal for 'championing people's right to know'

Reuters

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 11 May 2011 05.17 BST

Julian Assange was presented with the Sydney Peace Foundation's gold medal at the Frontline Club in London. Photograph: Stefan Wermuth/Reuters

The Sydney Peace Foundation? :wtf

WikiLeaks' Australian founder Julian Assange, who enraged Washington by publishing thousands of secret US diplomatic cables, has been given a peace award for "exceptional courage in pursuit of human rights".

Assange was awarded the Sydney Peace Foundation's gold medal on Tuesday at the Frontline Club in London, only the fourth such award to be handed out in its 14-year history. The not-for-profit organisation is associated with the University of Sydney and supported by the City of Sydney.

Assange, who is fighting extradition from Britain to Sweden over alleged sex crimes, was praised for "challenging centuries-old practices of government secrecy and by championing people's right to know".

"We think the struggle for peace with justice inevitably involves conflict, inevitably involves controversy," the foundation's director, Professor Stuart Rees, said.

"We think that you and WikiLeaks have brought about what we think is a watershed in journalism and in freedom of information and potentially in politics."

Rees criticised the Australian government, saying it must stop shoring up Washington's efforts to "behave like a totalitarian state", and said the foundation was "appalled by the violent behaviour by major politicians in the United States".

WikiLeaks caused a media and diplomatic uproar late last year when it began to publish its cache of more than 250,000 US diplomatic cables, revealing secrets such as that Saudi leaders had urged US military action against Iran. Some US politicians said WikiLeaks should be defined as an international terrorist organisation.

Assange himself claimed publication of the cables helped shape uprisings in north Africa and the Middle East and said WikiLeaks was on the side of justice.

buglerbilly

13-05-11, 01:59 AM

Ex-WikiLeaks spokesman criticises Assange's gagging order for staff

Daniel Domscheit-Berg claims that making staff sign restrictive confidentiality agreement 'cultivates unaccountability'

David Batty and agencies

guardian.co.uk, Friday 13 May 2011 01.02 BST

Daniel Domscheit-Berg has condemned Julian Assange for demanding workers for the website sign 'confidentiality agreements'. Photograph: Thomas Peter/Reuters

A former WikiLeaks spokesman has condemned Julian Assange for demanding that staff for the whistleblowing website sign a gagging order that imposes a penalty of up to £12m on anyone who breaks it.

German activist Daniel Domscheit-Berg said that in imposing the draconian confidentiality agreement on its employees WikiLeaks was behaving too much like the governments and businesses it purports to expose.

"WikiLeaks has become what it despises: a repressive organisation, using restrictive contracts to gag its staffers, cultivating intransparency and unaccountability," Domscheit-Berg said in an email to Reuters.

Domscheit-Berg, who was once one of Assange's closest associates, said he felt "sorry ... for all those new staffers that had no idea what they were getting into" in working for WikiLeaks.

The activist, who has written a book about his time with WikiLeaks, also said he regretted having helped set up the whistleblowing website.

His comments came after media lawyer and legal blogger David Allen Green published the full text of the gagging order signed by almost all WikiLeaks employees earlier this year.

Clause 5 of the confidentiality agreement imposes a £12m penalty on any employee who reveals any information about WikiLeaks' day-to-day operations. The agreement has been likened to superinjunctions because even revealing the existence of the gagging order is itself a breach.

One of Assange's London lawyers, Mark Stephens, said he could not comment on the contents of the gagging order posted on the New Statesman's website earlier this week.

Domscheit-Berg's comments come after Guardian journalist James Ball, a former WikiLeaks aide, described how Assange demanded that 10 staff and volunteers sign the document during a meeting at the Norfolk mansion where he was confined due to the ongoing legal case against him.

After he refused to sign, Ball wrote, Assange "spent two hours – shouting – explaining why I must sign the document, or else risk the lives and wellbeing of everyone in the room and never be trusted again."

Ball said other WikiLeaks staff pressured him to sign the document but he refused.

In an article for the Guardian's Comment is Free website, Ball criticised Assange's demand, contending that it confirms criticism that WikiLeaks is unaccountable.

He writes: "If any organisation in the world relies on whistleblowers to keep it honest, it is WikiLeaks.

"In such circumstances, silencing dissent is not just ironic, it's dangerous. WikiLeaks needs to get out of the gagging game."

In the months since his personal behaviour and website came under increasingly harsh public scrutiny, Assange has periodically threatened to sue his critics.

Those who say they have been targets of his legal threats include the Guardian, with whom Assange once closely collaborated, and Domscheit-Berg.

buglerbilly

28-05-11, 03:49 AM

WikiLeaks accused Bradley Manning 'should never have been sent to Iraq'

Guardian exclusive: Soldier held over US intelligence leak was known to be mentally fragile and unsuited to army life

Maggie O'Kane, Chavala Madlena and Guy Grandjean

guardian.co.uk, Friday 27 May 2011 22.25 BST

Bradley Manning was thought unfit to go to Iraq Link - to this video

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/video/2011/may/27/bradley-manning-wikileaks-iraq-video

The American soldier at the centre of the WikiLeaks revelations was so mentally fragile before his deployment to Iraq that he wet himself, threw chairs around, shouted at his commanding officers and was regularly brought in for psychiatric evaluations, according to an investigative film produced by the Guardian.

Bradley Manning, who was detained a year ago on Sunday in connection with the biggest security leak in US military history, was a "mess of a child" who should never have been put through a tour of duty in Iraq, according to an officer from the Fort Leonard Wood military base in Missouri, where Manning trained in 2007.

The officer's words reinforce a leaked confidential military report that reveals that other senior officers thought he was unfit to go to Iraq. "He was harassed so much that he once pissed in his sweatpants," the officer said.

"I escorted Manning a couple of times to his 'psych' evaluations after his outbursts. They never should have trapped him in and recycled him in [to Iraq]. Never. Not that mess of a child I saw with my own two eyes. No one has mentioned the army's failure here – and the discharge unit who agreed to send him out there," said the officer, who asked not to be identified because of the hostility towards Manning in the military.

"I live in an area where I would be persecuted if I said anything against the army or helped Manning," the officer said.

Despite several violent outbursts and a diagnosis of adjustment disorder, a condition that meant he was showing difficulty adjusting to military life, Manning was eventually sent to Iraq, where it is alleged he illegally downloaded thousands of sensitive military and diplomatic documents and passed them on to the whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.

In Iraq, Manning retained his security clearance to work as an intelligence specialist.

Two months after his arrival, the bolt was removed from his rifle because he was thought to be a danger, his lawyer, David Coombs, has confirmed.

A Guardian investigation focusing on soldiers who worked with Manning in Iraq has also discovered there was virtually no computer and intelligence security at Manning's station in Iraq, Forward Operating Base Hammer. According to eyewitnesses, the security was so lax that many of the 300 soldiers on the base had access to the computer room where Manning worked, and passwords to access the intelligence computers were stuck on "sticky notes" on the laptop screens.

Rank and file soldiers would watch grisly "kill mission" footage as a kind of entertainment on computers with access to the sensitive network of US diplomatic and military communications known as SIPRNet.

Jacob Sullivan, 28, of Phoenix, Arizona, a former chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear specialist, was stationed at FOB Hammer in Manning's unit.

"A lot of different people worked from that building and in pretty much every room there was a SIPRNet computer attached to a private soldier or a specialist," Sullivan said

"On the computers that I saw there was a [sticky label] either on the computer or next to the computer with the information to log on. I was never given permission to log on so I never used it but there were a lot of people who did."

He added: "If you saw a laptop with a red wire coming out of it, you knew it was a SIPRNet. I would be there by myself and the laptops [would] be sitting there with passwords. Everyone would write their passwords down on sticky notes and set it by their computer. [There] wasn't a lot of security going on so no wonder something like this transpired."

Manning is facing multiple charges of downloading and passing on sensitive information. No one else at the base has been charged. Manning denies all the charges. If convicted he could face up to 55 years in jail.

The US Defence Security Service is also investigating why Manning, who had been sent for psychiatric counselling before he was deployed to Iraq, was not screened more fully before he was allowed to work in intelligence.

Eyewitness accounts by soldiers who served with him there and friends in the US who spoke to the Guardian paint a picture of an increasingly unstable and at times violent man.

One soldier who served with him describes him "blowing up and punching this chick in the face".

Additional reporting by Daniel Fisher

buglerbilly

16-06-11, 03:05 PM

WikiLeaks: Julian Assange's 'excessive and dehumanising' house arrest

Supporters of Julian Assange have claimed that he is being detained “under house arrest” in “excessive and dehumanising” conditions.

Julian Assange

By Christopher Hope, Whitehall Editor

1:00PM BST 16 Jun 2011

My heart bleeds for the little Rapist..........NOT! :cuckoo

They have released a 611-word statement today to mark the six month anniversary of Mr Assange being granted bail while he fights extradition to Sweden over allegations of sexual crimes, which he denies.

The statement has been released alongside a video, titled House Arrest, in which his supporters and staff have been interviewed about the bail conditions and their impact on the work of WikiLeaks.

In the statement, they say: “Today, 16th June 2011, Julian Assange will have spent six months under house arrest. He has not been charged with a crime in any country. The conditions of his detention are excessive and dehumanising.”

The statement claims that the allegations made against Mr Assange are "controversial due to the involvement of a politician in reopening the investigation, which was previously closed, the actions of Swedish police and because both complainants (who went to the police together after meeting each other) admit to multiple consensual sexual acts, over multiple days, with Mr Assange.

It continues: “Both complainants admit consenting to sex and that consent to sex was not removed at any stage. The allegation made is that Mr Assange did not immediately inform the complainants that a condom had split or that he was not wearing a condom.”

The statement continues: “The allegations as they are made do not amount to crimes in the UK. If he were to go to Sweden he would be kept in detention indefinitely and incommunicado. If charged, he will be subjected to a trial held in secret.

“He will not be allowed to see all the evidence against him. Outside observers will not be able to scrutinise the merits of the case.”

It claims that Mr Assange “voluntarily stayed in Sweden for four weeks to clear his name. During this time he repeatedly tried to arrange a time to be questioned.

“The prosecutor who issued the European Arrest Warrant and the Interpol red notice was asked if he could leave Sweden, and she confirmed that he could.

“Only after Julian Assange had arrived in the UK and moments before WikiLeaks started to publish the US Diplomatic Cables, the Swedish authorities decided to issue a European Arrest Warrant and, unusually, an Interpol Red Notice.

“In the US, the Obama administration declared Julian Assange and WikiLeaks to be ‘hi tech terrorists’.”

The statement says that Mr Assange has continued to “request a hearing with the Swedish authorities from the UK.

“Despite this, Sweden has refused to cooperate with him and resorted to excessive force by preventing his freedom of movement.

“The Swedish government has refused to state that it will not hand over Mr. Assange to the United States.

“This is why he is fighting this disproportionate and unfair extradition order.”

“Whilst fighting this battle, and trying to continue with his important work for freedom of information, he is being forced to remain in unfair and undignified conditions.”

buglerbilly

04-07-11, 03:25 AM

Bradley Manning: I was bullied in the military for being gay

New online conversations allege the suspected WikiLeaks source was mocked and physically attacked

Ed Pilkington in New York

guardian.co.uk, Monday 4 July 2011 02.59 BST

Bradley Manning, seen here with military colleagues, alleges he was bullied about his sexuality. Photograph: Guardian

I'm a traitorous little shit cos I'm was being bullied cos I was gay.............hmmmmmmmmm all he now needs to be is a persecuted minority from Africa and his defence is made! :voodoo

New online conversations between a gay activist and Bradley Manning, the US soldier suspected of passing secret diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks, allege Manning was being bullied in the military over his sexuality.

The 2009 weblogs, sent from Fort Drum, the upstate New York barracks where Manning was preparing to be sent to Iraq as an intelligence analyst, give new insight into his state of mind around the time he is alleged to have contacted WikiLeaks.

Using the online pseudonym Bradass87, Manning used AOL's instant messager for several exchanges with a 19-year-old man called Zachary Antolak, who lived near Chicago. Antolak adopted a female persona on the internet, ZJ Antolak.

In the weblogs, never before made public, Manning tells ZJ of bullying he endured as a gay man serving in the army under "don't ask, don't tell", the discriminatory policy towards gay soldiers. Though he tried to hide his sexuality, it was soon discovered by others in his platoon.

"It took them a while, but they started figuring me out, making fun of me, mocking me, harassing me, heating up with one or two physical attacks," Manning wrote to ZJ.

The logs were uncovered by Steve Fishman, a journalist at New York magazine who wrote a profile of Manning for the latest issue.

The new material adds to the understanding of Manning, who has spent more than a year in military prison awaiting a court martial on charges that he sent hundreds of thousands of confidential documents and videos to WikiLeaks. Manning has become a cause celebre in the US, where protests are regularly held outside Fort Leavenworth in Kansas, where he is in custody.

In the cyber conversations with ZJ Manning also says he was shocked by life in the army when first recruited.

"The army took me, a web dev, threw me into a rigid schedule, removed me from my digital self," posted Manning. "The army … threw me in the forests of Missouri for 10 weeks with an old M-16, Reagan-era load-bearing equipment and 50 twanging people hailing from places like Texas, Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi … joy. What the hell did I put myself through?"

In October 2009 Manning was deployed to Forward Operating Base Hammer, 40 miles from Baghdad. There his feeling of isolation grew more intense. "It's awfully stressful, lonely," he wrote.

As part of the profile piece, Fishman interviews a counsellor who saw Manning in November 2009. At the sessions they discussed a previously unknown incident in which Manning appears to have felt responsible for a US military operation in Iraq that led to the death of a civilian.

Manning told the counsellor he was trying to find out why two groups of Iraqis were in a particular area. A US army unit was dispatched and Manning later learned that a man connected to them was killed. Manning, the counsellor said, "was very, very distressed". He also claimed Manning discussed wanting to have a sex change.

In previously disclosed weblogs he expressed anger at the apparent lack of concern shown by his superior officers in Iraq about the treatment of civilians.

buglerbilly

11-07-11, 05:29 PM

Assange faces enforced leisure to ponder folly of a law passed in haste

Mary Kostakidis

July 12, 2011

"If a country ticks the 'rape' box, it doesn't matter if 'minor rape' as defined by Sweden is not a crime in England." Photo: Reuters

Another Asswipe apologist masquerading as a Law Eggspurt...............:doh

As Julian Assange's extradition appeal begins today in London, the British government is considering a parliamentary review which recommended drastic changes to the European Arrest Warrant legislation. Widely regarded as a seriously flawed instrument, the extradition mechanism that will decide Assange's immediate future was agreed to immediately after September 11, 2001. Its purpose was to enable speedy prosecution across Europe of suspects wanted for terrorism and serious crime under a warrant that could be honoured with minimal scrutiny.

There are two serious problems with the way this law operates: the failure to protect the human rights of the accused, such as a guarantee of a fair trial; and its misuse. A vast number of warrants have been issued, predominantly to prosecute trivial offences or matters that would be regarded as civil matters in Britain.

Requesting states do not even need to provide any evidence. And for 32 listed crimes there is no requirement to prove double criminality. That is, the alleged conduct need not be regarded as a crime in the country from which an accused is extradited. If one European Union state provides a different definition of an offence but the same conduct would not meet the definition of the offence in the other country, the person will still be extradited.

Poland issued 5000 warrants in 2008. People have been trawled through the legal system for crimes such as stealing chickens - as in the case of a person extradited to the Czech Republic.

Clearly there has been no respect for the principle of proportionality in the application of the law. David Blunkett, the British home secretary who presided over the law's introduction, says the system needs reform: ''When we agreed to the system we believed people would act rationally.''

A British resident, Jacek Jaskolski, successfully defended a warrant issued by Poland for exceeding his overdraft limit, but the warrant has not been withdrawn, limiting his ability to visit other European countries without fear of arrest.

Even if an individual can successfully defend a warrant, the country seeking his surrender is under no obligation to remove the outstanding warrant. Should Assange successfully resist the warrant issued by Sweden, there is no guarantee he would not face a similar fate.

The treaty needs to be amended to remove this adverse consequence.

The human rights group Fair Trials International says there are many cases in which serious injustices have resulted, such as people serving prison sentences after an unfair trial or being held in detention for years before they can appear before a court to establish their innocence.

A British citizen, Andrew Symeou, was extradited to Greece in 2009 and charged with manslaughter over the death of a man two years earlier. Despite compelling evidence of mistaken identity and the retraction of statements by witnesses who alleged police intimidation, Symeou remained in jail for 11 months before he was released on bail and bound to remain in Greece awaiting his trial.

Two weeks ago, after a four-year ordeal, he was acquitted by a jury, his parents having spent their savings to support his case in the intervening years. The prosecutor himself recommended Symeou be acquitted.

In Assange's case, the original prosecutor, Eva Finne, declared there was no rape case to answer, despite the far broader definition of rape in Swedish law than in Britain. There is no provision for bail under Swedish rape laws, so Assange would remain in jail until the Swedish prosecution case is heard, however long that takes. The miscarriage of justice in Symeou's case would have been avoided if appropriate scrutiny of the evidence by a court in the country granting the extradition were a requirement.

Assange is fighting extradition for a crime that does not exist in Britain. Under Swedish law, rape is not about the withdrawal of consent but rather is defined by the use of physical force in acts of sex. Rape is a category one crime under the European Arrest Warrant regime, though Assange's case involves the most minor version of this charge under Swedish law.

Assange's lawyers say it is unlikely he could be prosecuted on the alleged facts under British law. The magistrate who heard the case said the behaviour would be an offence in Britain, but Britain's leading criminal lawyer, Professor Andrew Ashworth, disagreed.

Only proper scrutiny of the evidence could determine who is right. But that would be immaterial in any case, as there is no double criminality requirement for rape. If a country ticks the ''rape'' box, it doesn't matter if ''minor rape'' as defined by Sweden is not a crime in Britain. Moreover, Assange will be tried in a closed court in a case he believes is politically motivated. How will the world scrutinise proceedings under those circumstances?

Blunkett admits he was not sensitive enough to potential problems. Such oversights have taken a terrible toll on people caught in a system with no proper safeguards, including Assange, an Australian citizen.

Mary Kostakidis is a journalist with an interest in human rights, government and the law.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/assange-faces-enforced-leisure-to-ponder-folly-of-a-law-passed-in-haste-20110711-1hakb.html#ixzz1RoZbnpbG

buglerbilly

12-07-11, 01:59 AM

Julian Assange to launch fresh extradition appeal in high court

WikiLeaks founder will begin new legal challenge against attempts to send him to Sweden to face sexual assault charges

Robert Booth

guardian.co.uk, Monday 11 July 2011 19.35 BST

Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, has appointed a new legal team for the latest extradition hearing at the high court. Photograph: Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP

Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder wanted in Sweden over accusations of sexual assault, will launch a fresh appeal on Tuesday against his extradition at the high court in London.

The Australian will begin the latest stage of his legal challenge against attempts to send him to Sweden to face charges relating to alleged incidents with two women during a trip to Stockholm in August 2010. One accusation, that he had sex with a woman while she was asleep, would amount to rape under Swedish law if proved. Both women had previously had consenting sex with Assange. He denies any wrongdoing.

Swedish authorities secured a European arrest warrant in December and shortly afterwards he was detained by British police and bailed. At his first appeal in February, Westminster magistrates court – sitting at Belmarsh – ordered that he should be extradited, despite his defence alleging he would not get a fair trial and that the extradition attempt was politically motivated. The arrest warrant came as WikiLeaks was releasing thousands of classified US diplomatic cables it had obtained through a whistleblower.

Assange's legal team argued that the conduct of the Swedish prosecutor amounted to an "abuse of process" because the allegations against him were initially dismissed and then reopened, the prosecutor had refused Assange's offer of an interview and documents had not been made available to him in English. They also claimed the Swedish prosecutor, Marianne Ny, was "biased against men". Westminster magistrates found against Assange and ordered his extradition to Sweden.

Assange has claimed this would make it easier for US authorities to seek his extradition to face possible charges over his release in 2010 of hundreds of thousands of classified documents including the US diplomatic cables and military logs from Afghanistan and Iraq. Before their unsuccessful appeal in January, Assange's legal team warned there was "a real risk" he could face the death penalty in the US or detention in Guantánamo Bay.

Assange has appointed a new legal team for Tuesday's hearing. His previous representative, media lawyer Mark Stephens, has been replaced by Gareth Peirce, who has represented the Guildford Four, the Birmingham Six and Moazzam Begg, a British Muslim who was held at Guantánamo. Ben Emmerson QC, who specialises in European human rights law, will be Assange's barrister, replacing Geoffrey Robertson QC, who acted for him in January.

The changes are thought to be part of a more conciliatory approach by Assange. Peirce's office would not comment on their strategy on Monday, but she has been previously quoted indicating the need for sensitivity and respect in the case.

"Each of the human beings involved deserves respect and consideration," she reportedly wrote to former US senator Tom Hayden for an article in the Nation, a US magazine. "It is hoped that whatever steps as are required to be taken in the future will be taken thoughtfully, with sensitivity and with such respect."

Assange recently filmed an online fundraising advert in which he appeared to take credit for inspiring the uprising in Egypt. The commercial spoofs the MasterCard ads, saying: "Fighting legal cases across five countries: $1m" and "added cost due to house arrest: £500,000" before concluding with Assange watching footage on his laptop of Egyptian protesters streaming towards Tahrir Square with the voiceover: "Watching the world change as a result of your work: priceless. There are some people that don't like change. For everyone else there is WikiLeaks."

WikiLeaks issued a statement in June marking Assange's six months under house arrest at Ellingham Hall in Norfolk, the 10-bedroom country home of Vaughan Smith, founder of the Frontline club in London. Assange celebrated his 40th birthday there on Sunday with about 100 guests.

WikiLeaks said Assange had not been charged with a crime in any country and complained his conditions were "excessive and dehumanising".

The case will be heard by Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Ouseley in court four of the Royal Courts of Justice and will begin at 10.30am. It is scheduled to last for two days. If Assange loses the case he could yet appeal to the supreme court.

buglerbilly

13-07-11, 12:47 AM

UN Says US Breaking Rules in Manning Probe

July 12, 2011

Associated Press|by John Heilprin

GENEVA - The United Nations' torture investigator on Tuesday accused the United States of violating U.N. rules by refusing him unfettered access to the Army private accused of passing classified documents to WikiLeaks.

Juan Mendez, the U.N.'s special rapporteur for torture, said he can't do his job unless he has unmonitored access to detainees. He said the U.S. military's insistence on monitoring conversations with Bradley Manning "violates long-standing rules" the U.N. follows for visits to inmates.

Manning has been detained by the U.S. military for most of the past year in a case pitting the U.S. government against advocates of transparency in government. The Army private stands accused of being the source of a trove of sensitive documents about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

He was transferred to a Kansas military prison in April after being confined alone in a cell for 23 hours a day in a Marine Corps brig in Quantico, Virginia, for eight months after his arrest. He faces about two dozen charges, including aiding the enemy. That charge can bring the death penalty or life in prison.

Mendez said the U.S. government assured him Manning is better treated now than he was in Quantico, but the government must allow the U.N. investigator to check that for himself.

Mendez said he needs to assess whether the conditions Manning experienced amounted to "torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" while at Quantico.

"For that, it is imperative that I talk to Mr. Manning under conditions where I can be assured that he is being absolutely candid," Mendez said.

*cough* *splutter" WHAT? The ferkin UN believes itself far greater than it is...........:jerkit

Pentagon officials have consistently said Manning was being held under appropriate conditions given the seriousness of the charges against him.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

buglerbilly

14-07-11, 02:41 AM

JULY 13, 2011, 12:14 P.M. ET.

Sweden Turns Up Heat on Assange

By NATALIA RACHLIN

LONDON—Swedish authorities pressed their case for the extradition of Julian Assange on Wednesday, emphasizing the severity of the accusations made against the WikiLeaks founder during the second and final day of his appeal hearing.

Mr. Assange is appealing a February ruling by a lower U.K. court that he be extradited to Sweden to face questioning over allegations that he raped one woman, and molested another, during a stay in Stockholm last August. Sweden hasn't formally charged him with a crime, and he denies any wrongdoing.

On Tuesday, Mr. Assange's defense team argued that the allegations against their client didn't constitute extraditable crimes under English law. They also argued that the Swedish authorities had made improper use of a Europe-wide arrest warrant, claiming that such warrants aren't meant to be used to extradite a person who hasn't been formally charged with a crime. Mr. Assange's lawyers also argued that all of his sexual interactions with the women were consensual.

On Wednesday, Clare Montgomery, representing the Swedish Judicial Authority, argued that according to her understanding of European law, a formal charge wasn't necessary to merit extradition.

She also underscored the severity of the claims against Mr. Assange, and accused Mr. Assange's lawyers of "winding the law of consent back to the 19th century." She said the common definition of consent is "agrees by choice, and has freedom and capacity to make that choice," and argued that in the four charges against Mr. Assange, consent wasn't present. "They were forced either by physical force or by the sense of being trapped into the position where they had no choice," said Ms. Montgomery.

In the fourth and most serious claim, Mr. Assange is accused of "minor rape," a Swedish legal term applied to nonviolent, but nonconsensual sexual intercourse.

That allegation involves Mr. Assange allegedly having unprotected sex with one of the women while she was asleep; Mr. Assange's lawyers argue that the woman has in some interviews described herself as having been "half asleep."

WikiLeaks has angered Washington by publishing thousands of classified government documents about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as secret diplomatic cables. Since his December arrest in the U.K., he has been living under strict bail conditions at a supporter's house, where he is required to report to the police every day. It wasn't immediately clear when the appeals court plans to rule in the case.

buglerbilly

14-07-11, 02:48 AM

Julian Assange extradition appeal: QCs clash over 'conceptions of consent'

High court judges adjourn case to consider Swedish prosecution authority's case against WikiLeaks founder

Robert Booth

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 13 July 2011 20.34 BST

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange leaves the high court in London after his appeal against extradition to Sweden on sexual assault charges. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, must be extradited to Sweden to face accusations of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion, the high court in London heard.

Clare Montgomery QC, appearing for the Swedish prosecution authority on the last day of Assange's appeal against extradition, said complaints against him showed a lack of consent during a string of sexual encounters in Stockholm last August. She said the charges set out on the European arrest warrant and supported by witness statements amount to valid allegations.

Speaking to a packed court four at the Royal Courts of Justice before Lord Justice Thomas and Mr Justice Ouseley adjourned to consider their verdict, she spelled out in graphic detail Assange's alleged behaviour and said the two female complainants known as AA and SW described "circumstances in which they did not freely consent without coercion".

"They were coerced, either by physical force or they were trapped into a situation where they had no choice," Montgomery said. "AA says in her case the prelude to the offence was Mr Assange ripping her clothes off, breaking her necklace, her trying to get dressed again and then letting him undress her." He then had sex with her after pinning her arms and trying to force her legs apart to insert his unprotected penis, which she did not want, she said.

In an increasingly hard fought legal battle, Assange's counsel, Ben Emmerson QC, hit back at what he said were attempts by Montgomery to characterise him as having "19th-century conceptions of consent". It was "crazy" of Montgomery to isolate a moment of lack of consent within sexual encounters that were otherwise consenting. He said police reports in Sweden showed SW had told a friend, Marie Thorn, that she felt police and others around her "railroaded her" into pressing charges. She had only wanted the police to force Assange to take a blood test after she became worried about HIV after unprotected sex with him, he said.

Emmerson said a friend of AA, Donald Bostrom, said "she didn't say at all she had been exposed to abuse and didn't even want to go to the police", and a charge of sexual molestation arising from Assange sharing a single bed with AA was also unfounded.

The European arrest warrant said Assange "deliberately molested the injured party on 18 August 2010 by acting in a manner designed to violate her sexual integrity".

In an interview, AA said Assange undressed below the waist and rubbed his erect penis against her. She found it "strange" and "awkward" and moved to sleep on a mattress on the floor. But Assange's erection was normal, Emmerson told the court.

"He's lying beside her in a single bed my lord," he said. "Men will get erections involuntarily and at different times during a night's sleep. If she chooses to spend a night in a single bed with a man there is a strong possibility she will come into contact with an erect penis. I don't mean that as a joke."

"I agree with you," said Thomas.

However, Montgomery told the court the definition of an extradition offence "means the conduct complained of. It has nothing to do with the evidence."

Thomas appeared to concur: "We are not concerned with whether this is a good case or a bad case but whether what is charged amounts to a crime."

In one of several criticisms of the Swedish authorities, Emmerson said: "The clearest possible facts have been concealed through the terminology of the warrant. That is wrong and it is the responsibility of this court to put it right."

Assange left court without comment and returned to Norfolk to continue his house arrest. A verdict is expected in around a month.

buglerbilly

22-08-11, 03:07 AM

Wiki war: 3500 unpublished leaks destroyed forever as Assange hits out

Asher Moses

August 22, 2011 - 11:59AM.

Former WikiLeaks staffer and one of the founders of OpenLeaks, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, holds his book Inside WikiLeaks. Photo: AP

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's former right-hand man has irrevocably destroyed 3500 unpublished files leaked to the whistleblower site including the complete US no-fly list, five gigabytes of Bank of America documents and detailed information about 20 neo-Nazi groups.

Daniel Domscheit-Berg, who left WikiLeaks last year after a falling out with Assange, revealed the document destruction in an interview with Der Spiegel.

WikiLeaks has hit back, accusing Domscheit-Berg of being in bed with US intelligence agencies and of jeopardising the leaking of “many issues of public importance, human rights abuses, mass telecommunications interception, banking and the planning of dozens of neo-nazi groups”.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his former right-hand man, Daniel Domschelt-Berg aka. Daniel Schmitt. Photo: Flickr.com/andygee1

Along with the thousands of files, Domscheit-Berg also took the entire Wikileaks encrypted submission system with him on his way out to start a rival site, OpenLeaks. It has resulted in WikiLeaks being unable to receive leaked documents online for a year, with the site instead resorting to snail mail via an Australian P.O. Box at the University of Melbourne.

In a translation of the Der Spiegel interview, Domscheit-Berg said he had the files “shredded to ensure that the sources are not compromised”.

A large factor in Assange and Domscheit-Berg falling out was the fear that Assange released the 400,000 classified US documents about the Iraq war too early without taking the time to properly redact names of US collaborators and informants in Iraq.

In his book released this year, Inside WikiLeaks (review), Domscheit-Berg accused Assange of being autocratic and said the reason he took the submission system and unpublished documents was because “children shouldn't play with guns”.

“We will only return the material to Julian if and when he can prove that he can store the material securely and handle it carefully and responsibly,” he writes.

WikiLeaks has confirmed the breadth of documents that were destroyed in several tweets over the weekend. The organisation labels Domscheit-Berg's actions as “theft” and “sabotage”.

“DDB spits on every courageous whistblower who leaked data if they destroy the keys and refuse to return it. This is not acceptable,” WikiLeaks tweeted.

“Leak organisations don't destroy information whistleblowers risked their lives to leak.”

One Guatemalan human rights lawyer, Renata Avila, published an open letter earlier this month asking what happened to the material she submitted to WikiLeaks.

In a lengthy further statement, WikiLeaks reveals how it spent the past 11 months unsuccessfully trying to negotiate the return of the unpublished leaks and internal communications taken by Domscheit-Berg.

“Mr. Domscheit-Berg has repeatedly attempted to blackmail WikiLeaks by threatening to make available, to forces that oppose WikiLeaks, these private communications and to which Mr. Domscheit-Berg is not a party,” the statement reads.

“He has stated he will commit this action, should WikiLeaks move to charge him with sabotage or theft.”

The statement claims the negotiations were terminated by the mediator who had “doubts” about Domscheit-Berg's “integrity and claimed willingness to return the material”.

In response Domscheit-Berg threatened to destroy the files, WikiLeaks claimed. He now appears to have followed through on that threat.

“The material is irreplaceable and includes substantial information on many issues of public importance, human rights abuses, mass telecommunications interception, banking and the planning of dozens of neo-nazi groups. Our sources have in some cases risked their lives or freedom attempting to convey these disclosures to WikiLeaks and to the public,” the statement reads.

WikiLeaks says that because it does not collect or retain source identifying information, sources are not significantly at risk.

In a separate statement, Assange accuses Domscheit-Berg of being in contact with the FBI, implying that he is helping out the US investigation into WikiLeaks and Assange. He also links Domscheit-Berg's wife, Anke, to the CIA.

In addition to the US no-fly list, neo-Nazi material and Bank of America data, which was tipped to reveal serious corrupt practices at the bank, Domscheit-Berg also destroyed information on US intercept arrangements for over 100 internet companies, WikiLeaks said.

The no-fly list, maintained by the US government's Terrorist Screen Center, is a list of people forbidden from travelling in or out of the US on commercial aircraft.

The falling out between Domscheit-Berg and Assange was played out in full public view after a private instant messaging conversation between the pair was leaked.

“You are not anyone's king or god,” Domscheit-Berg told Assange in the chat.

“And you're not even fulfilling your role as a leader right now. A leader communicates and cultivates trust in himself. You are doing the exact opposite. You behave like some kind of emperor or slave trader.”

Assange's statement at the weekend references Domscheit-Berg leaking the chat logs “in clear violation of WikiLeaks internal security directives”. The Inside WikiLeaks book, Assange said, “contains many proven malicious libels”.

Domscheit-Berg's WikiLeaks rival, OpenLeaks, promises to be more transparent than WikiLeaks and route information to media organisations and interest groups instead of publishing material itself. The site still appears to be starting up and there has yet to be any high-profile leaks.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/wiki-war-3500-unpublished-leaks-destroyed-forever-as-assange-hits-out-20110822-1j5gw.html#ixzz1Vif4HlxG

buglerbilly

31-08-11, 04:53 AM

Six women in danger dossier

Dylan Welch, Rafael Epstein, Erik Jensen

August 31, 2011.

Melanie Joyce Brown. Photo: Eric Notarianni

Click here for the original document on WikiLeaks

http://wikileaks.org/cable/2010/01/10CANBERRA51.html

SIX women living in Australia have been linked by US intelligence agencies to an al-Qaeda plot to recruit women for terrorist attacks, according to a diplomatic cable discussing Australian links to the international jihadi organisation.

But some on the list, including a well-known Sydney imam, have rejected the claims and say they bear little relation to the truth.

Sheik Zoud at his Lakemba prayer hall. Photo: Anthony Johnson

The women - four Australians, one British and a Filipina - are among 23 people whom ASIO and the US State Department allege are connected to al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

''Recent threat information suggests [al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula] is looking to identify a female for a future attack,'' the cable stated in entries for all six women.

AQAP is al-Qaeda's most internationally active branch and is believed to have played a role in nearly all the attempted terrorist attacks in the West since 2009.

Rabiah Hutchinson. altho it could be anybody under there....................

Of particular concern to intelligence agencies is a belief that many on the list have been in contact with AQAP's chief propagandist and radical preacher, Anwar al-Awlaqi.

The Herald has been told more than 100 people with links to Australia are on similar lists and are being monitored by US intelligence agencies and police in Australia. There are concerns that those on these lists disappear off ''the passport radar'' in countries such as Malaysia and the United Arab Emirates. They then travel to countries such as Yemen and Pakistan for terrorism training.

But the quality of the information in the cable has been questioned by one of those named.

Sheikh Abdel Zoud, an imam at the Belmore mosque in Sydney, told the Herald he had no idea why he was on the list as he had never been to Yemen, had never spoken to al-Awlaqi, sent him money or visited his website. ''This is fabricated news. Not correct at all. I have no connection with this man,'' he said. ''You can say anything but I challenge them to find any connection between him and me. People are innocent until you prove it.''

He said neither ASIO nor the US consulate had contacted him.

The cable, written by the US embassy in Canberra in January last year, was sent to US intelligence agencies and 15 US diplomatic stations. The 23 names were provided by ASIO to the US State Department, which put them on its ''Visas Viper'' program, a database for ''watch listing'' suspected terrorists.

Ultimately, 11 of the 23 were banned from flying in the US. The rest were placed on another list and subject to increased security screening.

The Herald is not suggesting any of those on the no-fly list are involved in terrorist activity.

Stephen Hopper, a lawyer who represents two women on the list, dismissed the allegations as baseless. ''It is same old same old. I don't think the Australian public have anything to be concerned about,'' Mr Hopper said.

Many of the names have appeared in the media previously - the long-time ASIO target Rabiah Hutchinson; Shyloh Giddins, an Australian woman arrested in Yemen last year; and Melanie Brown, the wife of the convicted terrorist associate Willie Brigitte.

Many of those on the list are connected to Ms Hutchinson, who is known as the ''matriarch'' of radical Islam in Australia. Two of the men on the list are her children.

Another on the list is a Bosnian refugee, Mirsad Mulahalilovic. He was released from prison in 2009 after serving more than three years for his role in a foiled terrorist plot that was to target Sydney in 2005.

Mr Hopper represents Ms Hutchinson and Ms Giddins. He said he had spoken to them and they were frustrated that claims they had repeatedly rejected were being aired again.

The Attorney-General, Robert McClelland, also criticised the unedited release of the list. ''The publication of any information that could compromise Australia's national security - or inhibit the ability of intelligence agencies to monitor potential threats - is incredibly irresponsible.''

In the US there was some concern about WikiLeaks's most recent release, with The New York Times suggesting it might have compromised the safety of diplomatic sources.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/six-women-in-danger-dossier-20110830-1jk8n.html#ixzz1WZiBOtsB

buglerbilly

01-09-11, 01:53 AM

Unredacted US embassy cables available online after WikiLeaks breach

Guardian denies allegation in WikiLeaks statement that journalist disclosed passwords to archive

James Ball

The Guardian, Thursday 1 September 2011

A screensaver from the WikiLeaks website. Unredacted US embassy cables have been made available online after a security breach. Photograph: Karen Bleier/AFP/Getty Images

A security breach has led to the WikiLeaks archive of 251,000 secret US diplomatic cables being made available online, without redaction to protect sources.

WikiLeaks has been releasing the cables over nine months by partnering with mainstream media organisations.

Selected cables have been published without sensitive information that could lead to the identification of informants or other at-risk individuals.

The US government warned last year that such a release could lead to US informants, human rights activists and others being placed at risk of harm or detention.

A Twitter user has now published a link to the full, unredacted database of embassy cables. The user is believed to have found the information after acting on hints published in several media outlets and on the WikiLeaks Twitter feed, all of which cited a member of rival whistleblowing website OpenLeaks as the original source of the tipoffs.

The Guardian, New York Times, Der Spiegel, Le Monde and El Pais were the first five news organisations to publish stories based on the documents, allegedly leaked by US soldier Bradley Manning, in December 2010.

WikiLeaks published a statement blaming the documents' release on the Guardian's book WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy, by investigations editor David Leigh and Luke Harding, published in February 2011.

The statement, released on WikiLeaks's official Twitter feed, alleged: "A Guardian journalist has, in a previously undetected act of gross negligence or malice, and in violation of a signed security agreement with the Guardian's editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger, disclosed top secret decryption passwords to the entire, unredacted, WikiLeaks Cablegate archive. We have already spoken to the state department and commenced pre-litigation action. We will issue a formal statement in due course." The Guardian denies WikiLeaks's allegations.

WikiLeaks said it contacted the US state department on 25 August to warn that the full publication of cables may be imminent and to check whether the department's programme to notify those named in the documents had been completed. Julian Assange was said to have had a 75 minute phone conversation with Cliff Johnson, a legal advisor at the department, but was refused a face-to-face meeting to exchange further information.

The embassy cables were shared with the Guardian through a secure server for a period of hours, after which the server was taken offline and all files removed, as was previously agreed by both parties. This is considered a basic security precaution when handling sensitive files. But unknown to anyone at the Guardian, the same file with the same password was republished later on BitTorrent, a network typically used to distribute films and music. This file's contents were never publicised, nor was it linked online to WikiLeaks in any way.

A statement from the Guardian said: "It's nonsense to suggest the Guardian's WikiLeaks book has compromised security in any way.

"Our book about WikiLeaks was published last February. It contained a password, but no details of the location of the files, and we were told it was a temporary password which would expire and be deleted in a matter of hours.

"It was a meaningless piece of information to anyone except the person(s) who created the database.

"No concerns were expressed when the book was published and if anyone at WikiLeaks had thought this compromised security they have had seven months to remove the files. That they didn't do so clearly shows the problem was not caused by the Guardian's book."

Tim

01-09-11, 02:21 AM

Awww no Julian, someone violated your security protocols? You must be so upset...

buglerbilly

03-09-11, 03:11 AM

Revelations swamped by the secrecy sideshow

Tim Dick

September 3, 2011 .

In the eye of the storm ... Julian Assange. Photo: Reuters

WikiLeaks, the diplomacy game-changer, is losing its edge, argues Tim Dick.

One Wednesday, November 15, 2006, at 3.15pm, the US deputy chief of mission to Nassau, Brent Hardt, sent a confidential cable to the State Department with the urgent news that ''Hurricane Anna Nicole wreaks havoc in the Bahamas''.

Of all the diplomatic cables published by WikiLeaks, it is one of the more colourful. It details no natural disaster, but the effect of the late celebrity Anna Nicole Smith's arrival on island political life. "Not since Wallis Simpson dethroned a king and came to Nassau has an American femme fatale so captivated the Bahamian public and dominated local politics."

For detractors of WikiLeaks, it is further evidence for their case that the hoard of US diplomacy's internal communications is little more than a pile of state-funded gossip, an anthology of varying quality which rarely did anything but confirm what was publicly known.

A London Review of Books essay dismissed it as ''humdrum diplomatic pillow talk'' in January, declaring that "judged by any index of the smacked gob, many of the disclosures are unstartling".

The entire cache is now apparently free for anyone with enough determination to find it online, without names of vulnerable sources blacked out, prompting a three-way spat over blame between WikiLeaks, a defector who operates a rival leaks site and its former newspaper partner The Guardian.

Ten months since WikiLeaks began to release the cables in drips - water torture for the US government - it now seems appropriate to ask: what has been achieved?

In America, WikiLeaks promptly won itself a hatred reserved for the most egregious traitors. Politicians wanted it deemed a terrorist organisation. A Washington Post poll found 68 per cent of Americans thought WikiLeaks had harmed the public interest. Sarah Palin spoke for many when she called Julian Assange ''an anti-American operative with blood on his hands'' and asked why he was not pursued ''with the same urgency we pursue al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders''.

But in Tunisia, WikiLeaks is not seen as the devil incarnate, and its effect was pro-American.

On July 17, 2009, the US ambassador Robert Godec wrote home and said of the regime: "Corruption in the inner circle is growing. Even average Tunisians are keenly aware of it, and the chorus of complaints is rising. Tunisians intensely dislike, even hate, first lady Leila Trabelsi and her family. In private, regime opponents mock her; even those close to the government express dismay at her reported behaviour.''

Ten days later, another cable wrote about the lavish lifestyle of President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali's son-in-law, who had a large tiger called Pasha which ate four chickens a day.

The cables were published in December and, according to the Guardian reporter David Leigh, in WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy, it ignited collected gas. A 26-year-old fruiterer self-immolated in protest at the regime, and riots followed as authorities madly tried to block access to reports of the cables. Leigh argues that Tunisians already knew the ruling family was debauched, but there was a tangible effect: "WikiLeaks reveals what everyone was whispering."

The now-deposed Libyan leader, Muammar Gaddafi, complained that WikiLeaks ''publishes information written by lying ambassadors in order to create chaos" - and a month after the uprising began, the Tunisian dictator had fled to Saudi Arabia and the government had crumbled.

On the Foreign Policy blog, Elizabeth Dickinson wrote: "WikiLeaks acted as a catalyst: both a trigger and a tool for political outcry. Which is probably the best compliment one could give the whistle-blower site." Despite the US administration crying foul over WikiLeaks, it helped spread democracy in North Africa - hardly contrary to American policy.

In Australia, the fallout from the cables - published first in the Herald, The Age and The Canberra Times through journalist Philip Dorling - was less revolutionary.

The US diplomats here thought the government was pessimistic about Afghanistan. Kevin Rudd was a ''control freak''. Mark Arbib talked to them, so did the deputy director of the federal Liberal Party. They did not expect Tony Abbott to become Leader of the Opposition but did expect the first emissions trading scheme to become law.

This week, following the release of most of the cache by WikiLeaks, we read that 23 Australians had links to Yemeni terrorist groups and 11 were put on a no-fly list. Their names were not blacked out on the cables and, as the Herald noted, most had already been named.

The Attorney-General, Robert McClelland, was one of the few politicians in the world vocally complaining this week, and even he changed tack to shift from suggesting WikiLeaks's actions were illegal, as he did in December, to merely labelling them grossly irresponsible.

''The publication of any information that could compromise Australia's national security - or inhibit the ability of intelligence agencies to monitor potential threats - is incredibly irresponsible."

Yet the fear of untold damage to international relations has dissipated. In Defence Studies, Professor Jack Spence from the Department of War Studies at King's College London and a masters' student, Mark Page, argue the release of the cables will not win greater transparency.

''More likely secrecy will increase. WikiLeaks will not revolutionise the diplomatic method, and it is not 'the end of diplomacy as we know it','' they wrote.

The bulk of this week's coverage - particularly overseas - concentrated on who was to blame for the loss of control over the entire database. WikiLeaks launched a bitter attack on The Guardian, which brokered the publication deal last year with five outlets including The New York Times, and The Guardian fought back. Meanwhile, the ABC's Media Watch program criticised the Fairfax papers for not putting online all the cables on which its WikiLeaks stories based. They defended themselves.

In other words, what should be at most the sideshow - the process of telling the story - became the WikiLeaks story itself. Again. And as long as remains the case, the real impact of the cables is obscured.

In Australia, unscathed by revolution, whatever capital WikiLeaks built up by its massive leak of American intelligence is being steadily eroded by the sideshow, no matter how significant the contents of the cables. It is being replaced by an underwhelming feeling of, in modern terms, ''meh''.

In some years we may come to think of the leak more in terms of the Tunisian uprising or a check on government hypocrisy, than of Julian Assange, the rather peculiar Australian with a canny ability to fall out with most of those he deals with. But the opposite seems a safer bet.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/revelations-swamped-by-the-secrecy-sideshow-20110902-1jq4t.html#ixzz1Wqqcsf87

buglerbilly

23-09-11, 01:50 AM

WikiLeaks Founder Denies Sex Charges in Book

September 22, 2011

Associated Press|by Jill Lawless

LONDON - WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says in a new memoir that he did not sexually assault two women who have accused him of rape, and he claims he was warned the U.S government was trying to entrap him.

"Julian Assange: The Unauthorized Autobiography" went on sale in Britain Thursday - against the wishes of Assange, who condemned his publisher for releasing it.

In the book - written by a ghostwriter who conducted 50 hours of interviews with the WikiLeaks chief - Assange says "I may be a chauvinist pig of some sort but I am no rapist."

He says his two accusers "each had sex with me willingly and were happy to hang out with me afterwards."

Assange, 40, claims a Western intelligence contact warned him that the American government, angered by WikiLeaks' release of secret documents, was considering dealing with him "illegally" through rigged drug or sex allegations.

But he also says the sex charges may be the result of "a terrible misunderstanding that was stoked up" between his accusers.

WikiLeaks and its silver-haired frontman shot to worldwide prominence with a series of spectacular leaks of secret U.S. material, including the publication of about 250,000 classified State Department cables.

Assange has also become enmeshed in financial and legal woes, including the allegations of rape and sexual misconduct made last year by two Swedish women.

Assange was arrested and briefly jailed over the allegations in Britain in December. He is currently out on bail and living at a supporter's mansion in eastern England as he awaits a judge's decision on whether he will be extradited to Sweden. A ruling is expected within weeks.

The book, for which Assange says he agreed to advances of more than $1 million, was intended to help salvage WikiLeaks' precarious finances.

But after seeing the first draft, Assange got cold feet. Attempts to renegotiate the book deal were unsuccessful.

Assange accused his British publisher, Canongate, of "opportunism and duplicity" for publishing the unfinished book without his approval.

In a statement released to The Associated Press, he said the publisher had acted "in breach of contract, in breach of confidence, in breach of my creative rights and in breach of personal assurances."

Canongate said that since Assange had not repaid his advance - which was handed over to lawyers to help pay his legal fees - it had decided to publish the book.

Assange's U.S. publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, said it had canceled its contract with Assange and would not be releasing the memoir.

Canongate said it used extensive secrecy measures, including encrypted laptops and a ban on Internet communication, to ensure the news did not leak. Retailers were only told about the book a day in advance, and Assange said he was unaware it was being published until Wednesday afternoon.

"We have had books delivered under a level of security before, but not to this height," said Jon Howells, spokesman for the Waterstone's book store chain. "In publishing terms this is real 'Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy' stuff."

The book traces Assange's life from his Australian childhood as the son of roving puppeteers through his time as a teenage computer hacker to the founding of the secret-spilling website and its release of war logs from Iraq and Afghanistan and other secret documents.

It also recounts Assange's fallout with media partners including The Guardian and New York Times newspapers, which had helped edit and publish the site's trove of secret documents.

News York Times editor Bill Keller, Assange says, turned from "hungry collaborator to ungrateful avenger." The Guardian staff are described as "lily-livered gits hiding in their glass offices."

Assange notes angrily that WikiLeaks' former media partners "thought of us as a bunch of weird hackers and sexual delinquents."

The book includes an accounts of Assange's nine days in London's Wandsworth Prison in December, where he reads Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and muses about prison predecessor Oscar Wilde while enduring "a Kafkaesque miasma of passive aggression and hindrance."

Canongate publishing director Nick Davies defended the book as a "nuanced and balanced portrait" of a complex individual.

"He has been portrayed as this Bond villain or a character from a Stieg Larsson novel ... but what comes through here is this very human portrait of Julian, warts and all," he said.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

buglerbilly

01-10-11, 04:29 AM

We've only just begun: Assange on 'leaking boat' Wikileaks

Isabel Hayes

October 1, 2011 - 7:56AM .

Julian Assange:Wikileaks has not yet gone nearly far enough.

The grinning fool............I haf vays of making you listen! :cuckoo

Wikileaks is a leaking boat, filled with torpedo holes, that is struggling to stay afloat, founder Julian Assange says.

But the organisation has only just begun its work, the under-siege Australian has promised.

Assange, 40, who is currently on bail in Britain facing extradition to Sweden, appeared via videolink at the Sydney Opera House's annual Festival of Dangerous Ideas last night.

"At the moment, WikiLeaks is a rather big boat with a lot of torpedo holes in it that has taken water in and is drifting along and we're doing our best to keep it afloat," Mr Assange said.

But despite this, the organisation had not yet gone nearly far enough, he said.

"We have only just begun. We have put into that historic record less than one-thousandth of the series of information that is concealed that needs to be there," he said.

Assange reflected on how 310 days ago he was in Wandsworth Prison in London and the Australian government was doing "everything in their power to see me...shipped off to the United States".

"And that swift reaction from the Australian government was only stopped by the Australian population and our friends in Australia," he said.

"It was an expression of democratic discipline."

Assange is awaiting a decision by Britain's High Court of Appeal as to whether he will be extradited to Sweden to face allegations of sexual assault and rape against two women.

Wikileaks came under criticism earlier this month after it posted its entire archive of US State Department cables on its website, making potentially sensitive diplomatic sources available to anyone.

Mr Assange has blamed the Guardian newspaper for the leak, saying the newspaper's negligence in publishing an encryption key to uncensored files forced his organisation's hand in publishing the secret US diplomatic memos.

"Who is the biggest critic of all of this, who has been creating three articles a day for the past four weeks on this? The Guardian, the very newspaper that disclosed the password, that is trying to save its arse from criticism," he said.

Assange's other former media partner, The New York Times, was also trying to distance itself from WikiLeaks to "save its own arses", he said.

The leak of 251,287 cables was "the greatest intellectual political treasury that has ever been put into the historic records of modern times", Assange said.

"It can't be called a dump - dump is what you do to garbage," he said.

"This is a treasure."

Wikileaks is also under severe pressure from a credit card ban on donations to the site undertaken by Visa, Mastercard and Paypal, among others.

"That has wiped out 95 per cent of our revenue. Over $US20 million ($A20.53 million) has been destroyed as a result of that completely political blockade," Mr Assange said.

"In your wallet is an instrument of unstated US foreign policy and it's affecting your actions right now," he said.

Assange said he has accepted Wikileaks may not survive as an organisation.

"(But) even if WikiLeaks is destroyed, other people have been inspired by our work and they will continue to carry the flame."

AAP

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/weve-only-just-begun-assange-on-leaking-boat-wikileaks-20111001-1l27f.html#ixzz1ZUslHBWM

buglerbilly

15-10-11, 03:53 AM

'Who wouldn't shout with the stakes so high?'

Julian Assange

October 15, 2011.

News that's fit to print ... Assange says he struggled to ensure the cables were ''ready'' for publication. Photo: Mark Chew

The tense relationship between the founder of Wikileaks, Julian Assange, and two of the world's leading newspaper publishers unravelled in spectacular fashion.

Disclosure is not merely an action; it is a way of life.

To my mind it carries sense and sensibility: you are what you know, and no state has the right to make you less. Many modern states forget they were founded on the principles of the Enlightenment, that knowledge is a guarantor of liberty, and that no state has the right to dispense justice as if it were merely a favour of power. Justice, rightly upheld, is a check on power, and we can only look after the people by making sure that politics never controls information absolutely.

This is common sense. It used to be the first principle of journalism in every country with a free press. Early in our relationship with the media partners, I knew I would, at some point, offer them the chance to join us in publishing a giant cache of diplomatic cables. I was holding off, to let the Afghan and Iraq war logs see the light of day in as measured and careful a way as possible.

As a result of surveillance and the aggressive attitude of the Pentagon towards me, I wanted to make copies of the cables to ensure their safekeeping. I was not happy with how things had developed with The Guardian, but my attitude was ''better the devil you know''. The New York Times had shown themselves to be cowards, and I was not ready to work with them again. It felt like there was a massive strike coming down on us, so I copied the 250,000 documents and stashed them first with contacts in Eastern Europe and Cambodia. I also put them on an encrypted laptop and had it delivered to Daniel Ellsberg, the hero of the Pentagon Papers. Giving it to Dan had symbolic value for us. We also knew he could be trusted to publish the whole lot during a crisis.

I asked for a signed letter from The Guardian's editor, Alan Rusbridger, guaranteeing the material would be kept confidential, that nothing would be published until we were ready to go, and that it would not be stored on a computer that was connected to the internet or any internal network. Rusbridger agreed and we signed the letter. In return, I produced an encrypted disk with a password and they had the material. At which point the senior news reporter went off on holiday to Scotland, all bonhomie and jollity, ready to read the material and keep in touch about the future plan.

With the Swedish case [when Assange was accused of sexual assault by two women in Sweden] now in the air, there was a definite sense of gossiping schoolgirls among the media partners.

It amazed me, because many of them are investigative reporters, and you'd imagine they knew something about smears and hysteria when it came to political outcasts. A man, for example, who worked for the Bureau of Investigative Journalism suddenly told his colleagues he wouldn't ''appear on stage with a rapist''. Some of those men have more skeletons in their closets than Highgate Cemetery but they dived on my troubles with an unmistakeable glee.

None asked me how it came about, or how I was, or whether I needed anything: they simply responded as if the creepy allegations were ''smoke'' that could not possibly exist ''without fire''.

Having schmoozed their way to several scoops off the back of our organisation, two of these media partners began to behave as if I represented a moral risk. Nothing had changed in the material, nothing had changed in our passion to reveal it, but false allegations had been made against me that caused these men to increase their bad behaviour and their stereotyping of me to the point where it was crazy.

There were some incredible stories in the cables: $25 million worth of bribes to politicians in India, given with the knowledge of apparently sanguine US diplomats; signs of continued American interference in Haitian politics; revelations that a Peruvian presidential candidate had taken money from an alleged drug trafficker; unprecedented levels of lobbying of foreign governments by diplomats on behalf of American corporations; politicians in Lithuania paying journalists for positive coverage; and even spying by American diplomats on their colleagues at the United Nations.

The cables were going to be sensational, but at that point they were not quite ready. Any decent publisher would have understood this: it was more important than any scoop that the material be properly ready and the sources be protected. This was priority number one. But not to The Guardian. No sooner had the senior reporter returned from his holiday than he began harassing me about publication. He said a rival journalist had a copy of the cables and was a clear threat to their exclusivity.

I investigated that matter. It turned out that our Icelandic colleague Smá´ri McCarthy had indeed shared the material with the journalist during an anxious moment.

Stressed at his workload, McCarthy had misguidedly shared them with her - to get some help - under certain strict conditions. He then hacked into the computer remotely and wiped the cables, though it would never be clear whether she had copied them or not. The Guardian reporter's argument is that she was shopping them around.

I can't tell you how many times we have come across people - people who think of themselves as campaigners - behaving like stock exchange bullies when it comes to a commodity they are interested in. You can hear the snap of their red braces as they go in for the kill.

The Guardian's senior reporter said it was all very threatening and he wanted to rush towards publication. I told him we weren't ready and we had a written agreement. He went off in a fluster and we didn't hear from him.

It became clear later that he had already copied the material for The New York Times. They were moving towards publication with no regard for any of the important issues - matters of life and death - that stood behind the documents. Like greedy, reckless, damn-them-all bandits, they were going to shoot up the town no matter who was standing in the way. The Guardian's reporter had behaved cravenly and lawlessly, and was quite happy to please his newspaper, and his heroes across the Atlantic, while dumping the whole thing on our heads without warning … WikiLeaks could go and hang itself from the nearest tree.

We simply had to have some time. It was deeper than any of them could understand, in their juvenile deadline-mania, but we had to have time to prepare for this. I called Rusbridger and he agreed I should come in for talks. I knew they were double-crossing us, without even having the balls to say that was what they were doing. We came into the building with my lawyer, Mark Stephens, and came face to face with the senior news reporter beside the stairs.

''Hello,'' I said.

''Oh-oh,'' he said, surprised.

''We'll come down and see you later,'' I said. ''We just want to clarify a few things that Alan Rusbridger showed us.''

I've never seen anyone's face collapse like that. He went white. As we walked away, our group said the news reporter looked like a person caught with a murder weapon.

We went upstairs to see Rusbridger. Der Spiegel's editor came in. I was shouting, almost certainly, and I asked Rusbridger point-blank if they had given the material to The New York Times. He dodged the question.

''The first thing we need to do,'' I said, ''is establish who's got a copy of the material. Who does not have a copy of the material, and who does? Because we're not ready to publish.''

His eyes rolled around the room. He didn't know where to look.

''Did you give a copy of the cables to The New York Times?''

I kept pressing them. ''We need to understand what sort of people we're dealing with. Are we dealing with people whose word we can trust or are we not? Because if we're not dealing with people whose written word we can trust, then …''

It now looked like all their eyes were rolling round the room. It was like a cartoon, all these grown men finding themselves unable to face the truth of what they had done, or to put forward some argument to try to defend themselves. I would later be characterised as some sort of nutcase for shouting at them. But who wouldn't shout, when the stakes were so high? Who wouldn't lose their temper with such lily-livered gits hiding in their glass offices? It was soon clear to everyone that Alan's refusal to answer the question was as good as an admission. It was only for legal reasons that he wasn't saying ''yes'' or ''no''.

My respect for the man plummeted … here's this guy, the editor of an important newspaper, an institution, a man older than me and with a crucial issue in front of him, and what we get is eyes rolling around the room like marbles on a pogo stick. I couldn't believe I was witnessing it.

We ended up debating it for seven hours, then we went downstairs to come up with a plan.

The Guardian had known all along what it wanted to do - it wanted to publish right away. Der Spiegel was trying to be friends with everyone. The truth is, we weren't ready to go, and we were being strong-armed by these people who had been niggling away at us for weeks, and were now ready with the coup de grace. At the centre of their colossal, stained vanity, they had forgotten who we were and how we had got to this room. They now thought of us as a bunch of weird hackers and sexual delinquents.

But we knew our material and we knew our technology; these guys were playing by the oldest rules in the business.

I implied that I would immediately give the entire cache of material to the Associated Press, Al Jazeera and News Corp. I didn't want to do it, but I would if they didn't play ball.

They sobered up and began to speak more reasonably about how the publication might be handled.

It later emerged, via the guys at Der Spiegel, that The Guardian had been ready to f--k us all along. They were working with The New York Times and were willing to go without even telling us, and without giving us a chance to prepare the data properly or prepare ourselves for attack.

That's how much The Guardian actually cared for the principles involved. Openness? You must be joking. A new generation of libertarians? They couldn't have cared less.

A new mood of popular uprisings in the world and a new spirit of speaking truth to power? The Guardian - the most ill-named paper in the world - may carry picture after picture from Tahrir Square, but they were willing to sell all the principles that movement stood for straight down the river.

The senior news reporter's attempt to give his paper one last leg-up before retirement left his paper gasping for its liberal breath. When American right-wingers were calling for me to be killed, The Guardian didn't run a single article in my defence. Instead, they got my old friend, the special investigations reporter, to write a dirty little attack on me.

''Strewth,'' as we used to say. Life was easier when it was just sugar ants running up my legs and biting me to death. At least in those days I had the sun on my side. But in our new kind of business, you soon get over the old guard kicking you when you're down.

We had a month to get the cables in good order, and doing so would be the most exhilarating month of my life. The cables would show the modern world what it really thought of itself, and we worked through the nights in an English country house to meet the deadline.

The snow had begun to fall and it lay evenly over the Norfolk countryside. There was no way to know that the house was to become my prison for the foreseeable future.

This is an edited extract from Julian Assange: The Unauthorised Autobiography (Text, $29.95), to be published on Monday.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/books/who-wouldnt-shout-with-the-stakes-so-high-20111014-1lp02.html#ixzz1aob9b5A3

buglerbilly

17-10-11, 07:45 AM

Assange joins London protests

London

October 17, 2011.

Julian Assange addresses demonstrators from the steps of St Paul's Cathedral in central London. Photo: AFP

Ass-hole says its OK then it must be right................

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has joined about 800 people at a heavily policed rally in London's financial heart, part of worldwide protests against corporate greed and budget cutbacks.

The demonstrators, some of them masked, were pushed back by police as they marched from St Paul's Cathedral to the London Stock Exchange, around the corner from the famous landmark.

There were only minor scuffles with five people arrested, three for assaulting police officers and two for public order offences, Scotland Yard said.

"Today's protest has been largely calm and orderly," a statement said.

The demonstration went on after nightfall, with police urging protesters to leave the area.

Organisers in a group calling itself OccupyLSX were hoping for thousands of participants after some 15,000 people expressed support on social networking sites Facebook and Twitter.

Assange, flanked by bodyguards, received a warm reception from the demonstrators as he addressed them from the cathedral steps.

"One of the reasons why we support what is happening here in Occupy London is because the banking system in London is the recipient of corrupt money," the Australian said.

The marchers, bearing banners reading "Strike Back", "No Cuts" and "Goldman Sachs Is the Work of the Devil", were ringed by police cordons while mounted officers and vehicles stood by.

After London's police were severely criticised for being caught out by riots in August, they were clearly taking no chances on Saturday and were out in force.

"Police have a duty not just to provide a proportionate response, but to minimise the potential disruption to Londoners going about their business. This isn't an easy balance to strike," Scotland Yard said.

Ben Walker, 33, a teacher from Norwich in eastern England, was carrying a rolled-up sleeping bag and said he planned to spend one or two nights in the area.

"I'm here today mainly as a sense of solidarity with the movements that are going on around the world," he told AFP. "We're hoping for a kind of justice in the global financial system."

British student Amy Soyka, 22, who set up a tent outside the cathedral said: "I feel passionately that young people have been let down. All this hope and opportunity has been taken away from them ... it's a terrible situation and we shouldn't even be in this economic situation."

She was among a number of students at the rally. Others came from Greece, Spain, South Korea and the US.

But the protest, to the sound of guitars and drums, was overwhelmingly peaceful and the cathedral remained open to visitors.

Inspired by the Occupy Wall Street movement and Spain's "Indignants", people took to the streets across the world during the weekend, targeting 951 cities in 82 countries.

AFP

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/assange-joins-london-protests-20111016-1lraa.html#ixzz1b1Ea9S9f

buglerbilly

28-10-11, 04:36 PM

Assange can still Occupy centre stage

Philip Dorling

October 29, 2011.

Corporate critic ... Julian Assange addresses protesters in London earlier this month. Photo: Reuters

WikiLeaks may be suffering but its influence grows daily, writes Philip Dorling.

There was no shortage of commentators forecasting the imminent demise of whistleblower website WikiLeaks following Monday's announcement that it was halting its flow of leaked documents to concentrate on fundraising.

The urgent funding drive - caused by the banking embargo that has cut 95 per cent of WikiLeaks funding - combined with publicity surrounding founder Julian Assange's legal difficulties (including sexual molestation questions he faces in Sweden, as well as US efforts to pursue WikiLeaks for espionage), has overshadowed another quiet but far-reaching development.

Throughout the turmoil of the past 18 months, one constant has been the exponential growth of WikiLeaks's global support base. Followers of the website's Twitter account have increased almost 10-fold to nearly 1.2 million. And evidence is emerging of its important part in seeding and enabling the international political movement that has culminated in the world's first global protest action.

A trenchant critic of the influence of corporations on political life around the world, Assange has been enthusiastic in his support of the Occupy movement, recently observing that ''the politicisation of the youth connected to internet is the most significant thing that happened in the world since the 1960s. This is something new, a real revolution.'' The organisation has also expressed its support for the protests through its Twitter account, and Assange addressed protesters in Trafalgar Square in London this month.

What is not well known is the role of WikiLeaks supporters in igniting the surge of internet-based activism that has resulted in protests in reportedly more than 1000 cities in 82 countries.

Most accounts of the Occupy movement focus on the Canadian Adbusters Media Foundation's proposal in July for a peaceful occupation of Wall Street to protest at corporate influence on democracy. Activists from the Anonymous collective also encouraged followers to take part in the protest, calling on protesters to ''flood lower Manhattan, set up tents, kitchens, peaceful barricades and occupy Wall Street''.

However, investigations of the pattern of internet activism over the past year indicate the origins of the Occupy movement are to be found earlier, in the wave of activity generated last year when WikiLeaks released US Army helicopter gunship footage from Iraq, US military war logs and more than 250,000 classified US State Department cables.

Twitter exchanges between WikiLeaks supporters resulted in the establishment in November of a WikiLeaks news website - WL Central. Editors and contributors included Canadian human rights activist Heather Marsh, New York internet activist Alexa O'Brien, Melbourne ''Twitter journalist'' Asher Wolf and a Sydney activist known by her Twitter account @Jlllow.

While WL Central focused on support for the transparency website, some of its contributors were more ambitious. By her own account, Marsh hoped to ''encourage and facilitate connection and communication for the revolution, both in Canada and around the world''; while O'Brien looked to ''push … the edge of digital social media for scalable organisation of civil disobedience and non-violent protest''.

In February, prompted by the WikiLeaks banking embargo, and inspired by the role of online activism in the Arab Spring, O'Brien established ''US Day of Rage'', a website intended to promote US protests along the lines of the mass movements in the Middle East. A US Day of Rage Twitter account was established on March 10. Four days later, the account had 1077 followers and was reportedly growing at a rate of three followers every 10 minutes. On March 14, Marsh used the WL Central website to promote the group's cause.

''Americans are outraged because they realise that there is something terribly wrong with the way our nation is governed, and the way in which our public discourse is conducted,'' she wrote. ''The nation's institutions, meant to underpin the principles of our democratic republic, do not function effectively in the 21st century. Their failure leaves us prey to rampant corruption, unprincipled and abusive government action, and a demoralised populace.''

While Assange's involvement, if any, with this initiative is unclear, that same day, WikiLeaks tweeted a link to the US Day of Rage announcement on the WL Central website, with the observation ''Arab revolutions to spread to the US? A United States 'Day of Rage' is brewing.''

US Day of Rage's growth dramatically accelerated. In April, Marsh again used the WL Central website to elaborate US Day of Rage's critique of ''corporate influence [that] corrupts our political parties, our elections, and the institutions of government''.

By August, US Day of Rage had combined with Occupy Wall Street to announce September 17 as the date for the start of protests. Soon the groups morphed into a broad national, then international, movement.

Perhaps the best description of this new mode of highly dynamic political activism is provided by the internet activist and leader of the Pirate Party in the European Parliament, Rickard Falkvinge, who in a forthcoming book characterises it as a ''swarm''.

''A swarm is a new kind of organisation, made possible by available and affordable mass communication,'' Falkvinge writes. ''Where it used to take hundreds of full-time employees to organise 100,000 people, today that can be done - and is done - by somebody in their spare time from their kitchen.''

While, the origins of the Occupy swarm are diverse and complex, Assange's contribution was clearly acknowledged by an Anonymous collective representative interviewed by the Herald yesterday: ''[Assange has] been quite supportive … Movements are hard to get off the ground, hard to make go viral. [WikiLeaks] by tweeting [Occupy Wall Street] info early, encouraged those who wanted to see it take off to continue working.''

This in itself does not alter the significant problems Wikileaks faces in its day-to-day running. But various factors are in its favour. While the success of Assange's new funding drive remains to be seen, it will probably meet WikiLeaks's modest running costs - the most significant of which is the group's access to servers to maintain its internet presence. Nor is it the first time WikiLeaks has suspended operations to focus on fund-raising. But it is now doing so in the context of a much larger supporter base and a broad surge of online political activism associated with the Occupy Wall Street movement.

This base, along with Assange's announcement that Wikileaks will soon reactivate its confidential document submission system (this has been inoperative for more than a year after former staff members removed critical software) suggests the organisation will be around for some time.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/assange-can-still-occupy-centre-stage-20111028-1mo8x.html#ixzz1c5hP1iQW

buglerbilly

02-11-11, 09:36 AM

Julian Assange awaits high court ruling on extradition

WikiLeaks founder will hear on Wednesday if he has won his bid to block extradition to Sweden to face sex crime allegations

Press Association

guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 2 November 2011 07.18 GMT

Julian Assange denies allegations of sex crimes and says they are politically motivated. Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

The WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, will hear on Wednesday if he has won or lost his high court bid to block extradition to Sweden where he faces sex crime allegations.

His lawyers asked two judges to rule that extraditing the 40-year-old Australian would be "unfair and unlawful".

The Swedish authorities want Assange to answer accusations of raping one woman and sexually molesting and coercing another in Stockholm in August last year.

Assange, whose WikiLeaks website has published a mass of leaked diplomatic cables that have embarrassed several governments and international businesses, denies the allegations and says they are politically motivated.

The high court in London is deciding whether to uphold or overturn a ruling in February by District Judge Howard Riddle at Belmarsh magistrates court in south London that the computer expert should be extradited to face investigation.

Judgment will be handed down by the president of the Queen's Bench Division, Sir John Thomas, sitting with Mr Justice Ouseley.

The Assange legal challenge, which has attracted worldwide attention, centres on a European arrest warrant (EAW) issued by a Swedish prosecutor, which led to Assange's arrest.

His QC, Ben Emmerson, argued at a two-day hearing in July that the prosecutor was not a "judicial authority" entitled to issue the EAW.

The warrant had also contained "fundamental misstatements" of what had occurred in Stockholm last August while Assange was in Sweden to give a lecture, said Emmerson.

Assange's encounters with the two women who had made complaints involved consensual sex and would not be considered crimes in England, he argued.

Emmerson said the EAW was misleading in its accusations that Assange had used violence or "acted in a manner to violate sexual integrity".

The side that loses Wednesday's legal battle will have the opportunity to apply to take the case to the supreme court, the highest court in the land, on the grounds that it raises issues of general public importance.

buglerbilly

02-11-11, 11:04 AM

Assange loses Swedish extradition appeal

November 2, 2011 - 8:54PM .

AAP

Awwww Ass-hole lost his appeal, didums!!! :1010

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has lost his appeal against his extradition to Sweden.

Britain's High Court in London has upheld a ruling that Assange should be sent to face questioning by Swedish authorities over claims of sexual assault against two women.

The Australian-born head of the whistle-blowing website has been fighting a legal battle since his arrest in London on a European arrest warrant in December last year.

After Wednesday's decision, Assange's lawyers have the option of trying to have the case heard in the Supreme Court - the last court of appeal in the United Kingdom.

Otherwise, Assange, 40, could be sent to Sweden within the next fortnight.

© 2011 AAP

buglerbilly

09-11-11, 03:08 PM

Assange mother to protest at Obama visit

November 9, 2011 - 8:38PM .

"Both political parties have been spineless in standing up to the US over this" ... Christine Assange. Photo: Getty Images

It'd be funny IF it wasn't so sad...........and stupid, moronic, idiotic, paranoid, ridiculous and banal

The mother of Australian-born whistleblower Julian Assange on Wednesday said she would picket a visit of US President Barack Obama to the capital, Canberra, to rally support for her son.

Christine Assange said she would take protests in support of the founder of WikiLeaks to Parliament House next Thursday, where Obama is due to address a special sitting of lawmakers under extremely tight security.

"I'll get as close as I can," she said.

Assange's anti-secrecy website has enraged governments around the world by dumping hundreds of thousands of confidential US diplomatic cables on the Internet.

His mother fears he will be rendered to the United States after recently losing a fight against his extradition from Britain to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning on allegations of rape and sexual assault.

"I'm asking Australians around the country on November 17th to refuse to celebrate the Obama visit, and instead replace it with a day of support for Julian," she told the AAP news agency.

"Both political parties have been spineless in standing up to the US over this," Assange's mother added of the Australian government's response to his case.

"Whatever the US wants, the Gillard government is handing it over. And the opposition isn't much better."

Australia has been providing Assange with consular support and though it has made its "expectation of due process" clear to Britain and Sweden, the foreign ministry has warned it "cannot directly intervene in legal processes of other countries."

Obama's visit will be the first by a US president since former leader George W Bush was in Australia for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in 2007.

Obama had to cancel two previous trips Down Under, once because of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill and the other to oversee passage of domestic health reforms.

The president's visit on November 16 and 17 will mark the 60th anniversary of the military alliance between Australia and the United States and stress an increasing US diplomatic and military focus on the Pacific region.

Obama will travel to the Indonesian resort island of Bali afterwards for the East Asia summit.

AP

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/assange-mother-to-protest-at-obama-visit-20111109-1n7a1.html#ixzz1dDl7wcuv

buglerbilly

21-11-11, 11:01 PM

Bradley Manning hearing date set as court martial process finally begins

Manning, accused of leaking secrets to WikiLeaks, to go to pre-trial – known as Article 32 hearing – in Maryland next month

Ed Pilkington in New York

guardian.co.uk, Monday 21 November 2011 17.28 GMT

Bradley Manning, the US soldier who has been held in confinement for the past 18 months on suspicion of having leaked a huge trove of state secrets to WikiLeaks, is to go before a military panel on 16 December at the start of the most high-profile prosecution of a whistleblower in a generation.

The proceedings, at Fort Meade in Maryland, are expected to last five days, and will be the first opportunity for prosecuting officers and Manning's defence team to present their cases. It is known as an Article 32 hearing and, although it is preliminary, both sides will be able to call and cross-examine witnesses.

Since he was arrested in Iraq in May 2010, Manning has become a cause celebre for anti-war and free information advocates in America and around the world. His support network will be calling a rally outside the Article 32 hearing when it opens next month.

Jeff Paterson, a Manning supporter, welcomed news that the military prosecution was finally getting under way. Since his arrest, Paterson said, Manning has been trapped in a form of legal limbo, with no recourse to any appeals.

Now there will be a publicly named investigating officer assigned to the case.

"We will be protesting against the charges levelled at Bradley Manning. If he is proven to have been the WikiLeaks source, then to us Bradley is a hero: he's the most important whistleblower in decades," Paterson said.

The news of the Article 32 was announced by Manning's lawyer, David Coombs. In a blogpost, he said that the defence would be entitled to call and cross-examine witnesses, each of whom would be placed under oath and whose testimony could be used subsequently in the trial proper.

Manning has been charged with multiple counts of obtaining and distributing state secrets to unauthorised parties – WikiLeaks, in effect. He is specifically accused of having handed more than 50 of about 150,000 secret US government cables to the whistleblowing website – offences that carry a possible sentence of up to 52 years.

He has also been charged with "aiding the enemy" – a count that technically carries the death penalty, though military prosecutors have indicated they will be pressing for a lengthy prison term rather than execution in this case.

The standard of proof in an Article 32 hearing is relatively low, military law experts say. The prosecution has merely to present sufficient evidence to prove there is "reasonable cause to believe" that Manning committed the offences.

Once the hearing has been completed, a recommendation will be made to a military general who will decide whether or not to proceed to a full trial.

Philip Cave, a retired navy judge advocate who now works on court martial cases as a civilian lawyer, said the hearing would be a "road bump on the way towards Manning's trial. Does anybody seriously imagine that Bradley Manning isn't going to trial?"

But the hearing would be significant, Cave said, because it would give the first public indication of the prosecution and defence cases.

Manning's conditions of confinement led to an outpouring of criticism and protest, including the resignation of Hillary Clinton's press spokesman PJ Crowley. He was initially held in solitary confinement within the US at Quantico marine base, where he was stripped naked every night.

The UN rapporteur on torture, Juan Mendez, is still investigating the treatment.

In April, Manning was moved to a lower security jail at Fort Leavenworth and his lawyer says his conditions have greatly improved.

Daniel Ellsberg, the whistleblower behind the Pentagon Papers, said: "The charges against Bradley Manning are an indictment of our government's obsession with secrecy. Manning is accused of revealing illegal activities by our government and its corporate partners that must be brought to the attention of the American people."

buglerbilly

06-12-11, 01:09 AM

DECEMBER 5, 2011, 12:52 P.M. ET.

Assange to Seek Final Appeal

By JEANNE WHALEN

LONDON—A U.K. court gave WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange one more chance to fight extradition to Sweden to face questioning in a sexual-assault investigation, telling him he can ask Britain's Supreme Court for permission to appeal an extradition order.

The U.K.'s High Court on Monday declined to grant Mr. Assange permission to appeal to the Supreme Court, but told him he may go directly to the Supreme Court to request permission to appeal.

Zuma Press
Julian Assange won his right to appeal against extradition to Sweden Monday.

A WikiLeaks spokesman said Mr. Assange plans to lodge his appeal request within 14 days.

Sweden hasn't formally charged Mr. Assange, but wants to question him over allegations that he raped one woman and molested another during a visit to Stockholm in the summer of 2010.

He denies any wrongdoing. He was arrested in the U.K. a year ago on a warrant issued by Sweden and has been living under strict bail conditions at a supporter's home.

Earlier this year, a lower court ruled that Mr. Assange should be extradited—a decision the High Court upheld last month.

Appearing again before the High Court on Monday, Mr. Assange's lawyers argued he should be allowed to appeal to the Supreme Court on two points of law.

They said the Swedish prosecutor who issued the warrant for Mr. Assange's arrest shouldn't be considered a proper "judicial authority."

They also argued that Sweden hasn't yet decided whether to prosecute Mr. Assange, making its use of an arrest warrant improper.

A lawyer for Sweden disputed both arguments in court on Monday.

The High Court ruled that Mr. Assange should be allowed to request an appeal on the first point.

In a brief appearance after the hearing, Mr. Assange said he was "thankful" for the ruling.

The WikiLeaks founder, who has repeatedly criticized the European arrest-warrant system, added: "The long struggle for justice for me and others continues."

Mr. Assange's legal battle has compounded WikiLeaks' troubles at a time when the site is facing a number of difficulties, including constrained finances.

The document-leaking site said recently it would shut down by year-end if financial-services companies don't lift restrictions that have prevented supporters from donating money to the site.

WikiLeaks says infighting between Mr. Assange and some of his former colleagues has also led to the disabling of the site's anonymous submission system, leaving WikiLeaks unable to receive new leaked material.

WikiLeaks has angered Washington by publishing thousands of classified government documents about the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, as well as hundreds of thousands of secret diplomatic cables.

Mr. Assange has called the allegations in Sweden an attempt to smear him and undermine his work.

Swedish officials and the lawyer for the two women say the allegations have nothing to do with Mr. Assange's work.

Write to Jeanne Whalen at jeanne.whalen@wsj.com

buglerbilly

07-12-11, 12:36 AM

Mental State an Issue in Army WikiLeaks Case

December 06, 2011

Associated Press|by David Dishneau

HAGERSTOWN, Md. - A psychologist reported worrisome signs of Pfc. Bradley Manning's fragile mental and emotional state five months before he was detained on suspicion of giving classified information to WikiLeaks, according to a court document.

At least two other mental health workers who treated or examined the intelligence analyst as early as December 2009 told his supervisors of similar concerns, but none recommended restricting his access to classified material, according to the document submitted by Manning's defense team. Manning was arrested May 29 in Baghdad.

The three mental health workers are among 48 witnesses attorney David Coombs hopes to call at a hearing next week to determine whether Manning, 23, will be court-martialed. He faces 22 charges, including aiding the enemy, and is accused of passing hundreds of thousands of war logs and diplomatic cables, plus secret combat video, to WikiLeaks from November 2009 to May 2010.

The so-called Article 32 hearing is scheduled for Dec. 16 to Dec. 23 at Fort Meade, a large military installation between Washington and Baltimore.

Manning is accused of telling a confidant-turned-government-informant that he copied the material from his work computer onto compact discs because "I want people to see the truth."

The officer presiding over Manning's hearing will make a recommendation to the commander of the Military District of Washington on whether to subpoena the prospective witnesses. Others on the list include President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, but military justice experts said they almost certainly won't testify.

The government didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

Fifteen of the prospective witnesses would testify about Manning's mental or emotional problems, according to the defense document. Several others would give evidence about his shortcomings as a soldier, his private revelation that he is gay and the bullying treatment he endured from other soldiers, Coombs wrote.

Coombs wants to call Obama to testify about remarks the president reportedly made April 21 when asked by a Manning supporter about the case. "He broke the law," Obama said during the exchange, which was captured on cellphone video.

Coombs wrote that he wants to question Obama to explore the issue of "unlawful command influence," that is, that the commander in chief's remarks poisoned the military jury pool.

Michael Navarre, a Washington attorney who spent five years in the Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps, said questioning Obama could create more issues. He said a more likely remedy would be for prospective jurors to be screened for indications they were influenced by Obama's words.

Coombs wrote that Clinton would testify that the leaks were embarrassing to the administration but didn't' significantly damage foreign policy.

Eugene R. Fidell, a former Coast Guard judge advocate who teaches at Yale, said others could be called to testify about the effect on foreign policy.

"I don't remember a case in which a cabinet official would be called to testify," he said.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

buglerbilly

14-12-11, 05:29 PM

WikiLeaks Suspect Seen as Hero, Traitor

December 14, 2011

Associated Press|by David Dishneau

FORT MEADE, Md. -- The document in which Pfc. Bradley Manning allegedly confessed to giving classified information to WikiLeaks also includes a rationale that has made him a hero among peace and anti-secrecy activists worldwide: "I want people to see the truth."

But Manning also apparently understood that if any connection to WikiLeaks was revealed, he might be seen as a traitor, "like Nidal Hassan," the Army major accused of killing 13 Soldiers preparing for deployment at Fort Hood, Texas.

Both portraits will be on display during a military hearing starting Friday at this locked-down Army base between Baltimore and Washington, D.C. The hearing, which could run for days, will determine whether Manning will be court-martialed on charges that could bring life imprisonment. Prosecutors say they won't seek the maximum penalty of death for the most serious charge of aiding the enemy.

The basis for the 22 counts that Manning faces are transcripts of online chats the Army intelligence analyst purportedly initiated in May 2010 with confidant-turned-government-informant Adrian Lamo.

The chats also foreshadowed the divergent public perceptions of the 23-year-old: Is he a freedom-of-information idealist who rightfully exposed abuses of power? Or a Soldier who betrayed his country and comrades-in-arms?

The chat logs, which the military says are authentic, were first published by Wired.com, which got them from Lamo. In them, a writer using the screen name "bradass87" reveals much more than his reasons for divulging classified files to WikiLeaks, an anti-secrecy website. He discusses his disdain for feeble computer security at his post in Baghdad, his wrenching breakup with a boyfriend in Boston and his struggles as a "super-intelligent, awkwardly effeminate" homosexual trying to survive his conservative upbringing, a broken family, British schooling and military service in the era of "don't ask, don't tell."

"I'm a mess," bradass87 confided to Lamo. "I'm in the desert, with a bunch of hyper-masculine trigger happy ignorant rednecks as neighbors. And the only safe place I seem to have is this satellite internet connection."

Manning's civilian defense attorney, David Coombs, aims to present evidence of Manning's mental and emotional distress to highlight failings in the military chain of command. Prosecutors contend such testimony is irrelevant to the investigation.

The material Manning is suspected of leaking includes hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables, Iraq and Afghanistan war logs and a 2007 video clip of a laughing U.S. helicopter crew gunning down 11 men later found to include a Reuters news photographer and his driver. The Pentagon concluded the troops acted appropriately, having mistaken the camera equipment for weapons.

Coombs contends the leaked material didn't hurt national security and caused little damage to U.S. interests abroad, despite U.S. government claims that it endangered lives and security. Manning supporters say the leaks exposed war crimes and triggered pro-democracy uprisings in the Middle East.

Daniel Ellsberg, who revealed the history of the secret U.S. expansion of the Vietnam War by leaking the Pentagon Papers 40 years ago, says Manning is "unreservedly a hero."

"I think that Bradley Manning, if he is found to be the source of this, will deserve our thanks and our admiration," Ellsberg said.

Others say Manning's alleged crimes amount to selling out his fellow Soldiers, and that he should be punished as a traitor.

U.S. Rep. Mike Rogers, a Republican, said in August 2010 that execution would be an appropriate punishment for what he regarded as treason.

In a more temperate statement last week to The Associated Press, Rogers said he trusts in the military judicial process. Nevertheless, he said: "Leaking classified information and compromising U.S. national security is always an extremely serious offense. The ramifications of leaking classified material can be deadly for our men and woman on the front lines."

Manning's arrest in May 2010 made global headlines and his case has engendered strong sympathy in Europe. In Britain, where WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has largely been based for the past 18 months, many view WikiLeaks favorably for having exposed the gruesome reality of the deeply unpopular war in Iraq.

But it was the conditions of Manning's eight months in pretrial confinement at a Marine Corps base near Washington that caused his support base to swell. The Quantico brig commander, citing safety and security concerns, kept Manning confined 23 hours a day in a single-bed cell. For several days in March, he was forced to sleep naked. Amnesty International and the American Civil Liberties Union objected, the United Nations' torture investigator began an inquiry and chief State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley resigned after calling the confinement conditions "ridiculous" and "stupid."

British opposition lawmaker Ann Clwyd asked the British government to intervene in Manning's case, saying that "his treatment is cruel and unnecessary and we should be saying so."

Coombs says the conditions at Quantico were illegal; President Barack Obama has defended them as appropriate.

Manning was transferred in April to a medium-security facility at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.

Jeff Paterson of the Bradley Manning Support Network called that a victory for Manning supporters.

"That really did motivate people that, whether they appreciated Bradley's alleged actions or not, they realized that his treatment was wrong, and people spoke out," he said.

Paterson said about 5,000 donors worldwide have given about $400,000. The funds are to cover Coombs' estimated fee of $120,000, plus costs for any appeals and expenses linked to demonstrations on Manning's behalf, he said.

Criticism of Manning's treatment hasn't gone away. Last month, 54 members of the European parliament signed an open letter to the U.S. government raising concerns about his pretrial confinement. United Nations chief torture investigator Juan Mendez is preparing to release a report on Manning.

While Europeans are divided on WikiLeaks' confrontational tactics, the view that Manning was motivated by a crisis of conscience holds sway with many international observers.

"We are indebted to him," Swiss human rights investigator Dick Marty said in September. If Manning is guilty as charged, he said, then he "acted as a whistleblower and should be treated as such."

Lamo, whose fame as a former outlaw computer hacker may have prompted Manning to contact him, said he doesn't regret turning him in. He said his actions may have prevented Manning from leaking more classified information.

In the chat logs, bradass87 told Lamo he hoped his leaks would provoke "worldwide discussion, debates and reforms." He said he didn't know how people would see him, as "`hacker, `cracker,' `hacktivist,' `leaker' or what. I'm just me, really."

But he rejected Lamo's suggestion he might be labeled a spy: "Spies don't post things up for the world to see."

-- Associated Press writer Raphael Satter in London contributed to this story.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

buglerbilly

16-12-11, 01:29 AM

US Set to Try Manning Over Leaks, Targets Assange

December 15, 2011

Associated Press|by Raphael G. Satter

LONDON - As the suspected source for the biggest intelligence leak in American history faces his first hearing Friday, U.S. prosecutors have their eye on another prize: the man who disclosed the documents to the world.

When WikiLeaks' spectacular disclosures of U.S. secrets exploded onto the scene last year, much of Washington's anger coalesced around Julian Assange, the silver-haired globe-trotting figure whose outspoken defiance of the Pentagon and the State Department riled politicians on both sides of the aisle. Pfc. Bradley Manning, long under lock and key, hasn't attracted the same level of ire.

The pair's fates have been intertwined, however, even if the Australian-born computer hacker says he didn't know the private's name until after news of his arrest emerged in June 2010. Manning's alleged disclosures put Assange at the epicenter of a diplomatic earthquake.

Assange in turn has worked energetically to drum up support for the imprisoned soldier - all while emphasizing that the way his anti-secrecy site was set up meant he could not be sure if Manning was his source.

U.S. investigators have been scrutinizing links between the two as they explore the possibility of charging the Australian with serious crimes under U.S. law. A Virginia grand jury is studying evidence that might link Assange to Manning, but no action has yet been taken.

In chat logs recorded by Adrian Lamo, the hacker who turned Manning in, the 23-year-old private allegedly poured his heart out, laying bare his disillusionment with the military and his decision to ship mountains of classified material to Assange. In the logs - which the military says are genuine - Manning tells Lamo that he'd "developed a relationship with Assange" and hinted at instant messages swapped via a server maintained by the Germany-based Chaos Computer Club.

But even according to the logs, Manning and Assange do not seem to have learned very much about each other. "He won(')t work with you if you reveal too much about yourself," Manning is quoted as having said.

At least one media report suggested that prosecutors have struggled without success to flesh out the purported links between the pair. NBC News, citing unnamed military sources, said earlier this year that officials had turned up no evidence of direct contact between Assange and Manning.

In any case prosecutors face formidable obstacles. Experts say that a prosecution under the century-old Espionage Act would risk criminalizing practically any form of investigative journalism. A conspiracy charge, which some have floated as an alternative, would also be tough to prove.

"If Manning steals a bunch of information, and gives it to Julian Assange, I think that would be very difficult to show that that was a conspiracy," said Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute. Even if it turns out that Assange had, hypothetically, pushed Manning to divulge the documents, Wittes said it would still be hard to distinguish that from a traditional reporter trying to work a source.

"Is that any different in principle from the relationship between Deep Throat and Bob Woodward?" he asked, referring to the source behind the Watergate scandal and one of the reporters, Woodward, who broke the story.

Inquiries into Assange and WikiLeaks are ongoing. The grand jury has been investigating for more than year and could continue for months or even years longer. Witnesses have been called, though the identities of most are unknown.

A Manning supporter, David House, refused to testify when he was called in June, citing his right against self-incrimination. House said nearly all the questions posed to him centered on Manning. He said he was not asked about Assange.

There remains pressure to haul the Australian before an American judge.

Both Democratic Vice President Joe Biden and Republican presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich described Assange as an information-age terrorist, with Gingrich saying that Assange should be "treated as an enemy combatant." Others have been even more explicit, with pundits including former vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin calling on American officials to hunt him down.

The bloodthirsty rhetoric may have receded since last year, but the otherwise deeply divided U.S. political establishment remains nearly unanimous in its hostility to Assange.

"At a time when the political parties are polarized, WikiLeaks succeeded in uniting them," said Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists.

No matter what happens at Manning's court martial, Assange faces a host of other legal and financial problems.

His WikiLeaks website operation is running out of money and could close by next month. The British Supreme Court could rule on whether to extradite him to Sweden, where he is wanted on sex crimes allegations, as early as next week.

He has spent the last year fighting extraditon from a wealthy supporter's country estate in southeastern England, where he lives under virtual house arrest.

---

Matthew Barakat in McLean, Virginia and Richard Lardner in Washington contributed to this report.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

buglerbilly

17-12-11, 01:35 AM

Manning Hearing Bogs Down Over Dispute

December 16, 2011

Associated Press|by Pauline Jelinek and David Dishneau

FORT MEADE, Md. - Pfc. Bradley Manning, the young soldier accused of aiding the enemy by slipping a trove of national security secrets to WikiLeaks, sat quietly at the opening session of his pretrial hearing Friday as government and defense lawyers tangled over whether the presiding officer could be impartial.

Manning's civilian defense lawyer argued that the presiding officer, Paul Almanza, an Army Reserve lieutenant colonel, is biased and should step aside, but Almanza refused. Almanza also denied a move by Manning's defense to suspend the hearing while seeking to appeal Almanza's decision to continue on the case.

The hearing is to determine whether Manning will face a court-martial on charges that he aided the enemy by leaking hundreds of thousands of classified military and diplomatic documents.

Almanza is a Justice Department prosecutor in civilian life, and Manning's lawyer said that was reason enough to step aside. The Justice Department is conducting a criminal investigation targeting WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

After Almanza denied the request that he step aside, Manning's lawyers said they would seek to appeal that decision to the Army Court of Criminal Appeals. It was unclear when the court would decide whether to hear the appeal.

Before that dispute, Manning, who turns 24 on Saturday, took notes during at his hearing at this Army base between Washington and Baltimore. Dressed in Army camouflage fatigues and wearing dark-rimmed glasses, Manning sometimes twirled a pen in his fingers as the hearing got off to a slow start.

A U.S. military legal expert told reporters shortly before the proceedings began that Almanza was likely to make his recommendation on whether to court-martial Manning within eight days after the hearing ends. The hearing is expected to last through the weekend and possibly well into next week.

The decision on whether to go to court-martial will be made by Army Maj. Gen. Michael S. Linnington, commander of the Military District of Washington. Linnington could choose other courses, including applying an administrative punishment or dismissing some or all of the charges.

While David Coombs, Manning's civilian attorney, pushed for Almanza, to step aside, Capt. Ashden Fein, a member of the prosecution team, told the presiding officer, "The United States does not believe you've exhibited any bias in any form and that you can render a fair and impartial decision."

The Manning case has spawned an international support network of people who believe the U.S. government has gone too far in seeking to punish the Pfc.

Manning's supporters planned to maintain a vigil during the hearing and were organizing a rally for Saturday. By midday Friday, about 50 protesters had assembled outside the military base's main entrance, and a few dozen marched down an adjoining road carrying orange signs that read, "The Bradley Manning Support Network."

About 30 people were able to go to a base movie theater, where they could watch closed circuit video of the courtroom proceedings, according to Jeff Patterson of the Manning support group. Retired Army Col. Ann Wright, an adviser to the group, was able to sit in the courtroom, but Patterson said he did not know whether Manning's family or other supporters were able to attend the hearing in person.

In addition to the question of bias, Coombs also argued that Almanza had wrongly denied a defense request to call as witnesses the "original classification authorities" who first decided to classify as secret the material WikiLeaks published. Instead, Almanza has chosen to accept unsworn statements from those people, Coombs said.

Coombs said the decision eliminated the defense's ability to question why the leaked material was classified.

"Let's put witnesses on the stand," he said. "Why is this stuff classified? Why is it going to cause harm?"

During the hearing's opening moments, Manning responded to a series of questions from Almanza. After summarizing the charges against Manning, Almanza asked if he understood them. "Yes, sir," Manning replied.

Asked whether he had any questions about the charges, Manning replied, "No, sir."

The hearing is open to the public but with limited seating in the courtroom. A small number of reporters were present but not allowed to record or photograph the proceedings. Manning was not seen arriving in the courtroom because he was brought in before journalists were allowed to enter.

Absent from the Meade proceedings will be Assange, who runs WikiLeaks from England. He is fighting in British courts to block a Swedish request that he be extradited to face trial over rape allegations.

A U.S. grand jury is weighing whether to indict Assange on espionage charges, and WikiLeaks is straining under an American financial embargo.

The materials Manning is accused of leaking include hundreds of thousands of sensitive items: Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, State Department cables and a classified military video of a 2007 American helicopter attack in Iraq that killed 11 men, including a Reuters news photographer and his driver.

At the time, Manning, a native of Crescent, Okla., was a low-level intelligence analyst in Baghdad.

Manning was detained in Iraq in May 2010 and moved to a Marine Corps brig at Quantico, Va., in July. Nine months later, the Army sent him to the military prison at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., after a series of claims by Manning of unlawful pretrial punishment.

When it filed formal charges against Manning in March 2011, the Army accused him of using unauthorized software on government computers to extract classified information, illegally download it and transmit the data for public release by what the Army termed "the enemy."

The first large publication of the documents by WikiLeaks in July 2010, some 77,000 military records on the war in Afghanistan, made global headlines. But the material provided only limited revelations, including unreported incidents of Afghan civilian killings as well as covert operations against Taliban figures.

In October 2010, WikiLeaks published a batch of nearly 400,000 documents that dated from early 2004 to Jan. 1, 2010. They were written mostly by low-ranking officers in the field cataloging thousands of battles with insurgents and roadside bomb attacks, plus equipment failures and shootings by civilian contractors.

A month later, WikiLeaks released hundreds of thousands of State Department documents, including candid comments from world leaders.

---

Associated Press writers Sarah Brumfield, Robert Burns and Matthew Lee contributed to this report.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

buglerbilly

18-12-11, 12:21 PM

Soldier’s gender identity issues raised in WikiLeaks case

By Ellen Nakashima and Julie Tate, Sunday, December 18, 9:11 AM

Pfc. Bradley Manning was a deeply troubled soldier struggling with issues of gender identity whose alleged leaking of classified material to WikiLeaks could have been prevented by superiors.

He was also a gifted intelligence analyst who had received extensive training in proper handling of classified information and had been reprimanded once for breaching the rules.

Those were the clashing portraits of the same young man drawn by the defense and prosecution on the first full day of testimony in a hearing room at Maryland’s Fort Meade to decide whether Manning, who spent his 24th birthday in court, should face a court-martial for the alleged leak.

Manning, a former analyst in Baghdad, was detained in May 2010 and could face the death penalty or life in prison if he is tried and found guilty of all 22 counts of violating military code with which he is charged.

Under cross-examination, a series of government witnesses acknowledged lapses by Manning’s superiors, including a failure to pull his security clearance and deny him access to the classified computers from which he is alleged to have leaked information.

In April, Manning sent an e-mail to a superior, Master Sgt. Paul D. Adkins, saying that he was suffering from a gender identity disorder. He included a picture of himself dressed as a woman and described how it had affected his ability to do his job, to interact with others and to “think,” according to Capt. Steven Lim, military intelligence officer in the 1st Army East Division at Fort Meade.

But Adkins did not share that e-mail with Lim until after Manning was arrested, Lim acknowledged.

Manning also had a Facebook page under the name of Breanna Manning and two e-mail addresses that corresponded to that name, said retired Sgt. 1st Class Troy Bettencourt, an Army investigator in the case.

Bettencourt said he knew that Manning was gay, and that he exhibited “odd” behavior. Manning had been punished for assaulting a supervisor, Bettencourt added, and at one point was found in a room “curled up in a ball.”

Adkins apparently knew that Manning was unstable even before Manning was deployed to Iraq in fall 2009, but did not recommend that he stay behind because the Army was short on intelligence analysts. In December 2009, Manning became “furious” during a counseling session in Baghdad, flipped over a table, damaged a government computer and had to be restrained, and then “went for a weapons rack,” defense attorney David E. Coombs said.

“Would you consider this a minor incident?” Coombs asked Lim.

“Probably not,” said Lim, who was the head of Manning’s military intelligence section in Baghdad with the 2nd Brigade, 10th Mountain Division.

Lim acknowledged that such behavior could have resulted in a “derogatory” report in Manning’s file resulting in the pulling of his security clearance.

By airing superiors’ failure to address Manning’s personal issues, the defense team is “trying to discover all the failures of the chain of command which would help them in setting up the mitigation argument for the sentencing portion of the proceeding,” said David D. Velloney, a military law expert at Regent University School of Law. But they probably would not suffice to beat the charges, Velloney said. Those charges include aiding the enemy and violating the Espionage Act by wrongfully causing U.S. intelligence to be published on the Internet.

Coombs is also likely “continuing his shots across the bow in an effort to influence the government to soften its position on the seriousness of the charges against Manning,” Velloney said.

As an all-source intelligence analyst, Manning received 16 weeks of advanced intelligence training at Fort Huachuca in Arizona, said retired Sgt. 1st Class Brian Madrid, who was one of his instructors. While there, however, Manning posted a video on YouTube talking about his daily life at Huachuca, including “using buzzwords such as classified, top secret,” Madrid said. Manning was given “corrective training,” including doing an oral report for his company on information security.

The hearing also uncovered previously unknown details in the case.

Special Agent Mark Mander with the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division said that Adrian Lamo, a convicted hacker whose online chats with Manning led investigators to Manning, led investigators to a former Energy Department employee who Lamo said helped WikiLeaks decrypt a military video provided by Manning.

The employee, Jason Katz, was fired from Brookhaven National Labs in March 2010 for “inappropriate computer activity,” Mander said. The video, of an airstrike on an Afghan village that killed dozens of civilians, has not been posted by WikiLeaks.

Mander also said that Manning’s aunt, Debra Van Alstyne, told him that Manning had contacted her while he was in Iraq to ask her how WikiLeaks’ release of a 2007 Army video showing an Apache helicopter firing on civilians was “being perceived in the United States.” After Manning was detained, he again contacted her and asked her to post a reference on his Facebook page to the Apache video, Mander said.

Mander said that when investigators made a second visit to Van Alstyne’s home in Potomac, where Manning had lived before joining the Army, they recovered a memory card containing classified information and other digital media.

In the audience were two attorneys for WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange. A federal grand jury is investigating Assange’s role in the leaks, and on Friday, Coombs suggested that the Justice Department has an interest in obtaining a plea bargain in the Manning case and using Manning “as one of the many witnesses to go after Julian Assange.”

Jennifer Robinson, an attorney for WikiLeaks, said “it is very clear that the matters raised here in these proceedings have potential ramifications” for WikiLeaks and Assange, who is in London. “Our concerns,” she said, focus on “a potential extradition request for Mr. Assange.”

At one point, Coombs asked Bettencourt whether Manning’s military leadership had failed him.

“I would like to think if I were in the chain of command, I would have handled it differently and prevented him from deploying,” Bettencourt said. “But that is in hindsight.”

buglerbilly

19-12-11, 12:19 AM

Bradley Manning hearing: court told of Iraq unit's intelligence security chaos

Head of unit describes loose controls around databases from which Manning is alleged to have downloaded military secrets

Ed Pilkington in Fort Meade

guardian.co.uk, Sunday 18 December 2011 01.07 GMT

Bradley Manning is escorted from the military court in Fort Meade, Maryland, on the second day of his pre-trial hearing. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images

A shocking lack of basic discipline and intelligence security at the unit in which Bradley Manning worked before his arrest for allegedly transferring the largest trove of state secrets in American history to WikiLeaks has been revealed at his pre-trial hearing in Fort Meade, Maryland.

Under cross-examination by Manning's defence team, the head of the intelligence unit at the military base in Iraq where Manning was posted painted a picture of staggeringly loose controls. Soldiers were allowed to store movies on secure computer databases, were permitted to bring in commercial music CDs to areas where secure computers were in operation, DVDs were left strewn about and there was no system for checking that classified information was not removed from the building.

Captain Steven Lim told the hearing that he was shocked when he was presented with a set of memorandums from Manning's immediate supervisor, Master Sergeant Paul Atkins. The memorandums chronicled emotional behaviour on Manning's behalf dating back to before he was deployed to Iraq in October 2009.

Yet Atkins did not warn Lim, or any of his other superiors in the chain of command, about Manning's problems until 3 June 2010 – after his May 25 arrest. The memorandums gave details of an email that Manning had sent Atkins in April that year in which the soldier confessed that he was suffering severe psychological problems including gender identification disorder that was making it difficult for him to do his job, to interact with other people or even to think.

Manning included a picture with the email of himself dressed as a woman.

The memorandums also itemised a series of incidents in which Manning had displayed emotional outbursts. He assaulted a woman supervisor and was demoted shortly before his arrest to the rank of private first class.

In December 2010 he had to be restrained after he flipped over a table and made to grab a gun from a gun rack. In another incident he was found curled up in a foetal position on the floor of the unit.

Questioned by Manning's defence lawyer, David Coombs, Lim admitted that the incident with the gun rack was not a "minor" disciplinary matter as earlier suggested by the prosecution. Had he known about it at the time, Lim said, he would have recommended that Manning be issued with a "derog" – a disciplinary complaint that would probably have seen him removed from the intelligence unit and stripped of his security clearance.

That in turn, Lim admitted, would have meant that Manning would no longer have had access to the huge databases of state secrets from which he allegedly made his WikiLeaks downloads.

Because of his dereliction of duty in failing to pass on crucial information about Manning's state of mind to his superiors – at a key time in the soldier's alleged leaking to WikiLeaks – Atkins was demoted earlier this year to the rank of sergeant first class.

At the time of the WikiLeaks dump of classified information, Manning was working as an intelligence analyst inside the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) at the Forward Operating Base Hammer outside Baghdad. His task was to pore over information about Shia attacks on US forces and draw from it patterns of behaviour that commanders would find useful in determining future deployments.

He was known as a "35 Fox" – indicating that he had received intelligence training and had security clearance.

Inside the SCIF he had the use of a so-called D-Sig computer – a secure machine through which he could gain access to secure databases of classified information including one called SIPRNet and another CIDNE. He was called an "all source analyst" in that he had access to all types of intelligence.

But Lim revealed that the culture within the SCIF was extraordinarily lax, with soldiers regularly allowed to behave in contravention of the military rule book governing the handling of sensitive information.

CDs and DVDs should all have been clearly labelled for classified information and registered with the head of security for the unit – but they weren't. Soldiers were allowed to insert CDS into D-Sig computers and to take them out of the unit without any reference to their supervisors.

Manning is accused of downloading a massive trove of secrets, including more than 250,000 US embassy cables, from the secure databases. He is alleged to have stored them on a Lady Gaga CD while lip-synching to her music.

buglerbilly

19-12-11, 12:07 PM

Manning hearing turns to computer security

By Julie Tate, Monday, December 19, 10:28 AM

Questions about lax computer security and the judgment of his superior officers dominated the third day of a pretrial military hearing for Pfc. Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence officer charged with turning over government secrets to WikiLeaks.

In addition, two of the Army’s witnesses — among Manning’s superiors — declined to testify Sunday on the grounds that their testimony might incriminate them.

Manning, 24, faces 22 charges, including “aiding the enemy” for allegedly turning over information to the anti-secrecy Web site Wiki*Leaks.

The hearing, in a military courtroom at Fort Meade, will determine whether the government has sufficient evidence to proceed to a court-martial. Manning could face life in prison or the death penalty.

On Sunday, witnesses spoke of the loose computer security features of Forward Operating Base Hammer in Iraq, and Manning’s defense attorney argued that his client’s early displays of troubling behavior should have led to his security clearance being revoked long before WikiLeaks received any material.

Manning was reportedly alternately violent and withdrawn, and in at least one instance he told a superior that he struggled with gender identity. Manning is said to have sent a photograph of himself dressed as a woman to the superior.

One intelligence officer testified Sunday about unauthorized programs being stored on the computer system’s shared drive along with music, movies and games. Another witness said there was nothing to stop soldiers from burning information from the classified network onto a compact disc other than “trust that the soldier would do what is right.”

Capt. Thomas Cherepko, the officer who managed information systems, outlined violations on the classified network. Cherepko said he reported the problems to his supervisors but analysts were never disciplined.

Army prosecutors continued their argument that Manning was well-trained in handling classified information.

Manning told Allen Millman, a field software engineer contractor at FOB Hammer, “If people really knew what I could do with a computer they would be amazed,” Millman said.

Capt. Casey Fulton detailed Manning’s work as a junior analyst at Forward Operating Base Hammer, saying she relied heavily on his talents and routinely had him search classified databases.

She also was questioned about the video of an Apache helicopter firing on civilians that WikiLeaks posted in April 2010.

“I asked analysts if they had seen the video. It didn’t make the military look very good. I engaged them in what they thought of it. Manning asked me if the leaked video was the same video as the one on our shared drive. I said, ‘no way,’ ” Fulton testified.

Manning later sent Fulton a link to the video on the shared network drive as well as the link to the WikiLeaks video to show they were the same.

Manning is alleged to have sent the video to WikiLeaks.

Sgt. Chad Madaras, who worked with Manning at FOB Hammer, described him as moody and unreliable. Madaras recalled incidents when Manning would slam his fists or books down on his desk and said Manning sometimes would be completely unresponsive, staring blankly at his work station.

Fulton also detailed several incidents that she said should have resulted in Manning’s security clearance being revoked.

In December 2009, she said, Manning overturned a table during an argument. Had the event been reported, it would have been the basis for suspending his access to classified material at FOB Hammer, she said.

Two of the Army’s witnesses, however, appeared only to decline to testify.

Sgt. 1st Class Paul Adkins, gray-haired and with round wire-rimmed glasses, was the superior officer to whom Manning e-mailed a photo of himself dressed as a woman and described how his struggle with gender identity was impairing his ability to work.David Coombs, Manning’s chief defense attorney, argued that Adkins could be granted immunity, but that request was denied and Adkins was dismissed as a witness.

Adkins invoked his Article 31 rights against self incrimination.

Kyle J. Balonek, the warrant officer who was in charge of the day shift at FOB Hammer and witnessed some of Manning’s erratic behavior, also invoked his right to remain silent.

In April 2010, WikiLeaks posted a video of an Apache helicopter strike in which civilians were fired upon by U.S. forces. In summer 2010, several news organizations published the daily field reports from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and in November 2010, WikiLeaks and several news organizations began publishing more than 250,000 State Department cables.

Special Agent David Shaver of the Army’s Computer Crimes Investigative Unit was the last of the seven witnesses to testify Sunday. In the archives of Manning’s two work stations, Shaver was able to locate copies of Guantanamo detainee assessments, tens of thousands of State Department cables, the Apache helicopter video and other material.

Manning was arrested in Iraq in May 2010 and charged in July with transferring classified information onto his computer. He was moved that month to the jail at the Quantico Marine Corps Base, where he was held in solitary confinement until his transfer to Fort Leavenworth’s medium-security facility in April 2011.

The hearing’s investigating officer, Lt. Col. Paul Almanza, will make a recommendation in the coming weeks as to whether Manning should face a court-martial. A “convening authority” will make the decision to refer the case to court-martial or not, and on what charges.

A legal military adviser said new charges could be recommended and other charges dropped when Almanza submits his report to the authority. The hearing is expected to last three more days.

buglerbilly

20-12-11, 01:03 AM

Public Barred From Classified Part of Manning Case

December 19, 2011

Associated Press|by David Dishneau and Pauline Jelinek

FORT MEADE, Md. - Spectators and reporters have been removed from a military hearing for an Army intelligence analyst charged with giving hundreds of thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks.

The court-martial hearing's presiding officer ordered the public out on Monday for a part of the case dealing with still classified, yet widely published, information.

The closed-doors session came early in the fourth day of the hearing for Pfc. Bradley Manning. The government has called 13 witnesses, with up to eight more expected, before the defense begins presenting its case.

Monday's testimony will focus on a forensic examination of Manning's two workplace computers. In the most potentially damaging evidence so far, an investigator testified Sunday that he found more than 10,000 downloaded diplomatic cables and other sensitive information on a computer Manning used.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved

buglerbilly

20-12-11, 12:27 PM

Bradley Manning case: Investigators show evidence of WikiLeaks link, Assange chats

By Ellen Nakashima, Tuesday, December 20, 9:31 AM

Prosecutors presented new evidence Monday that appears to link Pfc. Bradley Manning to a massive leak of government material to the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, including the existence of computer chat logs between Manning and WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange discussing the exchange of government information.

At a pretrial hearing, which is scheduled to continue in a military courtroom at Fort Meade this week, a government witness on Monday described a memory card he said belonged to Manning and contained nearly 500,000 field reports from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Prosecution witnesses also testified that a file allegedly deleted from one of Manning’s work computers contained more than 100,000 State Department cables. And a May 2010 e-mail that was sent to an acquaintance — and that Manning apparently thought he had encrypted — said, “I was the source of the 12 July 07 video from the Apache weapons team which killed two journalists and injured two kids.”

The steady disclosure of evidence was highly damaging, experts said, as prosecutors attempted to paint a picture of a leaker who knew he was breaking military rules.

“You add it up, add it up, and eventually it gives people something approaching a moral certainty” that Manning committed the crimes, said Eugene Fidell, a visiting lecturer in military justice at Yale Law School. “I would be surprised if the defense was sipping champagne this evening. Private Manning is in serious trouble.”

Manning, 24, wearing fatigues and Army-issue dark-framed glasses, sat at a table with his defense team, taking notes or speaking to his attorney, mostly without expression. Also monitoring proceedings have been attorneys for the London-based Assange, who are concerned that he could face criminal conspiracy charges in the United States.

The hearing will determine whether Manning’s case proceeds to a court-martial. If it does, he could face as many as 22 charges, including aiding the enemy — a crime whose punishment could be the death penalty or life in prison — and violating the Espionage Act.

On this fourth day of the hearing, investigators said they recovered from one of Manning’s work computers a deleted file containing four assessments of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba; a corrupted, deleted file containing 10,000 State Department cables that apparently was never sent to WikiLeaks; and a deleted file with more than 100,000 diplomatic cables that had been compressed for apparent ease of transfer.

The chats between Manning and Assange, whose user name was “pressassociation@jabber.ccc.de,” were recovered from Manning’s laptop, prosecutors said.

“The substance of the chat was predominantly discussion of government information and specifically sending or receiving that information,” said Mark Johnson, a contract forensic examiner with the Army Computer Crimes Investigative Unit. He said Assange and Manning discussed WikiLeaks and assessments of detainees at Guantanamo Bay.

He also said that Manning’s laptop contained evidence that a secure file transfer connection had been set up between a Verizon Internet address registered to his aunt’s home and a secure server associated with a Swedish Internet service provider known as PRQ, which has been affiliated with WikiLeaks.

Johnson said Manning’s laptop password was the same as the one he used to log on to his secure work station in Baghdad: TWink1492!!

Investigators also recovered from Manning’s laptop an instruction to “Acquire and Exfiltrate the Global Address List of United States Forces Iraq” and “thousands” of e-mail addresses for soldiers in Iraq, Johnson said.

He said Manning erased data from his laptop twice in January 2010, making it impossible for investigators to retrieve any information before that month.

Johnson examined an external hard drive belonging to Manning that had been in his quarters in Baghdad. It included a document titled “wl-press.txt” created on Nov. 30, 2009, around the time Manning is said to have initiated contact with WikiLeaks. That document included the message, which was projected on a courtroom screen:

“You can currently contact our investigations editor directly in Iceland at 354 862 3481, 24 hour service, ask for Julian Assange.”

The memory card investigators found was among Manning’s belongings at his aunt’s home, in the Maryland suburb of Potomac, where Manning lived before joining the Army in 2009 and while on home leave in January 2010. On that card were four files, one containing 91,000 reports from a database of Afghanistan field reports, and a second containing 400,000 Iraq field reports, said Special Agent David Shaver, also with the Army’s Computer Crimes Investigative Unit.

A third file on that card contained a document titled: README.txt.

It appeared to be a note to accompany the Afghanistan and Iraq “significant activity” reports, saying they were drawn from the Defense and State departments and covered the period from Jan. 1, 2004, to Dec. 31, 2009, which corresponds with the time frame of the war reports WikiLeaks published.

“These items have already been sanitized of any source identity information,” it said, as Shaver read it and a copy was projected on a courtroom screen. “You might need to sit on this information for 90 to 100 days to figure out how best to send and distribute such a large amount of data to a large audience” and to protect the source of the data.

It continued: “This is perhaps one of the most significant documents of our time, removing the fog of war and revealing the true nature of 21st century asymmetric warfare. Have a good day.”

buglerbilly

21-12-11, 03:07 AM

US Rests Case Against Manning

December 20, 2011

Associated Press|by David Dishneau and Pauline Jelinek

FORT MEADE, Maryland - The U.S. government ended its case Tuesday against the Army intelligence analyst blamed for the biggest leak of national secrets in American history.

The prosecution called its final six witnesses in the case against alleged WikiLeaks source Pfc. Bradley Manning, which was being followed by the defense calling witnesses and closing arguments. Then a military officer will decide whether to recommend that the 24-year-old be court-martialed on 22 charges, including aiding the enemy. If convicted, Manning could face life in prison.

Manning is accused of illegally leaking a trove of secret information to WikiLeaks, a breach that rattled U.S. foreign relations and, according to the government, imperiled valuable military and diplomatic sources.

The military has released a text file, purportedly discovered on a data card owned by Manning, boldly stating the importance of data that would make its way to the secrets-spilling website WikiLeaks.

"This is possibly one of the more significant documents of our time, removing the fog of war and revealing the true nature of 21st century asymmetric warfare. Have a good day," Manning wrote, according to digital-crimes investigator David Shaver.

Almost 500,000 classified battlefield reports were also on the card, Shaver said.

A half-dozen, buttoned-down young men and women favoring charcoal gray suits have come and gone behind the prosecutor's table - apparently representatives of the Justice Department, CIA or other governments agencies.

Across the room were Manning's supporters, including a long-haired young man representing Occupy Wall Street and a pony-tailed, military veteran wearing a "Free Bradley Manning" T-shirt.

Attorneys for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange observed, as well as a representative of Amnesty International. A half-dozen journalists were present, alongside people in camouflage uniforms. They included the presiding officer, all three prosecutors, two of the defense lawyers and military police stationed along the back and side walls.

Until Monday, the defense largely focused on painting Manning as an emotionally troubled gay man serving during the Army's "don't ask, don't tell" era, and arguing that the classified material proved harmless in the open. Manning's lawyers have yet to acknowledge or deny his responsibility for leaking of hundreds of thousands of U.S. war and diplomatic cables and a classified military video of an American helicopter attack in Iraq that killed 11 men.

His lawyers argue the troubled young private should never have had access to classified material and that workplace security was inexplicably lax.

The prosecution said evidence showed that Manning communicated directly with Assange and bragged to someone else about leaking video of a 2007 helicopter attack to WikiLeaks.

Investigators pointed to one May 2010 exchange between Manning and a mathematician named Eric Schmiedl.

"Are you familiar with WikiLeaks?" Manning allegedly asked.

"Yes, I am," Schmiedl wrote.

"I was the source of the July 12, 2007, video from the Apache Weapons Team which killed the two journalists and injured two kids," Manning wrote, according to the prosecution.

Manning seemed to take in Monday's proceedings calmly.

Paul Almanza, the presiding officer, twice removed spectators and reporters from the hearing Monday for sessions dealing with classified information. By ruling the leaked diplomatic and military information should somehow remain secret, even though it has been published by media around the world, Almanza undermined the defense argument that no harm was done.

Manning supporters fumed. His defense also challenged thousands of cables found on Manning's workplace computers, arguing that some didn't match those published by WikiLeaks and that others couldn't be matched to the young private's user profile.

The 24-year-old Army intelligence analyst is a computer whiz who worked as a civilian software developer. He was the go-to guy for plotting data points and creating Excel spreadsheets in Baghdad, an intelligence officer testified.

But he may have met his match in the info-tech gumshoes who bored deep into several computer hard drives in search of incriminating evidence. Shaver and civilian contractor Mark Johnson are products of military or intelligence agencies with extensive government-funded training in their fields.

They said they found evidence Manning downloaded and e-mailed nearly half a million sensitive battlefield reports from Iraq and Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables and video of the helicopter attack that WikiLeaks shared with the world and dubbed "Collateral Murder."

The digital forensic examiners littered their testimonies with the terms of their trade. Text files. Zip files. Hash values. Allocated and unallocated disk space. And much, much more.

They frequently mentioned Wget - pronounced "double-you-get" - a computer program for finding and downloading large amounts of data. They talked about Base64, a program that compresses digital documents for speedy transmission by removing all the spaces and punctuation marks.

"It may look like gibberish," Shaver conceded.

One defense lawyer, Capt. Paul Bouchard, sometimes seemed baffled by the technical terms. On Monday, Shaver politely corrected him after Bouchard repeatedly referred to server files as logs during a cross-examination. Lead defense attorney David Coombs looked displeased.

An exchange between Bouchard and Johnson drew chuckles from the gallery. The defense lawyer, seeking indications that supervisors ignored signs of emotional distress, asked Johnson if his forensic probe of files and electronic data had turned up any evidence of Manning's odd behavior.

"Odd behavior?" Johnson replied matter-of-factly. "No sir, it's a computer drive."

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

buglerbilly

21-12-11, 01:10 PM

Manning faces hacker who told authorities of leak suspicions

By Ellen Nakashima, Wednesday, December 21, 9:27 AM

Pfc. Bradley Manning, in a military courtroom Tuesday, faced for the first time the man he apparently thought was a kindred spirit but who instead told authorities that the soldier had carried off one of the largest intelligence leaks in U.S. history.

Manning, who has been detained for 19 months, stared intently at Adrian Lamo, a convicted hacker who alerted investigators about Manning in May 2010 shortly after the intelligence analyst reached out to Lamo over the Internet seeking “moral and emotional support.”

It was the most dramatic scene of the day as the prosecution rested its case in the hearing at Fort Meade to decide whether the government has sufficient evidence to send Manning to trial. The case has drawn global attention, featuring as its suspect a slight young man who has been held up variously as a whistleblowing hero and a traitor to his country.

Over four days of testimony from 20 witnesses in the digital age’s first major leak case, Army prosecutors outlined in painstaking detail how Manning, from a military base in Baghdad, allegedly downloaded onto his work and personal computers hundreds of thousands of documents and two videos from the military’s classified network.

But no witness presented direct evidence that showed harm to national security. Prosecutors did enter as evidence certain documents, including an al-Qaeda video and a magazine of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, though they did not explain their relevance to the case.

Lamo, dressed in a dark suit and white open-necked shirt, dark circles under his eyes, strode to the witness box past Manning, 24, who wore fatigues and black-rimmed glasses. The two exchanged no words.

In a pointed cross-examination, Manning’s civilian defense attorney, David E. Coombs, attempted to portray Lamo as a double-dealing government informant who betrayed the trust of a troubled soldier who had contacted him over the Internet for moral support.

He directed Lamo to read from a lengthy transcript of Internet chats taken from his and Manning’s computers. The chats took place between May 20 and 26, 2010.

“I’m a journalist and a minister,” Lamo read, speaking in a monotone. “You can pick either, and treat this as a confession or an interview (never to be published) and enjoy a modicum of legal protection.”

Coombs, fixing Lamo with a steely glare, said: “Now at the time you were saying, ‘None of this is for print,’ you had already reached out to law enforcement. And you subsequently provided the chat logs not only to law enforcement but also to Wired magazine.”

Lamo replied: “That is correct.”

Coombs asked Lamo, who said he was a minister in the Universal Life Church, whether he believed “the person you were talking to was coming to you for moral and emotional support . . . asking for guidance.”

He replied: “I don’t believe they were looking for guidance so much as they were bragging about what they had done.”

Lamo, who pleaded guilty in 2004 to hacking into the computers of media companies, testified that on the second day of the chats, he attempted to alert law enforcement officials to Manning’s disclosures. “What I saw in the chats appeared to be an admission so egregious that they required a response,” he said.

Manning’s defense has focused on crafting a narrative of a distraught soldier whose superiors ignored repeated warnings that he was unfit for Army life, much less a position handling classified information.

“The government has told you a lot of stuff about how things happened,” Coombs said. “We’re telling you why things happened. That’s also important.”

Not long after Lamo went to authorities, Manning was detained. He faces 22 charges, ranging from “aiding the enemy” to adding unauthorized software to a classified computer.

The evidence produced over the past several days is damaging, experts said. It includes the existence of chat logs between Manning and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who himself is under federal investigation for his role in publishing the leaked material. On Tuesday, witnesses offered more evidence: Even as Manning was facing discharge from the Army in May 2010 for “adjustment disorder” linked to issues with gender identity, he was apparently seeking to download for WikiLeaks a “global address list” of e-mail addresses for U.S. troops in Iraq.

But the government may have overreached in bringing some of the more serious charges, such as aiding the enemy, which carries a potential life sentence, military law experts said. Prosecutors need to show that Manning intended to give intelligence to the enemy, which is difficult to prove, said Eugene Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale Law School. Calling WikiLeaks the enemy, said Fidell, is “a reach.”

The defense will present its witnesses Wednesday.

Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.

buglerbilly

22-12-11, 12:22 PM

Manning’s defense rests in pretrial hearing

By Ellen Nakashima and Julie Tate, Thursday, December 22, 9:44 AM

The defense rested its case Wednesday after presenting little evidence in a pretrial hearing to counter charges that Pfc. Bradley Manning illegally downloaded and leaked hundreds of thousands of sensitive government documents to the anti-secrecy Web site WikiLeaks.

Indeed, defense attorney David E. Coombs this week appeared at one point to have all but conceded the main point of the prosecution’s case: “The government has told you a lot of stuff about how things happened,” he said Tuesday. “We’re telling you why things happened. That’s also important.”

But, legal experts said, an absence of exculpatory evidence now could also mean that Manning’s defense team is reserving its strongest argument for an eventual court-martial of the soldier, legal experts said.

“They’re keeping their powder dry,” said Michael J. Navarre, a military law expert and former lieutenant commander in the Navy Judge Advocate General’s Corps. “Why preview your case in a proceeding you’re probably not going to win anyway?”

The government lawyers’ burden of proof to proceed to trial is quite low, Navarre said. Given the evidence presented, the pressing of at least one charge is practically “a foregone conclusion,” he said.

On Wednesday, Coombs called two witnesses, and both covered ground that had been discussed earlier in the hearing that began Friday at Fort Meade. One, Sgt. Daniel Padgett, testified about one of Manning’s emotional outbursts while he was serving as an intelligence analyst at a military base in Baghdad.

Padgett was in a counseling session with Manning in December 2009, after he had arrived late for duty, when Manning “got a look in his eye that made me uncomfortable,” Padgett said. Manning flipped the table over and had to be restrained in a “full nelson” by another officer, Padgett testified.

Padgett’s account was consistent with other testimony elicited from government witnesses by Coombs, who likely was trying to establish material that could serve to soften any sentence should Manning be found guilty, Navarre said. During the hearing, Coombs has tried to portray Manning, 24, as a troubled young man whose signs of distress were repeatedly ignored by superiors.

Manning could face up to 22 charges, ranging from adding unauthorized software to a classified computer to aiding the enemy. Although the latter carries a potential death penalty, prosecutors have said they would seek nothing more than life in prison. But the actual charges he might face are up to a military commander known as a “convening authority,” who will consider the recommendation made by the pretrial hearing investigating officer.

The most likely charges to go forward are the more minor ones, such as uploading unauthorized software and wrongfully storing classified information, which carry penalties of two years per charge, Navarre said.

The defense team has tried to poke holes in some of the witnesses’ accounts, by eliciting admissions that they could not rule out that other soldiers had not had access to computers on which incriminating evidence was found. Defense lawyers also asserted that a video of an Apache helicopter firing on civilians in Iraq, which Manning is alleged to have leaked, was not classified.

Closing arguments will take place Thursday.

buglerbilly

23-12-11, 01:57 AM

Prosecutor Says Manning Defied US Trust

December 22, 2011

Associated Press|by Pauline Jelinek and David Dishneau

FORT MEADE, Md. - An Army intelligence analyst defied the nation's trust by indiscriminately pulling more than 700,000 documents from a supposedly secure computer network and giving reams of national secrets to WikiLeaks, a military prosecutor argued Thursday at the close of a hearing for Pfc. Bradley Manning.

A defense attorney said the Army had failed the troubled young soldier and is now piling on charges in an attempt to strong-arm him into pleading guilty.

The summations at Fort Meade ended a preliminary hearing to determine whether Manning should be court-martialed on 22 charges, including aiding the enemy. He faces life in prison.

Prosecutors said Manning signed seven agreements to protect government secrets. They say he then made sure those secrets were published online for America's enemies to see.

"Pfc. Manning gave enemies of the United States unfettered access to these government documents," Capt. Ashen Fein said, pounding the podium.

The defense team says Manning was nearly paralyzed by internal struggles over his belief that he was a woman trapped in a man's body. They say his chain of command failed to suspend his access to classified data despite clear signs of emotional distress, including his statement to a supervisor that he had multiple personalities.

Civilian defense attorney David Coombs called the intelligence division of Manning's battalion a "lawless unit" for allowing soldiers to load personal music CDs onto their workplace computers and play music, movies and video games stored on a network meant for classified data.

He said the government needs "a reality check" for bringing such serious charges against Manning.

And he challenged the government's original decision to classify as "secret" the material WikiLeaks published.

"Why are we here when all this information is out in public?" asked Coombs, who argued that the release of the material had caused no harm.

"If anything, it's helped," he said.

Prosecutors noted that although the material has been published, the military still considers it classified.

Manning's supporters say the information published by WikiLeaks exposed war crimes and triggered the wave of pro-democracy uprisings in the Middle East.

It still could be weeks before Manning learns whether he will be court-martialed.

The presiding officer, Lt. Col. Paul Almanza, will have until Jan. 16 to recommend whether the 24-year-old Crescent, Okla., native should stand trial.

Military officials say Almanza's timeline could be extended, and there is no deadline for a final decision by Maj. Gen. Michael Linnington, commander of the Military District of Washington.

The standard of proof is whether reasonable grounds exist to believe Manning committed the alleged offenses.

It's been nearly 19 months since Manning was charged with giving WikiLeaks a trove of classified data, including hundreds of thousands of State Department diplomatic cables and raw battlefield reports from Iraq and Afghanistan. There was also video of a laughing U.S. helicopter crew gunning down 11 men, including a Reuters cameraman and his driver, in a clip WikiLeaks dubbed "Collateral Murder."

The reason Manning allegedly gave for the disclosures, in online chats with a confidant who turned him in: "I want people to see the truth."

His lawyers built a three-pronged defense: Manning was a troubled man who shouldn't have had access to classified material, let alone served in Iraq; security at his workplace was weak; and the published material did little or no harm to national security.

The prosecution's three main witnesses were, like Manning, computer experts.

Adrian Lamo, a onetime convicted hacker, testified he gave investigators records of his May 2010 online chats with a correspondent using the screen name "bradass87" who bragged about engineering "possibly the largest data spillage in American history" from his Army post in Baghdad.

Two computer forensic examiners said they found evidence on Manning's workplace and personal computers that he had downloaded battlefield reports from the military's supposedly secure network and emailed them to WikiLeaks.

The defense called just two witnesses - a sergeant who witnessed one of Manning's fits of rage and a captain who found it odd that intelligence analysts were allowed to load personal music CDs into computers linked to the classified data network. Manning allegedly downloaded the diplomatic cables onto a rewritable CD labeled "Lady Gaga," while lip-synching her song "Telephone."

Throughout the proceedings, Manning remained outwardly calm while witnesses talked about his emotional problems, his difficulties as a gay soldier during the military's "don't ask, don't tell" era, and his violent outbursts while serving in the United States and then in Iraq from late 2009 to mid-2010.

© Copyright 2011 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

buglerbilly

23-12-11, 12:31 PM

Prosecutors say Manning collaborated with WikiLeaks’ Assange in stealing secret documents

By Ellen Nakashima and Julie Tate, Friday, December 23, 10:04 AM

Military prosecutors presented new and detailed evidence Thursday that they said showed that Pfc. Bradley Manning collaborated with Julian Assange, the founder of the anti-secrecy Web site WikiLeaks, in stealing more than 700,000 documents from classified computer systems and publishing them on the Internet.

Assange came under grand jury investigation, possibly for conspiracy, after WikiLeaks publicized secret U.S. documents, roiling U.S. diplomatic relations and turning Manning, for some, into a whistleblowing hero.

Manning’s defense attorney, David E. Coombs, accused military prosecutors of “over-charging” in the case in an effort to obtain a plea agreement and gain the former intelligence analyst’s cooperation in a separate, federal case against Assange.

In just over an hour of closing arguments at a pretrial hearing, the prosecutors disclosed three new excerpts of chat logs taken from Manning’s personal Macintosh laptop. In one, he allegedly asks Assange for help in figuring out a password. In another, he allegedly tells Assange “i’m throwing everything i’ve got on’’ Guantanamo detainee reports “at you now” and estimates the “upload is about 36 pct” complete.

To which Assange replied, according to the prosecutors’ PowerPoint presentation, “OK . . . great.”

Baher Azmy, an attorney for Assange with the Center for Constitutional Rights, said the evidence is speculative. “We have no access to and cannot review or see the government’s evidence,” he said. “We do not know if it is reliable.”

Thursday’s dramatic proceedings brought to a close a seven-day hearing at Fort Meade to determine whether Manning will face a court-martial and under what charges. Coombs seemed to concede that the court-martial will proceed, making an impassioned plea that the charges Manning might face be reduced from 22 to three. He argued that the maximum sentence should be not the death penalty or life in prison but a maximum of 30 years behind bars.

The military will render a decision early next year on whether a court-martial will take place.

In a 20-minute summation, Coombs argued that Manning, now 24, was struggling with a gender-identity crisis so severe that he was unable to function even before he deployed to Iraq in October 2009. Coombs said Manning’s superiors repeatedly failed to act on signs of his distress.

Coombs read an anguished e-mail from Manning in which he told a superior about his “problem” with gender identity. “I thought a career in the military would get rid of it,” he wrote.

Coombs also argued that Manning was young, idealistic and “with a strong moral compass” — someone who believed “you can change the world.”

He argued that WikiLeaks’ posting of more than 250,000 diplomatic cables, and voluminous databases of Iraq and Afghanistan military field reports, has not caused harm to the United States, and that the government’s claim that “there’s been extreme harm . . . is an overreaction.”

“The sky has not fallen,” Coombs said. “The sky is not falling. And the sky will not fall.”

The prosecution countered that Manning was a bright soldier, an analyst “whom we trained and trusted” to use multiple intelligence systems to aid battlefield commanders. “He used that training to betray our trust,” Capt. Ashden Fein said.

Manning began his campaign to help WikiLeaks, Fein said, within two weeks of arriving in Baghdad. Over a six-month period he “indiscriminately and systematically harvested over 700,000 documents’’ from the secret-level classified network. He did so, Fein said, using as a guiding light WikiLeaks’ list of “Most Wanted Leaks,” which had been published on the Internet.

Prosecutors said the chat logs between Manning and Assange came from Manning’s personal computer, which a forensic examiner testified this week were authentic. They show an interlocutor whose user name, prosecutors said, is an alias for Assange.

In a March 8, 2010, chat, Manning asked Assange for help in cracking a password so he could log onto the classified computer anonymously, Fein said.

“Any good at IM-Hash cracking?” Manning asks.

“Yes,” is the reply. “We have rainbow tables for IM,” the interlocutor says, citing a tool that can be used to decipher passwords.

Manning sends a string of numbers.

“Passed it on to our guys,” is the reply.

On March 15, prosecutors said, WikiLeaks published another document that Manning provided, a classified 2008 Army counterintelligence report that discussed the potential for leaks of material to WikiLeaks that could result in an advantage to foreign enemies.

Three days later, prosecutors said, Manning told Assange in a chat that a New York Times article cited an Army spokesman “confirming the authenticity” of the report.

Assange allegedly asked: “Yes?”

Manning replied: “Hilarious.”

Manning transfered classified information “knowing” that U.S. enemies, including al-Qaeda, would have access to the information, Fein said.

He showed an al-Qaeda video clip in which a spokesman, over flashes of the WikiLeaks home page, says followers should not enter battle “before taking advantage of the wide range of resources available on the Internet.”

The material disclosed Thursday not only potentially strengthens the military’s case against Manning but also aids civilian prosecutors in their effort to bring a case against Assange, experts said. The Justice Department has said it has an active grand jury investigation against Assange and WikiLeaks. Lawyers representing him and the group have been in the Fort Meade courtroom all week.

Assange’s apparent role in helping Manning gain access to classified information “would get you closer to the point of charging Assange” with conspiracy to violate the Espionage Act, said a former federal prosecutor whose firm did not authorize him to speak publicly on the matter.

As he closed, Coombs repeated his appeal that Manning, who grew up in small-town Oklahoma and thought the Army would give him a future, acted out of pure motives.

“History will ultimately judge my client,” he said, and reprised a quote from Martin Luther King Jr. “An individual who breaks a law” that conscience tells him is unjust, Coombs said, and who risks prison to arouse the conscience of the community is in reality expressing the “very, very highest respect for the law.”

buglerbilly

24-12-11, 02:45 PM

Bradley Manning pre-trial hearing: what we learned

For the past week, a military court has been considering the case of Bradley Manning, alleged to have leaked more than 250,000 embassy cables to Wikileaks. What have we learned?

Ed Pilkington, Dominic Rushe and Matt Williams at Fort Meade

guardian.co.uk, Friday 23 December 2011 16.37 GMT

Bradley Manning is escorted from a military vehicle to the court facility at Fort Meade, Maryland. Photograph: Patrick Semansky/AP

For seven days, a makeshift court inside a sprawling military base in Maryland has been hearing evidence in a case that that has raised questions of freedom of speech, the practices of US army intelligence, gender identity and the place of gay personnel in the armed services.

Sitting sometimes in secret, at other times in a kind of pseudo-public forum, this idiosyncratic court has been considering whether a full court martial should be held for Bradley Manning, an army intelligence analyst with a troubled background who is alleged to be the source of the biggest leak of US state secrets in history.

Manning faces a potential life sentence if army investigators can prove he passed the information to WikiLeaks, the whistleblowing website founded by the mercurial Julian Assange.

Overview

In this courtroom sketch, Bradley Manning, second from left, sits as his attorney speaks during a military hearing in Fort Meade. Photograph: William Hennessy/AP

It has been a curious week. Faced with damning evidence, Manning's lawyers played up his confused sexual and gender identities, the extraordinarily chaotic environment at the supposedly top-security base where he worked, and even tried to get the presiding judge to dismiss himself on the grounds that he worked for the Department of Justice, which is pursuing a criminal case against Assange. The petition, unsurprisingly, was declined.

The army, meanwhile, led evidence to suggest that Manning had been in direct contact with Assange, and that his computer logs were littered with material related to the thousands of US embassy cables that ended up being published by WikiLeaks.

Security was extraordinarily tight. No electronic devices were allowed in court. Journalists were not even allowed to file copy from the separate media centre while the hearings were in progress, confined instead to filing only during the gaps in testimony. Sometimes, testimony was heard in private, with no public disclosure about what was discussed. On occasion, proceedings would resume far from where they had left off.

Adrian Lamo, left, a former computer hacker who informed US authorities about Bradley Manning, arrives at Fort Meade for the soldier's pre-trial hearing. Photograph: Patrick Semansky/AP

It was the longest that Manning has been seen in public since his arrest in May 2010. In person he cuts a diminutive figure at 5ft 2in. He seems calm and composed, taking frequent notes and conferring with his lawyers. His only moment of animation came during the testimony of his nemesis, the former hacker Adrian Lamo, who reported him to the authorities after a chatroom confession.

Warning signs overlooked

Even before he was deployed in Iraq in October 2009, signs of Manning's erratic behaviour were often noted – but ignored. Jihrleah Showman, Manning's immediate supervisor, testified that she advised a superior officer that Manning should not be sent to Iraq, because of his "psychotic issues". The court heard that Manning was found seen curled up in a ball on the floor of his work unit. On another occasion he flipped over a table and colleagues worried he might grab a gun off a nearby rack. In the most serious incident, he punched Showman in the face. One theory expressed during the proceedings was that nothing was done to control Manning because he was the best computer operator in the unit.

Chaotic work environment

Inside Manning's unit, the Sensitive Compartmentalized Information Facility at Forward Operating Base Hammer, east of Baghdad, analysts stored movies and computer games on a shared storage portion of a network that also held confidential military files. They kept passwords to secret material on Post-it notes on their terminals, and were allowed to bring commercial music CDs in to and out of the unit without registering them. Unmarked CDs, that should have been clearly labelled classified or unclassified, were scattered across the desks.

Manning's confused sexuality

Manning served before the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell", the policy that barred US soldiers from being openly gay. His defence team was keen to argue that Manning's mental state was compounded by the army's refusal to acknowledge his struggles with his sexuality.

At the time that more than 250,000 secret documents were alleged to have been passed to WikiLeaks, Manning was said to have been suffering from gender identity disorder. He created an alter ego called Breanna Manning, who had her own Facebook page and email address. He also sent an email to the head of security in his unit in which he appended a photo of himself dressed as a woman. "It makes my entire life feel like a bad dream that will not end," Manning said of his gender issues in a letter to his superior.

Damning evidence

Bradley Manning's attorney David Coombs arrives at the court facility at Fort Meade with a colleague. Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

Government agents discovered a spreadsheet on one of Manning's computer referring to 251,287 state department cables – precisely the number of cables released by WikiLeaks. Military computer experts told the hearing that they had found a computer programme called Wget that is used to speed up the transfer of files, and another called Roxio for burning CDs. A memory card found among the soldier's belongings after they were shipped back from Iraq to his aunt's house in America contained 400,000 records of significant activities from Iraq and 91,000 from Afghanistan.

Forensic examiners said they found Manning had searched the internet using terms unrelated to his work as an analyst specialising in Shia attacks on US forces in Iraq. He is said to have searched for Julian Assange, Iceland and Reykjavik. (A document known as Reykjavik-13 was the first US embassy cable released by WikiLeaks in February 2010.) Investigators also claimed to have found evidence that Manning had been in contact with Assange, using the alias "Press Association", the name of a UK news agency, in an online chatroom.

Manning's motivation

Evidence was produced that suggested Manning may have been motivated by political conscience. A text file on a computer used by Manning and allegedly sent to WikiLeaks stated: "This is possibly one of the more significant documents of our time. Removing the fog of war and revealing the true nature of 21st century asymmetrical warfare."

Involvement of others

One of the big questions surrounding the publication of the US embassy cables was whether anyone else was involved in aiding the website. For the first time, we heard that other people were on the radar of the FBI and other investigating authorities. The hearing was told about Jason Katz, a government employee at the energy department's Brook-haven national laboratory. Adrian Lamo, the hacker who betrayed Manning, told military authorities that Katz had been boasting on the internet that he was trying to decrypt a video of the Grain air strike in Afghanistan. Katz was sacked by the laboratory, but his fate since then is unknown. Others were said to have been the subject of FBI investigations, but no details were given.

Bradley Manning's supporters

A supporter of Wikileaks suspect Bradley Manning outside Forte Meade, Maryland, where a pre-trial hearing was taking place. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

A number of Manning's supporters took up the small number of public places available at the heading, while others held demonstrations outside the base. Among those present this week were Daniel Ellsberg, the former US military analyst who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971.

Daniel Ellsberg. Photograph: Reuters

In 1973, espionage charges against Ellsberg were dismissed, with Judge William Byrne concluding that government misconduct in the case went so far as to "offend a sense of justice". Ellsberg said this week: "This [Manning] process should not have had to take place. And the proceedings in this case should be ended in the same way that my trial was ended nearly 40 years ago."

Another supporter, Daniel Choi, who was discharged from the US army under DADT for openly acknowledging his sexuality, was ejected from Fort Meade after a confrontation with military police.

Manning has a lookalike

Bradley Manning, left, surrounded by US military officials, leaves the courtroom in Fort Meade, Maryland. Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

A curious feature of the pre-trial hearing is the fact Bradley Manning is being escorted to and from the Fort Meade hearing by a Bradley Manning lookalike. The clone is taller, and jowlier, but apart from that it's a good match.

What happens next

The hearing was concluded by investigating officer Lt Col Paul Almanza who told Manning that his recommendation to the convening authority – which will ultimately rule if the soldier is to face a court martial – is not binding.

Almanza now has until 16 January to inform that body of his opinion.
He must wade through a huge bulk of evidence, which includes a full transcript of this week's hearing and another 300,000 pages of submitted documents.

Meanwhile, Manning will spend the holiday season behind bars, waiting to find out if he is to be prosecuted as the suspect behind the largest leaking of classified US documents in history.

buglerbilly

25-12-11, 05:28 AM

Senator meets Swedish officials to protect Assange's human rights

December 25, 2011 - 2:36PM

Hmmmm we mustn't allow Ass-hole get the royal shafting he's due, now must we! Nasty Western Governments that we are.......... :cuckoo

Swedish officials have met an Australian senator to discuss the future of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

As extradition proceedings against the 40-year-old Australian continue in London, Greens Senator for Western Australia Scott Ludlam has embarked on a European mission to secure guarantees about Assange's human rights, should he be extradited to the Nordic nation.

Swedish prosecutors want Assange in Stockholm for questioning over allegations that he sexually assaulted two women in the capital in August 2010.

Assange denies the claims and is refusing to return to Sweden, fearing that the country will hand him over to the United States, where his secret-leaking website is the subject of a major investigation.

During the time he spent in Sweden, Senator Ludlam was able to meet justice officials and discuss the process faced by people being extradited to Sweden.

"For us it was a chance to get our heads clear about how it would work if and when (Assange) is ordered to return to Sweden," Senator Ludlam said.

"There is nothing out of the ordinary in that respect, if he is sent there ... it appears his human rights will be protected."

Senator Ludlam also saw photographs of the remand centre where Assange would be held while Swedish prosecutors decide if he will be charged, and was given a full briefing about it.

But his hopes of securing a guarantee from the Swedish government that Assange would not be handed on to the US were not realised.

"It didn't seem appropriate to raise it with the officials I met with. I needed to speak with the foreign minister for that," Senator Ludlam said.

Following the trip to Sweden, the Greens communications spokesman met with Assange for several hours to discuss what he had learned.

"I don't think there were too many surprises there for Julian, he was just absorbing the information that I had," Senator Ludlam said.

The pair met at Assange's new base at Kent, about an hour out of London.

Since a short time after his arrest on December 7, 2010, Assange was bailed to live at a lavish country estate at Norfolk.

Senator Ludlam said "logistical" issues led to Assange's recent relocation and he still wears an electronic tracking device and has to report daily to police as part of his bail conditions.

From February 1, Assange will face a panel of seven British supreme court justices for a two-day hearing where he will appeal the rulings of lower courts that he should be extradited to Stockholm.

Senator Ludlam plans to take the information he has learned in Stockholm to the Australian parliament and seek cross-party support for the government to do "everything possible to prevent this extradition".

AAP

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/senator-meets-swedish-officials-to-protect-assanges-human-rights-20111225-1p99k.html#ixzz1hWLdjy2Z

buglerbilly

14-01-12, 05:24 AM

Court-Martial Recommended in WikiLeaks Case

January 13, 2012

Associated Press|by David Dishneau

WASHINGTON -- An Army officer recommended a general court-martial for a low-ranking intelligence analyst charged with causing the biggest leak of classified information in U.S. history.

Lt. Col. Paul Almanza's recommendation Thursday to try Pfc. Bradley Manning on all 22 counts, including aiding the enemy, now goes up the chain of command for a final determination. Almanza sent his report to Col. Carl Coffman, garrison commander of Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall near Washington. Coffman will make a recommendation to Military District of Washington commander Maj. Gen. Michael Linnington, whose decision is final.

The military did not provide a timeline for those actions.

Manning, a 24-year-old native of Oklahoma, allegedly gave more than 700,000 secret U.S. documents to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks for publication. Prosecutors say WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange collaborated with Manning.

Defense lawyers say Manning was clearly a troubled young Soldier whom the Army should never have deployed to Iraq or given access to classified material while he was stationed there from late 2009 to mid-2010.

Manning could be imprisoned for life if convicted of the aiding the enemy, the most serious charge. The charge carries a maximum penalty of death, but Almanza agreed with prosecutors, who recommended against seeking the death penalty. Ultimately, however, that decision lies with Linnington.

Almanza presided over Manning's seven-day preliminary hearing, called an Article 32 investigation, in December at Fort Meade, Md. During that hearing, military prosecutors produced evidence that Manning downloaded and electronically transferred to WikiLeaks nearly half a million sensitive battlefield reports from Iraq and Afghanistan, hundreds of thousands of diplomatic cables, and video of a deadly 2007 Army helicopter attack that WikiLeaks shared with the world and dubbed "Collateral Murder."

Manning's lawyers countered that others had access to Manning's workplace computers. They say he was in emotional turmoil, partly because he was a gay Soldier at a time when homosexuals were barred from serving openly in the U.S. armed forces.

Manning's apparent disregard for security rules during stateside training and his increasingly violent outbursts after deployment were red flags that should have prevented him from having access to classified material, the defense claims. Manning's lawyers also contend that military computer security was lax, and the material WikiLeaks published did little or no harm to national security.

Defense attorney David Coombs did not respond immediately on Thursday to requests from The Associated Press for comment on Almanza's recommendation.

Jeff Paterson, a founding member of the Bradley Manning Support Network, said the recommendation was what he expected.

"We're not surprised, we're disappointed, and we're going to go forward with our public efforts," Paterson said.

He said the group hopes to bring thousands of Manning supporters to demonstrate at Fort Meade if there is a trial there.

Separately Thursday, Coombs released a document he has filed in the case seeking approval to take depositions -- sworn, out-of-court testimony -- from six people who either ordered or reviewed the classification of various leaked documents and videos. Coombs wrote in the filing that he wants to question them because Almanza improperly determined they were not available to testify at the Article 32 hearing.

The witnesses' names were blacked out on the document, but from Coombs' characterization of the testimony he is seeking, none would appear to be President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton or former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, all of whom were on Coombs' prospective witness list for the December hearing.

-- AP National Security Writer Robert Burns contributed to this report from Washington.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

buglerbilly

17-01-12, 07:42 AM

Manning’s attorney wants to depose Clinton

The Associated Press

Posted : Monday Jan 16, 2012 19:46:01 EST

WASHINGTON — A lawyer for an intelligence analyst charged with leaking classified information to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks wants to question Secretary of State Hillary Clinton before his client is tried.

David Coombs, a lawyer for Pfc. Bradley Manning, included a request to question Clinton as part of a redacted document posted Monday on his website and also sent to Army officials. Clinton’s name is obscured in the document, but it is clear from context that she is the person he wants to question.

Coombs failed in his attempt to call Clinton as a witness at Manning’s preliminary hearing last month. The Army is still deciding whether the 24-year-old Manning, who is accused of causing the biggest leak of classified information in U.S. history, should stand trial.

Manning is from Crescent, Okla.

buglerbilly

21-01-12, 01:34 AM

Manning Moves One Step Closer to Court-Martial

January 20, 2012

Associated Press

WASHINGTON -- A low-ranking intelligence analyst charged in the biggest leak of classified information in U.S. history is a step closer to a general court-martial, the Army says, after a second officer signed off on the procedure.

Col. Carl Coffman sent his recommendation Wednesday to Maj. Gen. Michael Linnington, commander of the Military District of Washington, according to a statement emailed to The Associated Press. Linnington now must decide whether to order a trial for Pfc. Bradley Manning.

Coffman, a garrison commander based near Washington, concurred with Lt. Col. Paul Almanza, the presiding officer at Manning's preliminary hearing last month, that Manning should be tried by a court-martial. The 24-year-old faces 22 counts, including aiding the enemy.

Coffman's recommendation did not specify whether he agreed with Almanza that Manning should be tried on all counts.

Manning could be imprisoned for life if convicted of aiding the enemy, the most serious charge. The charge carries a maximum penalty of death, but Almanza has recommended against seeking the death penalty. Ultimately, however, that decision lies with Linnington.

Manning allegedly gave more than 700,000 secret U.S. documents to the anti-secrecy website WikiLeaks for publication. Prosecutors say WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange collaborated with Manning.

Defense lawyers say Manning was clearly a troubled young Soldier whom the Army should never have deployed to Iraq or given access to classified material while he was stationed there from late 2009 to mid-2010.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

buglerbilly

02-02-12, 11:25 AM

Julian Assange makes final bid to fight extradition to Sweden

Martin Daly in London

February 2, 2012 - 10:02AM

Final bid ... Julian Assange. Photo: Reuters

For more than four hours in the UK Supreme Court yesterday there were references to complex European law, citations from 14th and 15th century texts, and a quote from the Codex lustinianus, dated 376 AD, all of which lawyers used in an effort save Julian Assange from extradition to Sweden, where he faces allegations of rape and sexual assault involving two women.

There were utterings in court in German, French and Latin as Assange's barrister, Dinah Rose, presented her case to six Lords and a Lady, all judges of the Court, that the arrest warrant under which Assange faces extradition is flawed and that in the name of justice, it should not be allowed to stand.

The Court normally provides five judges for appeals but decided on seven judges for the controversial Assange case “given the great public importance of the issue raised.” They are expected to give a written verdict perhaps a few weeks after the hearing ends today.

This appeal is consider to be Assange's last stand against the extradition that has been upheld already by one British court. If his appeal fails, he could get permission to appeal to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg.

But Dinah Rose did everything she could yesterday to convince the judges that to send Assange to Sweden would be a great injustice. Her delivery and responses to the Court were more polished and assured than that of Clare Montgomery, QC, who was presented the Swedish case for only 30 minutes before the court was adjourned until today.

The Roman Codex used by Rose to assist the Australian-born Assange, a one time computer hacker and founder of Wikileaks, says: “…We decree by general law that no one ought to be his own judge or to administer justice in his own cause. For it is very unjust to give somebody permission to pass judgement in his own cause.”

And that is the kernel of the defence that Rose presented on behalf of Assange who is fighting extradition on the basis that the European Arrest Warrant used by a Swedish prosecutor is invalid in law.

The prosecutor, Rose told the Court, was not a “judicial authority” (a judge or someone with similar powers) within the meaning of the Extradition Act 2003 and therefore could not issue a valid EAW.

The prosecutor, she added, in her “adversarial relationship” with Assange, lacked the required impartiality and independence to be involved in issuing an EAW, which, Ms Rose said, should be done by a judge.

Ms Rose told the Court that the ancient standard that “no one should be judge in their own cause was “one of the pillars of natural justice” and to give the prosecutor 'judicial authority', as was happening in the Assange extradition, was “contrary to a basic, fundamental principal of law.”

Montgomery, who rejected Rose's assertion that prosecutors could not be impartial in terms of issuing WAWs because they were so involved in the cases, also came under more intense questioning from the judges than Rose.

Assange is accused of rape, sexual molestation and coercion involving two women, but there was no debate about the charges and the word “rape” was not mentioned even once. The appeal is about the legality of the extradition process, not about the allegations which Assange strenuously denies.

There is, however, an agree statement of facts before the court. They state that Assange visited Sweden to give a lecture in August 2010. He had sexual relations with two women. Both women went to the police who treated their visits as the filing of complaints. Assange was interviewed by police and subsequently left Sweden in ignorance of the fact that a domestic arrest warrant had been issued for him.

Proceedings were brought in the Swedish courts in Assange's absence, although he was represented, in which a domestic warrant for the his detention for interrogation was granted and upheld on appeal. Subsequently, an EAW for Assange was issued by the Swedish Prosecution Authority that set out allegations of four offences of unlawful coercion and sexual misconduct including rape.

The EAW was certified by the UK Serious Organised Crime Agency under the Extradition Act 2003. Assange surrendered himself for arrest in the UK and, following an extradition hearing, his extradition to Sweden was ordered. The order was upheld on appeal to the Divisional Court.

Assange arrived in court early yesterday morning to cheers and well wishes and support from anti-war placard holders, who waited in the cold outside. He refused to speak on leaving court, but was again greeted with shouts of support as police escorted him to a taxi: “Good on yah,” shouted one. “Well done, Julian,” said another. One woman invoked the name of the Lord and offered Assange blessings. He appeared to not hear her.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/julian-assange-makes-final-bid-to-fight-extradition-to-sweden-20120202-1qu6g.html#ixzz1lDqpMN4H

buglerbilly

04-02-12, 01:00 AM

WikiLeaks: Bradley Manning to face full court martial

The US Army has approved a recommendation that Bradley Manning be court-martialed for allegedly funneling hundreds of thousands of classified documents to WikiLeaks.

Government investigators found classified information stored on a memory stick in Bradley Manning's bedroom basement, a military court heard Photo: AP Photo/Cliff Owen

11:31PM GMT 03 Feb 2012

The decision clears the way to set a date for Manning, a private with the Army, to face a host of charges, including that he aided the enemy and wrongfully caused intelligence to be openly published on the Internet.

"A military judge will be detailed by the US Army Trial Judiciary and that military judge will set the date for Manning's arraignment, motion hearings and trial," the army statement said.

Manning is also accused of stealing public property or records, transmitting defense information and of committing computer fraud.

A US investigating officer last month concluded that the 24-year-old soldier should be court-martialed because "reasonable grounds exist to believe that the accused committed the offenses alleged."

That recommendation followed a seven-day pre-trial hearing in December to determine if there was sufficient evidence for him to face trial.

If convicted, Manning could be sentenced to life in prison for what authorities have described as one of the most serious intelligence breaches in US history.

Trained on various intelligence systems, the Oklahoma soldier served in Iraq from November 2009 until his arrest the following May.

He is accused of giving WikiLeaks a massive trove of US military reports from Iraq and Afghanistan, 260,000 classified State Department cables, Guantanamo detainee assessments and videos of US air strikes.

buglerbilly

25-02-12, 11:20 AM

24 Feb 2012 at 12:54 PM

Cyberlaw, Department of Justice, Military / Military Law

Court-Martial Begins for Bradley Manning; He Faces 22 Counts and Life in Prison

By Christopher Danzig

Did this young soldier aid the enemy?

Bradley Manning, the American traitor or human rights champion depending on your perspective, was back in court yesterday. His court-martial officially began, and he now faces 22 serious charges that could carry a life sentence, if he is convicted.

The 24-year-old Army intelligence analyst allegedly gave more than 700,000 classified documents to Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks. Manning deferred his plea, so he and his attorneys have more time to strategize. Both sides are still working to set a date for trial, but is getting close to do-or-die time for the embattled Manning.

Let’s see the newest details about his case…

From Reuters:

In Thursday’s procedure, Manning, 24, was formally charged with 22 counts including aiding the enemy, wrongfully causing intelligence to be published on the Internet and theft of public property. Military prosecutors say Manning downloaded more than 700,000 classified or confidential documents and transferred thousands to WikiLeaks, which promotes leaking government and corporate information.

Manning’s plea deferral allows his defense team time to strategize and see the outcome of several motions to be heard before the trial begins, which could be as late as August.

“It basically leaves their options open,” said a legal expert with the Military District of Washington, the Army command unit for the capital region, who was present at the arraignment. The expert could not be named under rules imposed on media covering the proceedings.

It’s worth noting that aiding the enemy is a capital offense, but the government decided not to try it as such. Sounds like a good PR move to me.

On the other side of the fence, this is how Manning’s attorneys plan to defend him. From the Associated Press:

Manning’s lawyers countered that others had access to Manning’s workplace computers in Iraq. They say he was in emotional turmoil, partly because he was a gay soldier while U.S. armed forces still barred gays from serving openly. The defense also claims Manning’s apparent disregard for security rules during stateside training and his increasingly violent outbursts after deployment were red flags that should have prevented him from having access to classified material. They also contend that the material WikiLeaks published did little or no harm to national security.

I know I tend to lean left on this sort of issue, but I’m honestly not sure what the right call is here. On one hand, I think it’s fair to say that the information Manning allegedly unveiled is important, and the American public should know about it. I don’t know if you can call the helicopter video or any of the other things he allegedly gave to Wikileaks “war crimes.” But it’s significant information about the ways the American military operates abroad. Keeping Manning in custody for most of the last two years, under questionable conditions, is unacceptable. And I tend to agree with the idea that the military should not have ignored his supposedly obvious and worrisome emotional issues.

That said, the military is based on a hierarchy. If members of the military don’t follow the rules based on rank, we would have obvious chaos. Nothing would get done. It’s the same reason I agreed with Stanley A. McChrystal’s forced resignation after he badmouthed Vice President Joe Biden to Rolling Stone. You can’t do that. In a way it is like any other job: you can’t badmouth your boss in public or break the rules of your workplace and not expect to have to pay for it.

In regards to a soldier’s duty/ability/responsibility/whatever to report war crimes, I’m not sure it even matters or applies in this case. If the allegations against Manning are true, it simply means he “reported” the information to a borderline sociopathic albino Australian, who is facing sex crimes charges and has said his goal is to break down the current world order.

:owned

I would think soldiers are given the ability to report war crimes so that future atrocities can be avoided, and so such a situation can be fixed. I don’t think the point is to help a chronic pot-stirrer cause more chaos.

I am honestly curious to see how this shakes out in court. To me, it’s a great example of the complexities of our legal system. I know people on both sides have a lot of strong opinions — so please feel free to share yours in the comment section.

buglerbilly

18-03-12, 08:35 AM

WikiLeaks tweet airs Assange Senate aim

Stephanie Peatling

March 18, 2012

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has his eye on the Senate. Photo: Reuters

It'll be a sick joke, a complete parody, if this clown gets in the Senate...........

THE WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, wants to run for a seat in the Senate despite being under house arrest in Britain and facing possible extradition to Sweden.

''We have discovered that it is possible for Julian Assange to run for the Australian Senate while detained. Julian has decided to run,'' the WikiLeaks website announced on Twitter yesterday.

The organisation also wants to run a candidate against the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, in her seat of Lalor, which it misspelt as Laylor, earning a Twitter slapdown from the general secretary of NSW Labor, Sam Dastyari: ''Best they learn the seat's name.''

The organisation said Mr Assange had not decided which state to run in but that it would be announced ''at an appropriate time''.

WikiLeaks claims it has discovered that Mr Assange's legal situation does not prohibit him from running for Parliament when an election is called, some time in the second half of next year.

Mr Assange is awaiting a British Supreme Court decision on his appeal against extradition to Sweden to be questioned in relation to sexual assault allegations.

Mr Assange, who has not been charged with any offence in Sweden, fears extradition to Stockholm would open the way for his extradition to the US on possible espionage or conspiracy charges in retaliation for WikiLeaks's publication of thousands of leaked US classified military and diplomatic reports.

Fairfax newspapers reported last month that US prosecutors drew up secret charges against the WikiLeaks founder more than a year ago.

In recent answers to written parliamentary questions from the Greens Senator Scott Ludlam, the former foreign affairs minister Kevin Rudd indicated Australia had sought confirmation that a secret grand jury inquiry directed against Mr Assange was in progress. Mr Rudd said that ''no formal advice'' had been received from US authorities.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/wikileaks-tweet-airs-assange-senate-aim-20120317-1vc3n.html#ixzz1pS3czvCp

Gubler, A.

18-03-12, 12:40 PM

I wonder what the Greens think of this Senate push. They declare Assange to be the second Messiah and now he promises to hack into their primary vote in the Senate!

buglerbilly

18-03-12, 01:22 PM

They'll probably sponsor him............turn him into a God-walking............

Gubler, A.

19-03-12, 02:52 AM

They'll probably sponsor him............turn him into a God-walking............

I doubt it unless he runs as a Greens candidate which I think is unlikely.

According to this article:

http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/assange-on-the-run-8230-for-the-senate-20120317-1vccl.html

Greens Senator Scott Ludlam (WA) says anything that promotes Assange’s cause is good. Though I would imagine he’d change his tune if Assange was running against him and threatening to cut his vote in half. While any Assange senate run would likely see the votes return to the Greens via preferences things aren’t that simple in a multi candidate proportional representation ballot where you are trying to reach quotas and not be knocked out. This is a big deal for the Greens who are usually way down the order of being elected and if Labor and Liberal preferences flow to some minor parties first can miss out. Also it will cut into their public campaign funding even if Assange doesn’t make 4% of the vote and gets a pay out. A 2-3% cut to their primary vote in a state like Victoria is a quarter of a million dollars lost to the Greens and serious money.

From that article I linked to above there is some confused stuff about being convicted and being disqualified from being a candidate. The newspaper staff really should have read the constitution rather than Wikipedia. One is disqualified for running for federal parliament if convicted AND under sentence or about to be sentenced for any Commonwealth and state offence with imprisonment of at least one year. So Assange’s criminal history as a convicted hacker and the possibility of conviction for rape in Sweden and espionage in America don’t matter.

He may be disqualified if he was to seek political asslyum in some country and that involved an informal or formal allegiance to that state. Which is also a disqualification from federal parliament.

buglerbilly

19-04-12, 02:14 PM

Julian Assange's lawyer 'prevented from boarding flight at Heathrow'

Jennifer Robinson says she was told she was on a 'watch list' and would need official approval to return to her native Australia

Press Association

guardian.co.uk, Thursday 19 April 2012 13.15 BST

Jennifer Robinson, a lawyer for the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Photograph: Patrick Semansky/AP

A lawyer for the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, has said she was stopped at Heathrow airport and told she was on a watch list requiring official approval before she could return to her native Australia.

Jennifer Robinson said a member of airport security told her she "must have done something controversial" and that they would have to contact the Australian high commission in London before letting her on her flight.

The Australian human rights lawyer was later allowed on to a plane bound for Sydney, where she is due to speak at the Commonwealth Law Conference on Friday.

Australia's department of foreign affairs said it was not aware of any restrictions on Robinson's travel and added that its high commission in London had no record of receiving a call from the British authorities about her movements.

Robinson wrote on Twitter at 9.30pm on Wednesday night: "Just delayed from checking in at LHR [London Heathrow] because I'm apparently 'inhibited' – requiring approval from Australia House @dfat [department of foreign affairs] to travel …

"Security guard: 'you must have done something controversial' because we have to phone the embassy. 'Certain government agencies' list."

She met Assange – who is fighting extradition to Sweden to face sex crime allegations – on Monday, according to a Tweet from the official WikiLeaks account.

The Commonwealth Lawyers Association (CLA), which is organising the conference at which Robinson will appear, voiced concerns about the incident.

It said in a statement: "If these reports are accurate, then the CLA believe they raise profound issues concerning the independence of lawyers and their clients.

"The CLA points out that Article 13 of the UN principles on the role of lawyers sets out clearly that 'lawyers shall not be identified with their clients or their clients' causes as a result of discharging their functions."

An Australian department of foreign affairs spokesman said: "We are aware of claims by Jennifer Robinson, a member of Julian Assange's legal team, that she was prevented by UK border authorities from boarding a flight in London because her travel was in some way 'inhibited', and that she would not be able to travel without prior approval from Australian officials.

"As the department of immigration and citizenship confirmed publicly earlier today, no Australian government agency prevented Ms Robinson from boarding her flight at London's Heathrow airport. We are not aware of any Australian government restrictions applying to Ms Robinson's travel.

"As an Australian with a valid passport, Ms Robinson would be free to return to Australia at any stage.

"The Australian high commission in London has no record of a call being received from UK authorities concerning her travel.

"We understand Ms Robinson has today departed London on a flight to Australia. We are seeking to verify Ms Robinson's claims with relevant UK authorities."

Assange, an Australian former computer hacker, made headlines around the world with revelations from secret US military files and diplomatic cables released by his whistleblowing website WikiLeaks.

He is awaiting the outcome of his appeal to the supreme court, the highest court in the UK, against being extradited to Sweden.

buglerbilly

25-04-12, 02:05 AM

WikiLeaks Suspect Manning Seeks Dismissal of Charges

April 24, 2012

Agence France-Presse

Lawyers for US soldier Bradley Manning, who is accused of leaking secret documents to the WikiLeaks website, will argue for the dismissal of all charges against their client at a pre-trial hearing Tuesday.

Attorneys for the 24 year old US Army private have filed motions asking a military judge to throw out all or some of the 22 counts that allege their client passed along a massive trove of classified documents to the secret-spilling website.

Manning's defense team says that prosecutors have utterly failed to meet their obligations to share relevant information with them and that therefore the whole case must be thrown out.

At this military base northeast of Washington, Manning's lawyers also plan to challenge the most serious charge: that the former intelligence analyst was "aiding the enemy" by allegedly leaking sensitive documents, saying there is no evidence that shows their client had "criminal intent."

"PFC Manning expressly disclaimed any intent to help any enemy of the United States" in his online chat logs, his defense lawyer David Coombs wrote in a defense motion.

The government is not claiming that Manning intended to give intelligence to Al-Qaeda but that he understood that if the information was published, it "might be accessible to the enemy and that such information might help the enemy," Coombs wrote.

The "aiding the enemy" charge, known as Article 104, carries a possible death sentence.

The defense lawyers are also seeking to have other charges dismissed on grounds that single criminal violations are being prosecuted as multiple offenses.

Military prosecutors reject the defense lawyers' arguments, saying they have complied with their discovery obligations to share pertinent documents in the case. And they say that even if they have failed in that task, the judge can remedy any problems without throwing out the whole case.

A court-martial date has yet to be set and Manning so far has declined to enter a plea on the counts he faces in a case that involves one of the most serious intelligence breaches in US history.

Manning is accused of passing hundreds of thousands of military field reports from Iraq and Afghanistan and US diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks between November 2009 and May 2010, when he served as an intelligence analyst in Iraq.

The leak of the military documents shed light on civilian deaths, while the diplomatic cables exposed the private remarks of heads of state and candid observations by senior US officials.

The episode embarrassed the US government, and officials said the document dump threatened national security and the lives of foreigners working with the military and US embassies.

WikiLeaks supporters view the site as a whistleblower that exposed US wrongdoing and see Manning as a political prisoner.

© Copyright 2012 Agence France-Presse. All rights reserved.

buglerbilly

25-04-12, 10:55 PM

Judge Refuses to Dismiss GI's WikiLeaks Case

April 25, 2012

Associated Press|by David Dishneau

FORT MEADE, Md. - A military judge refused on Wednesday to throw out the charges against an Army private accused of providing reams of sensitive documents to Wikileaks in the biggest leak of government secrets in U.S. history.

Army Col. Denise Lind denied the defense motion to dismiss all 22 charges during a pretrial hearing in the court-martial of Pfc. Bradley Manning. The ruling means the hearing that's mainly concerned with the exchange of evidence will continue. It's scheduled to run through Thursday.

The defense has filed a separate motion seeking dismissal of the most serious charge, aiding the enemy. That offense carries a maximum penalty of life imprisonment. Lind tentatively scheduled the trial to run from Sept. 21 through Oct. 12. Manning hasn't entered a plea to the charges.

Manning is accused of sending hundreds of thousands of sensitive documents to Wikileaks, the anti-secrecy website run by Julian Assange.

On Tuesday, the two sides engaged in a sometimes heated courtroom debate over defense claims that prosecutors haven't met their obligation to provide Manning's lawyers with evidence they uncover that could aid the defense, a process called discovery.

In seeking the dismissal, Manning's lawyers had argued that prosecutors were so slow in sharing required information with the defense that the only remedy was to throw out the charges.

Prosecutors said they worked diligently to meet their obligations. They maintained that they needed time to obtain documents from civilian agencies and search the records for relevant material. They also accused the defense of making an overly broad, vague request for information.

Lind asked the prosecutors on Tuesday for several government assessments of potential damage caused by Wikileaks' publication of the documents. She said she would review the assessments and determine whether they must be given to the defense team.

The 24-year-old Oklahoma native was ordered court-martialed after he was accused of downloading the documents, diplomatic cables and video clips, then sending them to WikiLeaks. He was working as an intelligence analyst in Baghdad when authorities say he copied classified material from government computers in late 2009 and early 2010.

The material WikiLeaks published included cockpit video of a 2007 U.S. Apache helicopter attack that killed a number of civilians, including a Reuters news photographer and his driver. The U.S. government says the civilian deaths were accidental.

Manning has been in pretrial confinement since he was charged in May 2010. His treatment at a Marine Corps base caused support for him to swell. The Quantico, Va., brig commander kept Manning confined 23 hours a day in a single-bed cell, citing safety and security concerns. For several days in March 2011, he was forced to sleep naked, purportedly for injury prevention, before he was issued a suicide-prevention smock.

Manning's supporters have raised funds to place posters in the Washington Metro subway system this week portraying him as a whistleblower, patriot and hero.

© Copyright 2012 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

buglerbilly

27-04-12, 02:37 PM

Alleged Document Leaker’s Trial Set for September

(Source: U.S Department of Defense; issued April 26, 2012)

FORT MEADE, Md. --- Army Pfc. Bradley Manning will go to trial this fall to face charges that he leaked hundreds of thousands of classified documents in what’s believed to be the largest intelligence leak in U.S. history.

Army Col. Denise Lind, the judge presiding over three days of motion hearings here, scheduled the trial to begin Sept. 21 and continue through Oct. 12.

The defense will get to decide if the case will be heard by a judge alone, by a jury to consist of all officers, or by a mixed panel that includes one third enlisted members from within Manning’s current command, the Army’s Military District of Washington.

During the hearings, Lind rejected the defense’s argument yesterday that all 22 charges against him Manning should be dismissed.

Today, she also upheld the most serious charge against him, that he aided the enemy by disclosing classified military and diplomatic documents material to the whistle-blowing website WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks, in turn, released thousands of these documents, including classified records about military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, on its website.

Lind specified today that the prosecution must prove that Manning disclosed the data with a clear understanding that the enemy would have access to it.

The decision followed three days of oral arguments, with the discussion centered largely on Manning’s intent in disclosing the classified documents and what damage resulted.

The defense, led by civilian counsel David Coombs, argued that Manning never intended to aid the enemy when he provided the information to WikiLeaks.

The government called Manning’s intent immaterial and said he should be tried based solely on his actions. “Why he did something isn’t relevant,” Army Maj. Ashden Fein, the lead prosecutor, told the judge. What is relevant at this point, he said, is what Manning actually did and how he did it.

Aiding the enemy under Article 104 of the Uniformed Code of Military Justice is a capital offense; however, the prosecution team has said it won’t recommend the death penalty, a legal official said.

The maximum sentence Manning could receive, if found guilty of the charge, is life in prison.

He also could be reduced to E-1, the lowest enlisted grade, face a total forfeiture of all pay and allowances and dishonorable discharge, officials said.

Lind upheld other lesser charges against Manning, rejecting the defense’s claim the government imposed “unreasonable multiplication of charges,” essentially piling on duplicate charges for the same acts. She said she found no evidence that the prosecution exaggerated Manning’s criminality or otherwise “overreached” in compiling charges against him.

The judge did, however, leave the door open for combining charges in the event that Manning is found guilty and the case moves into the sentencing phase. This could reduce the length of any sentence imposed, a military legal official explained.

The defense team reiterated its call for the government to provide assessments of damages actually caused by the disclosures, calling this information critical to its case. Coombs argued today that the government’s failure to provide a full accounting of harm done demonstrates that the disclosures actually had minimal impact.

Fein said the burden of proving actual damages isn’t the government’s responsibility, and that that information, should it be considered at all, should be reserved until sentencing.

Lind did not say when she will rule on the defense’s request for damage assessments. She said she will review these documents personally to determine if the defense team should have access to them.

The judge also has yet to consider a new prosecution request to reconsider her directive that the State Department share its interim damage assessment report findings.

Lind ruled yesterday that the prosecution does not have to provide the defense team transcripts of federal grand jury testimony regarding the WikiLeaks case. Although the FBI has been involved in the WikiLeaks investigation, the judge said the military has no authority to release the FBI information.

Manning sat emotionless in the courtroom wearing his Army service uniform during the three days of oral arguments. He followed the proceedings closely, periodically jotting notes on a yellow pad or leaning toward Coombs or his new military defense attorney, Army Capt. Joshua Tooman, to whisper a comment or peek at a document.

The 24-year-old military intelligence analyst was arrested at Contingency Operating Base Hammer near Baghdad, Iraq, May 25, 2010. A former 10th Mountain Division soldier, he is accused of installing unauthorized software onto government computers to extract classified information, unlawfully downloading it, improperly storing it, and transmitting the data for public release and use by the enemy.

The specific charges, as outlined on his charge sheet, include aiding the enemy; wrongfully causing intelligence to be published on the Internet knowing that it is accessible to the enemy; theft of public property or records; transmitting defense information; and fraud and related activity in connection with computers. The charges include violation of Army Regulations 25-2 “Information Assurance” and 380-5 “Department of the Army Information Security Program.”

Manning has not issued a plea on these charges.

Along with the trial dates, Lind scheduled additional hearings related to the case: June 6 to 8; July 16 to 20; Aug. 27 to 31; and Sept. 19 to 20. The hearings will focus on specific elements related to each charge to ensure a common understanding as both sides prepare their cases, as well as other procedural items.

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