The Intercept Profits and Burns its Own Whistleblower

 I was one of those that perhaps looked to the Intercept as possibly one of the beacons of truth in the new media, than this comes out. Human behavior is human behavior. We should never ever trust anyone when it comes down to the truth. We have to figure it out ourselves. I wonder what Snowden thinks about these people. Mind you, this has nothing to do with him. But these fools are hurting the whatever passes for the left media these days.

Source: The Intercept Profits and Burns its Own Whistleblower | Covert Geopolitics

Covert Geopolitics

June 9, 2017

There’s a twin problem with the pseudo-patriots in America today, i.e. pseudo-alternative media. Tracing its roots from The Guardian, Gleen Glenwald gained popularity when the NSA whistleblower Ed Snowden gave him and other mainstream journalists the Scoop of the Century, i.e. NSA massive surveillance.

Profiting heavily from the Edward Snowden NSA leak, the overlords at the pseudo alternative media The Intercept, which have made it a big business luring would be whistleblowers to leak everything they know through its own platform and enjoy subsequent stardom, has done it again. It burns its own leaker just so it could prove Russia is really hacking the US agencies with another worldwide exclusive release.

Russian military intelligence executed a cyberattack on at least one U.S. voting software supplier and sent spear-phishing emails to more than 100 local election officials just days before last November’s presidential election, according to a highly classified intelligence report obtained by The Intercept.

The top-secret National Security Agency document, which was provided anonymously to The Intercept and independently authenticated, analyzes intelligence very recently acquired by the agency about a months-long Russian intelligence cyber effort against elements of the U.S. election and voting infrastructure. The report, dated May 5, 2017, is the most detailed U.S. government account of Russian interference in the election that has yet come to light.

While the document provides a rare window into the NSA’s understanding of the mechanics of Russian hacking, it does not show the underlying “raw” intelligence on which the analysis is based. A U.S. intelligence officer who declined to be identified cautioned against drawing too big a conclusion from the document because a single analysis is not necessarily definitive.

• https://theintercept.com/2017/06/05/top-secret-nsa-report-details-russian-hacking-effort-days-before-2016-election/

There are only two key phrases which any investigator would like to focus on from the above Intercept article:

• “A U.S. intelligence officer…”, and;
• “… a single analysis is not necessarily definitive.”

.. and the specific intelligence officer, which is sometimes called an intelligence analyst, is identified because there is only one specific person assigned to a specific task, which in turn is a security measure by itself.

But despite the “not necessarily definitive” clause which the NSA intelligence analyst has arrived at, the Intercept went on and published the leaked NSA document because it mentioned about Russian hacking, to the detriment of its source.

The Intercept article continues:

The report indicates that Russian hacking may have penetrated further into U.S. voting systems than was previously understood. It states unequivocally in its summary statement that it was Russian military intelligence, specifically the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU, that conducted the cyber attacks described in the document:

Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate actors … executed cyber espionage operations against a named U.S. company in August 2016, evidently to obtain information on elections-related software and hardware solutions. … The actors likely used data obtained from that operation to … launch a voter registration-themed spear-phishing campaign targeting U.S. local government organizations.

This NSA summary judgment is sharply at odds with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s denial last week that Russia had interfered in foreign elections: “We never engaged in that on a state level, and have no intention of doing so.” Putin, who had previously issued blanket denials that any such Russian meddling occurred, for the first time floated the possibility that freelance Russian hackers with “patriotic leanings” may have been responsible. The NSA report, on the contrary, displays no doubt that the cyber assault was carried out by the GRU.

We are not saying here that there are no Russian hackers, government employed or civilians, who are doing these activities because all governments that are currently engaged in a hybrid war against each other actually do. But it is only the NATO member states, and other Khazarian alliances, which are proven to be spying on each other.

There is also a big difference between snooping and hacking. Monitoring and tampering of data like what the Deep State operatives did to a Qatari website is more aggressive. The Russians did not manipulate the results of last year’s presidential election, like Google did with its Clinton-biased search results.

In fact, some of these “patriot” hackers have leaked about the preparatory manipulations done by Soros affiliated electoral systems prior to the said election, and it did not take a Russian hacker to inform the world what had actually occurred within the DNC camp to the detriment of the Bernie Sanders’ campaign.

The Intercept is working closely with its twin platform, Democracy Now, and with its sister site Rappler in the Philippines is spreading dangerous leaks,

• Classified Trump-Duterte Call Transcript Leaked by Deep State Stooges in the Philippines

… just so it could live up to its name, The Intercept.

But not for long…

Do Not Trust The Intercept or How To Burn A Source

Moon of Alabama | June 06, 2017

Yesterday The Intercept published a leaked five page NSA analysis about alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. elections. Its reporting outed the leaker of the NSA documents. That person, R.L. Winner, has now been arrested and is likely to be jailed for years if not for the rest of her life.

Intercepted source – R.L. Winner

FBI search (pdf) and arrest warrant (pdf) applications unveil irresponsible behavior by the Intercept‘s reporters and editors which neglected all operational security trade-craft that might have prevented the revealing of the source. It leaves one scratching one’s head if this was intentional or just sheer incompetence. Either way – the incident confirms what skeptics had long determined: The Intercept is not a trustworthy outlet for leaking state secrets of public interests.

The Intercept was created to privatize the National Security Agency documents leaked by NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The documents proved that the NSA is hacking and copying nearly all electronic communication on this planet, that it was breaking laws that prohibited spying on U.S. citizen and that it sabotages on a large scale various kinds of commercial electronic equipment. Snowden gave copies of the NSA documents to a small number of journalists. One of them was Glenn Greenwald who now works at The Intercept. Only some 5% of the pages Snowden allegedly acquired and gave to reporters have been published. We have no idea what the unpublished pages would provide.

The Intercept, a subdivision of First Look Media, was founded by Pierre Omidyar, a major owner of the auctioning site eBay and its PayPal banking division. Omidyar is a billionaire and “philanthropist” who’s (tax avoiding) Omidyar Network foundation is “investing” for “returns”. Its microcredit project for farmers in India, in cooperation with people from the fascists RSS party, ended in an epidemic of suicides when the farmers were unable to pay back. The Omidyar Network also funded (fascist) regime change groups in Ukraine in cooperation with USAID. Omidyar had cozy relations with the Obama White House. Some of the held back NSA documents likely implicate Omidyar’s PayPal.

The Intercept was funded with some $50 million from Omidyar. Its first hires were Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras – all involved in publishing the Snowden papers and other leaks. Its first piece was based on documents from the leaked NSA stack. It has since published on this or that but not in a regular media way.  The Intercept pieces are usually heavily editorialized and tend to have a mainstream “liberal” to libertarian slant. Some were highly partisan anti-Syrian/pro-regime change propaganda. The website seems to have no regular publishing schedule at all. Between one and five piece per day get pushed out, only a few of them make public waves. Some of its later prominent hires (Ken Silverstein, Matt Taibbi) soon left and alleged that the place was run in a chaotic atmosphere and with improper and highly politicized editing. Despite its rich backing and allegedly high pay for its main journalists (Greenwald is said to receive between 250k and 1 million per year) the Intercept is begging for reader donations.

Yesterday’s published story (with bylines of four(!) reporters) begins:

Russian military intelligence executed a cyberattack on at least one U.S. voting software supplier and sent spear-phishing emails to more than 100 local election officials just days before last November’s presidential election, according to a highly classified intelligence report obtained by The Intercept.

The NSA “intelligence report” the Intercept publishes alongside the piece does NOT show that “Russian military intelligence executed a cyberattack“. The document speaks of “cyber espionage operations” – i.e someone looked and maybe copied data but did not manipulate anything. Espionage via computer networks is something every nation in this world (and various private entities) do all the time. It is simply the collection of information. It is different from a “cyberattack” like Stuxnet which are intended to create large damage,

The “attack” by someone was standard spearfishing and some visual basic scripts to gain access to accounts of local election officials. Thee is no proof that any account was compromised. Any minor criminal hacker uses similar means. No damage is mentioned in the NSA analysis. The elections were not compromised by this operation. The document notes explicitly (p.5) that the operation used some techniques that distinguish it from other known Russian military intelligence operations. It was probably -if at all- done by someone else.

The reporters note that the document does not provide any raw intelligence. It is an analysis based on totally unknown material. It does not include any evidence for the claims it makes. The Intercept piece describes how the document was received and “verified”:

The top-secret National Security Agency document, which was provided anonymously to The Intercept and independently authenticated, …
…
The NSA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence were both contacted for this article. Officials requested that we not publish or report on the top secret document and declined to comment on it. When informed that we intended to go ahead with this story, the NSA requested a number of redactions. The Intercept agreed to some of the redaction requests.

The piece quotes at length the well known cyber security expert Bruce Schneier. It neglects to reveal that Schneier is a major partisan for Clinton who very early on, in July 2016, jumped on her “Russia hacked the Democratic National Council” claim for which there is still no evidence whatsoever.

The Intercept story was published on June 5. On June 3 the FBI already received a search warrant (pdf) by the U.S. District court of southern Georgia for the home, car and computers of one Reality Leigh Winner, a 25 year old former military language specialist (Pashto, Dari, Farsi) who worked for a government contractor. In its application for the warrant the FBI asserted:

19. On or about May 24, 2017, a reporter for the News Outlet (the “Reporter”) contacted another U.S. Government Agency affiliate with whom he has a prior relationship. This individual works for a contractor for the U.S. Government (the “Contractor”). The Reporter contacted the Contractor via text message and asked him to review certain documents. The Reporter told the Contractor that the Reporter had received the documents through the mail, and they were postmarked “Augusta. Georgia.” WINNER resides in Augusta, Georgia. The Reporter believed that the documents were sent to him from someone working at the location where WINNER works. The Reporter took pictures of the documents and sent them to the Contractor. The Reporter asked the Contractor to determine the veracity of the documents. The Contractor informed the Reporter that he thought that the documents were fake. Nonetheless, the Contractor contacted the U.S. Government Agency on or about June 1, 2017, to inform the U.S. Government Agency of his interaction with the Reporter. Also on June I. 2017, the Reporter texted the Contractor and said that a U.S Government Agency official had verified that the document was real. …

To verify the leaked document the reporter contacted a person working for the government. He used insecure communication channels (SMS) that are known to be tapped. He provided additional meta-information about the leaker that was not necessary at all for the person asked to verify the documents.

It got worse:

13. On June I, 2017, the FBI was notified by the U.S. Government Agency that the U.S. Government Agency had been contacted by the News Outlet on May 30, 2017, regarding an upcoming story. The News Outlet informed the U.S Government Agency that it was in possession of what it believed to be a classified document authored by the U.S Government Agency. The News Outlet provided the U.S. Government Agency with a copy of this document. Subsequent analysis by the U.S. Government Agency confirmed that the document in the News Outlet’s possession is intelligence reporting dated on or about May 5. 2017 (the “intelligence reporting”). This intelligence reporting is classified at the Top Secret level, … … 14. The U.S. Government Agency examined the document shared by the News Outlet and determined the pages of the intelligence reporting appeared to be folded and/or creased,suggesting they had been printed and hand-carried out of a secured space.
14. The U.S. Government Agency conducted an internal audit to determine who accessed the intelligence reporting since its publication. The U.S. Government Agency determined that six individuals printed this reporting. These six individuals included WINNER. A further audit of the six individuals’ desk computers revealed that WINNER had e-mail contact with the News Outlet. The audit did not reveal that any of the other individuals had e-mail contact with the News Outlet.

The source that provided the document had no operational security at all. She printed the document on a government printer. All (color) printers and photo copiers print nearly invisible (yellow) patters on each page that allow to identify the printer used by its serial number. The source used email from her workplace to communicate. Ms. Winner is young, inexperienced and probably not very bright. (She is also said to be Clinton partisan.) She may not have known better.

But a reporter at The Intercept should know a bit or two about operational security. Sending (and publishing) the leaked documents as finely scanned PDF’s (which include (de) the printer code) to the NSA to let the NSA verify them was incredibly stupid. Typically one only summarize these or at least converts them into a neutral, none traceable form. Instead the reporters provided at several points and without any need the evidence that led to the unmasking of their source. Wikileaks is offering $10,000 for the exposure and firing of the person responsible for this.

It is also highly questionable why the Intercept contacted the NSA seven days(!) before publishing its piece. Giving the government such a long reaction time may lead to preemptive selective leaks by the government to other news outlets to defuse the not yet published damaging one. It may give the government time to delete evidence or to unveil leakers. The Intercept certainly knows this. It had been burned by such behavior when the National Counterterrorism Center spoiled an Intercept scoop by giving a polished version to the Associate Press. Back then the Intercept editor John Cook promised to give government agencies no longer than 30 minutes for future replies. In this case it gave the NSA seven days!

Besides the failure(?) of The Intercept there are other concerns to note.

• Why has a 25 year old language specialist for Afghanistan access to Top Secret NSA analysis of espionage in the U.S. election? Where was the “need to know”?
• Could this espionage -if it happened- have been part of a different plan by whomever? Consider:

@mattblaze
Simple way to hack elections: Compromise some county offices & systems. Do nothing. If election doesn’t go your way, reveal that you hacked.
10:52 PM – 5 Jun 2017

More additional question are asked in this thread.

The lessons learned from this catastrophic -for the source- leak:

• Start thinking of good op-sec before you think of leaking.
• Computer access gets logged. Do not leave any suspicious (log) trace at your workplace (or anywhere else).
• Do not provide any trace from your immediate workplace or any personal metadata with the leaked material.

And last but certainly not least:

• Do not trust The Intercept.

Posted by b on June 6, 2017 at 06:09 AM | Permalink

• http://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/06/do-not-trust-the-intercept-or-how-to-burn-a-source.html

Putin: JFK Was Murdered by the Deep State

• 

Source: Putin: JFK Was Murdered by the Deep State – LewRockwell

http://www.lewrockwell.com

In Megyn Kelly’s much anticipated interview with Vladimir Putin for her debut episode of NBC’s “Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly”, the Russian President said he never met Donald Trump during his business trips to Russia (including Trump’s 2013 visit to Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant), stated that he was unaware of any proposal from Jared Kushner to set up an alleged “secret line” of communications between the Trump administration and the Russian government, and that it’s “nonsense” to say Russia has collected compromising material about Trump among many other topics covered in the 7 minute interview (see below).

“I am not aware of such a proposal,” Putin said referring to Kushner’s alleged proposal. “No such proposal ever reached me.” Putin said many CEOs of major U.S. companies visit Russia and then asked rhetorically, “do you think we’re gathering dirt on all of them right now or something?” Putin asked, before saying: “Have you all lost your mind?”

While previously the NYT and WaPo reported that Kushner discussed the idea of creating a secret channel to discuss the crisis in Syria, with Russian ambassador to the U.S. Sergey Kislyak in December, the line was never established, according to a source cited by Bloomberg. A secret line with Russia – which H.R. McMaster said is a normal thing in diplomatic relations with international counterparties – could have allowed the Trump transition team and Russian officials to communicate outside of the scrutiny of the departing Obama administration. It’s become a centerpiece of the questions swirling around Trump and his campaign and possible ties to Russia.

Putin also said that his nation had no channels of communication with the campaigns of either Trump or Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, but that there may have been official contacts, which he called a “standard diplomatic practice.”

* * *

Putin also said he’d never met Trump, including during a visit by Trump to Moscow for the 2013 Miss Universe pageant, and called the existence of a secret Russian dossier on Trump “just another piece of nonsense.”

“There was no relationship whatsoever. Yes, he visited Moscow in his day. But, you know, I never met him,” Putin says, according to transcript.

Putin also said that he’s not aware of any meetings between Kislyak and officials from the Trump campaign, and that he doesn’t talk to Russian ambassadors every day. He called the allegations “domestic political squabbles” and a line of attack against Trump.

“Well, this is just another load of nonsense,” Putin said in response to a question about Kislyak meeting Trump campaign officials. “Because if there had been something meaningful, he would have made a report to the minister, and the minister would have made a report to me. There weren’t even any reports” the Russian president said cited by Bloomberg. And despite saying there had been no reports, Putin volunteered that “there was not even a specific discussion of sanctions or something else.” In a discussion moderated by Kelly on Friday, Putin said it was “nuts” to suggest the Trump administration had moved to ease economic sanctions on Russia.

* * *

Additionally, as previewed earlier in the day by Reuters, Putin also said that he barely interacted with Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, during a dinner in Moscow in 2015 when the pair were seated together. Flynn, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant general and former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, was paid $45,000 to speak at the anniversary gala for the Russia Today television network.

“You and I personally have a much closer relationship than I had with Mr Flynn…. When I came to the event for our for our company, Russia Today, and sat down at the table, next to me there was a gentleman sitting on one side. I made my speech. Then we talked about some other stuff. And I got up and left… afterwards I was told, ‘You know there was an American gentleman, he was involved in some things. He used to be in the security services.’ ….That’s the extent of my acquaintance with Mr Flynn.” As a reminder, the payments Flynn received from RT, and his appearance next to Putin at the dinner, have been raised frequently amid speculation about his relationship with the Kremlin.

Asked whether all 17 U.S. intelligence agencies that concluded Russia interfered with the election are lying, Putin said “they have been misled” and said he has not seen “any direct proof of Russia’s interference.”

“What fingerprints or hoot-prints or horn-prints, what are you talking about,” he said. Putin even suggested that former President Barack Obama “started having doubts” when they spoke about it. The pair met on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Peru in November, weeks after Trump’s upset election win.

The Russian president accused the U.S. of “actively interfering in electoral campaigns of other countries” while denying that Russia has any motive to do so. “Even if we wanted to, it wouldn’t make any sense for us to interfere,” Putin said.

Meanwhile, Putin accused the US of doing precisely what Russia has been charged with doing in the US: “Put your finger anywhere on a map of the world, and everywhere you will hear complaints that American officials are interfering in internal electoral processes,” he said, adding that “every action has an equal and opposite reaction. But, I repeat, we don’t even have to do that. Presidents come and go, and even the parties in power change, but the main political direction does not change.”

Putin claimed that Russia has a preference in an election but only reacts to the “political direction” that the United States seems to be heading in. “It wouldn’t make sense for us to interfere,” he said.

* * *

But the most notable highlight of the interview was Putin’s tongue in cheek hint that the Deep State – the same entity that may have been behind the Kennedy assassination according to the Russian president – is now behind the attempt to topple Trump and the ongoing push to sour ties with Russia:

“There is a theory that Kennedy’s assassination was arranged by the United States intelligence services. So if this theory is correct, and that can’t be ruled out, then what could be easier in this day and age than using all the technical means at the disposal of the intelligence services and using those means to organize some attacks, and then pointing the finger at Russia.”

The original video that was in this post has been taken out, so here’s an overview of it from Dahboo777, a critical Christian thinker:

 

Reprinted with permission from Zero Hedge.

John Pilger: Getting Assange: the Untold Story

So much for the rule of law, hey Britain? Pathetic minion is what you are.

Can someone take the USA to the International Court of Justice?

US War Crimes: (Just a few) Rendition program, torture, illegal overthrows of governments, constant warfare, inability to deal with its own infrastructure problems, inability to deal with the rampant poverty that is destabilizing the whole country at the expense of the few, etc.

Source: Getting Assange: the Untold Story

With permission from

http://www.counterpunch.org

May 19, 2017

by John Pilger

Photo by Lord Jim | CC BY 2.0

Julian Assange has been vindicated because the Swedish case against him was corrupt. The prosecutor, Marianne Ny, obstructed justice and should be prosecuted. Her obsession with Assange not only embarrassed her colleagues and the judiciary but exposed the Swedish state’s collusion with the United States in its crimes of war and “rendition”.

Had Assange not sought refuge in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, he would have been on his way to the kind of American torture pit Chelsea Manning had to endure.

This prospect was obscured by the grim farce played out in Sweden.  “It’s a laughing stock,” said James Catlin, one of Assange’s Australian lawyers. “It is as if they make it up as they go along”.

It may have seemed that way, but there was always serious purpose. In 2008, a secret Pentagon document prepared by the “Cyber Counterintelligence Assessments Branch” foretold a detailed plan to discredit WikiLeaks and smear Assange personally.

The “mission” was to destroy the “trust” that was WikiLeaks’ “centre of gravity”. This would be achieved with threats of “exposure [and] criminal prosecution”. Silencing and criminalising such an unpredictable source of truth-telling was the aim.

Perhaps this was understandable. WikiLeaks has exposed the way America dominates much of human affairs, including its epic crimes, especially in Afghanistan and Iraq: the wholesale, often homicidal killing of civilians and the contempt for sovereignty and international law.

These disclosures are protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution.  As a presidential candidate in 2008, Barack Obama, a professor of constitutional law, lauded whistle blowers as “part of a healthy democracy [and they] must be protected from reprisal”.

In 2012, the Obama campaign boasted on its website that Obama had prosecuted more whistle blowers in his first term than all other US presidents combined. Before Chelsea Manning had even received a trial, Obama had publicly pronounced her guilty.

Few serious observers doubt that should the US get their hands on Assange, a similar fate awaits him. According to documents released by Edward Snowden, he is on a “Manhunt target list”. Threats of his kidnapping and assassination became almost political and media currency in the US following then Vice-President Joe Biden’s preposterous slur that the WikiLeaks founder was a “cyber-terrorist”.

Hillary Clinton, the destroyer of Libya and, as WikiLeaks revealed last year, the secret supporter and personal beneficiary of forces underwriting ISIS, proposed her own expedient solution: “Can’t we just drone this guy.”

According to Australian diplomatic cables, Washington’s bid to get Assange is “unprecedented in scale and nature”. In Alexandria, Virginia, a secret grand jury has sought for almost seven years to contrive a crime for which Assange can be prosecuted. This is not easy.

The First Amendment protects publishers, journalists and whistle blowers, whether it is the editor of the New York Times or the editor of WikiLeaks. The very notion of free speech is described as America’s “ founding virtue” or, as Thomas Jefferson called it, “our currency”.

Faced with this hurdle, the US Justice Department has contrived charges of “espionage”, “conspiracy to commit espionage”, “conversion” (theft of government property), “computer fraud and abuse” (computer hacking) and general “conspiracy”. The favoured Espionage Act, which was meant to deter pacifists and conscientious objectors during World War One, has provisions for life imprisonment and the death penalty.

Assange’s ability to defend himself in such a Kafkaesque world has been severely limited by the US declaring his case a state secret. In 2015, a federal court in Washington blocked the release of all information about the “national security” investigation against WikiLeaks, because it was “active and ongoing” and would harm the “pending prosecution” of Assange. The judge, Barbara J. Rothstein, said it was necessary to show “appropriate deference to the executive in matters of national security”. This is a kangaroo court.

For Assange, his trial has been trial by media. On August 20, 2010, when the Swedish police opened a “rape investigation”, they coordinated it, unlawfully, with the Stockholm tabloids. The front pages said Assange had been accused of the “rape of two women”. The word “rape” can have a very different legal meaning in Sweden than in Britain; a pernicious false reality became the news that went round the world.

Less than 24 hours later, the Stockholm Chief Prosecutor, Eva Finne, took over the investigation. She wasted no time in cancelling the arrest warrant, saying, “I don’t believe there is any reason to suspect that he has committed rape.” Four days later, she dismissed the rape investigation altogether, saying, “There is no suspicion of any crime whatsoever.”

Enter Claes Borgstrom, a highly contentious figure in the Social Democratic Party then standing as a candidate in Sweden’s imminent general election. Within days of the chief prosecutor’s dismissal of the case, Borgstrom, a lawyer, announced to the media that he was representing the two women and had sought a different prosecutor in Gothenberg. This was Marianne Ny, whom Borgstrom knew well, personally and politically.

On 30 August, Assange attended a police station in Stockholm voluntarily and answered the questions put to him. He understood that was the end of the matter. Two days later, Ny announced she was re-opening the case.

At a press conference, Borgstrom was asked by a Swedish reporter why the case was proceeding when it had already been dismissed. The reporter cited one of the women as saying she had not been raped. He replied, “Ah, but she is not a lawyer.”

On the day that Marianne Ny reactivated the case, the head of Sweden’s military intelligence service – which has the acronym MUST — publicly denounced WikiLeaks in an article entitled “WikiLeaks [is] a threat to our soldiers [under US command in Afghanistan]”.

Both the Swedish prime minister and foreign minister attacked Assange, who had been charged with no crime. Assange was warned that the Swedish intelligence service, SAPO, had been told by its US counterparts that US-Sweden intelligence-sharing arrangements would be “cut off” if Sweden sheltered him.

For five weeks, Assange waited in Sweden for the renewed “rape investigation” to take its course. The Guardian was then on the brink of publishing the Iraq “War Logs”, based on WikiLeaks’ disclosures, which Assange was to oversee in London.

Finally, he was allowed him to leave. As soon as he had left, Marianne Ny issued a European Arrest Warrant and an Interpol “red alert” normally used for terrorists and dangerous criminals.

Assange attended a police station in London, was duly arrested and spent ten days in Wandsworth Prison, in solitary confinement. Released on £340,000 bail, he was electronically tagged, required to report to police daily and placed under virtual house arrest while his case began its long journey to the Supreme Court.

He still had not been charged with any offence. His lawyers repeated his offer to be questioned in London, by video or personally, pointing out that Marianne Ny had given him permission to leave Sweden. They suggested a special facility at Scotland Yard commonly used by the Swedish and other European authorities for that purpose. She refused.

For almost seven years, while Sweden has questioned forty-four people in the UK in connection with police investigations, Ny refused to question Assange and so advance her case.

Writing in the Swedish press, a former Swedish prosecutor, Rolf Hillegren, accused Ny of losing all impartiality. He described her personal investment in the case as “abnormal” and demanded she be replaced.

Assange asked the Swedish authorities for a guarantee that he would not be  “rendered” to the US if he was extradited to Sweden. This was refused. In December 2010, The Independent  revealed that the two governments had discussed his onward extradition to the US.

Contrary to its reputation as a bastion of liberal enlightenment, Sweden has drawn so close to Washington that it has allowed secret CIA “renditions” – including the illegal deportation of refugees. The rendition and subsequent torture of two Egyptian political refugees in 2001 was condemned by the UN Committee against Torture, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch; the complicity and duplicity of the Swedish state are documented in successful civil litigation and in WikiLeaks cables.

“Documents released by WikiLeaks since Assange moved to England,” wrote Al Burke, editor of the online Nordic News Network, an authority on the multiple twists and dangers that faced Assange, “clearly indicate that Sweden has consistently submitted to pressure from the United States in matters relating to civil rights. There is every reason for concern that if Assange were to be taken into custody by Swedish authorities, he could be turned over to the United States without due consideration of his legal rights.”

The war on Assange now intensified. Marianne Ny refused to allow his Swedish lawyers, and the Swedish courts, access to hundreds of SMS messages that the police had extracted from the phone of one of the two women involved in the “rape” allegations.

Ny said she was not legally required to reveal this critical evidence until a formal charge was laid and she had questioned him. Then, why wouldn’t she question him? Catch-22.

When she announced last week that she was dropping the Assange case, she made no mention of the evidence that would  destroy it. One of the SMS messages makes clear that one of the women did not want any charges brought against Assange, “but the police were keen on getting a hold on him”. She was “shocked” when they arrested him because she only “wanted him to take [an HIV] test”. She “did not want to accuse JA of anything” and “it was the police who made up the charges”. In a witness statement, she is quoted as saying that she had been “railroaded by police and others around her”.

Neither woman claimed she had been raped. Indeed, both denied they were raped and one of them has since tweeted, “I have not been raped.”  The women were manipulated by police – whatever their lawyers might say now. Certainly, they, too, are the victims of this sinister saga.

Katrin Axelsson and Lisa Longstaff of Women Against Rape wrote: “The allegations against [Assange] are a smokescreen behind which a number of governments are trying to clamp down on WikiLeaks for having audaciously revealed to the public their secret planning of wars and occupations with their attendant rape, murder and destruction… The authorities care so little about violence against women that they manipulate rape allegations at will. [Assange] has made it clear he is available for questioning by the Swedish authorities, in Britain or via Skype. Why are they refusing this essential step in their investigation? What are they afraid of?”

Assange’s choice was stark: extradition to a country that had refused to say whether or not it would send him on to the US, or to seek what seemed his last opportunity for refuge and safety.

Supported by most of Latin America, the government of tiny Ecuador granted him refugee status on the basis of documented evidence that he faced the prospect of cruel and unusual punishment in the US; that this threat violated his basic human rights; and that his own government in Australia had abandoned him and colluded with Washington.

The Labor government of the then prime minister, Julia Gillard, had even threatened to take away his Australian passport – until it was pointed out to her that this would be unlawful.

The renowned human rights lawyer, Gareth Peirce, who represents Assange in London, wrote to the then Australian foreign minister, Kevin Rudd: “Given the extent of the public discussion, frequently on the basis of entirely false assumptions… it is very hard to attempt to preserve for him any presumption of innocence. Mr. Assange has now hanging over him not one but two Damocles swords, of potential extradition to two different jurisdictions in turn for two different alleged crimes, neither of which are crimes in his own country, and that his personal safety has become at risk in circumstances that are highly politically charged.”

It was not until she contacted the Australian High Commission in London that Peirce received a response, which answered none of the pressing points she raised. In a meeting I attended with her, the Australian Consul-General, Ken Pascoe, made the astonishing claim that he knew “only what I read in the newspapers” about the details of the case.

In 2011, in Sydney, I spent several hours with a conservative Member of Australia’s Federal Parliament, Malcolm Turnbull.  We discussed the threats to Assange and their wider implications for freedom of speech and justice, and why Australia was obliged to stand by him. Turnbull then had a reputation as a free speech advocate. He is now the Prime Minister of Australia.

I gave him Gareth Peirce’s letter about the threat to Assange’s rights and life. He said the situation was clearly appalling and promised to take it up with the Gillard government. Only his silence followed.

For almost seven years, this epic miscarriage of justice has been drowned in a vituperative campaign against the WikiLeaks founder. There are few precedents. Deeply personal, petty, vicious and inhuman attacks have been aimed at a man not charged with any crime yet subjected to treatment not even meted out to a defendant facing extradition on a charge of murdering his wife. That the US threat to Assange was a threat to all journalists, and to the principle of free speech, was lost in the sordid and the ambitious. I would call it anti-journalism.

Books were published, movie deals struck and media careers launched or kick-started on the back of WikiLeaks and an assumption that attacking Assange was fair game and he was too poor to sue. People have made money, often big money, while WikiLeaks has struggled to survive.

The previous editor of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, called the WikiLeaks disclosures, which his newspaper published, “one of the greatest journalistic scoops of the last 30 years”. Yet no attempt was made to protect the Guardian’s provider and source. Instead, the “scoop” became part of a marketing plan to raise the newspaper’s cover price.

With not a penny going to Assange or to WikiLeaks, a hyped Guardian book led to a lucrative Hollywood movie. The book’s authors, Luke Harding and David Leigh, gratuitously described Assange as a “damaged personality” and “callous”. They also revealed the secret password he had given the paper in confidence, which was designed to protect a digital file containing the US embassy cables. With Assange now trapped in the Ecuadorean embassy, Harding, standing among the police outside, gloated on his blog that “Scotland Yard may get the last laugh”.

Journalism students might well study this period to understand the most ubiquitous source of “fake news” — as from within a media self-ordained with a false respectability and as an extension of the authority and power it courts and protects.

The presumption of innocence was not a consideration in Kirsty Wark’s memorable live-on-air interrogation in 2010. “Why don’t you just apologise to the women?” she demanded of Assange, followed by: “Do we have your word of honour that you won’t abscond?”

On the BBC’s Today programme, John Humphrys bellowed: “Are you a sexual predator?” Assange replied that the suggestion was ridiculous, to which Humphrys demanded to know how many women he had slept with.

“Would even Fox News have descended to that level?” wondered the American historian William Blum. “I wish Assange had been raised in the streets of Brooklyn, as I was. He then would have known precisely how to reply to such a question: ‘You mean including your mother?’”

Last week, on BBC World News, on the day Sweden announced it was dropping the case, I was interviewed by Greta Guru-Murthy, who seemed to have little knowledge of the Assange case. She persisted in referring to the “charges” against him. She accused him of putting Trump in the White House; and she drew my attention to the “fact” that “leaders around the world” had condemned him. Among these “leaders” she included Trump’s CIA director. I asked her, “Are you a journalist?”.

The injustice meted out to Assange is one of the reasons Parliament reformed the Extradition Act in 2014. “His case has been won lock, stock and barrel,” Gareth Peirce told me, “these changes in the law mean that the UK now recognises as correct everything that was argued in his case. Yet he does not benefit.” In other words, he would have won his case in the British courts and would not have been forced to take refuge.

Ecuador’s decision to protect Assange in 2012 was immensely brave.  Even though the granting of asylum is a humanitarian act, and the power to do so is enjoyed by all states under international law, both Sweden and the United Kingdom refused to recognise the legitimacy of Ecuador’s decision.

Ecuador’s embassy in London was placed under police siege and its government abused. When William Hague’s Foreign Office threatened to violate the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, warning that it would remove the diplomatic inviolability of the embassy and send the police in to get Assange, outrage across the world forced the government to back down.

During one night, police appeared at the windows of the embassy in an obvious attempt to intimidate Assange and his protectors.

Since then, Assange has been confined to a small room without sunlight. He has been ill from time to time and refused safe passage to the diagnostic facilities of hospital. Yet, his resilience and dark humour remain quite remarkable in the circumstances. When asked how he put up with the confinement, he replied, “Sure beats a supermax.”

It is not over, but it is unravelling. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention – the tribunal that adjudicates and decides whether governments comply with their human rights obligations – last year ruled that Assange had been detained unlawfully by Britain and Sweden. This is international law at its apex.

Both Britain and Sweden participated in the 16-month long UN investigation and submitted evidence and defended their position before the tribunal. In previous cases ruled upon by the Working Group – Aung Sang Suu Kyi in Burma, imprisoned opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim in Malaysia, detained Washington Post journalist Jason Rezaian in Iran – both Britain and Sweden gave full support to the tribunal. The difference now is that Assange’s persecution endures in the heart of London.

The Metropolitan Police say they still intend to arrest Assange for bail infringement should he leave the embassy. What then? A few months in prison while the US delivers its extradition request to the British courts?

If the British Government allows this to happen it will, in the eyes of the world, be shamed comprehensively and historically as an accessory to the crime of a war waged by rampant power against justice and freedom, and all of us.

John Pilger can be reached through his website: www.johnpilger.com

More articles by:John Pilger

Chelsea Manning posts 1st photo of herself since prison release

A day after her release from a Kansas prison, Chelsea Manning tweeted the first image of herself since saying in 2013 that she identifies as a female, following a conviction of contravening the U.S. Espionage Act, among other charges.

Source: Chelsea Manning posts 1st photo of herself since prison release – World – CBC News

CBC News

May 18, 2017

Photo of the then U.S. military private in a blond wig and makeup dated back at least 7 years

Chelsea Manning, the former military intelligence analyst released from prison on Wednesday, has not revealed specific plans for where she’ll live, but had planned to settle in the Maryland area. (@xychelsea via Twitter)

A day after her release from a Kansas prison, Chelsea Manning tweeted the first image of herself since saying in 2013 that she identifies as a female, following a conviction of contravening the U.S. Espionage Act, among other charges.

Manning was released early Wednesday after serving seven years of a 35-year sentence for the largest breach of classified information in U.S. history. Her sentence was commuted in January by Barack Obama in the final week of his presidency.

The picture she sent out on Twitter on Thursday shows a smiling Manning with short hair. 

Manning was known as Pte. Bradley Manning when arrested for releasing documents, videos, diplomatic cables and battlefield accounts to WikiLeaks in 2010.

Upon a conviction on 20 charges in 2013, Manning declared in a statement: “I am Chelsea Manning. I am a female,”  adding, “given the way that I feel, and have felt since childhood, I want to begin hormone therapy as soon as possible.”

She then became engaged in a legal battle with the U.S. Department of Defence, seeking health-care services to help in transitioning while imprisoned.

A now-famous photo of Manning in a long-haired blond wig and makeup is believed to date from 2009 or 2010, when it was shared in an email with an army superior.

Manning indicated in January she planned to eventually settle in the Maryland area after her release. 

She is considered on excess leave in active-duty status, receiving medical benefits but not pay pending an appeal of her court-martial conviction.

WikiLeaks set up a bitcoin fund to help Manning after her release.

With files from The Associated Press

Canada: Spies’ use of cellphone surveillance technology suspended in January, pending review

CSIS used the devices — which pretend to be cell towers — to collect information about phones, both with and without a warrant.

Source: Spies’ use of cellphone surveillance technology suspended in January, pending review – Technology & Science – CBC News

CBC News

By Matthew Braga, Dave Seglins

May 03, 2017

CSIS used the investigative technique both with and without a warrant to collect information about phones

After a decade of silence, the RCMP revealed last month that it has been using IMSI catcher technology, prompting police forces across the country — and now, CSIS — to make similar disclosures. (Mike Blake/Reuters)

​Canada’s spy agency suspended its use of a controversial cellphone surveillance technology in January and placed the investigative technique under review, CBC News has learned.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) confirmed it has used the cellphone identification and tracking technology in recent years, both with and without a warrant.

The devices are often colloquially referred to as Stingrays after a well-known brand, but are also known as IMSI catchers, mobile device identifiers (MDIs) and cell-site simulators. They collect information about cellphones in a given area by pretending to be legitimate cell towers, and are used by both intelligence agencies and police to investigate crimes or national security threats.

• RCMP reveals use of cellphone surveillance technology
• Someone is spying on cellphones in the nation’s capital

“The policy and procedures for use of MDI devices to support CSIS operations is under internal review,” agency spokesperson Tahera Mufti wrote in an email. “The use of the devices was suspended until the recommendations of the review are completed.”

CSIS declined to comment on what prompted the review, what internal recommendations have been made or why the agency decided to suspend the use of the technology for months.

Depending on the device and surveillance approach used, an IMSI catcher can cast a wide net designed to harvest data transmissions from any cellular device within range, rather than target only the person of interest to law enforcement. It functions by fooling cellphones into believing it is a legitimate cellphone tower. (CBC News)

After a decade of silence, the RCMP revealed last month that it has also been using IMSI catcher technology, prompting other police agencies across the country to make similar disclosures to CBC News.

Unlike the RCMP, CSIS refused to say how frequently it used IMSI catchers, citing “operational security reasons.” However, the agency did state that, like the RCMP, “the equipment currently used by CSIS is not capable of intercepting content.”

With and without warrants

CSIS told CBC News that in some circumstances it would seek a warrant from a judge to use the technology, much like police.

“CSIS will apply for warrants where it is required to do so because of the manner and the degree in which an investigative technique may intrude upon the privacy of a person,” Mufti explained, declining to elaborate on the type of warrant used.

But the CSIS Act also gives Canada’s spy agency the authority to use certain investigative powers — in this case, IMSI catchers — without a warrant. University of Toronto law professor Lisa Austin wants to know more about how warrantless uses of the technology are justified.

“Was this because they did not think that the use of the technology intruded upon a reasonable expectation of privacy? That would be a troubling interpretation,” Austin said. “Or was it because it was used outside of Canada in circumstances where they did not believe they were subject to the same charter standards in relation to privacy?”

She believes “the question of legal authorization is central here and CSIS needs to answer it.”

During a six-month period in 2015, the RCMP also didn’t seek warrants for using IMSI catchers to track suspects under the advice of the Department of Justice and an intergovernmental working group on wiretapping technology. The Mounties have since abandoned that practice and now seek a judge’s warrant when using the devices.

‘We should be very worried’

The review of CSIS’s use of surveillance technology comes in the wake of a scathing legal ruling last fall on another controversial data collection practice, involving a little-known group called the Operational Data Analysis Centre (ODAC). 

In that case, a Federal Court judge rebuked CSIS for breaking the law, after it found that the spy agency’s analysis centre had collected and stored metadata on Canadians unrelated to its investigations for over ten years.

Metadata could mean the collection of phone numbers or e-mail addresses — data that describes other types of data — but not the actual content of messages. 

It’s not clear what sort of metadata the agency retained, and CSIS director Michel Coulombe would only describe the information as “non-threat-related associated data linked with third-party communication.”

The Security Intelligence Review Committee (SIRC) that oversees CSIS also called on the spy agency last year to review its policies on bulk data collection and use of warrants to conduct surveillance. 

Lawyer Micheal Vonn, policy director of the BC Civil Liberties Association, says Canadians should be ‘very worried about what CSIS is doing with IMSI catchers.’ (CBC)

Lawyer Micheal Vonn, policy director of the BC Civil Liberties Association, says if the spy agency’s bulk data collection has taught Canadians anything, it’s that “we should be very worried about what CSIS is doing with IMSI catchers.”

Vonn says CSIS has shown itself to be interested in “not meeting the threshold of their current statutes, which is that they cannot collect [data] unless it is strictly necessary.”

CSIS says the metadata collected by its IMSI catchers was not provided to ODAC.

• Cellphone surveillance tech being used by police across Canada

Part of the problem, according to professor Austin, is Canada’s legal system is ill-suited to deal with the collection and protection of metadata — which is often treated as “less private” than, say, the content of a phone call.

Despite the existence of relatively new warranting powers meant to deal more specifically with the use of new technologies such as IMSI catchers — introduced as part of the government’s 2015 anti-terror legislation, Bill C-51 — Austin calls those powers “flawed.”

“We need to create better models for the legal authorization of these kinds of bulk data techniques,” Austin said. “And I think the way to build these better models is to have people in law and policy fields work closely with people in technology fields.”

The Satanists who destroyed the Middle East are back in Washington

Source: The Satanists who destroyed the Middle East are back in Washington | Veterans Today

With permission from

veteranstoday.com

Jonas E. Alexis

April 26, 2017

Wolfowitz was elated when he heard that Trump attacked Syria, and he has had private email conversation with “Trump Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and national security advisor H.R. McMaster, both longtime contacts since his Bush days.” He hopes that the Trump adiministration “will pursue a U.S. strategy of stepped-up engagement in the Middle East.”

Satanist Paul Wolfowitz

The Satanists who literally created chaos in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya are back in the White House. They are currently chilling with the Trump administration. One of those Satanists is none other than Paul Wolfowitz. A little background of this dude.

When he was told by deputy national security advisor Stephen Hadley that there was no link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, Wolfowitz responded with certainty, “We’ll find it. It’s got to be there,”[1] which is another way of saying that if it does not exist, they would make it up.

Both Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith were under investigation for passing classified documents to Israel.[2] In other words, these people were and obviously still are agents of the Israeli regime. It must be stated in passing that the FBI has numerous documents tracing Israel’s espionage in the U.S.,[3] but no one has come forward and declared it explicitly in the media because most value their careers and lives.

For example, when two top AIPAC officials—Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman—were caught passing classified documents from the Pentagon to Israel, Gabriel Schoenfeld defended them.[4] In the annual FBI report called “Foreign Economic Collection and Industrial Espionage,” Israel is a major country that pops up quite often.[5]

This is widely known among CIA and FBI agents and U.S. officials for years.[6] One former U.S. intelligence official declared,

“There is a huge, aggressive, ongoing set of Israeli activities directed against the United States. Anybody who worked in counterintelligence in a professional capacity will tell you the Israelis are among the most aggressive and active countries targeting the United States. They undertake a wide range of technical operations and human operations. People here as liaisons… aggressively pursue classified intelligence from people. The denials are laughable.”[7]

In 1991, the Israeli tried to recruit a former U.S. intelligence official, but he declined. “I had an Israeli intelligence officer pitch me in Washington at the time of the first Gulf War. I said, ‘No, go away,’ and reported it to counterintelligence.”[8]

Covert operations were done by the Israelis in “a 1997 case in which the National Security Agency bugged two Israeli intelligence officials in Washington discussing efforts to obtain a sensitive U.S. diplomatic document. Israel denied wrongdoing in that case and all others, and no one has been prosecuted.”[9]

“Why not helping Israel and the Neocons?”

Yet this has rarely seen the light of day in the popular media. Pointing these facts out, according to the reasoning of Omri Ceren of Commentary, is tantamount to anti-Semitism.[10] And since criticism of Israel and Jewish behavior is anti-Semitism, then Satanists like Paul Wolfowitz can walk on the political platform as they so choose because no one can touch them.

Wolfowitz has obviously seen that Iraq is not paradise, but he still wants to bludgeon America in the region—presumably for Israel. “The alternative is to let a very important, critical part of the world go to hell literally and lose American influence,” he declares. “We may not like to talk about oil, but this is the engine of the world economy and if it’s dominated by the wrong people, the consequences here in the United States are very serious.”[11]

Wolfowitz was elated when he heard that Trump attacked Syria, and he has had private email conversation with “Trump Defense Secretary Jim Mattis and national security advisor H.R. McMaster, both longtime contacts since his Bush days.” He hopes that the Trump administration “will pursue a U.S. strategy of stepped-up engagement in the Middle East.”[12]

Wolfowitz actually sees the Trump administration as a puppet which needs to be manipulated. “I think there is a fantastic opportunity here,” he diabolically declared. “It’s only a first step, it’s only an opportunity.”[13]

Opportunity to do what? To con the American people again? To send a six-trillion dollar bill to decent Americans who cannot even afford to feed their families? To loot pension funds for perpetual wars?

Keep in mind that Wolfowitz completely disavowed Trump during his election precisely because Trump kept talking about “America First,” an idea which is antithetical to perpetual wars in the Middle East. Now Satanists like Wolfowitz are all over the Trump administration because Trump has already prostrated before them.

---

[1] Thomas E. Ricks, “Fear Factor,” NY Times, October 5, 2012.

[2] Philip Giraldi, “The Spy Who Loves Us,” American Conservative, June 2, 2008.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Justin Raimondo, “Trotskyites for Romney,” Antiwar.com, October 19, 2012.

[5] Giraldi, “The Spy Who Loves Us,” American Conservative.

[6] See “France, Israel Cited in CIA Espionage Study,” LA Times, August 15, 1996; Bob Drogin and Greg Miller, “Israel Has Long Spied on U.S., Say Officials,” LA Times, September 3, 2004 389. Bob Drogin and Greg Miller, “Israel Has Long Spied on U.S., Say Officials,” LA Times, September 3, 2004.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Omri Ceren, “The Times’s Spectacular Bias Against Israel,” Commentary, September 8, 2012.

[11] Quoted in Susan B. Glasser, “Why Paul Wolfowitz Is Optimistic About Trump,” Politico, April 24, 2017.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid.

Al Jazeera Investigations – Spy Merchants (49 min)