Wikileaks: A Big Dangerous US Government Con Job

[WyoSeeker]

The story on the surface makes for a script for a new Oliver Stone Hollywood thriller. A 39-year old Australian hacker holds the President of the United States and his State Department hostage to a gigantic cyber “leak,” unless the President leaves Julian Assange and his Wikileaks free to release hundreds of thousands of pages of sensitive US Government memos. A closer look at the details, so far carefully leaked by the most ultra-establishment of international media such as the New York Times, reveals a clear agenda. That agenda coincidentally serves to buttress the agenda of US geopolitics around the world from Iran to Russia to North Korea. The Wikileaks is a big and dangerous US intelligence Con Job which will likely be used to police the Internet.

It is almost too perfectly-scripted to be true. A discontented 22-year old US Army soldier on duty in Baghdad, Bradley Manning, a low-grade US Army intelligence analyst, described as a loner, a gay in the military, a disgruntled “computer geek,” sifts through classified information at Forward Operating Base Hammer. He decides to secretly download US State Department email communications from the entire world over a period of eight months for hours a day, onto his blank CDs while pretending to be listening to Lady Gaga. In addition to diplomatic cables, Manning is believed to have provided WikiLeaks with helicopter gun camera video of an errant US attack in Baghdad on unarmed journalists, and with war logs from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Manning then is supposed to have tracked down a notorious former US computer hacker to get his 250,000 pages of classified US State Department cables out in the Internet for the whole world to see. He allegedly told the US hacker that the documents he had contained "incredible, awful things that belonged in the public domain and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington, DC." The hacker turned him in to US authorities so the story goes. Manning is now incommunicado since months in US military confinement so we cannot ask him, conveniently. The Pentagon routinely hires the best hackers to design their security systems.

Then the plot thickens. The 250,000 pages end up at the desk of Julian Assange, the 39-year-old Australian founder of a supposedly anti-establishment website with the cute name Wikileaks. Assange decides to selectively choose several of the world’s most ultra-establishment news media to exclusively handle the leaking job for him as he seems to be on the run from Interpol, not for leaking classified information, but for allegedly having consensual sex with two Swedish women who later decided it was rape.

He selects as exclusive newspapers to decide what is to be leaked the New York Times which did such service in promoting faked propaganda against Saddam that led to the Iraqi war, the London Guardian and Der Spiegel. Assange claims he had no time to sift through so many pages so handed them to the trusted editors of the establishment media for them to decide what should be released. Very “anti-establishment” that. The New York Times even assigned one of its top people, David E. Sanger, to control the release of the Wikileaks material. Sanger is no establishment outsider. He sits as a member of the elite Council on Foreign Relations as well as the Aspen Institute Strategy Group together with the likes of Condi Rice, former Defense Secretary William Perry, former CIA head John Deutch, former State Department Deputy Secretary and now World Bank head Robert Zoellick among others.

Indeed a strange choice of media for a person who claims to be anti-establishment. But then Assange also says he believes the US Government version of 9/11 and calls the Bilderberg Group a normal meeting of people, a very establishment view.

Not so secret cables…

The latest sensational Wikileaks documents allegedly from the US State Department embassies around the world to Washington are definitely not as Hillary Clinton claimed "an attack on America's foreign policy interests that have endangered innocent people." And they do not amount to what the Italian foreign minister, called the "September 11 of world diplomacy." The British government calls them a threat to national security and an aide to Canada’s Prime Minister calls on the CIA to assassinate Assange, as does kooky would-be US Presidential hopeful Sarah Palin.

Most important, the 250,000 cables are not "top secret" as we might have thought. Between two and three million US Government employees are cleared to see this level of "secret" document,[1] and some 500,000 people around the world have access to the Secret Internet Protocol Network (SIPRnet) where the cables were stored. Siprnet is not recommended for distribution of top-secret information. Only 6% or 15,000 pages of the documents have been classified as even secret, a level below top-secret. Another 40% were the lowest level, "confidential", while the rest were unclassified. In brief, it was not all that secret.[2]

Most of the revelations so far have been unspectacular. In Germany the revelations led to the removal of a prominent young FDP politician close to Guido Westerwelle who apparently liked to talk too much to his counterpart at the US Embassy. The revelations about Russian politics, that a US Embassy official refers to Putin and Medvedev as “Batman and Robin,” tells more about the cultural level of current US State Department personnel than it does about internal Russian politics.

But for anyone who has studied the craft of intelligence and of disinformation, a clear pattern emerges in the Wikileaks drama. The focus is put on select US geopolitical targets, appearing as Hillary Clinton put it “to justify US sanctions against Iran.” They claim North Korea with China’s granting of free passage to Korean ships despite US State Department pleas, send dangerous missiles to Iran. Saudi Arabia’s ailing King Abdullah reportedly called Iran’s President a Hitler.

Excuse to police the Internet?

What is emerging from all the sound and Wikileaks fury in Washington is that the entire scandal is serving to advance a long-standing Obama and Bush agenda of policing the until-now free Internet. Already the US Government has shut the Wikileaks server in the United States though no identifiable US law has been broken.

The process of policing the Web was well underway before the current leaks scandal. In 2009 Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller and Republican Olympia Snowe introduced the Cybersecurity Act of 2009 (S.773). It would give the President unlimited power to disconnect private-sector computers from the internet. The bill "would allow the president to 'declare a cyber-security emergency' relating to 'non-governmental' computer networks and do what's necessary to respond to the threat." We can expect that now this controversial piece of legislation will get top priority when a new Republican House and the Senate convene in January.

The US Department of Homeland Security, an agency created in the political hysteria following 9/11 2001 that has been compared to the Gestapo, has already begun policing the Internet. They are quietly seizing and shutting down internet websites (web domains) without due process or a proper trial. DHS simply seizes web domains that it wants to and posts an ominous "Department of Justice" logo on the web site. See an example at http://torrent-finder.com. Over 75 websites were seized and shut in a recent week. Right now, their focus is websites that they claim "violate copyrights," yet the torrent-finder.com website that was seized by DHS contained no copyrighted content whatsoever. It was merely a search engine website that linked to destinations where people could access copyrighted content. Step by careful step freedom of speech can be taken away. Then what?

Notes
1. BBCNews, Siprnet: Where the leaked cables came from, 29 November, 2010, accessed in http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-11863618

2. Ken Dilanian, Inside job: Stolen diplomatic cables show U.S. challenge of stopping authorized users, Los Angeles Times, November 29, 2010, accessed in http://www.latimes.com/news/nationwo...,6716809.story

F. William Engdahl is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by F. William Engdahl

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.p...t=va&aid=22357

[irishspirit]

Wyoseeker,

good post. However, I do not believe that the UD Governemtn is in on this. There is to much at stake. I think this is the real deal.

However, I can respect your views and give you a thankyou for this post. Always good to keep an open mind!

Be Safe my friend.

Irish

[truth will win out]

I agree irishspirit. I think we will get more evidence to validate JA.

[irishspirit]

truth,

I am hearing people say, why does the mainstream cover this so much?

The answer is simple! They have to! Reason why? When we look at it, the Internet is way ahead of the mainstream. The mainstream have to offer snips of it to please the sheep they still control. The internet is way ahead of the mainstream. I believe that it is call damage control?

Be safe friend.


Irish

[rosie]

I firmly believe Wikileaks motives are pure. The open can of worms is now squirming, and change requires action. Personally, these leaks have shown to me that the powers have shifted. It does not matter what the cables stirred up, what matters is that it has opened many eyes that have been shut for too long. I see it now all around me. People are open to trusting one another, not the governments and their promises. They are just big boys with big toys, along with way too many secret "meetings". Just watching them squirm through this has made my year! Oh, and the ones squirming are the ones that have everything to hide. I am sure they are having a very hard time falling asleep, wondering exactly how much of their dirt will be thrown back in their faces, in full public view.

in love & light

[truth will win out]

During the Nixon Administration, my dad was a US Army intelligence analyst at the Pentagon and CIA. His take on this whole affair is the following as he forwarded in email to me(Got approval from him to repost):

1. That there is no way the Pentagon, CIA or U.S. government would sanction this. They have to little control over what goes out over the internet. Although, they are diligently working on methods to do effective back-tracking and monitor the entire web. They do conduct nefarious subterfuge through various methods of entrapment in order to lure people into committing acts that are prosecutable under a variety of draconian laws implemented after 9/11 and a few older laws like the Sedition Act that have been used for years to cower those who dare question authority into submission . Additionally, the items released in no way would represent the selective leak process so effectively utilized by the minions of deceit.

2. After contacting some of his former colleagues, some still active in the intelligence community, and others retired, they actually laughed out loud at the suggestion of Jullian Assange being a plant. It is apparent to all of them that stupidity does exist at all levels of the government hierarchy. However, they would never leak images or details that purposely makes them look like reprehensible buffoons. Iran is not a serious threat today, and probably not in the near future. It would take a first strike from Iran to really generate a military response from the USA. Iran knows they cannot win a conventional war with the USA, but, as Afghanistan has shown, they can and will wage an unending war of attrition if attacked by the USA. Even a militaristic empire like the USA knows that it cannot carry on three wars at the same time, and expect to come out on top in any of them. Barrack Obama has continued the American jingoistic empire building by prolonging wars which will all end in defeat for the USA, but he knows that a war with Iran would be highly counter-productive to USA foreign policy goals.

3. The key leak has nothing to do with the above. The leak on Shell oil is the most patently serious, as an attack on corporate power cannot and will not be tolerated in a nation dedicated to the complete domination of corporations across the globe.

[Wesly]

I use to get up at 4 in the morning to check a couple of web sites for sensitive material befor NSA would
contact the web mastor and warn him that he had 1 hour to remove it or they would burn his web site down.
This is another one of those look over here this is whats important, its just more bull droppings.

[Ahkenaten]

While I agree that this whole phenomenon could be used as an excuse to put the leather jack-boot on the neck of the internet - as I have said before severe restriction of the internet or substitution of "Web2" is a double-edged sword. TPTB would be cutting their own revenue conduit and there would be no guarantee people could all be herded like compliant sheep into Web 2. I do not agree that the entire thing is an elaborate fabrication of US "Intelligence" in collaboration with others. Even if elements of the story were/are related to another controlled demolition operation managed by the usual suspects - it has gotten entirely out of anyone's control now and that is what the high levels of hysteria and shrill and nasty rhetoric are about. Remember that of the 260K documents in the dump, less than 1,000 have been released to date. 1,000 down, 259,000 to go! As far as I know no human beings' motives are entirely pure and above reproach. I do think it telling that one of JA's accusers has left Sweden and is now 'working as a volunteer' in Palestine......helping the downtrodden Palestinians of course.

[irishspirit]

speaking of web 2

Anonymous Hitting Web 2.0

Web 2.0 has turned into a world of espionage with more twists and turns than a James Bond film. By now we all may have heard of a group called Anonymous, who has been hitting web 2.0 sites that have refused to do business with the controversial Wikileaks. Since last week their targets have been the Swiss bank that froze Julian Assange's assets and PayPal which stopped processing donations to Wikileaks. Anonymous is a loose-knit group of hacktivists. Coldblood, a member of Anonymous has stated, "Multiple things are being done. Websites that are bowing down to government pressure have become targets. As an organisation we have always taken a strong stance on censorship and freedom of expression on the internet and come out against those who seek to destroy it by any means. We feel that Wikileaks has become more than just about leaking of documents; it has become a war ground, the people vs. the government. The idea is to give the companies a wake-up call. Companies will notice the increase in traffic and an increase in traffic means increase in costs associated with running a website."

This tactic that Coldblood mentions is called denial-of-service attacks (DDoS) and swamps a web 2.0 site with so many requests that it becomes overwhelmed. DDoS attacks are illegal in many countries, including the UK. Anonymous is also helping to create hundreds of mirror sites for Wikileaks, after its US domain name provider withdrew its services and at the last count there were 507 mirrors of Wikileaks. Wikileaks has been hit by a series of denial-of-service attacks, following the release of a quarter of a million US embassy cables. It is unclear who is behind the attacks but it seems that Wikileaks is getting too hot to handle as many of the businesses that work with the site have distanced themselves from it.

http://www.justmeans.com/Anonymous-H...2-0/39737.html

¤=[Post Update]=¤

Posted by truth will win out (here)
During the Nixon Administration, my dad was a US Army intelligence analyst at the Pentagon and CIA. His take on this whole affair is the following as he forwarded in email to me(Got approval from him to repost):

1. That there is no way the Pentagon, CIA or U.S. government would sanction this. They have to little control over what goes out over the internet. Although, they are diligently working on methods to do effective back-tracking and monitor the entire web. They do conduct nefarious subterfuge through various methods of entrapment in order to lure people into committing acts that are prosecutable under a variety of draconian laws implemented after 9/11 and a few older laws like the Sedition Act that have been used for years to cower those who dare question authority into submission . Additionally, the items released in no way would represent the selective leak process so effectively utilized by the minions of deceit.

2. After contacting some of his former colleagues, some still active in the intelligence community, and others retired, they actually laughed out loud at the suggestion of Jullian Assange being a plant. It is apparent to all of them that stupidity does exist at all levels of the government hierarchy. However, they would never leak images or details that purposely makes them look like reprehensible buffoons. Iran is not a serious threat today, and probably not in the near future. It would take a first strike from Iran to really generate a military response from the USA. Iran knows they cannot win a conventional war with the USA, but, as Afghanistan has shown, they can and will wage an unending war of attrition if attacked by the USA. Even a militaristic empire like the USA knows that it cannot carry on three wars at the same time, and expect to come out on top in any of them. Barrack Obama has continued the American jingoistic empire building by prolonging wars which will all end in defeat for the USA, but he knows that a war with Iran would be highly counter-productive to USA foreign policy goals.

3. The key leak has nothing to do with the above. The leak on Shell oil is the most patently serious, as an attack on corporate power cannot and will not be tolerated in a nation dedicated to the complete domination of corporations across the globe.

Thanks for that my friend. EXCELLENT post!

[Ahkenaten]

Irish Spirit to clarify I meant "Web 2" in the sense of an alternate, "controllable" substitution for what we use now. I did not know that some websites are known as web 2, and do not know what that means. Sorry if I misspoke.

[irishspirit]

Posted by Ahkenaten (here)
Irish Spirit to clarify I meant "Web 2" in the sense of an alternate, "controllable" substitution for what we use now. I did not know that some websites are known as web 2, and do not know what that means. Sorry if I misspoke.

Sorry friend, but web two is already here.

http://www.google.co.uk/#sclient=psy...41473e231b710e

They are trying to kill it, and push the web onto their control grid.

[Zook]

Hello TWWO,

Posted by truth will win out (here)
During the Nixon Administration, my dad was a US Army intelligence analyst at the Pentagon and CIA. His take on this whole affair is the following as he forwarded in email to me(Got approval from him to repost):
[...]

The lie is different at every level - Richard Hoagland

Will you grant the above? If so, that takes us back to square one, at least, the square before this post of yours. IMHO, decisions like Wikileaks are made at the highest levels in the intelligence agencies. I'm sure you'll agree that the CIA/Mossad/MI6 organization is a pyramidal command structure. So unless your father was high up on the pyramid, his knowledge of CIA innerworkings would be limited.

Anyways, carry on.

[Victoria Tintagel]

-------------

Law experts say WikiLeaks in the clear

Simon Lauder reported this story on Tuesday, December 7, 2010 12:14:00

ELEANOR HALL: As the leaks from the WikiLeaks website continue, the US government is again condemning what it calls the 'illegal' publication of state secrets.

But some Australian legal experts question whether the website's founder, Julian Assange, has broken any law. Lawyers for Mr Assange say that instead Australia’s Prime Minister may have behaved illegally by defaming their client.

Simon Lauder has our report.

SIMON LAUDER: The WikiLeaks cables have lifted the lid on a world of two faced diplomacy. The uncomfortable revelations are set to continue and rather than deny them the Australian and US governments have turned the focus on the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange.

A member of Mr Assange's legal team, Jennifer Robinson, says the Prime Minister's assertion that the website's publication of the documents is illegal goes too far.

JENNIFER ROBINSON: Well her comments were made outside of Parliament so they're certainly not privileged and I think it was misguided to suggest that he had committed a crime in England and, indeed, defamatory. Though I think that Prime Minister Gillard's account will probably come at the ballot box.

SIMON LAUDER: US and Australian authorities are working to find any laws which may have been violated by WikiLeaks.

The President of Liberty Victoria, Spencer Zifcak, says the website doesn't seem to have done anything illegal.

SPENCER ZIFCAK: All WikiLeaks have done is publish documents that have been given to it. Now the interesting thing about that is WikiLeaks is publishing these documents in association with some of the great newspapers of the world.

So if WikiLeaks is to be charged with the disclosure of official information then presumably these major newspapers will also be in the guns. But I can't see the authorities, either in Australia or the United States, pursuing those newspapers.

SIMON LAUDER: Mr Zifcak has written to the Prime Minister to express his concern about her comments.

SPENCER ZIFCAK: There is no charge and there has been no trial and even given all of those things the Prime Minister had the confidence to say that Mr Assange was guilty of illegality. Now that seems to me to be completely inappropriate.

SIMON LAUDER: How serious is it to say that someone has done something illegal or could be arrested when there is no proof of that?

SPENCER ZIFCAK: Well I think it is, it is quite a serious thing. But it's made even more serious by the fact that the statement is made by the Prime Minister of the country. The effect of the statement is to pre-empt the outcome of any legal proceedings.

SIMON LAUDER: The latest publications by WikiLeaks have prompted more accusations of crime.

The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, says the release of a secret list of critical infrastructure is deeply distressing and the illegal publication of classified information poses real concerns and dangers.

The director of the Centre for International Law at the University of Sydney, Dr Ben Saul, says Mr Assange is the victim of an international smear campaign.

BEN SAUL: Julian Assange has become a target of a kind of global campaign to demonise him as a criminal, as a terrorist. I mean this is pretty serious stuff and the Australian Government hasn't said very much on the public record to suggest that they're looking out for his interests in any kind of serious way.

SIMON LAUDER: Dr Saul says the most likely avenue for prosecuting WikiLeaks is through the development of international laws which protect diplomatic correspondence, but even that would be problematic.

BEN SAUL: Now we know that some of the disclosures by WikiLeaks have genuinely been in the public interest. That is, disclosure has involved US war crimes, for example, in Afghanistan and Iraq. The disclosure that the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, ordered a campaign of espionage against the United Nations secretary general, I mean these are properly matters in the public interest.

So if the law on diplomatic inviolability is to be extended globally to all kinds of diplomatic information then there really needs to be a kind of exception or carve out for the disclosure of illegal conduct. It doesn't make sense to absolutely protect the inviolability of diplomatic information if that just becomes a shield for government lawlessness.

SIMON LAUDER: Do you think that the WikiLeaks scandal will lead to laws being tightened?

BEN SAUL: I'd say it's a fair estimate to suggest that a whole lot of other countries are going to be looking at their laws. Australia, no doubt, is doing that at the moment but it could be some time before those laws are changed.

But there's certainly great interest amongst governments to look at how they can tighten up the protection of classified information.

SIMON LAUDER: The only legal trouble the founder of WikiLeaks is in so far is an arrest warrant which is in the works, over allegations of sexual assault in Sweden.

ELEANOR HALL: Simon Lauder reporting.

http://abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2010/s3086781.htm

[zebowho]

If I may...Web 2.0 is nothing more than a buzz word. The thing that identifies a site as being "Web 2.0" is the large buttons, graphics, search bars etc. They still use popular programming languages that have been used for years...like "Ajax" its really the best of old technology but issued with a new buzz word....marketing really!

-z

[bluestflame]

ww3.com/

looks like someone's already making preperations

¤=[Post Update]=¤

yes it is a real site in development ( they seem hopeful)

[Humble Janitor]

This is the real deal.

I've spent a lot of time thinking and to me, THIS IS IT. Your mileage may vary.

[lisa]

When I first heard about Wikileaks I went to their website to see the leaked videos and documents. Unexpectedly, there were none.
If I want to leak info to the public, I would publish them immediately on my website rather than cherry pick a major media company to do the leak.
Most here would agree that the childish gossips between the politicians are intentional leaks by the PTB (with or without Wikileaks knowledge). Who would jeopardize his career/reputation/life to "leak" gossips?

Chipping in my 2 cents.

[Samothrace]

Posted by lisa (here)
When I first heard about Wikileaks I went to their website to see the leaked videos and documents. Unexpectedly, there were none.
If I want to leak info to the public, I would publish them immediately on my website rather than cherry pick a major media company to do the leak.

That would assume the individual has his or her own website and was confident the information would get out to enough people before the site is taken down and the content is removed.

Most here would agree that the childish gossips between the politicians are intentional leaks by the PTB (with or without Wikileaks knowledge).

Err there is a bit more weight to the leaks than just "childish gossips". And I don't know where you are getting "most" from.

Who would jeopardize his career/reputation/life to "leak" gossips?

Well going off of a whistleblower like Peter Ross, they become disillusioned with the system they are in and attempt to provoke change by exposing what they find reprehensible about said system.

[jaybee]

Posted by rosie (here)
I firmly believe Wikileaks motives are pure. The open can of worms is now squirming, and change requires action. Personally, these leaks have shown to me that the powers have shifted. It does not matter what the cables stirred up, what matters is that it has opened many eyes that have been shut for too long. I see it now all around me. People are open to trusting one another, not the governments and their promises. They are just big boys with big toys, along with way too many secret "meetings". Just watching them squirm through this has made my year! Oh, and the ones squirming are the ones that have everything to hide. I am sure they are having a very hard time falling asleep, wondering exactly how much of their dirt will be thrown back in their faces, in full public view.

in love & light

with you all the way on what you've said, rosie

all those secrets clogging up the collective consciousness

they have been creating unhealthy paranoia

now it's THEIR turn to get paranoid....very paranoid

what goes around comes around, eh



online petition supporting Wikileaks

http://www.avaaz.org/en/wikileaks_petition/96.php

[Lost Soul]

Wikileaks just scratched the surface. Can you imagine what the higher-ups have that they don't want released?