Cryptome founder:"Wikileaks is a fraud"

[barracuda]

Why would you "presume" such a thing?

I'm relying on your informed assertion that a guest attending an embassy function post-911 would necessarily be included on the list of attendees, or would in all probability be refused entrance.

She specifically says he wasn't invited

But she was invited, and would have been required to notify the embassy of the identity of her escort, as per your information. "He went as my guest."

and that she didn't think they "had any idea" who he was.

Less than a year ago, Assange was already very widely known.

"I said it would be a bit of a prank to take him and see if they knew who he was. I don't think they had any idea."

It seems rather obvious that Sam Watson knew exactly who he was, whether you find Assange's attendance suspicious or not.

[nathan28]

The story that Birgitta's telling, that she invited Assange to come along and then he went without her, doesn't sound possible.

It doesn't sound very likely to me either. Maybe he did a Jedi Mind Trick on the doorman or something - he seems the type. Maybe he just said "Fidelio."

That's the one DHS tells all of us to use if we can't get in.

[MacCruiskeen]

Shades of this.

I vote "cover story".

I was just about to post that article.

the headline of the article is in itself enough for me to judge the spirit in which this tidbit is hoped to be viewed by those presenting it.

Way to pre-judge that thorny Wikileaks Question! And what's wrong with saying he "wined and dined"? It was, apparently "a US Embassy cocktail party". So let's split hairs and say he didn't in fact literally wine and dine (although I bet there were fine wines there, and good food); he just cocktailed and canapéd. So what? It makes no significant difference. Julian Assange was entertained at a US Embassy in December 2009, with that US Embassy's knowledge, and at that US Embassy's expense.

Whatever this is, exactly, it is undoubtedly interesting and pertinent information. And one thing is undeniable: nobody gets into a US Embassy reception in 2009 (Year 8 of the Global War on Terror, let's remember) on anyone's invitation, unless it's absolutely clear who they are and unless their attendance is positively desired or at least not positively rejected.

The witness is, let's remember, a named Icelandic MP. Not, for example, "a guest, speaking on condition of anonymity".

Rakish.

Well, that's one way of putting it. Why, he's just like this guy:



or this one:



- namely, a fictional Hollywood creation.

Julian Assange, the Non-Elusive Pimpernel. They wine him here, they dine him there.

Mr Assange's site had already published dozens of leaks embarrassing to the US, including secret Guantanamo Bay detainee handling manuals and the full emails of Sarah Palin, the 2008 Republican vice-presidential candidate. The US State Department condemned the manuals' publication as "a criminal act."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/andrew-gilligan/

Not so much rakish, then, as positively foolhardy, anywhere beyond the silver screen. Or the comics.

Mr Assange went straight to the party from WikiLeaks' Icelandic base, known as "the bunker," where he was working on the release of a top-secret US Army video showing an attack on civilians in Iraq.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/andrew-gilligan/

Rakish

[justdrew]

yeah I really don't think it's a big deal at all, and especially in Iceland, you're way overestimating the security level at an embassy social function like this. If he went up and said he was the "plus one" for some name on the guest list, that would be plenty, especially if as is likely she had his name already on the list.

There's no reason to exclude him from the party then or now if a local MP wanted to bring him, and it would have been at least a good chance to pump him for info, so I see no conceivable reason why they wouldn't have been glad to welcome him with open arms.

and FFS people, if this is your idea of proving he's working for the man, get a clue, that's just jumping at straws.

[MacCruiskeen]

Btw, I still have no definite sense of whether or not Assange and/or Wikleaks are truly genuine, being genuinely successful, being craftily "gamed", working knowingly for the spooks, or whatever. I too am just trying, so far in vain, to find a clear path through the ongoing media shitstorm.

One thing it is, is time-consuming.

[MacCruiskeen]

yeah I really don't think it's a big deal at all, and especially in Iceland, you're way overestimating the security level at an embassy social function like this. If he went up and said he was the "plus one" for some name on the guest list, that would be plenty, especially if as is likely she had his name already on the list.

Oh FFS, drew, have you ever been anywhere near a US Embassy abroad? Even 20 years ago, long before The Day That Changed Everything, I couldn't get into a US-funded library here, without going through a beeping gate and then having my passport checked and my bag carefully searched.

(Full disclosure: I have never been to the US Embassy in Reykjavik. Maybe the security staff there are in fact unusually relaxed. Maybe they're pixies.)

[barracuda]

Way to pre-judge that thorny Wikileaks Question! And what's wrong with saying he "wined and dined"? It was, apparently "a US Embassy cocktail party". So let's split hairs and say he didn't in fact literally wine and dine (although I bet there were fine wines there, and good food); he just cocktailed and canapéd. So what? It makes no significant difference. Julian Assange was entertained at a US Embassy in 2010, with that US Embassy's knowledge, and at that US Embassy's expense.

I guess your expectations for journalism are so significantly diminished at this point that you have little or no surprise at encountering tabloid-style headlines hovering over articles written on what is essentially hearsay. Ms. Jonsdottir didn't attend the reception, but passed along Assange's details of his time there to Andrew Gilligan. Clearly, Assange felt no need to hide from her the identities of the persons with whom he spoke at the reception. And Ms. Jonsdottir apparently didn't find it ridiculously improbable that he was able to get in the door, or the article would certainly have reported on that, as they had so few facts to attend to in the first place.

Whatever this is, exactly, it is undoubtedly interesting and pertinent information. And one thing is undeniable: nobody gets into a US Embassy reception in 2009 (Year 8 of the Global War on Terror, let's remember) on anyone's invitation, unless it's absolutely clear who they are and unless their attendance is positively desired or at least not positively rejected.

Probably true, and yet the fact that he was let in the door doesn't create suspicion without excercising prior predispositions to view him as suspect. He was, in fact, internationally famous by this point, and though the releases may have been condemned, he was not wanted by the US government for criminal prosecution. In fact, he still isn't. He was not considered a terrorist rendition candidate until quite recently.

The witness is, let's remember, a named Icelandic MP. Not, for example, "a guest, speaking on condition of anonymity".

Yes, and as such, she felt it altogether fun and appropriate to bring Julian Assange to an embassy reception.

Mr Assange went straight to the party from WikiLeaks' Icelandic base, known as "the bunker," where he was working on the release of a top-secret US Army video showing an attack on civilians in Iraq.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/journalists/andrew-gilligan/

Rakish

Let's remember that Assange was basically infamous for his couch surfing at this stage of the game.

[Plutonia]

Uh-oh. Here we go...

WikiLeaks’s Assange gains influential defenders
By Jeff Stein

The predominant consensus in official Washington that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should eventually stand trial here on espionage charges is not likely to change anytime soon. But three influential voices are now saying publicly what many others say privately: that blame should be focused on leakers, not Assange, who after all was merely the middleman for the handful of newspapers and magazines that were given first crack at classified military and diplomatic documents.

On Friday Jack L. Goldsmith, “widely considered one of the brightest stars in the conservative legal firmament” when he joined the Bush administration Justice Department in 2003, according to a typical assessment, wrote that he found himself “agreeing with those who think Assange is being unduly vilified.”

“I certainly do not support or like his disclosure of secrets that harm U.S. national security or foreign policy interests,” Goldsmith wrote on the Lawfare blog. “But as all the hand-wringing over the 1917 Espionage Act shows, it is not obvious what law he has violated. It is also important to remember, to paraphrase Justice Stewart in the Pentagon Papers, that the responsibility for these disclosures lies firmly with the institution empowered to keep them secret: the Executive branch.”

Goldsmith called the government “unconscionably lax in allowing Bradley Manning,” an Army private arrested on suspicion of giving WikiLeaks Afghan and Iraq war documents last summer, “to have access to all these secrets and to exfiltrate them so easily.”

“I do not understand why so much ire is directed at Assange and so little at the New York Times,” continued Goldsmith, who resigned from the Justice Department after only nine months on the job because he disagreed with its legal rationalizations for waterboarding and other counter-terrorism tactics.

Goldsmith's remarks came only a few days after libertarian standard-bearer Rep. Ron Paul virtually celebrated WikiLeaks for exposing America's “delusional foreign policy.”

“When presented with embarrassing disclosures about U.S. spying and meddling, the policy that requires so much spying and meddling is not questioned,” said the nominal Texas Republican, denouncing calls for prosecuting Assange. “Instead the media focuses on how authorities might prosecute the publishers of such information.”

On Monday influential Harvard political scientist Stephen M. Walt endorsed Goldsmith’s views, asking whether The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward shouldn’t be prosecuted for publishing secrets if Assange was.

"I keep thinking about the Wikileaks affair,” Walt wrote for NPR’s Web site, “and I keep seeing the double-standards multiplying. Given how frequently government officials leak classified information in order to make themselves look good, box in their bureaucratic rivals, or tie the President's hands, it seems a little disingenuous of them to be so upset by Assange's activities.”

By Jeff Stein | December 13, 2010; 3:23 PM ET

Seven Thoughts on Wikileaks

by Jack Goldsmith

* I find myself agreeing with those who think Assange is being unduly vilified. I certainly do not support or like his disclosure of secrets that harm U.S. national security or foreign policy interests. But as all the hand-wringing over the 1917 Espionage Act shows, it is not obvious what law he has violated. It is also important to remember, to paraphrase Justice Stewart in the Pentagon Papers, that the responsibility for these disclosures lies firmly with the institution empowered to keep them secret: the Executive branch. The Executive was unconscionably lax in allowing Bradley Manning to have access to all these secrets and to exfiltrate them so easily.

* I do not understand why so much ire is directed at Assange and so little at the New York Times. What if there were no wikileaks and Manning had simply given the Lady Gaga CD to the Times? Presumably the Times would eventually have published most of the same information, with a few redactions, for all the world to see. Would our reaction to that have been more subdued than our reaction now to Assange? If so, why? If not, why is our reaction so subdued when the Times receives and publishes the information from Bradley through Assange the intermediary? Finally, in 2005-2006, the Times disclosed information about important but fragile government surveillance programs. There is no way to know, but I would bet that these disclosures were more harmful to national security than the wikileaks disclosures. There was outcry over the Times’ surveillance disclosures, but nothing compared to the outcry over wikileaks. Why the difference? Because of quantity? Because Assange is not a U.S. citizen? Because he has a philosophy more menacing than “freedom of the press”? Because he is not a journalist? Because he has a bad motive?

* In Obama’s Wars, Bob Woodward, with the obvious assistance of many top Obama administration officials, disclosed many details about top secret programs, code names, documents, meetings, and the like. I have a hard time squaring the anger the government is directing toward wikileaks with its top officials openly violating classification rules and opportunistically revealing without authorization top secret information.

* Whatever one thinks of what Assange is doing, the flailing U.S. government reaction has been self-defeating. It cannot stop the publication of the documents that have already leaked out, and it should stop trying, for doing so makes the United States look very weak and gives the documents a greater significance than they deserve. It is also weak and pointless to prevent U.S. officials from viewing the wikileaks documents that the rest of the world can easily see. Also, I think trying to prosecute Assange under the Espionage Act would be a mistake. The prosecution could fail for any number of reasons (no legal violation, extradition impossible, First Amendment). Trying but failing to put Assange in jail is worse than not trying at all. And succeeding will harm First Amendment press protections, make a martyr of Assange, and invite further chaotic Internet attacks. The best thing to do – I realize that this is politically impossible – would be to ignore Assange and fix the secrecy system so this does not happen again.

* As others have pointed out, the U.S. government reaction to wikileaks is more than a little awkward for the State Department’s Internet Freedom initiative. The contradictions of the initiative were apparent in the speech that announced it, where Secretary Clinton complained about cyberattacks seven paragraphs before she boasted of her support for hacktivism. I doubt the State Department is very keen about freedom of Internet speech or Internet hacktivism right now.

* Tim Wu and I wrote a book called Who Controls The Internet? One thesis of the book was that states could exercise pretty good control over unwanted Internet communications and transactions from abroad by regulating the intermediaries that make the communications and transactions possible – e.g. backbone operators, ISPs, search engines, financial intermediaries (e.g. mastercard), and the like. The book identified one area where such intermediary regulation did not work terribly well: Cross-border cybercrime. An exception we did not discuss is the exposure of secrets. Once information is on the web, it is practically impossible to stop it from being copied and distributed. The current strategy of pressuring intermediaries (paypal, mastercard, amazon, various domain name services, etc.) to stop doing business with wikileaks will have a marginal effect on its ability to raise money and store information. But the information already in its possession has been encrypted and widely distributed, and once it is revealed it is practically impossible to stop it from being circulated globally. The United States could in theory take harsh steps to stop its circulation domestically – it could, for example, punish the New York Times and order ISPs and search engines to filter out a continuously updated list of identified wikileaks sites. But what would be the point of that? (Tim and I also did not anticipate that state attempts to pressure intermediaries would be met by distributed denial-of-service attacks on those intermediaries.)

* The wikileaks saga gives the lie to the claim of United States omnipotence over the naming and numbering system via ICANN. Even assuming the United States could order ICANN (through its contractual arrangements and de facto control) to shut down all wikileaks sites (something that is far from obvious), ICANN could not follow through because its main leverage over unwanted wikileaks websites is its threat to de-list top-level domain names where the wikileaks sites appear. It is doubtful that ICANN could make that threat credibly for many reasons, including (a) the sites are shifting across top-level domains too quickly, (b) ICANN is not going to shut down a top-level domain to get at a handful of sites, and (c) alternative and perhaps root-splitting DNS alternatives might arise if it did.

[battleshipkropotkin]

edit- this had already been posted in a few of the other threads, so I axed it.
(It was Assange's OKCupid profile)

[barracuda]

Plutonia, why do you find Jack Goldsmith's opinion here troubling? His article reflects most of his opinions for the last five years, and is hardly surprising.

[82_28]

In a lot of ways and in order to clear things up, a lot of us that are following this story from the most rudimentary of "Deep State" comprehension are going to need a "leak" as to the nature of wikileaks. Just a hall of mirrors here. Nothing to see, except for everything. To me, and only to me, it seems to be the same exact psychological phenomenon as when those four cops were assassinated out here Seattle-way last year. Allegedly, two "prank" phone calls were made to the authorities less than an hour after the murders which sent the cops all scurrying around and losing the "scent" of the crime/crimes itself. We will never know just what it was these cops could have been on the trail of. It happened across the street from Joint Base Lewis McChord.

What I am saying is chaff. You commit a totally unrelated crime next to a place where those who have noticed it, didn't notice anything necessarily, but become the reverse patsies for something much larger that isn't related to the victims at all. But the crime becomes the story. Now have alleged idiots call in and confuse the fuck out of the cops. I would imagine any phone number on Earth could be easily mimicked by anybody in the know. We never heard anything again about these pranksters -- nothing noticeable at least.

Here is where I kinda tie "it all" together, insofar as the psychological aspect of these things. You make up a story orders of magnitude worse than what people are expecting and use it to hide an unrelated crime orders of magnitude larger than the originating story. Voila, you gotz you a CONSPIRACY THEORY, that there ain't nobody who's into such things will ever get over. Hidden in plain sight.

Wikileaks is information that, I feel, was always hidden in plain sight. However, it could be, the purpose of wikileaks is to highlight shit that is orders of magnitude greater than what PEOPLE EXPECT in order to cover up shit that is ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE greater than the fictional "outrage" was meant to invoke. It really isn't any kind of a garden variety "conspiracy theory" I am theorizing about here, it's actually, I think, kinda common sense if what it is you are set out to do, is confuse a problem people do not grasp the magnitude of in the first place, by making the problem everyone is focusing on, not the problem itself. The "conspiracy" part jumps in only if (shout out OMH) if occult means hidden.

To have something revealed of this nature, yet the only action by society is to further up the ante in fear for our fellow Earthlings and to believe that there are no solutions, just perpetual outrage and/or indifference to moral and ethical sins and nothing can ever be done about it then your cover has been perfectly pulled off. This is why "open-source", liberal, morality is so important -- free of authority.

Hope that made sense!

[justdrew]

yeah I really don't think it's a big deal at all, and especially in Iceland, you're way overestimating the security level at an embassy social function like this. If he went up and said he was the "plus one" for some name on the guest list, that would be plenty, especially if as is likely she had his name already on the list.

Oh FFS, drew, have you ever been anywhere near a US Embassy abroad? Even 20 years ago, long before The Day That Changed Everything, I couldn't get into a US-funded library here, without going through a beeping gate and then having my passport checked and my bag carefully searched.

(Full disclosure: I have never been to the US Embassy in Reykjavik. Maybe the security staff there are in fact unusually relaxed. Maybe they're pixies.)

but so what? That security is there to make sure weapons don't go in.

[barracuda]

You might be wondering exactly why Assange would be invited by an Icelandic MP to an embassy function in the first place:

In 2009, WikiLeaks published documents showing suspicious loans carried out by the Kaupthing Bank just before the Icelandic financial crisis. Public uproar over the banking procedures that WikiLeaks exposed galvanized Iceland into enacting the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative. The proposal, unanimously passed by the Icelandic parliament, strengthened free speech protections, turned Iceland into an “international transparency haven,” and established the Icelandic Prize for Freedom of Expression.

He was a fucking hero in Iceland at that time. The US embassy could not have failed to know who he was, nor how inadvisable it would be to for them to appear to be blocking him from attending an event. And it's virtually certain that they would have wanted to get a look at him, or buttonhole him if they could for some conversation regarding recent events. That's what they do at embassies, as we've been discovering of late: gossip about what's in the newspapers. And spy.

One thing it is, is time-consuming.

Totally agree. It seems people here can't even be bothered to enter "Wikileaks" and "Iceland" into a search engine.

[JackRiddler]

.

An Icelandic member of parliament got Assange on the guest list for an Embassy cocktails function and Mr. Famously High-Risk Behavior, who at the time was wanted for nothing, went there to spar with the presumed CIA guy, erm, sorry: "Deputy Chief of Mission."

At last, the smoking gun! Nobody on this board could imagine taking up this invitation!

And this in an island nation of 300,000 people, so imagine the embassy. In fact, you don't have to:


Not exactly That Thing they're building in Bagdad, or even That New Thing in Berlin.

http://iceland.usembassy.gov/about_the_embassy.html

Even the defense attache is "based in Oslo," and Iceland is a NATO member. (The US base was shut down, but I saw they've still got a brigade's worth of US soldiers there.)

Now those of you in the Smear Assange game can't even figure out the proper angle of attack: The bastard stood up his date, the aforementioned Icelandic MP, none other than Birgitta Jonsdottir, poet and anarchist.


OMG! What the fuck is wrong with this guy Assange?!

Just think of all the conclusions you could read into the statement currently at the top of her website:

"Statement: Birgitta Jonsdottir will not be granting ANY interviews or comments in relation to Julian Assange or WikiLeaks."

Fantastic! This empowers you to make up any opinion you like and interpret it into to her non-statement!

.

[justdrew]

Looks like someone besides me has begun to wonder about something far more questionable than wikileaks... CREW, (it's from politico, but I'm not linking) ::

December 13, 2010
Greenwald quits CREW over WikiLeaks

The Salon blogger and civil libertarian (and sometime POLITICO critic) Glenn Greenwald has quit his post on the board of the liberal ethics watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington over the group's criticism of WikiLeaks.

Greenwald writes in his letter of resignation:

[T]he recent condemnation of WikiLeaks by Anne Weismann, purporting to speak on behalf of CREW, is both baffling and unacceptable to me. It is baffling because I cannot fathom how a group purportedly devoted to greater transparency in government could condemn an entity that has brought more transparency to governments and corporations around the world than any single other organization by far. And it is unacceptable to me because I believe defense of WikiLeaks has become one of the greatest and most important political causes that exists -- certainly one to which I intend to devote myself -- and I do not want to be affiliated with any group which works to undermine it.

Weismann, CREW's chief counsel, sharply criticized WikiLeaks on Huffington Post, approvingly quoting a condemnation of the group as "among the enemies of open society because it does not respect the rule of law."

The WikiLeaks controversy has explosed a gap between those on right and left who are sympathetic to the government's secrecy concerns and those who identify more clearly as outsiders.

UPDATE: CREW executive director Melanie Sloan responds that Greenwald's resignation is "quite welcome."

"Glenn is using CREW merely as a foil for his own press ambitions rather than to make any real policy points," she said, adding that she learned of his resignation from the press. "This is the second time recently Glenn has chosen to take his disputes with CREW public without discussing them with us."

She accused Greenwald and other progressives of "demonizing us for disagreeing" on WikiLeaks.

"I guess the current position du jour is 'You're supposed to be on WikiLeaks side no matter what, and if you are varying from that, you're terrible, you're awful, you're evil,'" she said.

Greenwald's full letter is after the jump.

December 12, 2010

To the Board of Directors of CREW:

I am hereby resigning from the Board of Directors, effective immediately. I fully expected when joining the Board that CREW would periodically take positions with which I disagreed, and that was perfectly acceptable to me.

But the recent condemnation of WikiLeaks by Anne Weismann, purporting to speak on behalf of CREW, is both baffling and unacceptable to me. It is baffling because I cannot fathom how a group purportedly devoted to greater transparency in government could condemn an entity that has brought more transparency to governments and corporations around the world than any single other organization by far. And it is unacceptable to me because I believe defense of WikiLeaks has become one of the greatest and most important political causes that exists -- certainly one to which I intend to devote myself -- and I do not want to be affiliated with any group which works to undermine it.

I remain supportive of much of the work done by CREW and wish the organization nothing but the best.

Very truly yours,
Glenn Greenwald