RI Subject - Reality Winner

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Re: RI Subject - Reality Winner

Postby alloneword » Thu Apr 04, 2019 8:05 am

RocketMan » Thu Apr 04, 2019 8:07 am wrote:This thread has obviously been dredged up in an effort to desperately attempt to discredit those who don't agree with the Russiagate line.


Well, I'm glad it was dredged up.

I wasn't around when all this kicked off, so I only just read the whole thread (with appropriate filters) and it utterly discredits those who do agree with the Russiagate line. :)

Where I refer to 'drivel' above - though I'm sure I don't need to point it out - I meant the MSM output (wherever it appears), not the cautiously skeptical and insightful posts that pepper this thread.

Classic RI.

Aaron Maté just (joint) won the 2019 Izzy Award “for outstanding achievement in independent media”, BTW. :yay
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Re: RI Subject - Reality Winner

Postby seemslikeadream » Thu Apr 04, 2019 8:08 am

yea I am really glad I did post a new reply (that is the correct word not the derogatory one) and I am very happy with my response to you

Russiagate Is Ending Like Any White-Collar Crime
That’s an undeniable scandal. Just ask Glenn Greenwald and Matt Taibbi.

David KlionApril 3, 2019 6:00 AM
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Russiagate is best understood as a story of international white-collar crime. I’ve argued this point in various publications since the 2016 election. While cable-news conspiracists were making Donald Trump out to be a literal foreign agent and some left-leaning commentators were denying the mere existence of a Russian interference campaign, I tried to emphasize post-Soviet Russia’s transformation into a neoliberal hellscape, the way oligarchic fortunes from Russia and other countries have been laundered through luxury real estate in cities like New York, and the corrupting effects of globalized capitalism. Russiagate was blowback for the economic policies that successive American governments have pushed on the rest of the world, as well an exposure of the weaknesses of our unregulated campaign-finance system at home. Above all, it was a story of a presidential candidate who has surrounded himself throughout his life with crooks and grifters, and of a Republican Party that didn’t care.

It’s only fitting, then, that Robert Mueller’s investigation should end with Trump escaping any accountability for his inner circle’s strange dalliances with Russia, just as he has consistently escaped accountability for dozens of other criminal dealings throughout his sordid career. After all, this is how white-collar crime stories usually pan out.

The problem with counting on the criminal justice system to save us from Trump is that the entire system is rigged. In theory, the attorney general is supposed to operate independent of the president. In practice, everyone knows that William Barr was handpicked by a president who has sought to impede the Russia investigation, that Barr took office openly skeptical of Mueller’s efforts, that he has participated in high-level cover-ups before, and that he was confirmed on a party-line vote by a Republican Senate that has every incentive to make this story go away. Mueller’s job was to submit a report to Barr, and so far Barr has made no move to reveal more than a brief summary of the 400-page report’s contents to the public. While it’s true that Mueller has issued 37 indictments, including of six people close to the president, Trump himself is effectively immune from prosecution. Once again, the most powerful people are beyond the rule of law.

None of this should be surprising to anyone who has read With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law Is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful, by the Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Glenn Greenwald. The 2011 book, which features glowing cover blurbs from MSNBC anchors Rachel Maddow and Chris Hayes, persuasively lays out the case that the wealthy and politically connected operate with legal impunity. “Those with political and financial clout are routinely allowed to break the law with no legal repercussions whatsoever,” Greenwald writes in his introduction. “Often they need not exploit their access to superior lawyers because they don’t see the inside of a courtroom in the first place—not even when they get caught in the most egregious criminality.”

Over the course of the book, Greenwald lays out a series of damning examples in recent memory, ranging from Watergate to Iran-Contra to the Bush administration’s 2005 warrantless wiretapping scandal to the 2008 financial crisis, none of which resulted in prosecutions for the people most responsible. He particularly emphasizes the role of the 1992 pardon of Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger in entrenching a culture of elite immunity in Washington:

What made the pardon even more pernicious was that the person issuing it—George H.W. Bush—had been centrally involved in many of the incriminating acts as Reagan’s vice president and was widely believed to be at risk himself if the trials of Weinberger and others proceeded. A major effect of pardoning the remaining Iran-Contra criminals was to put an end to the investigations and thus to exempt Bush from accountability for his own crimes. The post-Nixon pattern was reaffirmed: those who are most politically powerful in our society could break the law with impunity.

Later on, an entire chapter, titled “Immunity by Presidential Decree,” accuses the Obama administration of failing to hold its predecessors accountable for crimes such as torture or indefinite detention. As Greenwald writes, “To acknowledge that our highest political officials are felons […] is to threaten the system of power, and that is unthinkable.”

Greenwald saw this coming years ago. “Vesting the powerful with license to break the law guarantees high-level lawbreaking; indeed, it encourages such behavior,” he writes in his 2011 book.
In a prescient conclusion, Greenwald points to growing wealth inequality as the real culprit. The United States, he says, “has taken on the classic attributes of oligarchy (government by a small dominant class) and plutocracy (government by the wealthy). Like banana republic, such derogatory terms were once reserved for other nations, and it was unthinkable to apply them to the United States; yet now they are being commonly, even casually, used by mainstream sources to describe the facts of life in contemporary America.” Today, Trump and his cronies are at the helm of the US government, openly plundering the public via their hotels and businesses—including Trump’s undisclosed, ultimately unrealized efforts to build a major real estate project in Moscow while simultaneously running for president and promising improved relations with Russia. So far there have been no consequences. Greenwald saw this coming years ago. “Vesting the powerful with license to break the law guarantees high-level lawbreaking; indeed, it encourages such behavior,” he writes in With Liberty and Justice for Some.

Another journalist who saw this problem clearly was Matt Taibbi, whose 2014 book, The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap, covers many of the same themes. In his rousing conclusion, Taibbi dismisses the excuses that federal prosecutors give for letting essentially the entire banking sector off the hook for the accumulated frauds that tanked the global economy in 2008. He cites a speech given in 2012 by an SEC commissioner, who invoked the basketball metaphor of “shot selection” to argue that the agency would be better off focusing on fraud cases in “smaller entities.” Taibbi writes: “This is coward’s language. No true cop would ever think like this. Real police will go after the bad guy no matter who he is or how well protected he might be. In fact, the best of them will take on a villain even when winning is a long shot. There’s value even in trying and losing sometimes.”

Taibbi insists that the big banks were guilty not just of reckless bets on what turned out to be troubled assets, but of systemic criminal wrongdoing that the government was willfully ignoring. As recent reporting on Deutsche Bank’s sketchy relationship with Trump shows, the financial industry is still in the business of underwriting toxic assets, including one who happened to become president.

The Mueller investigation has been marked by constant reminders of the two-tiered US criminal justice system, the way that political elites “receive special treatment under the law,” as independent journalist Michael Tracey has written. Consider Trump’s campaign manager, Paul Manafort, who after a career spent providing lucrative services to some of the world’s most corrupt governments now faces a mere seven and a half years in prison. That’s only two and a half years more than the sentence handed down to Reality Winner, the young NSA whistleblower who leaked evidence of Russian election interference to the public. As Winner’s mother wrote this past December for The Intercept, the website Winner trusted to publish her information, “Despite having the financial means, connections, multiple passports, and experience traveling to other countries—at levels that far exceeded Reality’s—Manafort was allowed to remain out of jail on bond.” She added:

Last year, on December 18, 2017, as the court allowed Manafort to travel to the Hamptons to celebrate Christmas, our family celebrated that Reality had been given fresh fruit, a gift from a local church, and the very first fresh anything since her arrest on June 3, 2017.

Ultimately, while Mueller was unable to establish that Trump colluded directly with Russia, at the very least he managed to expose an elaborate network of criminality and corruption surrounding the president, all of which congressional Democrats and state courts now have the power to investigate further. Accountability for the powerful is always an uphill battle in our system, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a worthy goal.

In the wake of Barr’s summary of Mueller’s conclusions, a clutch of noisy Russiagate skeptics in the media, having argued for the past few years that the whole thing was a neo-McCarthyite hoax, now claim vindication on the say-so of the attorney general—a curious bit of deference to the nation’s top law enforcement official, doubly curious coming from the very journalists who’ve done so much to expose the perversions of our justice system. “The biggest thing this affair has uncovered so far is Donald Trump paying off a porn star,” writes Matt Taibbi, dismissing the entire scandal as hype. And Glenn Greenwald himself has described the media’s Russiagate coverage as “unhinged conspiratorial trash, distracting from real issues,” as if creeping international kleptocracy, elite self-dealing, and two-tiered justice weren’t real issues.

Back in 2011, Greenwald well understood the incentives within the media industry to protect the powerful instead of challenge them. In his book, he writes disgustedly about Iran-Contra conspirator Oliver North, who, rather than being professionally shunned, “was rewarded with a Fox News contract.” Pretty embarrassing for everyone involved.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/20 ... bi-denial/



it wasn't dredged up...see this post for an explanation ...


seemslikeadream » Thu Apr 04, 2019 6:49 am wrote:Mar 22, 2019 9:47 am

this was the last time I "dredged up" this thread TWO WEEKS AGO

I have been "dredging up" this thread since Tue Jun 06, 2017 10:07 am

I didn't just "dredge up" this thread ...could you please just stop ...this attitude about me is getting really old....and your made up myriad of excuses as to why you have a problem with me is just silly

I don't need your advice about what I read...how to post....or what threads I will be bumping and for what reason. I will add to any thread I want ...whenever I want ...my reasoning for posting is not for you to decided and I resent your inserting your conclusion as to my actions



it utterly discredits those who do agree with the Russiagate line. :)


that's just wrong I have no idea how you could come to that conclusion ..Greenwald was shown for just who he is OUTING A SOURCE.... REALITY WINNER BECAUSE WHAT SHE HAD TO SAY DIDN'T FIT HIS AGENDA

The Secretary for Homeland Security told Tucker Carlson (the racist that Greenwald loves to visit on FauxNews) last night that ending birthright citizenship via executive order is still "on the table" for Trump.

Just thought you'd like to know.

And just for the record ONE MORE TIME....

the trump crime family is not just about Russia..trump has just been laundering Russian oligarch money for years but that is one of his many many crimes ...there is so much more criminal behavior besides his connection with Russian laundered money ....hopefully we can dispel that rumor that trump is a really good guy

READ THIS ...maybe you should take off you Mate filter at some point...
Sarah Kendzior


"Some things that we do not need a Mueller report to see: 1) Trump asking Russia for HRC’s emails at a July 2016 presser 2) Stone’s collaboration with Wikileaks, in the public domain 3) Cohen and Sater’s Nov 2015 emails saying Putin would help Trump, also in the public domain...


4.The changes to the GOP platform by oligarch lackey Paul Manafort to make it favorable to Russia, also in the public domain 5) The details of the 2016 Trump Tower meeting tweeted out by Donald Trump Jr in 2017, also in the public domain...


6. Trump firing Comey, partying with Lavrov and Kislyak in the Oval the next day, and confessing to obstruction of justice to Lester Holt on TV 7) Multiple staffers lying about illicit contacts with Russians on their clearance forms, including Ivanka, Jared and Jeff Sessions...


8. Jeff Sessions having to recuse himself because he’s implicated in the Russia plot 9) Guilty Michael Flynn working secretly for both Russia and Turkey while openly hanging out with Putin at an RT gala in Dec 2015. All of this is in the public domain!


That’s the tip of the iceberg. You have decades of dirty deals between Trump and the Russian mafia, as well as the deals of almost everyone in their inner circle, as well as events like Russian mobster Felix Sater taking Ivanka to the Kremlin and having her sit in Putin’s chair.


"You don't need the Mueller report to see all this. What we need are answers about why nothing was done when all this took place in public and was a massive security threat. And we need answers about why the media lied about it then and now." @gaslitnation
https://twitter.com/sarahkendzior/statu ... 4470029312



just a couple of hundreds of examples I could give and one of a hundred Mate ignores....

there was no trump crime family involvement with Russia


Michael Flynn’s involvement in a plan to build nuclear reactors in the Middle East is looking even shadier
According to a whistleblower, a Flynn business associate bragged that Flynn would end sanctions on Russia to clear the way for this project.
https://www.vox.com/2017/12/6/16743476/ ... -sanctions


Why Would Paul Manafort Share Polling Data with Russia?
https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-des ... ith-russia


A COMPLETE GUIDE TO ALL 17 (KNOWN) TRUMP AND RUSSIA INVESTIGATIONS
https://www.wired.com/story/mueller-inv ... ete-guide/


you ignoring facts like they don't exist does not make them go away

Here's a glimpse at Trump's decades-long history of business ties to Russia
https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-r ... es-2018-11

Michael Flynn, Russia and a Grand Scheme to Build Nuclear Power Plants in Saudi Arabia and the Arab World
https://www.newsweek.com/2017/06/23/fly ... 23396.html


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emptywheel

I'm so old I remember when Greenwald and Taibbi were making factually incorrect claims about journalistic errors stemming from hasty reporting.



emptywheel

Aaron still beclowns himself bc he doesn't realize Manafort has already pled to a conspiracy.

Why would I engage with this? It's not even intelligent bad faith hoaxery.

Oh. You mean the guy who *just* claimed that Butina pleading guilty to the same charges Anna Chapman and Carter Page's SVR recruiter were charged with has nothing to do with spying? He's an embarrassment, as are all the people who cling to what he says.

And it is equally painful to see any human with half a brain treat Aaron as anything but a clown below contempt.


Aaron Maté :roll:


I think you must have missed this post or are you just ignoring it ... because you didn't address any of it ...I think I will repost


John Kiriakou

Verified account

@JohnKiriakou
Follow Follow @JohnKiriakou
More
.@theintercept should be ashamed of itself. Matthew Cole burns yet another source. It makes your entire organization untrustworthy.

@theintercept showed NSA the original document for comment.
https://twitter.com/JohnKiriakou?lang=en


Moon of Alabama

Do Not Trust The Intercept or How To Burn A Source

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2017/06/d ... ource.html


WikiLeaks Declares War on The Intercept
The FBI says a reporter led it to an NSA leaker. Julian Assange says that person, whom he suspects is an Intercept reporter, is a ‘menace’ to sources, journalists, and democracy.
On his personal Twitter account, Assange expressed support for Winner’s actions, saying “she is a young women [sic] accused of courage in trying to help us know.”

https://www.thedailybeast.com/wikileaks ... -intercept


The Intercept's Bad Track Record Gets Worse as New Whistleblower Outed
March 30th, 2018
MINNEAPOLIS – On Wednesday, Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) reported that former Minneapolis-based FBI agent Terry James Albury had been charged with leaking classified government information to the online publication The Intercept.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/bad-track ... pt/239822/


Ted Rall
Et Tu, Glenn Greenwald?
June 12, 2017
Image
NSA whistleblower Reality Winner leaked a secret NSA memo to the journalism website The Intercept, which promptly betrayed her by showing the document to the NSA. Even worse, they told the Agency where it was mailed from. As a result, Winner is now warming the inside of a prison cell. At bare minimum, The Intercept owes Winner and its readers a big apology for burning their source. But who can possibly trust a news organization that has such close ties to the government spooks it claims to be covering?
http://rall.com/comic/intercept-burned-reality-winner


What’s important for readers to know, to The Intercept’s founding editors, is that their publication’s alleged source was not motivated by their Russia skepticism, or at least not spurred by the transcript of one recorded expression of it. What’s conspicuously lacking is that express solidarity with a woman — source or not — who is accused of, and facing prison time for, releasing a report that revealed no raw intelligence or intelligence-gathering methods but demonstrated, for the skeptics, that at least the U.S. intelligence community’s internal assessments track with its public statements.
But that, again, may be unwelcome for those who have devoted a year to a nothing-to-see-here line.

https://medium.com/@charlesdavis/realit ... 70718aaac6


Reality Winner trusted Glenn Greenwald and now she's in federal prison

Greenwald had no problem throwing courageous Reality Winner to the wolves while protecting Assange

She actually sent the info to the intercept to prove to Greenwald that Russian interference...and she got prison time for her trouble

yea Glenn sees a difference in different whistleblowers depending on the info ...it is so obvious why she is in jail

Reality Winner should have known better than to try and contradict Glenn's pro-Russia/trump editorial line and given those docs to NBC.


But that, again, may be unwelcome for those who have devoted a year to a nothing-to-see-here line.



The Intercept's Bad Track Record Gets Worse as New Whistleblower Outed
March 30th, 2018
MINNEAPOLIS – On Wednesday, Minnesota Public Radio (MPR) reported that former Minneapolis-based FBI agent Terry James Albury had been charged with leaking classified government information to the online publication The Intercept. Albury’s legal defense, led by Jane Anne Murray and Joshua Dratel, identified him as a whistleblower, stating that his decision to leak the documents was “driven by a conscientious commitment to long-term national security and addressing the well-documented systemic biases within the FBI.”

Albury’s defense also noted that he has accepted “full responsibility for the conduct set forth in the Information,” referencing the fact that the document charging Albury was a two-page felony information. As noted by the Star Tribune, such a document usually signals an imminent guilty plea.

Albury had previously worked as a liaison on counter-terrorism matters at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. He has been charged with one count of “knowingly and willfully” transmitting documents and information related to national defense to a news organization and one count of refusing to hand over documents in his possession to the government upon request.


While the FBI warrant filed against Albury does not explicitly name The Intercept, MPR revealed that the documents described in the search warrant exactly match a cache of FBI documents used in The Intercept’s article series titled “The FBI’s Secret Rules,” published in January 2017. Albury is alleged to have possessed and shared the documents with a news outlet between February 2016 and January 2017. The documents examine the expansion of, as well as the questionable tactics used by, the FBI since the attacks of September 11, 2001. The Intercept’s current editor, Betsy Reed, stated that the publication does not discuss anonymous sources.

Read more by Whitney Webb

The Media’s Curious Coverage of the “Second Snowden”
Displacing WikiLeaks and Intercepting Whistleblowers: SecureDrop’s Security Problem
Palantir: The PayPal-offshoot Becomes a Weapon in the War Against Whistleblowers and WikiLeaks
FBI Whistleblower on Pierre Omidyar and His Campaign to Neuter Wikileaks
Former FBI special agent and whistleblower Coleen Rowley — who retired after 24 years after having opposed the invasion of Iraq and exposed the agency’s mishandling of information — told MintPress that she was “kind of surprised that FBI informant guidelines,” such as those allegedly leaked by Albury, “are now considered secret as, if I remember right, most of the informant guidelines were not classified when I worked there [up to and including 2004]. But after 9-11, things began to rapidly change, so I am guessing they have overly/improperly classified them [these types of documents].”

Rowley, who like Albury worked in Minneapolis during her time at the FBI, continued that “the informant program was replete with problems because there was no oversight” during her years at the FBI and that “Albury was probably trying to bring systemic problems [in the FBI] to the public. That makes him a true whistleblower.”

The Intercept fails to protect its source

Other information contained in the complaint against Albury has led some to suggest that The Intercept was responsible for outing or “burning” Albury as a confidential source. According to the FBI, The Intercept made two Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests in March 2016. Both of those requests contained specific information identifying the names of the documents that were not publicly available.

Previously sealed FBI search warrants show that these FOIA requests led the FBI to link references contained in the requests to Albury’s activity on FBI information systems. This led the FBI to conclude that “the classified and/or controlled nature of the documents indicates the News Outlet obtained these documents from someone with direct access to them” and that The Intercept had the documents prior to making the FOIA requests and then “used its knowledge of such documents to create the FOIA requests.”

Jesus, what a bad look. A second member of the US intelligence community, this time a Minneapolis FBI agent, has been charged with leaking to the Intercept. This appears to the the opsec failure: https://t.co/nMX1K2qUHn pic.twitter.com/eW3xTpsSf8

— Kevin Collier (@kevincollier) March 28, 2018

Ah the Intercept: Get a source, try to launder the source's leaked documents through FOIA requests, fail, publish anyway, get source arrested.#NeverChangehttps://t.co/Vb0tjD1M7T

— Nicholas Weaver (@ncweaver) March 28, 2018

An FBI review conducted at a later date found that Albury had taken 11 screenshots of one of the documents specifically named in the FOIA requests by The Intercept and was one of only 16 individuals to access the document between August 2011 and March 29, 2016 – when the FOIA request was filed. The warrant also added that “to date, a review of FBI records has revealed no indication that any individual other than ALBURY both accessed this document and conducted cut and paste action.”

The FBI has asserted that Albury was found to have accessed more than two-thirds of the leaked documents published by The Intercept and had been caught taking photos of other secret documents months later in the summer of 2017.

Interestingly, The Intercept report referencing Albury’s arrest does not make any mention of the FOIA requests mentioned in the FBI’s case against Albury. A statement regarding Albury’s arrest from First Look Media, The Intercept’s parent company, mentions neither the FOIA requests nor the involvement of The Intercept.

Second whistleblower burned in less than a year

Albury is not the first source to have been burned by poor journalistic practices and source protection methods at The Intercept. Just nine months ago, Reality Leigh Winner, a now 26-year-old federal contractor, was arrested for allegedly leaking a classified NSA document to The Intercept that was related to an investigation of an alleged Russian military intelligence hacking operation targeting the U.S. Ever since her initial arrest, Winner has been held in pre-trial detention and has been denied bail. She faces up to 10 years in prison under the Espionage Act and her trial is set to begin in October of this year.

While The Intercept has long maintained that it was unaware that Winner was the source of the document, FBI documents have shown that negligence helped lead federal investigators straight to Winner.The Intercept’s scanned images of the intelligence report that Winner leaked contained tracking dots – a type of watermark – that, according to Rob Graham of the Errata Security blog, showed “exactly when and where documents, any document, is printed.” These dots make it easy to identify a printer’s serial number as well as the date and time a document was printed. As Graham noted, “Because the NSA logs all printing jobs on its printers, it can use this to match up precisely who printed the document.”

https://twitter.com/ErrataRob/status/871931112221794306

In addition, and perhaps most concerning of all, the FBI warrant also notes that the reporter in question – who is unnamed in the document – contacted a government contractor with whom he had a prior relationship and revealed where the documents had been postmarked from – Winner’s home of Augusta, Georgia – along with Winner’s work location. He also sent unedited images of the documents that contained the tracking dot security markings that allowed the document to be traced to Winner.

Despite that, The Intercept has never named the reporter who was responsible and has taken minimal responsibility as an organization for her arrest. However, Pierre Omidyar – the billionaire backer of The Intercept, who has a noted disdain for transparency organizations like WikiLeaks – has directed First Look Media, The Intercept’s parent company, to support Winner’s legal defense via its Press Freedom Defense Fund. It remains to be seen if Omidyar and First Look Media will offer to support Albury’s defense.

While the identity of the reporter mentioned in the FBI warrant remains unknown, the published report that used the document leaked by Winner has four authors – two of whom, Matthew Cole and Richard Esposito, were once involved in a case against CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou. Cole still writes regularly for The Intercept while Esposito’s last story for the publication was the report containing the Winner document. When Winner’s arrest was announced, Kiriakou specifically singled out Cole as having not only misled him, but also played a likely role in incriminating him. Kiriakou spent nearly two years in prison for exposing the CIA’s torture program.

Kiriakou, in an email to MintPress stated:

I am appalled that yet another whistleblower in touch with The Intercept has been outed and arrested. The Intercept has a track record on whistleblowers that it should be ashamed of. Reality Winner was in touch with The Intercept and was arrested and charged with espionage. Terry Albury apparently was in touch with The Intercept and was arrested and charged with espionage. I was arrested and charged with espionage after being in touch with Matthew Cole, now an Intercept reporter. If The Intercept cannot or will not protect the identity of its sources, it should not be in the business of journalism. Indeed, perhaps The Intercept should walk away from national security reporting before its lack of journalistic professionalism ruins any more lives.”

Rowley, for her part, took a different view of the situation. She stated that “whistleblowing is so difficult these days for a lot of different reasons. … Both the whistleblower and the reporter are really up against some huge challenges. It’s probably not possible [anymore] to guarantee secrecy. If any reporter is promising that kind of thing, they are probably not being honest because the government has really doubled down on the ‘insider threat.’”

However, Rowley also expressed skepticism about recent hires at The Intercept and also asserted:

[The Intercept] should be a lot more forthright about this [Albury arrest] because this issue [whistleblowers, leaks] is their bread and butter. … That’s The Intercept’s brand and if they now are falling down on that job they should be as forthright as they could be about this mess and not just blaming [Attorney General Jeff] Sessions and Trump – the crackdown on whistleblowers has been going on for a long time.”

She also expressed concern about the SecureDrop platform that The Intercept promotes.

Pierre Omidyar and the Snowden documents

The news that another whistleblower in contact with The Intercept has been arrested is concerning, as it suggests that source protection at the outlet is not given the importance it deserves, especially when those sources are risking their freedom to get vital information out to the public. However, other actions taken by The Intercept in its short history have also raised concern and have been the subject of extensive reporting at MintPress News as well as other publications, such as Pando.

Much of the scrutiny, aside from the arrest of Winner and now Albury, has been aimed at The Intercept’s billionaire backer, Pierre Omidyar, who is very well-connected to various agencies of the U.S. government and powerful politicians, including past presidents; has funded U.S.-backed regime-change efforts abroad; and still funds USAID, particularly its overseas program aimed at “advancing U.S. national security interests” abroad. Omidyar also has a history of attacking the transparency organization WikiLeaks and has publicly stated that, in the case of those who leak documents to news outlets, those outlets “should help catch the thief.”

Concern and speculation related to Omidyar’s role at The Intercept has proliferated due to its glacial publishing of the Snowden documents. Indeed, The Intercept was founded with the mission to “aggressively report” on the leaked NSA documents Edward Snowden provided to Intercept co-founders Laura Poitras and Glenn Greenwald. However, in the years since The Intercept’s founding, more than 90 percent of those documents leaked by Snowden have yet to be made publicly available, leading some to accuse the publication of having “privatized” leaks originally intended for public scrutiny.

Snowden, however, has not publicly spoken about the slow pace of the releases and, in the past, has said he delegated all decision-making regarding the release of the documents to the journalists to whom he gave his cache. Snowden’s lack of concern could also potentially be due to the fact that he is now the President of the Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF), which has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from Omidyar since 2014. The majority of the FPF’s directors, aside from Snowden, either work for First Look Media – the Omidyar-owned parent company of The Intercept – or for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) – which has received significant funding from the Omidyar network since 2004.

Another area of contention related to the release – or lack thereof – of the Snowden documents has been the timing with which some documents have been released. In two recent cases, The Intercept published Snowden documents that would have had a major impact had they been released earlier. In one instance, The Intercept published a document last year on the Syrian conflict that revealed that some Syrian “rebel” opposition groups were taking marching orders from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. As MintPress reported at the time, The Intercept published this document only after the U.S. State Department itself began to report more honestly on the nature of these so-called “rebels.”

A more recent example of this occurred little over a week ago. On March 20, The Intercept published Snowden documents that revealed how the NSA worked to illegally “track down” Bitcoin users, naming tracking the movements of Bitcoin as a “#1 priority.” However, the information in this document was released only after Bitcoin had become a mainstream phenomenon. It also was released after it could have helped defend Ross Ulbricht of Silk Road fame.

As The Intercept itself noted:

Part of his [Ulbricht’s] unsuccessful defense was the insistence that the FBI’s story of how it found him did not add up, and that the government may have discovered and penetrated the Silk Road’s servers with the help of the NSA — possibly illegally. The prosecution dismissed this theory in no uncertain terms.”

Thus, if this document had been released before or during Ulbricht’s trial, it could have impacted the outcome. In 2016, Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison without parole and his legal team is seeking to appeal that decision. Interestingly, one of Ulbricht’s lawyers, Joshua Dratel, is currently representing Terry Albury.

“Welcoming” whistleblowers should not mean outing them

Despite its sizable financial resources and the number of employees who are dedicated to source protection, The Intercept’s practices have led to the arrest of a source — not once but twice — in less than a year. In the cases of Winner and now Albury, it has not taken full responsibility for its role in outing either of these unfortunate whistleblowers, but still seeks to present itself as a trustworthy organization that “welcomes whistleblowers.” Along with past calls to scrutinize the publication — as well as its billionaire backer — Albury’s arrest should serve as a fresh reminder that The Intercept has largely become part of the establishment journalism that it purports to stand against, and is hardly the haven for whistleblowers that it has presented itself to be.
https://www.mintpressnews.com/bad-track ... pt/239822/



The Intercept
Betsy Reed
August 23 2018, 10:08 a.m.

STATEMENT ON THE SENTENCING OF WHISTLEBLOWER REALITY WINNER FOR DISCLOSING NSA REPORT ON RUSSIAN ELECTION HACKING
Betsy Reed
August 23 2018, 10:08 a.m.
REALITY WINNER WAS sentenced today to 63 months in prison for disclosing a top-secret NSA document describing a hacking campaign directed by the Russian military against U.S. voting systems.

On June 5, 2017, The Intercept published a story about the document. We did not know the identity of the source who had sent it to us. Shortly after we posted our story, we learned that Winner had been arrested two days earlier. After an internal review, we acknowledged shortcomings in our handling of the document.
https://theintercept.com/2018/08/23/rea ... n-hacking/




Reality Winner was arrested by FBI agents at her home in Augusta, Georgia, June 3rd, 2017, two days before The Intercept published an exposé revealing Russian military intelligence conducted a cyberattack on at least one US voting software company just days before the US presidential election in 2016


It was provided to the Intercept, which made several mistakes related to source protection that led authorities to identify Winner as the person who gave the report to the media outlet.
https://shadowproof.com/2018/08/23/nsa- ... isclosure/



Evidence That The Intercept Betrayed Winner
The Intercept Sent A Copy Of The Document To An NSA Contractor Who Tattled
One of the Intercept's reporters shared a photograph of the document with another contractor in an attempt to verify its authenticity. Crucially, that reporter told the contractor that the document had been sent from Augusta, Georgia — where Winner lives.

[O]n May 24, a reporter from the Intercept reached out to an unnamed government contractor, trying to determine the validity of the leak. During the exchange, the Intercept revealed that the leak had been mailed with a postmark of Augusta, Georgia, where Winner lives. (Checking with other sources about the validity of a leak is not necessarily bad opsec; revealing specific information about the leak almost certainly is — though it's also probably more common than journalists would like to admit.)
[New York Magazine]

According to the FBI's search warrant affidavit, the contractor eventually told his or her superiors about the conversation with the reporter.

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 1, 2017, the Reporter texted the Contractor and said that a U.S Government Agency official had verified that the document was real.
Lawfare's Susan Hennessey points out on Twitter that the Intercept's contractor source was legally obligated to report any leak to his or her superiors, which means that the Intercept was taking a big risk by sharing the leak with him or her.


The Intercept Also Gave A Copy Of The Document Directly To The NSA
As part of the verification process, and to give the government a chance to recommend redactions of sensitive info, the Intercept shared some version of the document with the NSA.

The Intercept also passed along a copy of the document to the government as part of its reporting process — and that apparently contained some clues as well. "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," says one of the court documents.
[Washington Post]
http://digg.com/2017/did-intercept-burn-reality-winner



Mother of NSA Whistleblower Reality Winner: My Daughter Was “Nailed to the Door”
Amy Goodman Published August 24, 2018
NSA whistleblower Reality Winner has been sentenced to five years and three months in prison — the longest sentence ever imposed in federal court for leaking government information to the media. Twenty-six-year-old Reality Winner is the first person to be sentenced under the Espionage Act since President Trump took office. Her sentencing Thursday came after she pleaded guilty in June to transmitting a top-secret document to a news organization. She had faced up to 10 years in prison. We speak with her mother, Billie Winner-Davis.

TRANSCRIPT

AMY GOODMAN: NSA whistleblower Reality Winner has been sentenced to five years and three months in prison — the longest sentence ever imposed in federal court for leaking government information to the media. The 26-year-old Reality Winner is the first person to be sentenced under the Espionage Act since President Trump took office. Her sentencing Thursday came after she pleaded guilty in June to transmitting a top-secret document to a news organization. She had faced up to 10 years in prison.

This is Bobby Christine, US attorney for the Southern District of Georgia, speaking after Winner’s sentencing.

BOBBY CHRISTINE: The sentence rendered today is the longest received by a defendant for an unauthorized disclosure of national defense information to the media. It appropriately satisfies the need for both punishment and deterrence, in light of the nature and seriousness of the offense. … Winner’s purposeful violation put our nation’s security at risk. … She claimed to hate America. When asked, “You don’t really hate America, right?” she responded, “I mean, yeah, I do. It’s literally the worst thing to happen on the planet.” She was the quintessential example of an insider threat.

AMY GOODMAN: Reality Winner was arrested by FBI agents at her home in Augusta, Georgia, June 3rd, 2017, two days before The Intercept published an exposé revealing Russian military intelligence conducted a cyberattack on at least one US voting software company just days before the US presidential election in 2016. The exposé was based on a classified NSA report from May 5th, 2017, that shows the agency is convinced the Russian General Staff Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU, was responsible for interfering in the 2016 presidential election.

Earlier this morning, President Trump tweeted about the case, saying, quote, “Ex-NSA contractor to spend 63 months in jail over ‘classified’ information. Gee, this is ‘small potatoes’ compared to what Hillary Clinton did! So unfair Jeff, Double Standard.” He was referring to Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who he has been attacking over the last 24 hours.

For more, we’re joined by three guests who were in the courtroom Thursday during Reality Winner’s sentencing. Joining us via Democracy Now! video stream is Billie Winner-Davis, mother of Reality Leigh Winner. She’s joining us from Augusta, where Reality Winner was sentenced. In Atlanta, Georgia, Kevin Gosztola is managing editor of Shadowproof Press. He has been covering Reality’s case and has covered several whistleblower trials, including that of Chelsea Manning. He was in the courtroom on Wednesday. And in Washington, DC, James Risen is with us, The Intercept’s senior national security correspondent, a best-selling author and a former New York Times reporter, also serves as director of First Look Media’s Press Freedom Defense Fund.

We welcome you all to Democracy Now! Let’s begin with Reality’s mother, Billie Winner-Davis. You were in the courtroom with your daughter. Can you explain your — can you share your reaction to her plea deal and sentencing?

BILLIE WINNER–DAVIS: Well, I think yesterday my initial reaction to the whole proceeding and the judge’s sentencing was, I was relieved that the judge did approve of the plea agreement that the parties had reached for the 63 months in prison with a 3-year supervised release. Today I’m a little bit bitter. I’m a little angry. No, I should say I’m a lot bitter today. Just processing it, knowing that she is going to be serving the longest prison sentence for this, hearing Mr. Christine’s comments about her, hearing, you know, again, that she has to be the deterrent for anyone else in America who would think of warning us, of blowing the whistle on something important like this, it’s just — it’s really hard. It’s hard, as her mother, to have to experience this and to know that she’s going to be the one who is going to set the example. She is that first leaker under Trump’s administration. She’s the first one that they intended to nail to the door as a message to others.

AMY GOODMAN: And can you share Reality’s statement yesterday before the judge?

BILLIE WINNER–DAVIS: Reality had a pretty lengthy statement that she had worked on. She basically — she let the judge know a little bit about who she was. She did share with the court that she was grateful for the professionalism that everyone had shown to her, the respectful environment. She let the court know, you know, a little bit about who she was, why she went in to serve her country. She basically went through her childhood, her relationship with her father, how 9/11 had affected her as a child, how she followed her stepbrother’s footsteps to go into the Air Force to be a linguist. She wanted to serve her country. She really had the desire to protect and defend and serve her country. I think she was trying to, you know, let the court know that although in some statements with texting with her sister she did indicate that she hates America, that that’s not really who she was. And so, she was really letting the court know a little bit about herself.

She also apologized to the court. She apologized to the government for the breach of trust. She apologized to the court and the government for the expense that she has cost them. She apologized to her family. She indicated that she knew that what she had done was wrong. She indicated that she was willing to accept responsibility and willing to move forward and accept the consequences of her actions.

AMY GOODMAN: How long has she been in jail, Billie?

BILLIE WINNER–DAVIS: She’s been in jail for about 15 months.

AMY GOODMAN: Will that be part — will time served be part of that five — more than five years in jail?

BILLIE WINNER–DAVIS: Yes, it’s my understanding that that time served will count toward her sentence, day for day.

AMY GOODMAN: When she came into the courtroom, you heard her shackles?

BILLIE WINNER–DAVIS: Yes. That was — that was really difficult. That’s the first time that we’ve heard that, I think, because typically she’s been in the courtroom downstairs, and there’s carpeting. You know, you kind of hear her shuffle. But yesterday it was very quiet when they brought her in. And when she went up to the podium, you could actually hear her leg shackles hit the floor and make that clanking sound. It’s really striking that every time that Reality has appeared in court, she has to wear the orange inmate jumpsuit. She is shackled. She is very much presented as a criminal in that court. They dehumanize her, and they portray her as a criminal.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, your daughter Reality will be incarcerated at the Federal Medical Center, Carswell in Fort Worth, Texas. Why a medical center?

BILLIE WINNER–DAVIS: That is only the recommendation at this time. That’s the recommendation that her defense team is making for her, the recommendation that a psychiatrist is making for her. And the judge actually approved of that recommendation yesterday. Whether or not she’s placed there, we won’t know. That will be up to the Bureau of Prisons to decide. But we do feel like that facility will meet her needs. My daughter does suffer from severe depression. She does suffer from bulimia. This entire situation with her being incarcerated, her inability to really control her environment, has been very difficult on her. And we’re hoping that she is placed there, so that they can meet her needs and she can get the treatment that she needs.

AMY GOODMAN: And did you speak to her? Were you able to communicate with her yesterday?

BILLIE WINNER–DAVIS: Afterward, she called me when she was back at the jail. The defense team did ask the marshals if we could be allowed, you know, a brief visit with her yesterday at the courthouse. And again, we were denied. They make this request whenever they can. And again, the marshals will not permit us to be in the same room with her.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re going to break and then come back to this discussion. We’re speaking to Billie Winner-Davis. She is the mother of Reality Winner, who has just been sentenced to more than five years for releasing intelligence, leaking a top-secret document to The Intercept. When we come back, in addition to Billie Winner-Davis, we’ll be joined by Jim Risen. He is now at The Intercept. He’s a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist. He himself has been prosecuted, under the Obama administration. And we’ll talk about that, as well. And Kevin Gosztola, longtime reporter, in the courtroom yesterday, he’ll be speaking to us from Atlanta. Stay with us.
https://truthout.org/video/mother-of-ns ... -the-door/
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Re: RI Subject - Reality Winner

Postby Grizzly » Thu Apr 04, 2019 11:58 pm

hopefully we can dispel that rumor that trump is a really good guy


Name one person, who has said that or even eluded to that on this board, please.
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Re: RI Subject - Reality Winner

Postby RocketMan » Fri Apr 05, 2019 12:05 am

Grizzly » Fri Apr 05, 2019 6:58 am wrote:
hopefully we can dispel that rumor that trump is a really good guy


Name one person, who has said that or even eluded to that on this board, please.


Yep, this is just par for the course. Throwing out these insulting, semi deniable asides while proclaiming to be persecuted. And continuing to flood the board.
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Re: RI Subject - Reality Winner

Postby Grizzly » Fri Apr 05, 2019 12:18 am

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service , doen't care how much bandwidth is used up, as long as the honey-trap works. I suspect that's why Jeff abandoned this place. But he can't tell us. The canary is dead. I'm American, for now. Until the disapearing and re-education/work camps start. I wont be silenced or bow to the Panopticon any more. I'll die on my feet not on my knee's. Share that with the Fusion centres here (locally you, cowards). As Manson said, YOU MADE ME THIS WAY.

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Yeah, until they drop the Genomebomb, bio-chem weapons.

But, maybe... we can before they do it.
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Re: RI Subject - Reality Winner

Postby Grizzly » Fri Apr 05, 2019 3:07 am

Glenn Greenbacks Completes the Edward Snowjob –
“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.”

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Re: RI Subject - Reality Winner

Postby Grizzly » Fri Apr 05, 2019 3:13 am

Grizzly » Fri Apr 05, 2019 3:07 am wrote:Glenn Greenbacks Completes the Edward Snowjob –


Story #1: Silencing the Whistle – The Intercept Shutters Snowden Archive, Citing Cost
https://www.mintpressnews.com/intercept ... ve/256772/

NWNW Flashback: Reality Intercept_ed as Deep State Winner Busted (Jun. 8, 2017)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CGXgnH2HBc

Story #2: US Refusal to Confirm or Deny It Put American Journalist on Drone Kill List Called ‘Chilling’
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2019/ ... -kill-list

US Spies Helped UAE Hack Phones of Al Jazeera Chairman, BBC Host & Other Journalists
https://www.rt.com/news/455335-us-spies ... hones-uae/

Story #3: Forget ‘Creepy’ – Biden Has A Major Ukraine Problem
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-04- ... ne-problem

.@SenFeinstein told me she was surprised she went viral, because: “You know what somebody said to me?–I didn’t see any of this–they said anybody with a cell phone in their hand can get you on international news in two minutes. I never knew that.”
https://twitter.com/ryangrim/status/1100484670175805440

Biden Accused By Two More Women of Inappropriate Touching
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden- ... e-touching

Biden Pledges In Video To Be More “Respectful” of Personal Space
https://www.politico.com/story/2019/04/ ... ce-1253527

NWNW Flashback: #CreepyJoeBiden and Lady Gaga to Establish Sexual Assault Centres (Nov. 16, 2017)
https://mediamonarchy.com/nwnw328-video/

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Re: RI Subject - Reality Winner

Postby alloneword » Fri Apr 05, 2019 10:41 am

Elvis » Wed Oct 11, 2017 4:29 am wrote:Check Cryptome.org for these files:

2017-0125.zip Reality Winner Court Exhibit Doc 112, October 4, 2017

2017-0122.zip Reality Winner Court Exhibits Docs 104-110, October 4, 2017 (13MB)

2017-0118.pdf Reality Winner Arrest and Interrogation via Politico, October 1, 2017 (2.8MB)


^^^ Thanks for that, Elvis.

Incase anyone's still interested, they're currently in: https://cryptome.org/cryptomb41.htm

2017-0125.zip Reality Winner Court Exhibit Doc 112, October 4, 2017

2017-0122.zip Reality Winner Court Exhibits Docs 104-110, October 4, 2017 (13MB)

2017-0118.pdf Reality Winner Arrest and Interrogation via Politico, October 1, 2017 (2.8MB)

also 'Arrest Warrant' here.

Having read through all that, two things strike me about 'Winner' and the case:

1) She was an idiot (although I do kinda like her).

2) It's doubtful that her getting caught was anything to do with MIC (printer dots), more likely it was due to (1) above.

Cheers for the vids, G. Snowjob and Greenbucks... heh. :D

But yeah, five years for leaking a document that remains "the only actual public evidence we have so far that attributes voting hacking attempts to the Russian government", despite being no more than an unconfirmed 'analysts judgement'.
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Re: RI Subject - Reality Winner

Postby Spiro C. Thiery » Mon May 13, 2019 2:21 pm

Another Whistleblower Bites the Dust as The Intercept Adds a Third Notch to Its Burn Belt

The Intercept, which has long been associated with the documents shared by whistleblower Edward Snowden, has yet to fire any of the reporters responsible for these breaches that have seen two whistleblowers already imprisoned and third, Daniel Hale, likely to be imprisoned.
May 10th, 2019
By Whitney Webb

Early Thursday morning, the Department of Justice unsealed an indictment against Daniel Everette Hale — a former intelligence analyst for the U.S. Air Force and National Security Agency (NSA) and later a defense contractor working for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) — for providing a reporter with classified government information. The reporter in question, although unnamed in the indictment, is Jeremy Scahill, co-founder of and journalist for the online publication The Intercept.

The indictment against Hale makes him the third Intercept source to be charged with leaking classified information to the outlet in less than two years. Notably, both of the government whistleblowers that have already been prosecuted and convicted by the Trump administration – Reality Winner and Terry Albury – were Intercept sources who were outed as whistleblowers by reporters working for the online publication.

The publication, which has long been associated with the documents shared by whistleblower Edward Snowden, has yet to fire any of the reporters responsible for these breaches that have seen two whistleblowers already imprisoned and third, Daniel Hale, likely to be imprisoned.

read more:
https://www.mintpressnews.com/daniel-hale-another-whistleblower-bites-the-dust-as-the-intercept-adds-a-third-notch-to-its-burn-belt/258386/
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Re: RI Subject - Reality Winner

Postby JackRiddler » Mon May 13, 2019 3:26 pm

.

Hale's case is not remotely comparable to Winner's. He has been speaking out already for six years and has made multiple public and documentary appearances. The FBI first raided his house in 2014. It was not a secret that he was an ex-insider source on drone warfare. This is about the government deciding to go after him, and possibly also Scahill (which would be another line crossed). This is a very serious moment in government repression, it should not be instrumentalized for a cheap pile-on on the Intercept.

https://www.democracynow.org/2019/5/10/ ... tleblowers

AMY GOODMAN: [...]

A former U.S. intelligence analyst was arrested Thursday and charged with violating the Espionage Act for allegedly leaking documents about the secretive U.S. drone program. 31-year-old Daniel Hale was arrested in Nashville, Tennessee. He faces up to 50 years in prison. Hale was enlisted in the Air Force from 2009 to 2013, during which he worked with the National Security Agency and the Joint Special Operations Task Force at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan where he helped identify targets to be assassinated. He later worked as a contractor for the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.

Hale is accused of disclosing 11 top-secret or secret documents to a reporter. The indictment does not name the reporter, but unnamed government sources have told media outlets the reporter is investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill of The Intercept. In 2015, The Intercept published a special report called The Drone Papers exposing the inner workings of the U.S. military’s assassination program in Afghanistan, Yemen and Somalia. The publication’s findings were later turned into a book called The Assassination Complex: Inside the Government’s Secret Drone Warfare Program.

In a statement, The Intercept’s editor-in-chief Betsy Reed said, “The Intercept does not comment on matters relating to the identity of anonymous sources. In an indictment unsealed on May 9, the government alleges that documents on the U.S. drone program were leaked to a news organization. These documents detailed a secret, unaccountable process for targeting and killing people around the world, including U.S. citizens, through drone strikes. They are of vital public importance, and activity related to their disclosure is protected by the First Amendment.” Reed went on to say, “The alleged whistleblower faces up to 50 years in prison. No one has ever been held accountable for killing civilians in drone strikes,” she said.

After leaving the Air Force in 2013, Daniel Hale began publicly speaking out against the drone program. In November 2013, he spoke at a drone summit in Washington, D.C., organized by CODEPINK.

DANIEL HALE: Before I begin, one last thing. I just would like to in a way say I am sorry. I am not up here for any good reasons. And to the people in the audience who are victims, or who are families of victims, or have families who live in countries where U.S. militarism and specifically unmanned systems are conducting kinetic strikes, I am sorry. Because I am up here because I was, for a time, a short period of time during my military career as an analyst, working with unmanned systems and deployed to Afghanistan. And at the very least, you all deserve an apology.

AMY GOODMAN: In January 2014, Daniel Hale spoke at a rally outside the White House calling for the closing of the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo.

DANIEL HALE: Good afternoon, everybody. My name is Daniel Hale. I was a veteran in the United States Air Force from 2009 until 2013. Through my experience and my deployment to Afghanistan, where I was primarily tasked with pursuing high-value targets through the utilization of unmanned systems or otherwise known as drones, I came to learn of the thousands of prisoners who remain at the prison in Bagram Air Force Base to this day who are in similar situations to those at Guantánamo, who are continually held indefinitely for benign or otherwise petty offenses or reasons not given to them whatsoever.

AMY GOODMAN: Daniel Hale was also featured in the documentary National Bird about drone warfare whistleblowers. It was directed by Sonia Kennebeck.

DANIEL HALE: People would defend drones and defend the way that they’re used. They always say, you know, they protect American lives by not putting them in harm’s way. Well, what they really do is they just embolden commanders. They embolden decision-makers. Because there is no threat. There is no immediate consequence. They can do the strike and they can potentially kill this person that they’re so desperate to get and to eliminate because of how dangerous, potentially dangerous they could be to the U.S.

But if it just so happens that they don’t kill that person or some other people are involved in the strike and get killed as well, there’s no consequence for it. When it comes to high-value targeting, every mission is to go after one person at a time. But anybody else that’s killed in that strike is just blanketly assumed to be an associate of the targeted individual. So as long as they can reasonably identify that all of the people in the field of view of the camera are military-aged males, meaning anybody who is believed to be of age 16 or older, they are a legitimate target under the rules of engagement. If that strike occurs and kills all of them, they just say that they got ’em all.

AMY GOODMAN: Drone whistleblower Daniel Hale speaking in the documentary National Bird. In August 2014, the FBI raided Hale’s house, but the Obama Justice Department never filed charges. In the film, Hale spoke about the possibility of being indicted.

DANIEL HALE: Personally, I just live every day trying to become more and more comfortable with the idea that it’s probably going to happen. That I’m probably going to get indicted, and I’m probably going to get charged with a crime and that there’s probably a real chance that I’ll have to fight to stay out of prison.


AMY GOODMAN: Those are the words of drone whistleblower Daniel Hale, who was arrested in Nashville on Thursday. After appearing in court, he was released under pretrial supervision. His next court hearing is May 17th. According to the Freedom of the Press Foundation, Hale is at least the sixth alleged journalistic source charged by the Trump administration over the past two years.

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Re: RI Subject - Reality Winner

Postby Harvey » Mon May 13, 2019 3:59 pm

As much as I'm ambivalent about the Intercept, it does some good work and some execrable work though it's certainly developing a track record for fucking over it's sources, by accident or by design. But then again, both Seth Rich (allegedly) and Chelsea Manning leaked to Wikileaks (who have yet to reveal a single source AFAIK, even posthumously) for all the good it did them. (Side note, Trump Junior learned of the leaked DNC material just a few days before Seth Rich's death. A fact few have commented on. It's perfectly plausible, given their relationship that the Clinton campaign learned of Rich via Trump...)

The takeaway message is that it's a war on leaks and those who leak, which has always been the case and why it's so important to defend both Julian Assange and Wikileaks. Many conversations which formerly resulted in the charge "Conspiracy theorist!" no longer have a predestined terminus, thanks in large part to Wikileaks. In other words, they are at least one reason that the current wave of change is a real contest instead of a foregone conclusion. As for the Intercept, much as I appreciate Glen Greenwald on the whole, he's probably on a pirate ship who's captain and crew have mutinied for the king, but nevertheless, the riddler has almost certainly called it correctly on this one. (And please stop bitching. Plurality is to the good!)
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Re: RI Subject - Reality Winner

Postby Spiro C. Thiery » Tue May 14, 2019 6:44 am

JackRiddler » Yesterday, 21:26 wrote:.
Hale's case is not remotely comparable to Winner's.

I was thinking exactly the same thing when I put it here, but my search skills are either inept, or the search function here rather lame. I thought there was an Intercept thread where I had intended to put it.

JackRiddler » Yesterday, 21:26 wrote:.
This is about the government deciding to go after him, and possibly also Scahill (which would be another line crossed). This is a very serious moment in government repression, it should not be instrumentalized for a cheap pile-on on the Intercept.


Certainly regarding the first part, but I am not entirely sure how cheap the pile on is. Like any press org, "the Intercept" can be considered a synecdoche or at least metonymy of sorts (whatever one things of its staff of journalists) that should include consideration of villain and victim alike, which would include anyone who might be aiding the former and causing the latter.
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Re: RI Subject - Reality Winner

Postby JackRiddler » Tue May 14, 2019 10:57 am

.

I agree. But again, even if true generally about the Intercept, or at least those there responsible for burning two sources, it's irrelevant in the Hale case. No one burned him, he spoke out himself, and we must honor his courage. This is government taking revenge and preemptively attacking others who would speak out. Hale's case demands media focus on what is actually going on: government repression that should unite even highly questionable corporate media (say, NY Times) in condemnation. So Mint Press and others are engaging in a bad kind of diversion and divisiveness when they shift the Hale case coverage to attack their competition for something that is not true.
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Re: RI Subject - Reality Winner

Postby Spiro C. Thiery » Tue May 14, 2019 11:14 am

JackRiddler » 14 minutes ago wrote:.

I agree. But again, even if true generally about the Intercept, or at least those there responsible for burning two sources, it's irrelevant in the Hale case. No one burned him, he spoke out himself, and we must honor his courage. This is government taking revenge and preemptively attacking others who would speak out. Hale's case demands media focus on what is actually going on: a government repression that should unite even highly questionable corporate media (say NY Times) in condemnation. So Mint Press and others are engaging in a bad kind of diversion and divisiveness when they shift the Hale case coverage to attack their competition for something that is not true.


He's not been charged with speaking out. And as far as I know, he didn't burn himself as it relates to what he's being charged with.
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Re: RI Subject - Reality Winner

Postby JackRiddler » Tue May 14, 2019 12:16 pm

It can't be said he "burned himself."

As he says in the transcript from 2014, he revealed himself. As I would say, he courageously did the right thing and spoke out in person at multiple appearances. This started in 2013 and resulted in a first raid of his house by the FBI, after which he expected that they might indict him. So he knew what he was doing and of course they have been after him for five years now. Since his material was being published by Scahill in The Intercept, it was not a mystery to the bad guys regarding whom they would investigate. This has been a discretionary call by the government, which has now belatedly decided to go ahead with the repressive move. Again, in no way can this be compared to the Winner case, or be laid at the feet of the outlet that published Hale's material.

In the simplest words, there is no relevance to defending or criticizing the Intercept in this case, although of course it must be defended as a publisher. It matters most to focus on the actual perpetrator of repression, the US government.
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