“The report looks at a number of cases of US exported terrorism, including attacks by US based or financed Jewish, Muslim and Irish-nationalism terrorists. It concludes that foreign perceptions of the US as an “Exporter of Terrorism” together with US double standards in international law, may lead to noncooperation in renditions (including the arrest of CIA officers) and the decision to not share terrorism related intelligence with the United States,”
says a statement by WikiLeaks that is included with the report published on the World Wide Web.
The Pentagon and various U.S. officials have condemned WikiLeaks for releasing at least 76,000 secret U.S. documents surrounding the war in Afghanistan. U.S. authorities say releasing the documents puts the lives of U.S. service men and women at risk. WikiLeaks says it has another 15,000 documents and plans to publish them. A U.S. Army soldier, Bradley Manning, is being prosecuted for releasing secret documents.
In a recent twist, Swedish prosecutors plan to question WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in relation to a molestation accusation, Bloomberg reports. But Assange says the accusations are false and an attempt to smear him for releasing U.S. documents.
Cropped photo of original taken by New Media Days via WikiMedia Commons. Julian Assange at New Media Days ’09 in Copenhagen.
Julian Assange appears to have more legal problems that have nothing to do with revealing classified documents and national security secrets. Law enforcement authorities in Sweden have accused the controversial WikiLeaks founder/editor with rape and molestation and issued a warrant for his arrest.
Spokeswoman Karin Rosander [of the Swedish prosecutor's office] said Assange was arrested in absentia Friday night, and faces charges in relation to two separate instances, but she didn’t have more detail about when the alleged crimes occurred or who the alleged victims are.
Assange has already denied the allegations on Twitter. His supporters claim the move is just a smear campaign designed to discredit Assange’s whistle-blowing activities.
Assange moves around a lot, and authorities have been unable to determine if Assange is still in Sweden.
According to the London Telegraph, Assange’s accusers are “two Swedish women aged between 20 and 30, and relate to alleged incidents that occurred in a Stockholm apartment and in the city of Enköping outside Stockholm.”
UPDATE: Prosecutors have dropped the rape charge and withdrawn the arrest warrant. As far as the molestation charge is concerned, it is not punishable by jail time in Sweden.
Bradley Manning, who is suspected of leaking a classified video and documents about U.S. military operations, to WikiLeaks, was disciplined by the Army at least twice prior to the leaks. But somehow Manning kept his security clearance that may have helped him to allegedly gain access to and leak the information, according to CNN.
Prior to the leaks, Manning was reprimanded during his advanced individual training (AIT) at Fort Huachuca, Ariz., where the Army was teaching him how to be an intelligence analyst. The incident happened sometime prior to his graduation from AIT in August 2008. Tanja Linton, a Fort Huachuca spokeswoman, told CNN that Manning received “non-judicial punishment,” but she didn’t specify what exactly Manning did.
CNN also quotes an unidentified source said to be an “unnamed military official,” who reportedly said Manning was also demoted from specialist to private first class after getting into a fight with another service member. If that is accurate, then it would be at least the second time that Manning was punished by the Army, and now some are questioning whether or not the Army could have identified Manning earlier as a security risk.
Manning was later arrested as the lead suspect in leaking a classified video of a helicopter attack that killed Reuters reporters and several individuals. The video was published on the World Wide Web by WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks also recently published thousands of classified documents that provide additional long term details about how the war in Afghanistan is being conducted.
The Pentagon has condemned the release of the documents saying it puts U.S. military personnel and U.S. allies at greater risk, but other people say the public has a right to know how the war is being conducted. Government officials suspect Manning was also involved in that leak, but some people believe he may have had outside help.
Photo: Logo used by Wikileaks via Wikimedia Commons.
On Sunday the New York Times released a report about the war effort in Afghanistan that was based on 90,000 pages of U.S military documents supplied by the website Wikileaks.com. According to the Wall Street Journal the reports range from day to day military operations to reports dealing with Taliban heat seeking missiles that have shot down several military aircraft.
The Obama administration has condemned Wikileaks for distributing secret reports that they claim could put more American military operations in danger. However, the administration was also quick to point out that many of the alleged war-crimes found in the documents happened during the Bush administration.
Regardless of political party lines this report paints a depressing view of the war in Afghanistan and the inability of NATO forces to stop the spread of Taliban influence. The war in Afghanistan has become the longest military conflict in U.S history and public doubts about a good ending to the war are mounting. Several lawmakers in Washington have expressed their desire to end the futile war.
These reports could seriously undermine the Democrats this fall as conservative parties focus on the highly criticized Obama Administration war plan for Afghanistan. Even with 50,000 new troops deployed to Afghanistan little support has been gained from the local population. Civilian deaths are mounting and hardening the public opinion in Afghanistan against the U.S.
Wikileaks has also confirmed that it is withholding 15,000 more pages of documents at the request of the military source but will release the reports in the near future. We can only guess what is hidden in those additional reports. Both political parties are bracing for the release of the additional documents because the war in Afghanistan could play a big role in the fall elections.
Julian Assange – the WikiLeaks editor/founder who published a classified 2007 video of a U.S. helicopter attack in Baghdad that killed 12 people, including two Reuters reporters – is being internationally hunted by the U.S. government, according to a new report by Philip Shenon on The Daily Beast. Officials fear Assange may be on the verge of publishing more classified information, specifically, numerous secret cables from the State Department.
The cables are reportedly about Arab governments and their leaders, and date back several years. They were allegedly prepared by diplomats and State Department officials throughout the Middle East. The cables also concern U.S. diplomatic and intelligence efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq, according to The Daily Beast.
Assange got himself into hot water with the U.S. government when he published the helicopter attack video. The video was illegally leaked to WikiLeaks by Bradley Manning of Potomac, Maryland, a 22-year-old Army intelligence specialist, who had access to classified information while in Iraq, according to Reuters. Manning is currently in custody in Kuwait.
The Australian-born Assange appears to be hiding out. It’s likely not in his best interest to be in the United States right now. Assange canceled a scheduled Friday appearance in Las Vegas at an International Reporters and Editors conference, The Daily Beast reports. Assange reportedly doesn’t have a permanent address and moves about from place to place, although he’s apparently been Tweeting publicly in a kind of cat-and-mouse game with U.S. authorities.
The Daily Beast quotes a number of anonymous U.S. officials in its story about the hunt for Assange, so it’s difficult to tell how much is credible and how much isn’t or how extensively the U.S. government is searching for the WikiLeaks founder. It’s also difficult to say how valuable or impactful any classified information Assange may or may not have actually is. If this information is so valuable (which it may not be), then why was a 22-year-old Army specialist allowed to have access to it? If this information is truly that valuable, then it seems like some folks in the government or military screwed up in how classified information is being handled. Who are the people in official positions responsible for this who screwed up? Are they being held accountable? Maybe that’s more important than finding Assange. It’s hard to believe that a young Army specialist, even if he did act alone, is the only person in the military responsible for this problem. There are many levels of responsibility and accountability for keeping secret information secret.
While investigators are spending all this time hunting down Assange, the military might also want to take a hard look at who should be held accountable for these leaks and for the handling of secret information. Perhaps there needs to be a serious shake up in the ranks. The handling of classified information in a time of war is very important, because the lives of American service men and women could be on the line.
The flip side, however, is that much of the information may only being kept secret out of politics, which has the effect of backfiring when you look at it long term, because no one is being held accountable. Such hidden information could actually hurt the United States because wrong-doers and incompetent people are being protected, and their misdeeds are being hidden. In that case, nothing changes, and the wrongful practices and problems continue, leading to more problems, blow-back and undermining of U.S. efforts across the world. Some of the Pentagon’s handling of information, some would say, manipulation, for political reasons, has come into question before. For example, many people believe the Pentagon hid, misrepresented or manipulated information following the 2004 accidental fratricide shooting death of Pat Tillman in Afghanistan. There have also been recent reports that the Pentagon gave $1.4 billion in no-bid contracts to foreign companies with alleged ties to the Kyrgyzstan and their corrupt former president. (See this recent Indyposted post.)
U.S. officials quoted by The Daily Beast say no one wants to hurt Assange; they just want him to stop publishing any more classified information that could damage national security.
“We’d like to know where he is; we’d like his cooperation in this,”
an anonymous U.S. official reportedly told The Daily Beast.
Assange is an advocate for freedom of the press. Here he is speaking about censorship on a YouTube video just four weeks ago at the Oslo Freedom Forum 2010.
“When we see the path that countries like the United States, which once had a proud tradition of freedom of the press, is going down, we have to question whether it is really holding those values any more and what we should do about it, because if we don’t have Western countries as a beacon on the hill for enlightenment values, what countries are left to hold that value?”
Assange says during his Oslo Freedom Forum speech.
WikiLeaks published on Wednesday a secret Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) document, which WikiLeaks titles, “CIA Red Cell Memorandum on United States ‘exporting terrorism’, 2 Feb 2010.” It is unclear exactly how WikiLeaks obtained the document.
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