[LINK] The war on WikiLeaks and why it matters

[Kim Holburn]

I claim this is worth a read.  Note his assessment of US media:
> The American media are largely co-opted, and their few remaining  
> vestiges of real investigative journalism are crippled by financial  
> constraints.
>


Just a selection of the text here.  It is worth reading the whole  
article.

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/03/27/wikileaks/index.html

> A newly leaked CIA report prepared earlier this month (.pdf)  
> analyzes how the U.S. Government can best manipulate public opinion  
> in Germany and France -- in order to ensure that those countries  
> continue to fight in Afghanistan.  The Report celebrates the fact  
> that the governments of those two nations continue to fight the war  
> in defiance of overwhelming public opinion which opposes it -- so  
> much for all the recent veneration of "consent of the governed" --  
> and it notes that this is possible due to lack of interest among  
> their citizenry:   "Public Apathy Enables Leaders to Ignore Voters,"  
> proclaims the title of one section.


....

> It's both interesting and revealing that the CIA sees Obama as a  
> valuable asset in putting a pretty face on our wars in the eyes of  
> foreign populations. It is odious -- though, of course, completely  
> unsurprising -- that the CIA plots ways to manipulate public opinion  
> in foreign countries in order to sustain support for our wars.  Now  
> that this is a Democratic administration doing this and a Democratic  
> war at issue, I doubt many people will object to any of this.  But  
> what is worth noting is how and why this classified Report was made  
> publicly available:  because it was leaked to and then posted by  
> WikiLeaks.org, the site run by the non-profit group Sunshine Press,  
> that is devoted to exposing suppressed government and corporate  
> corruption by publicizing many of their most closely guarded secrets.
>
> * * * * *
>
> I spoke this morning at length with Julian Assange, the Australian  
> citizen who is WikiLeaks' Editor, regarding the increasingly  
> aggressive war being waged against WikiLeaks by numerous government  
> agencies, including the Pentagon.  Over the past several years,  
> WikiLeaks -- which aptly calls itself "the intelligence agency of  
> the people" -- has obtained and then published a wide array of  
> secret, incriminating documents (similar to this CIA Report) that  
> expose the activities of numerous governments and corporations.   
> Among many others, they posted the Standard Operating Manual for  
> Guantanamo, documents showing how corrupt offshore loans  
> precipitated the economic collapse in Iceland, the notorious emails  
> between climate scientists, documents showing toxic dumping off the  
> coast of Africa, and many others.  They have recently come into  
> possession of classified videos relating to  civilian causalities  
> under the command of Gen. David Petraeus, as well as documentation  
> relating to civilian-slaughtering airstrikes in Afghanistan which  
> the U.S. military had agreed to release, only to change their mind.
>
> All of this has made WikiLeaks an increasingly hated target of  
> numerous government and economic elites around the world, including  
> the U.S. Government.  As The New York Times put it last week:  "To  
> the list of the enemies threatening the security of the United  
> States, the Pentagon has added WikiLeaks.org, a tiny online source  
> of information and documents that governments and corporations  
> around the world would prefer to keep secret."  In 2008, the U.S.  
> Army Counterintelligence Center prepared a secret  report --  
> obtained and posted by WikiLeaks -- devoted to this website and  
> detailing, in a section entitled "Is it Free Speech or Illegal  
> Speech?", ways it would seek to destroy the organization.  It  
> discusses the possibility that, for some governments, not merely  
> contributing to WikiLeaks, but "even accessing the website itself is  
> a crime," and outlines its proposal for WikiLeaks' destruction as  
> follows (click on images to enlarge):
>
....

> As the Pentagon report put it:  "the governments of China, Israel,  
> North Korea, Russia, Vietnam and Zimbabwe" have all sought to block  
> access to or otherwise impede the operations of WikiLeaks, and the  
> U.S. Government now joins that illustrious list of transparency- 
> loving countries in targeting them.


....

> The Pentagon report also claims that WikiLeaks has disclosed  
> documents that could expose U.S. military plans in Afghanistan and  
> Iraq and endanger the military mission, though its discussion is  
> purely hypothetical and no specifics are provided. Instead, the bulk  
> of the Pentagon report focuses on documents which embarrass the U.S.  
> Government:  information which, as they put it, "could be  
> manipulated to provide biased news reports or be used for conducting  
> propaganda, disinformation, misinformation, perception management,  
> or influence operations against the U.S. Army by a variety of  
> domestic and foreign actors."  In other words, the Pentagon is  
> furious that this exposing of its secrets might enable others to  
> engage in exactly the type of "perception management" which the  
> aforementioned CIA Report proposes the U.S. do with regard to the  
> citizenry of our allied countries.


....

> * * * * *
>
> In my interview this morning with Assange, he described multiple  
> incidents that clearly signal a recent escalation of surveillance  
> and other forms of harassment directed at WikiLeaks.  Many of those  
> events are detailed in an Editorial they just published, which, he  
> explained, was part of an effort to publicize what is being done to  
> them in order to provide some safety and buffer.  A good summary of  
> those events is provided by Gawker.  As but one disturbing  
> incident:  a volunteer, a minor, who works with WikiLeaks was  
> detained in Iceland last week and questioned extensively about an  
> incriminating video WikiLeaks possesses relating to the actions of  
> the U.S. military.  During the course of the interrogation, the  
> WikiLeaks volunteer was not only asked questions about the video  
> based on non-public knowledge about its contents (i.e., information  
> which only the U.S. military would have), but was also shown  
> surveillance photos of Assange exiting a recent WikiLeaks meeting  
> regarding the imminent posting of documents concerning the Pentagon.
>
> That WikiLeaks is being targeted by the U.S. Government for  
> surveillance and disruption is beyond doubt.  And it underscores  
> how  vital their work is and why it's such a threat.
>
> WikiLeaks editors, including Assagne, have spent substantial time of  
> late in Iceland because there is a pending bill in that country's  
> Parliament that would provide meaningful whistle blower protection  
> for what they do, far greater than exists anywhere else.  Why is  
> Iceland a leading candidate to do that?  Because, last year, that  
> nation suffered full-scale economic collapse.  It was then revealed  
> that numerous nefarious causes (corrupt loans, off-shore  
> transactions, concealed warning signs) were hidden completely from  
> the public and even from policy-makers, preventing detection and  
> avoidance.  Worse, most of Iceland's institutions -- from its media  
> to its legislative and regulatory bodies -- completely failed to  
> penetrate this wall of secrecy, allowing this corruption to fester  
> until it brought about full-scale financial ruin.  As a result,  
> Iceland has become very receptive to the fact that the type of  
> investigative exposure provided by WikiLeaks is a vital national  
> good, and there is real political will to provide it with  
> substantial protections.
>
> If that doesn't sound familiar to Americans, it should.  At exactly  
> the time when U.S. government secrecy is at an all-time high, the  
> institutions ostensibly responsible for investigation, oversight and  
> exposure have failed.  The American media are largely co-opted, and  
> their few remaining vestiges of real investigative journalism are  
> crippled by financial constraints.  The U.S. Congress is almost  
> entirely impotent at providing meaningful oversight and is, in any  
> event, controlled by the factions that maintain virtually complete  
> secrecy.  As I've documented before, some alternative means of  
> investigative journalism have arisen -- such as the ACLU's tenacious  
> FOIA litigations to pry documents showing "War on Terror" abuses and  
> the reams of bloggers who sort through, analyze and publicize them  
> -- but that's no match for the vast secrecy powers of the government  
> and private corporations.
>



-- 
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
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