Thread: Wikileaks Spokesperson is 'Do-Gooder' Australian 'Migrant'

Below is a decription of the man who is responsible for deliberately leaking United States Department of Defense documents on the internet now:

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Julian Assange

Julian Assange in 2010
Born 1971
Townsville, Queensland, Australia
Occupation Currently
Editor in chief and spokesperson for Wikileaks
Previously

Journalist, programmer, internet activist

Board member of Wikileaks
Awards Amnesty International UK Media Awards 2009, Sam Adams Award 2010

Julian Paul Assange (English pronunciation: /əˈsÉ‘Ë

In Disclosing Secret Documents, WikiLeaks Seeks ‘Transparency’
By ERIC SCHMITT
Published: July 25, 2010

WikiLeaks.org, the online organization that posted tens of thousands of classified military field reports about the Afghan war on Sunday, says its goal in disclosing secret documents is to reveal “unethical behaviorâ€

Wikileaks: More US Documents Coming on Afghan War
Monday, 26 Jul 2010 01:03 PM

The Defense Department is conducting a damage assessment on the leak of some 91,000 classified documents on the Afghanistan war.

Pentagon spokesman Col. Dave Lapan told reporters Monday the review could take "days, if not weeks" because the military has yet to see all of the leaked reports.

Wikileaks.org posted the classified documents to its Web site Sunday night, but access was difficult, apparently because the site was overwhelmed with traffic.

The source of the leak is still in question. Lapan said that while the military has detained an Army soldier in Kuwait for transmitting classified information, the latest documents could have come from anyone with a secret-level clearance.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

LONDON (AP) — The release of some 91,000 secret U.S. military documents on the Afghanistan war is just the beginning, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange promised Monday, adding that he still has thousands more Afghan files to post online.

The White House, Britain and Pakistan have all condemned the online whistle-blowing group's release Sunday of the classified documents, one of the largest unauthorized disclosures in military history. The Afghan government in Kabul said it was "shocked" at the release but insisted most of the information was not new.

The documents cover some known aspects of the troubled nine-year conflict: U.S. special operations forces have targeted militants without trial, Afghans have been killed by accident, and U.S. officials have been infuriated by alleged Pakistani intelligence cooperation with the very insurgent groups bent on killing Americans.

Still, they also included unreported incidents of Afghan civilian killings and covert operations against Taliban figures.

Assange told reporters in London that what's been reported so far on the leaked documents has "only scratched the surface" and said some 15,000 files on Afghanistan are still being vetted by his organization.

He said he believed that "thousands" of U.S. attacks in Afghanistan could be investigated for evidence of war crimes, although he acknowledged that such claims would have to be tested in court.

"It is up to a court to decide really if something in the end is a crime," he said.

Assange pointed in particular to a deadly missile strike ordered by Taskforce 373, a unit allegedly charged with hunting down and killing senior Taliban targets. He said there was also evidence of cover-ups when civilians were killed, including what he called a suspiciously high number of casualties that U.S. forces attributed to ricochet wounds.

White House national security adviser Gen. Jim Jones said the release of the documents "put the lives of Americans and our partners at risk." In a statement, he took pains to point out that the documents describe a period from January 2004 to December 2009, mostly during the administration of President George W. Bush.

Jones noted that time period was before President Obama announced a new strategy.

Pakistan's Ambassador Husain Haqqani agreed, saying the documents "do not reflect the current on-ground realities," in which his country and Washington are "jointly endeavoring to defeat al-Qaida and its Taliban allies."

The U.S. and Pakistan assigned teams of analysts to read the records online to assess whether sources or locations were at risk.

Pakistan's powerful spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, said Monday that the accusations it had close connections to Taliban militants were malicious and unsubstantiated.

A senior ISI official said they were from unverified raw intelligence reports and were meant to impugn the reputation of the spy agency. He spoke on condition of anonymity in line with the agency's policy.

Hamid Gul, a former head of the ISI who is mentioned many times in the documents, also denied allegations that he'd worked with the insurgents.

The New York Times said the documents reveal that only a short time ago, there was far less harmony in U.S. and Pakistani exchanges.

The Times says the "raw intelligence assessments" by lower level military officers suggest that Pakistan "allows representatives of its spy service to meet directly with the Taliban in secret strategy sessions to organize networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders."

The Guardian, however, interpreted the documents differently, saying they "fail to provide a convincing smoking gun" for complicity between the Pakistan intelligence services and the Taliban.

The leaked records include detailed descriptions of raids carried out by a secretive U.S. special operations unit called Task Force 373 against what U.S. officials considered high-value insurgent and terrorist targets. Some of the raids resulted in unintended killings of Afghan civilians, according to the documentation.

During the targeting and killing of Libyan fighter Abu Laith al-Libi, described in the documents as a senior al-Qaida military commander, the death tally was reported as six enemy fighters and seven noncombatants — all children.

Task Force 373 selected its targets from 2,000 senior Taliban and al-Qaida figures posted on a "kill or capture" list, known as JPEL, the Joint Prioritized Effects List, the Guardian said.

U.S. government agencies have been bracing for the deluge of classified documents since the leak of helicopter cockpit video of a 2007 firefight in Baghdad. That was blamed on a U.S. Army intelligence analyst, Spc. Bradley Manning, 22, of Potomac, Md. He was charged with releasing classified information earlier this month. Manning had bragged online that he downloaded 260,000 classified U.S. cables and transmitted them to Wikileaks.org.

Assange on Monday compared the impact of the released material to the opening of the East German secret police archives. "This is the equivalent of opening the Stasi archives," he said.

He also said his group had many more documents on other subjects, including files on countries from across the globe.

"We have built up an enormous backlog of whistleblower disclosures," he said.

Assange said that he believed more material would flood amid the blaze of publicity.

"It is our experience that courage is contagious," he said. "Sources are encouraged by the opportunities that they see before them."

——

Dozier reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin and Robert Burns in Washington contributed to this report.

http://www.newsmax.com/Newsfront/US-Afg ... /id/365649

Source: The Associated Press

It's WikiTreason, and it's deadly: Don't minimize the damage WikiLeaks' Julian Assange has done
By Ross Baker

Wednesday, July 28th 2010, 4:00 AM

Related News

In December 1944, when German Field Marshal Gerd Von Rundstedt was planning Adolf Hitler's final offensive, which would culminate in the Battle of the Bulge, a few fragments of seemingly innocuous information might have enabled him to succeed in splitting the Allied armies and, perhaps, changing the course of World War II.

No single piece of information, in and of itself, need to have appeared very important for it to have proved useful to the enemy. And if Von Rundstedt had enjoyed the benefit of a leak of military information of the magnitude of the massive document dump recently rolled out by WikiLeaks, we might all be singing "Deutschland Uber Alles."

So don't believe, not for a second, the assertion that the release of troves of secret data by the online "information activist" Julian Assange is no big deal because all it says is that the war in Afghanistan is difficult and, well, "we knew that already."

In time of war, and this country is most assuredly in a war - two, in fact - even small dots of classified information can, taken together, draw a vivid picture for our enemies - which they can then use to deduce valuable information and ultimately kill our soldiers.

For this reason, the release and publication of secret military documents must invite a charge of treason.

Yet Assange is an Australian living in the United Kingdom and, as such, is beyond the reach of American law.

He defends his irresponsible practice with the dubious claim that almost anything is worthy of being disclosed in the interest of "transparency." The more secret the information, the more valuable it is to his project.

But this "information activist" is no agnostic crusader for openness. A measure of his unbridled arrogance was revealed in a recent interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel in which Assange admitted that his objective in releasing the information was to "shift political will" against the war in Afghanistan - and crowed, "I enjoy crushing bastards." Apparently, Assange has arrogated to himself the determination of who is and who is not a bastard.

If the U.S. military is, to him, a bastard to be crushed, shouldn't that make him, to us, an enemy?

Assange's release of toxic materials has long been highly selective. In one case that would make Andrew Breitbart blush, he edited down a 38-minute video of an attack by a U.S. helicopter in Iraq that would lead a viewer of his 17-minute version to conclude that the chopper's crew was guilty of callously gunning down an innocent man.

As none other than Stephen Colbert told Assange, "You have edited this tape, and you have given it a title called 'Collateral Murder.' That's not leaking, that's a pure editorial."

"Treason" is certainly a strong word. It is conventionally described as an act that gives aid and comfort to an enemy. What aid and comfort are the Taliban enjoying from the WikiLeaks document dump?

More than you might think.

There are, for example, excerpts from after-action reports from units in the field. There was, in one instance, information on the time required for helicopter gunships to get to forward operating bases that were under Taliban attack, in addition to intelligence reports and operational details of all kinds. It is not hard to imagine insurgent leaders salivating over this data, especially over the apparent consternation of American forces over the likelihood that the Taliban now have shoulder-fired ground-to-air missiles.

Armies engaged in deadly combat are entitled not to have their operational techniques handed to the enemy on a cyber platter. We can't nail Julian Assange for exposing our troops to the wrath of terrorists but at the very least, we should put him on the no-fly list.

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/201 ... _done.html

Baker is a professor of political science at Rutgers University.