Wikileaks documenten #20: Stratfor Leaks

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IA INVESTIGATION: Interpol and Julian Assange's red notice

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Why did Julian Assange receive an Interpol Red Notice, but Gaddafi only an Orange? Tess Lawrence investigates the murky world of Interpol exclusively for IA, asking some troubling questions and uncovering some startling facts.

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* The paperwork for the Assange Red Notice failed to comply with Interpol's own regulations.

* Sweden revised its requests on several more occasions.

* The documents were incorrectly filed.

* The Assange Red Notice was designed to compromise and damage the personal reputation of Julian Assange and cause him to be held in disrepute.

* That there was a serious internal dispute between Interpol staff and Interpol Executives over the posting of the Assange Red Notice.

* That the Assange Red Notice may, in fact, be defamatory because it breaches Interpol's guidelines.

Further, that the tenuous and spurious requests made by Sweden to Interpol could be used as supportive evidence that Sweden and Interpol (and others) deliberately colluded to inhibit Assange's chances of a fair trial and diminish his international public standing.

* That Interpol has email correspondence, text and communication notes/recordings that confirm such discussion and collusion between Sweden, Australia, the United States and Interpol Executives and these materials attest to political interference by these countries and their representatives, in contravention and violation of Interpol's own regulations.

* That the current Secretary-General of Interpol, Ronald K. Noble is "too close" to US intelligence and remains partisan to preserving and protecting the legacy of the George W. Bush administration and that, despite his formidable qualifications, he has been in the position too long--he is now in his 11th year as Secretary General and his third term. Some of the other 188 member nations understandably want a stint in the high chair.

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'VN geven Assange gelijk: hij zit onterecht vast in Londen'

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De Verenigde Naties vinden dat Julian Assange niet moet worden opgepakt als hij de ambassade van Ecuador in Londen verlaat. Er zou sprake zijn van willekeurige gevangenhouding. Dat zal een speciale werkgroep van de VN volgens de BBC bekend gaan maken. Toch ziet het er niet meteen rooskleurig uit voor de WikiLeaks-oprichter.

Wanneer hij zich dit keer wel aan zijn woord houdt, zal Assange vrijdag rond het middaguur na een vrijwillige gevangenschap van ruim 3.5 jaar de Ecuadoriaanse ambassade in Londen verlaten. Bobby's zullen klaarstaan om hem in de boeien te slaan, ongeacht de beslissing, eveneens morgen, van de Verenigde Naties-werkgroep van 'Arbitraire Gevangenhouding'.

Hij zou geestelijk en fysiek uitgeput zijn, de gezochte Wikileaks-oprichter die op 19 juni 2012 de ambassade van binnengetreden om daar met succes politiek asiel te vragen. Vanaf dat moment stond het gebouw nabij Harrods onder toezicht van de politie. Er was geen uitgang voor Assange, temeer alle juridische procedures voorbij waren. Justitie in Zweden wil hem ondervragen met betrekking tot seksueel misbruik van twee vrouwen en het Verenigd Koninkrijk is verplicht om mee te werken aan dit Europese uitleveringsverzoek.

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WikiLeaks: NSA luisterde telefoontjes tussen Merkel en Ban Ki-moon af

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De Amerikaanse inlichtingendienst NSA heeft in 2008 naar verluidt telefoongesprekken tussen de Duitse bondskanselier Angela Merkel en secretaris-generaal van de Verenigde Naties Ban Ki-moon afgeluisterd. Dit blijkt uit de meest recente onthullingen op de klokkenluiderwebsite WikiLeaks.

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Tspiras wil opheldering IMF over Wikileaks-lek - rtlz.nl

Griekenland eist tekst en uitleg van het Internationaal Monetair Fonds (IMF) over de door Wikileaks gelekte notulen over het Griekse steunpakket.

Daarin zou staan dat het IMF een Grieks staatsbankroet overweegt om de Europese Unie te bewegen de aan Griekenland voorwaarden voor de noodsteun te versoepelen. Premier Alexis Tsipras vraagt IMF-directeur Christine Lagarde om opheldering, schrijft de Griekse krant Kathimerini.

Discussie tussen topfunctionarissen
In de notulen komen Poul Thomsen, de hoofd van de afdeling Europa van het fonds, en de leider van de IMF-missie in Griekenland, Delia Velculescu, aan het woord. Uit het verslag zou onder meer blijken dat de beide topfunctionarissen gefrustreerd zijn doordat er weinig schot zit in de gesprekken over de hervormingen die de Grieken beloofden door te voeren. Ze hebben het over een 'event', een de default, waardoor Europa wel op dezelfde lijn zou moeten komen als het IMF: soepelere voorwaarden, waaronder schuldverlichting.

Het IMF weigert te reageren op het vermeende lek. De komende week staan nieuwe gesprekken op de agenda tussen Athene en de internationale geldschieters van de Grieken.

Bron: www.rtlz.nl

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Government Docs Reveal White House Efforts To Stop The Next Whistleblower

WASHINGTON — Memos and documents revealed by Freedom of Information Act requests shine light on the extreme lengths the U.S. government took to try to stop whistleblowers in the wake of Chelsea Manning’s massive leak of army reports and diplomatic cables to WikiLeaks.

The documents, released on Sunday by national security journalist Alexa O’Brien on her website and Twitter account, are the results of several FOIA requests pertaining to the U.S. government’s response to WikiLeaks’ publication of classified documents.

Manning, who served as a U.S. Army intelligence officer in Iraq, gave WikiLeaks hundreds of thousands of classified files in 2010, which the website published online. In 2013, she was sentenced to 35 years in prison, which she is currently serving at a military facility at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas.

O’Brien’s investigation shows that every government agency that handles classified information was directed to form “mitigation teams” to examine any current security risks and try to forestall future whistleblowers.

The 2010 memo that called for these teams, written by Jacob Lew, director of the Executive Office of Management and Budget, claims that “the recent irresponsible disclosure by WikiLeaks has resulted in significant damage to our national security.”

The following year, mitigation teams were gathered under a single umbrella by an executive order which formed the Insider Threat Task Force, an anti-whistleblower team spanning multiple government departments and agencies.

At one point, the administration’s panic over its loss of control of classified material reached such a fever pitch that individual government employees reportedly faced police investigations just for visiting the WikiLeaks website. O’Brien’s FOIA requests revealed a 2012 investigation by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, a U.S. government law enforcement agency, into the conduct of a linguist stationed at Camp Dwyer, a Marine Corps base in Afghanistan.

— Alexa O'Brien (@carwinb) May 15, 2016



In a letter included in the documents, the linguist, whose name has been redacted, pleads for leniency from the investigators: “I am writing this letter to inform you that I have gone through a incident that was not my fault translating classified file in my personal computer.”

Under the heading “Wiki leaks explanation,” the linguist continues, recounting the single visit to the WikiLeaks website which landed them in hot water:

One of the files leaked by Manning, which has come to be known as the “Collateral Murder” video, revealed a series of airstrikes in 2007 by U.S. Army helicopters in Iraq which killed dozens of civilians, including Reuters journalists, Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen.

After the deaths of Chmagh and Noor-Eldeen, the military repeatedly refused to release key details of the incident to Reuters until Manning blew the whistle on the killings. O’Brien’s FOIA requests revealed repeated attempts by Reuters to obtain information through FOIA requests. In response to one 2007 request, the U.S. government charged Reuters $352 for the privilege of obtaining information on the deaths of the company’s own employees.

Six years after Manning’s leaks and three years after her conviction, the U.S. government’s criminal investigation of WikiLeaks continues. WikiLeaks’ founder, Julian Assange, has spent the last four years living in Ecuador’s Embassy in London on asylum out of fear of extradition to the United States. In March, the U.S. government refused Manning’s FOIA request for details of the Justice Department and FBI investigations into her actions and those of her “alleged civilian co-conspirators” like Assange.

Despite the formation of the Insider Threat Task Force, government leaks have continued, including the 2013 leak of NSA files by Edward Snowden. Although the leak has not been publicly released in full, the Intercept offered expanded access to dozens of these files on Monday.

Bron: www.mintpressnews.com

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WikiLeaks belaagd rond publicatie Turkse documenten | NOS

De site van WikiLeaks is gisteravond aangevallen. De organisatie zelf denkt dat het te maken heeft met de aanstaande publicatie van 300.000 e-mails en 500.000 documenten afkomstig van de Turkse AKP, de partij van president Erdogan.

Het is de bedoeling dat de informatie vandaag online komt.

In een Twitter-bericht schrijft de klokkenluidersorganisatie dat zijn "infrastructuur constant wordt aangevallen". WikiLeaks lijkt zelf niet zeker te weten uit welke hoek de aanval komt, maar denkt vanwege de timing dat de Turkse overheid er mogelijk mee te maken heeft.

Het is onduidelijk om wat voor aanval het gaat. Op Twitter wordt gesuggereerd dat het een DDoS-aanval is, waarbij servers worden bestookt met heel veel verkeer waardoor deze tijdelijk offline gaat. WikiLeaks heeft daar zelf nog niets over gezegd.

Het is onduidelijk in hoeverre in de e-mails en documenten informatie staat over de staatsgreep van afgelopen vrijdag. In een tweet zegt de organisatie dat er wel informatie in staat over ontwikkelingen die tot de coup hebben geleid. WikiLeaks zegt daarnaast dat de informatie de AK-partij kan schaden, maar ook kan helpen.

Bron: nos.nl

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DNC emails: Wasserman Schultz furiously pressured MSNBC after it criticized her “unfair” treatment of Sanders - Salon.com

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, was furious when she was criticized by MSNBC host Mika Brzezinski.

Wasserman Schultz called for Brzezinski to “apologize” and told her co-worker Chuck Todd “this must stop.” The DNC chair even complained to MSNBC’s president.

In May, Brzezinski held a segment on the program “Morning Joe” in which she condemned Wasserman Schultz’s “unfair” treatment of Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary.

“This has been very poorly handled from the start. It has been unfair, and they haven’t taken him seriously, and it starts, quite frankly, with the person that we just heard speaking,” Brzezinski said, referring to Wasserman Schultz.

“She should step down,” Brzezinski added.



In a May 18 email, Kate Houghton, the director of the DNC chair’s office, forwarded a report on Brzezinski’s segment to Wasserman Schultz.

“This is the LAST straw,” Wasserman Schultz replied, enraged. “This is outrageous. She needs to apologize.”

Wasserman Schultz asked DNC Communications Director Luis Miranda to call Phil Griffin, the president of MSNBC.

Miranda responded noting that Wasserman Schultz “already went to Chuck,” a reference to MSNBC’s Chuck Todd, moderator of “Meet the Press.”



Wasserman Schultz sent another angry message to Todd titled, “Chuck, this must stop.” She included the link to the report on Brzezinski’s segment and wrote, “I would like to discuss this with you today.”

Todd replied noting he was available to speak with her. She thanked him and said Miranda would schedule a time to talk.

Wasserman Schultz was insistent: “I think we need to speak to both of them,” she wrote, referring to Chuck Todd and Phil Griffin, the MSNBC president.

She added, “I’ve been talking to Phil about this since our breakfast.”

WikiLeaks released approximately 20,000 DNC emails on Friday. Another email shows that Wasserman Schultz called the attempt by the Sanders campaign to moderate the party’s stance on Israel “disturbing.”

The DNC chair has long been criticized for anti-Sanders bias. Wasserman Schultz served as co-chair of Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign, and is a longtime Clinton ally.

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Op vrijdag 22 juli 2016 23:42 schreef Nintex het volgende:
Ah, de Russen hebben de e-mails van Hillary gepubliceerd.

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Assange belooft nieuwe onthullingen over Clinton | Nieuwsuur

De klokkenluiderssite WikiLeaks zal de komende tijd nog veel meer vertrouwelijke informatie over de campagne van Hillary Clinton naar buiten brengen. Dat zegt WikiLeaks-oprichter Julian Assange in een interview met Nieuwsuur.

"We hebben belangrijke informatie over de campagne van Hillary Clinton, de Clinton Foundation en het Democratisch Nationaal Comité. Dat gaan we de komende weken in delen naar buiten brengen."

Eind vorige maand onthulde de klokkenluiderssite al 19.000 e-mails waaruit bleek dat de partijleiding van de Democratische partij systematisch heeft geprobeerd de campagne van Bernie Sanders te dwarsbomen. Uit de mails van zeven prominente partijleden blijkt dat de leiding van de Democratische Partij de kandidatuur van Clinton steunde.

Volgens Hillary Clinton zitten de Russische inlichtingendiensten achter de hack die bedoeld zou zijn om Donald Trump te steunen. Assange noemt dat onzin. "Het hoofd van de Amerikaanse veiligheidsdiensten zegt niet te weten wie er achter de hack zit."

Met het beschuldigen van de Russen probeert Clinton volgens Assange de aandacht af te leiden van wat er daadwerkelijk is gebeurd; het manipuleren van het kiessysteem. "Ik vind het nogal een serieuze aantijging om Donald Trump een Russische spion te noemen, net als sommige journalisten en WikiLeaks."

"Dat brengt ons terug naar grimmige tijden waarin politieke tegenstanders worden afgeschilderd als buitenlandse spionnen. Clinton is nu de veiligheidskandidaat, en iedereen die tegen haar is een Russische spion."

Assange wil niet onthullen wie de mails heeft gelekt, maar suggereert dat het een staflid van de Democratische partij zou kunnen zijn. "Onze klokkenluiders nemen serieuze risico's om aan materiaal te komen. Er is een 27-jarige man, Seth Rich, die werkte voor de DNC. Hij is twee weken geleden in zijn rug geschoten en vermoord om onbekende redenen."

Er werd in Amerikaanse media gezegd dat het om een overval zou gaan, maar volgens Assange is daar geen bewijs voor. "Wij zijn dat aan het onderzoeken."

Vlak na het interview loofde Wikileaks op Twitter een beloning van 20.000 dollar uit voor informatie over de moord op het staflid Seth Rich.

Bron: nos.nl

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Renowned lawyer who represented Julian Assange died after being struck by train in West Hampstead - News - Hampstead Highgate Express

One of the UK’s most respected international criminal lawyers who was representing Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has died after being hit by a train in West Hampstead.

Married father of two John Jones, QC, worked at renowned legal chambers, Doughty Street and died last Monday morning. Police say they are not treating the death as suspicious.

The 48-year-old barrister has been described as “a giant in his field” by colleagues, who said that his death is “a monumental loss to the cause of international justice and human rights.”

Oxford graduate Mr Jones, who took silk in 2013, specialised in extradition, war crimes and counter-terrorism, representing clients from around the world in high profile cases.

He was part of a team of lawyers acting to prevent the extradition of Julian Assange - holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy for four years - whose case is currently being heard by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.

Mr Jones was also working with his colleague Amal Clooney to try and halt the execution of Colonel Gaddafi’s son Saif and Libyan spy chief Abdullah-al Senussi.

Earlier in his career, he helped bring to justice some of those responsible for genocide in the former Yugoslavia as part of the UN’s International Criminal Tribunal, working to establish procedures that were used in the historic trials.

As well as his criminal law work, Mr Jones acted as a human rights lawyer, saving a 19-year old from the death penalty in Singapore, fighting on behalf of journalists for free speech in Africa, and making representations to the UN to prevent torture.

He joined Doughty Street in 2005, where he worked alongside some of the UK’s top barristers, including Keir Starmer, MP for Holborn and St Pancras, who remains an associate tenant there.

Mr Starmer, who knew Mr Jones well, said: “John made a huge contribution to international justice. His loss is felt deeply by all his friends and colleagues, and all our thoughts are with his family and friends.”

Doughty Street Chambers said in a statement: “The passing of John Jones QC is a monumental loss to the cause of international justice and human rights worldwide. He was a pioneer, at the forefront of establishing our modern system of international criminal justice, and a giant in the field.

“John was a good friend, great colleague and a brilliant and creative lawyer.

“John was admired and appreciated for his amazing sense of humour, his professionalism and his deep commitment to justice and the rule of law.

“His death is a huge loss for all of us in Chambers, for the British and international legal profession, but mostly for his family to whom we offer our sincerest and deepest condolences.”

The statement also praised Mr Jones for his wit, eloquence and benevolence. His colleagues said: “John prepared humbler cases with a rigour equal to his higher profile ones. He constantly gave his services for free, and his generous spirit and selfless devotion came at some cost.”

Mr Jones lived in Kentish Town with his wife and two young children.

A statement from British Transport Police said officers attended West Hampstead rail station at 7.07 on Monday morning after a man was struck by a train.

It said: “He was pronounced dead at the scene. The man’s death is not being treated as suspicious. A file will be prepared for the coroner.”

Messages of support can be sent to condolences@doughtystreet.co.uk and cards or letters can be sent to Chambers (53-54 Doughty Street, WC1N 2LS) to be forwarded to the family.

A fund has been set up for his family, and donations can be made to the Doughty Street John Jones QC Memorial Fund (sort code 20-77-67, account no. 93017451.

Bron: www.hamhigh.co.uk

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Leaked Speech Excerpts Show a Hillary Clinton at Ease With Wall Street

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In lucrative paid speeches that Hillary Clinton delivered to elite financial firms but refused to disclose to the public, she displayed an easy comfort with titans of business, embraced unfettered international trade and praised a budget-balancing plan that would have required cuts to Social Security, according to documents posted online Friday by WikiLeaks.

The tone and language of the excerpts clash with the fiery liberal approach she used later in her bitter primary battle with Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and could have undermined her candidacy had it become public.

Mrs. Clinton comes across less as a firebrand than as a technocrat at home with her powerful audience, willing to be critical of large financial institutions but more inclined to view them as partners in restoring the country’s economic health.

In the excerpts from her paid speeches to financial institutions and corporate audiences, Mrs. Clinton said she dreamed of “open trade and open borders” throughout the Western Hemisphere. Citing the back-room deal-making and arm-twisting used by Abraham Lincoln, she mused on the necessity of having “both a public and a private position” on politically contentious issues. Reflecting in 2014 on the rage against political and economic elites that swept the country after the 2008 financial crash, Mrs. Clinton acknowledged that her family’s rising wealth had made her “kind of far removed” from the struggles of the middle class.

The passages were contained in an internal review of Mrs. Clinton’s paid speeches undertaken by her campaign, which was identifying potential land mines should the speeches become public. They offer a glimpse at one of the most sought-after troves of information in the 2016 presidential race — and an explanation, perhaps, for why Mrs. Clinton has steadfastly refused demands by Mr. Sanders and Donald J. Trump, her Republican rival, to release them.

Mrs. Clinton’s campaign would not confirm the authenticity of the documents. They were released on Friday night by WikiLeaks, the hacker collective founded by the activist Julian Assange, saying that they had come from the email account of John D. Podesta, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman.

In a statement, a Clinton spokesman, Glen Caplin, pointed to the United States government’s findings that Russian officials had used WikiLeaks to hack documents in order to sway the outcome of the presidential election, suggesting that the leak of Mr. Podesta’s emails was also engineered by Russian officials determined to help Mr. Trump. Mr. Caplin noted that a Twitter message from WikiLeaks promoting the documents had incorrectly identified Mr. Podesta as a co-owner of his brother’s lobbying firm.

But Clinton officials did not deny that the email containing the excerpts was real.

The leaked email, dated Jan. 25, does not contain Mrs. Clinton’s full speeches to the financial firms, leaving it unclear what her overall message was to these audiences.

But in the excerpts, Ms. Clinton demonstrates her long and warm ties to some of Wall Street’s most powerful figures. In a discussion in the fall of 2013 with Lloyd Blankfein, a friend who is the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, Mrs. Clinton said that the political climate had made it overly difficult for wealthy people to serve in government.

“There is such a bias against people who have led successful and/or complicated lives,” Mrs. Clinton said. The pressure on officials to sell or divest assets in order to serve, she added, had become “very onerous and unnecessary.”

In a separate speech to Goldman Sachs employees the same month, Mrs. Clinton said it was an “oversimplification” to blame the global financial crisis of 2008 on the U.S. banking system.

“It was conventional wisdom,” Mrs. Clinton said of the tendency to blame the banking system. “And I think that there’s a lot that could have been avoided in terms of both misunderstanding and really politicizing what happened.”

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In the Democratic Echo Chamber, Inconvenient Truths Are Recast as Putin Plots

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Donald Trump, for reasons I’ve repeatedly pointed out, is an extremist, despicable, and dangerous candidate, and his almost-certain humiliating defeat is less than a month away. So I realize there is little appetite in certain circles for critiques of any of the tawdry and sometimes fraudulent journalistic claims and tactics being deployed to further that goal. In the face of an abusive, misogynistic, bigoted, scary, lawless authoritarian, what’s a little journalistic fraud or constant fearmongering about subversive Kremlin agents between friends if it helps to stop him?

But come January, Democrats will continue to be the dominant political faction in the U.S. — more so than ever — and the tactics they are now embracing will endure past the election, making them worthy of scrutiny. Those tactics now most prominently include dismissing away any facts or documents that reflect negatively on their leaders as fake, and strongly insinuating that anyone who questions or opposes those leaders is a stooge or agent of the Kremlin, tasked with a subversive and dangerously un-American mission on behalf of hostile actors in Moscow.

To see how extreme and damaging this behavior has become, let’s just quickly examine two utterly false claims that Democrats over the past four days — led by party-loyal journalists — have disseminated and induced thousands of people, if not more, to believe. On Friday, WikiLeaks published its first installment of emails obtained from the account of Clinton campaign chair John Podesta. Despite WikiLeaks’ perfect, long-standing record of only publishing authentic documents, MSNBC’s favorite ex-intelligence official, Malcolm Nance, within hours of the archive’s release, posted a tweet claiming — with zero evidence and without citation to a single document in the WikiLeaks archive — that it was compromised with fakes:

Official Warning: #PodestaEmails are already proving to be riddled with obvious forgeries & #blackpropaganda not even professionally done. https://t.co/UuJZrurHAA

— Malcolm Nance (@MalcolmNance) October 7, 2016

As you can see, more than 4,000 people have re-tweeted this “Official Warning.” That includes not only random Clinton fans but also high-profile Clinton-supporting journalists, who by spreading it around gave this claim their stamp of approval, intentionally leading huge numbers of people to assume the WikiLeaks archive must be full of fakes, and its contents should therefore simply be ignored. Clinton’s campaign officials spent the day fueling these insinuations, strongly implying that the documents were unreliable and should thus be ignored. Poof: Just like that, unpleasant facts about Hillary Clinton just disappeared, like a fairy protecting frightened children by waving her magic wand and sprinkling fairy dust over a demon and causing it to scatter away.

Except the only fraud here was Nance’s claim, not any of the documents published by WikiLeaks. Those were all real. Indeed, at Sunday night’s debate, when asked directly about the excerpts of her Wall Street speeches found in the release, Clinton herself confirmed their authenticity. And news outlets such as the New York Times and AP reported — and continue to report — on their contents without any caveat that they may be frauds. No real print journalists or actual newsrooms (as opposed to campaign operatives masquerading as journalists) fell for this scam, so this tactic did not prevent reporting from being done.

But it did signal to Clinton’s most devoted followers to simply ignore the contents of the release. Anyone writing articles about what these documents revealed was instantly barraged with claims from Democrats that they were fakes, by people often pointing to “articles” like this one.

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The Guardian’s Summary of Julian Assange’s Interview Went Viral and Was Completely False

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Julian Assange is a deeply polarizing figure. Many admire him and many despise him (into which category one falls in any given year typically depends on one’s feelings about the subject of his most recent publication of leaked documents).

But one’s views of Assange are completely irrelevant to this article, which is not about Assange. This article, instead, is about a report published this week by The Guardian that recklessly attributed to Assange comments that he did not make. This article is about how those false claims — fabrications, really — were spread all over the internet by journalists, causing hundreds of thousands of people (if not millions) to consume false news. The purpose of this article is to underscore, yet again, that those who most flamboyantly denounce Fake News, and want Facebook and other tech giants to suppress content in the name of combating it, are often the most aggressive and self-serving perpetrators of it.

One’s views of Assange are completely irrelevant to this article because, presumably, everyone agrees that publication of false claims by a media outlet is very bad, even when it’s designed to malign someone you hate. Journalistic recklessness does not become noble or tolerable if it serves the right agenda or cause. The only way one’s views of Assange are relevant to this article is if one finds journalistic falsehoods and Fake News objectionable only when deployed against figures one likes.



The shoddy and misleading Guardian article, written by Ben Jacobs, was published on December 24. It made two primary claims — both of which are demonstrably false. The first false claim was hyped in the article’s headline: “Julian Assange gives guarded praise of Trump and blasts Clinton in interview.” This claim was repeated in the first paragraph of the article: “Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has offered guarded praise of Donald Trump. …”

The second claim was an even worse assault on basic journalism. Jacobs set up this claim by asserting that Assange “long had a close relationship with the Putin regime.” The only “evidence” offered for this extraordinary claim was that Assange, in 2012, conducted eight interviews that were broadcast on RT. With the claimed Assange-Putin alliance implanted, Jacobs then wrote: “In his interview with la Repubblica, [Assange] said there was no need for WikiLeaks to undertake a whistleblowing role in Russia because of the open and competitive debate he claimed exists there.”

The reason these two claims are so significant, so certain to attract massive numbers of clicks and shares, is obvious. They play directly into the biases of Clinton supporters and flatter their central narrative about the election: that Clinton lost because the Kremlin used its agents, such as Assange, to boost Trump and sink Clinton. By design, the article makes it seem as though Assange is heralding Russia as such a free, vibrant, and transparent political culture that -- in contrast to the repressive West -- no whistleblowing is needed, all while praising Trump.

But none of that actually happened. Those claims are made up.

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The strange tale of a dating site’s attacks on WikiLeaks founder Assange

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WASHINGTON

For an online dating site, toddandclare.com seems really good at cloak-and-dagger stuff. Disconnected phones. Mystery websites. Actions that ricochet around the globe.

But the attention grabber is the Houston-based company’s target: Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, whose steady dumps of leaked emails from Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign have given supporters of Donald Trump the only cheering news of the last few weeks.

In some ways, toddandclare.com’s campaign against Assange is as revelatory as the leaked emails themselves, illustrating the powerful, sometimes unseen, forces that oppose WikiLeaks.

Whoever is behind the dating site has marshaled significant resources to target Assange, enough to gain entry into a United Nations body, operate in countries in Europe, North America and the Caribbean, conduct surveillance on Assange’s lawyer in London, obtain the fax number of Canada’s prime minister and seek to prod a police inquiry in the Bahamas.

And they’ve done it at a time when WikiLeaks has become a routine target of Democratic politicians who portray Assange as a stooge of Russian President Vladimir Putin and his reported efforts to disrupt the U.S. election.

One part of toddandclare’s two-pronged campaign put a megaphone to unproven charges that Assange made contact with a young Canadian girl in the Bahamas through the internet with the intention of molesting her. The second part sought to entangle him in a plan to receive $1 million from the Russian government.

WikiLeaks claims the dating site is “a highly suspicious and likely fabricated” company. In turn, the company lashed out at Assange on Thursday and “his despicable activities against American national security,” and warned journalists to “check with your libel lawyers first before printing anything that could impact or endanger innocent people’s lives.”

So why are the parties to the melee coming out with both barrels blazing? That remains a mystery of the kind that might take a WikiLeaks-style document dump to suss out.

What is beyond dispute, though, is that the attacks on WikiLeaks rose as the group released a first batch of leaked Democratic National Committee emails in July, days before the party’s national convention, and again this month, as WikiLeaks began releasing thousands of emails from the account of John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman.

The online company paints itself as all-American. Online material says its founders, Todd and Clare Hammond, “are an average American couple from Michigan, who met in the eighth grade.” In 2011, the company says, the Christian couple started an email dating service, and “have married 3,000 couples to date.” Their online network began in 2015, and a statement it filed to a U.N. body says it has “100,000+ female singles” in six countries.

The company’s operating address is a warehouse loading dock in Houston. Its mail goes to a Houston drop box. Its phone numbers no longer work. WikiLeaks says Texas officials tell it the entity is not registered there either under toddandclare.com or a parent company, T&C Network Solutions.

The person who responds to email sent to the company declined to identify himself or herself or answer further questions.

“We are not required to confirm the information you are requesting to anyone other than our government and tax authorities. So many people (and companies) have now been unfairly libeled by the wikileaks troll machine, we are being advised not to comment,” an unsigned email from the company to a McClatchy reporter said Thursday morning.

The people behind toddandclare.com persuaded a U.N. body known as the Global Compact to give it status as a participant in May, and it submitted an eight-page report to the U.N. group Oct. 4 carefully laying out its allegations against Assange. The firm was delisted by the U.N. body eight days later amid controversy over its claims.

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The global tussle between the online dating company and WikiLeaks went public in mid-October when the anti-secrecy group voiced public doubt on whether toddandclare.com actually existed, or served only as a vehicle to attack Assange.

The announcement opened the gates for a disparate crew of internet sleuths - some motivated by hatred of Clinton and others impelled by support for WikiLeaks - to probe into the history of toddandclare.com, suspicious that the dating site might be an undercover operation with links to the Clinton campaign.

Posting their findings on the discussion websites 8chan.net and Reddit.com, they unearthed some curious coincidences. A perusal into the archives of the internet revealed that the Hammonds had once occupied a San Francisco building later rented to a company, Premise Data, whose co-founder has ties to Clinton and her top supporters.

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SEE IT: CNN apologizes to Julian Assange after commentator calls him ‘a pedophile’

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CNN issued an apology after one of its paid commentators called WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange "a pedophile" during a live broadcast Wednesday morning.

Phil Mudd, a counterterrorism analyst for the network, slipped out the incorrect accusation while discussing Assange's controversial anti-secrecy site on the network's "New Day" show.

"I think there's an effort to protect WikiLeaks (and) a pedophile who lives in the Ecuadorian embassy in London — this guy is not credible," Mudd said, referring to Assange.

Just hours after the segment aired, WikiLeaks threatened to sue CNN for defamation unless it issued an apology or aired a "one hour expose" on the supposed "plot" against Assange.

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Klokkenluidersite Wikileaks zegt duizenden documenten van de CIA te hebben gepubliceerd, met daarin uitgebreide informatie over hacksoftware die de inlichtingendienst gebruikt.
In het datalek, dat Wikileaks de naam 'Year Zero' geeft, zitten 8.761 documenten. Het gaat volgens Wikileaks om het eerste deel in een serie met de titel 'Vault 7'.

De documenten zouden afkomstig zijn van een gesloten netwerk binnen het CIA-kantoor in Langley. Volgens de klokkenluiders zou de CIA recent de controle zijn verloren over een groot deel van zijn hack-arsenaal.

Een verzameling van malware, virussen en hacksoftware van de CIA zou sindsdien circuleren onder voormalige overheidshackers en opdrachtnemers. Wikileaks zegt zijn informatie van één van deze personen te hebben ontvangen, maar houdt de identiteit van deze persoon geheim.

De CIA heeft nog niet gereageerd op het lek. De echtheid van de documenten kan niet direct worden geverifieerd.

Afluisteren
De documenten lijken een beeld te geven van de schaal waarop de CIA hacksoftware inzet. Onder de documenten bevinden zich instructies om iOS-, Android- en Windows-apparaten te hacken. Ook is in één document te zien hoe de CIA zich richtte op smart-tv's van Samsung, die zouden worden gebruikt om ongemerkt als afluistermicrofoon te dienen.

Uit de documenten blijkt dat de CIA voor veelgebruikte apparaten software heeft om bijvoorbeeld keyloggers te installeren, zodat er kan worden meegelezen bij het typen van gebruikers. Ook wordt omschreven hoe bekende antiviruspakketten kunnen worden omzeild.

Het Amerikaanse consulaat in Frankfurt zou dienen als hackersbasis van de CIA, voor spionage in Europa, Afrika en het Midden-Oosten. In één document zijn onder meer instructies te lezen voor medewerkers die daar op bezoek komen.

Autorisatie
Volgens Wikileaks heeft de bron achter de documenten zich gemeld vanwege zorgen over de vele mogelijkheden van de CIA. De bron zou zich afvragen of de inlichtingendienst meer doet dan officieel is toegestaan, en daar een discussie over starten.

Uit de documenten zou onder meer blijken dat de CIA zogenoemde zero-day-lekken heeft opgespaard. Dat zijn kwetsbaarheden die niet bij makers van de betreffende software bekend zijn. De inlichtingendienst zou zulke lekken niet melden bij techbedrijven, terwijl de regering van president Obama juist beloofde dat vaker te zullen doen.

Wikileaks heeft bepaalde informatie in de documenten onleesbaar gemaakt, waaronder namen en e-mailadressen. Ook bijlagen bij de documenten, waaronder mogelijk de hacksoftware zelf, zijn vooralsnog niet gepubliceerd.

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The Logic of Leaks, reconsidered

Are leaks fast and slow? Does their “illicit aura” matter? Naomi Colvin dives into the debate about leaking and the politics of journalism today.

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Zweden staakt strafonderzoek tegen WikiLeaks-oprichter Julian Assange | NOS

Het Zweedse Openbaar Ministerie stopt het strafrechtelijk onderzoek tegen WikiLeaks-oprichter Julian Assange. "De verdachte heeft het land verlaten en het ziet er niet naar uit dat hij binnen afzienbare tijd aan Zweden wordt uitgeleverd", laat het Zweedse OM weten.

Het Zweedse arrestatiebevel is ingetrokken. Als Assange naar Zweden terugkeert, kan de zaak tot in augustus 2020 worden heropend. Daarna is de zaak verjaard.

Assange (45) werd in Zweden verdacht van verkrachting van twee vrouwen. Hij heeft de beschuldigingen steeds ontkend en was bang dat ze een voorwendsel waren om hem via Zweden aan de VS uit te leveren. Daar wordt hij gezocht voor het publiceren van geheime documenten.

Na de bekendmaking verspreidde Assange een foto van zichzelf waarop hij breeduit lacht. Zijn advocaat in Zweden spreekt van een totale overwinning. "Hij is natuurlijk blij en opgelucht."

Toch zijn de problemen niet voorbij. Om uitlevering te ontlopen vluchtte hij in 2012 de ambassade van Ecuador in Londen binnen. Hij was daarvoor al door de Britten gearresteerd, maar in afwachting van een besluit op borgtocht vrijgelaten.

Als hij een stap buiten de Ecuadoriaanse ambassade zet, wordt hij opnieuw opgepakt voor het schenden van de borgtochtvoorwaarden. Mogelijk wordt hij dan alsnog aan de VS uitgeleverd.

Het is nog onduidelijk of dit iets te maken heeft met de vrijlating gisteren van de Amerikaanse Chelsea Manning. Manning zat vast wegens het lekken van Amerikaanse militaire documenten over de oorlog in Irak die op WikiLeaks werden gepubliceerd.

Assange zei in januari dat hij zich aan de VS wilde laten uitleveren als Manning daar zou vrijkomen. Aan die voorwaarde is nu voldaan.

Bron: nos.nl

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“In order to proceed with the case, Julian Assange would have to be formally notified of the criminal suspicions against him. We cannot expect to receive assistance from Ecuador regarding this. Therefore the investigation is discontinued.

“If he, at a later date, makes himself available, I will be able to decide to resume the investigation immediately.”

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UK prosecutors admit destroying key emails in Julian Assange case

Correspondence between CPS and its Swedish counterparts about WikiLeaks founder deleted after lawyer retired in 2014

The Crown Prosecution Service is facing embarrassment after admitting it destroyed key emails relating to the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who is holed up in Ecuador’s London embassy fighting extradition.

Email exchanges between the CPS and its Swedish counterparts over the high-profile case were deleted after the lawyer at the UK end retired in 2014.

The destruction of potentially sensitive and revealing information comes ahead of a tribunal hearing in London next week.

Adding to the intrigue, it emerged the CPS lawyer involved had, unaccountably, advised the Swedes in 2010 or 2011 not to visit London to interview Assange. An interview at that time could have prevented the long-running embassy standoff.

The CPS, responding to questions from the Guardian, denied there were any legal implications of the data loss for an Assange case if it were to come to court in the future. Asked if the CPS had any idea what was destroyed, a spokesperson said: “We have no way of knowing the content of email accounts once they have been deleted.”

Assange, whose WikiLeaks has been involved in a series of controversial leaks that include the Iraq war logs, US state department cables and Democratic party emails, was wanted by Sweden as part of a preliminary investigation into rape allegations. Sweden dropped the investigation in May.

Detractors of Assange, who sought refuge in Ecuador’s embassy in 2012, accuse him of collaborating with Russian propagandists in undermining Hillary Clinton’s bid for the presidency and helping Donald Trump secure it.

Supporters of Assange fear he could have been extradited to the US from Sweden and might yet from the UK. The US attorney general, Jeff Sessions, said this year Assange was a priority for the justice department and US federal prosecutors are believed to be considering charges against him over the leaks.

The CPS data destruction was disclosed in a freedom of information (FOI) case being pursued by the Italian journalist Stefania Maurizi.

Maurizi, a reporter on La Repubblica who has covered WikiLeaks since 2009, has been pressing both the CPS and its Swedish counterpart for information relating to Assange and extradition.

Unhappy over the limited material released so far, she is taking her case against the CPS to an information tribunal on Monday and Tuesday.

“It is incredible to me these records about an ongoing and high-profile case have been destroyed. I think they have something to hide,” Maurizi said.

She is keen to establish how much influence the UK had in the decision of the Swedish authorities at the time not to travel to London to interview Assange. She is also looking for evidence of US involvement in extradition moves.

She unearthed two years ago, through an FOI request to the Swedish prosecutors, an email from a lawyer in the CPS extradition unit on 25 January 2011 saying: “My earlier advice remains, that in my view it would not be prudent for the Swedish authorities to try to interview the defendant in the UK.”

The sentence was redacted in the email obtained by Maurizi from the CPS under an FOI request but not when it was released under an FOI request from the Swedish prosecutors.

Assange declined to travel to Sweden at the time, expressing fear it was a ruse that could pave the way for his extradition to the US. His lawyers offered a compromise in which Swedish investigators could interview him in person in London or by a video link, but the Swedish authorities did not take up the offer at the time.

A legal manager at the CPS, Mohammed Cheema, who has been dealing with the FOI requests, said, in a lengthy witness statement in August this year, that the Assange case file comprises mainly 55 lever-arch files, one A4 file and a selection of other paper files.

He added it was very unlikely the CPS held further significant email correspondence.

But just 11 days before the hearing, Cheema sent a further statement saying a search of electronic records found data associated with the lawyer who had been in touch with the Swedish prosecutors “was deleted when he retired and cannot be recovered”. He retired in March 2014.

Jennifer Robinson, a Doughty Street chambers barrister, and Estelle Dehon, who specialises in freedom of information, will be representing Maurizi at the tribunal.

Robinson, who has also represented Assange, said: “The missing information raises concerns about the Crown Prosecution Service’s data retention policy and what internal mechanisms are in place to review their conduct of this case in light of the fact the UK has been found to have breached its international obligations.”

A United Nations panel last year found Assange had been arbitrarily detained by the UK and Sweden.

Robinson said: “The CPS has disclosed some material which is very limited. We know there is more.”

She added: “Serious questions must be asked about the role of the CPS. Had the Swedes interviewed Assange back in 2010 one wonders whether this case would have continued for such a long time.”

The Swedes had interviewed many other people in the UK in relation to other cases, Robinson said. “We had been offering the Swedish prosecutors Assange’s testimony since October 2010. We didn’t know at the time that the CPS was advising them not to take up the offer.”

The CPS spokesperson, in response to a question from the Guardian why such important documents were destroyed, said the email account was deleted following retirement in accordance with standard procedure.

Asked if it was CPS policy that documents relating to live court cases should be destroyed, the spokesperson said: “The individual to whom you refer was a lawyer in the CPS extradition unit discussing matters relating to extradition proceedings which concluded in 2012. The case was, therefore, not live when the email account was deleted.”

He added: “Most casework papers and related material are stored for three years following the conclusion of proceedings, or for the duration of the convicted defendant’s sentence plus three months. In some cases material may be held for longer.”

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WikiLeaks recognised as a 'media organisation' by UK tribunal

Definition by the UK information tribunal may assist in Julian Assange’s defence against US extradition on grounds of press freedom

A British tribunal has recognised Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks as a “media organisation”, a point of contention with the United States, which is seeking to prosecute him and disputes his journalistic credentials.

The issue of whether Assange is a journalist and publisher would almost certainly be one of the main battlegrounds in the event of the US seeking his extradition from the UK.

The definition of WikiLeaks by the information tribunal, which is roughly equivalent to a court, could help Assange’s defence against extradition on press freedom grounds.

The US has been considering prosecution of Assange since 2010 when WikiLeaks published hundreds of thousands of confidential US defence and diplomatic documents. US attorney general Jeff Sessions said in April this year that the arrest of Assange is a priority for the US.

The director of the CIA, Mike Pompeo, after leaks of emails from the US Democratic party and from Hillary Clinton, described WikiLeaks as “a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia”. He added Assange is not covered by the US constitution, which protects journalists.

But the UK’s information tribunal, headed by judge Andrew Bartlett QC, in a summary and ruling published on Thursday on a freedom of information case, says explicitly: “WikiLeaks is a media organisation which publishes and comments upon censored or restricted official materials involving war, surveillance or corruption, which are leaked to it in a variety of different circumstances.”

The comment is made under a heading that says simply: “Facts”.

Assange remains holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London where he has been granted diplomatic asylum.

The tribunal’s definition of WikiLeaks comes in the 21-page summary into a freedom of information case heard in London in November. An Italian journalist, Stefania Maurizi, is seeking the release of documents relating to Assange, mainly in regard to extradition, and had lodged an appeal with the tribunal.

While the tribunal dismissed her appeal, it acknowledged there issues weighing in favour of public disclosure in relation to Assange. But it added these were outweighed by a need for confidentiality on the matter of extradition.

The UK Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and the US justice department have refused to confirm or deny whether they have discussed extradition of Assange.

Maurizi, likely to take her appeal to a higher tribunal, welcomed Bartlett’s acceptance of WikiLeaks as a media organisation but argued the tribunal should have gone a step further by pushing the CPS to confirm whether the US has lodged an extradition request.

“If such a request were made, the UK would not be assisting the US to extradite a narco, a mafia boss, or a drug kingpin. It would being assisting the US to extradite a media publisher to prosecute him and his media organisation for their publications,” she said.

The tribunal also looked at the destruction by the CPS of emails relating to Assange. It said the deletion took place when a CPS lawyer retired and it had been believed all significant case papers were collated separately from his email account.

The tribunal said: “We conclude that there was nothing untoward in the deletion of the email account.”

Maurizi had put in FOI requests for information relating to communications between the UK and Sweden, where prosecutors were investigating sexual assault allegations against Assange which have since been dropped. Supporters of Assange feared that if he want to Sweden, the US would seek to extradite him from there.

Maurizi also pressed for disclosure of any communications by the CPS and the US to extradite Assange directly from the UK.

Estelle Dehon, who specialises in freedom of information and who represented Maurizi at the tribunal, said that while disappointed with the overall ruling, she welcomed some of the findings.

“Progress has been made because the tribunal accepted that the circumstances of the case raise issues of human rights and press freedom and also agreed that there is a significant public interest in disclosing the information, in particular to increase understanding of how the CPS handled the extradition process and its relationship with a foreign prosecuting authority, “ Dehon said.