WikiLeaks, Assange & Manning

[conspiracy Bro]

Daily brief: website leaks thousands of Afghan war docs

WIKILEAKS Strike Again

The website WikiLeaks.org released roughly 92,000 government documents related to the war in Afghanistan from 2004-2010 yesterday evening, after giving the documents to the New York Times, The Guardian, and Germany's Der Spiegel weeks ago (NYT, Guardian, Guardian, Der Spiegel, NYT). Composed in large measure of "secret" reports and cables from the U.S. military, the initial review of the documents reveals new details about multiple aspects of the war, including civilian casualties caused by international forces, the increased use of sometimes unreliable armed drones, Pakistan's alleged role in supporting various Taliban and militant factions and suspicion of Iranian involvement as well, secret special operations task forces that hunt Taliban and al Qaeda leaders, formerly unrevealed reports that the Taliban may have used heat-seeking surface-to-air missiles against coalition helicopters, and increased evidence that Afghan government corruption is undermining efforts to win over the Afghan population (Wash Post, AJE, CNN, Guardian WSJ, Atlantic, Danger Room, Guardian, Guardian).

The collection also documents the alarming rise in Taliban use of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), noting that in the period in question that IEDs alone killed approximately 7,000 Afghans (Guardian). And C.J. Chivers has a must-read piece closely examining reports from Combat Outpost Keating, the isolated post in E Afghanistan that would eventually be nearly overrun by Taliban after it had been ordered to close (NYT).

Many of the reports document civilian casualties and links between current and former elements of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and the Taliban and al Qaeda (Guardian, NYT, WSJ). Details of civilian casualties come from 144 reports filed on different incidents, including last September's U.S. airstrike on a gasoline truck in Kunduz that killed scores of civilians, and incidents where American, French, British and Polish forces fired on or shelled Afghan civilians (Guardian, Guardian). The reports also note high-level cooperation between the ISI and militants, from training to supporting plots to assassinate Afghan President Hamid Karzai, and an allegation that former ISI head Hamid Gul met with three presumed al Qaeda representatives in South Waziristan to plan a suicide bombing against U.S. forces (NYT, Guardian). However, much of this reporting came from single informants and Afghan officials hostile to the ISI, leading the Guardian's Declan Walsh to write that the reports, "fail to provide a convincing smoking gun for ISI complicity," in aiding the insurgency (Guardian).

American and Pakistani officials condemned the document's release (Bloomberg, AJE, AFP, BBC, NYT). The leak comes as House and Senate Democrats are debating how to approve additional funding for the war (LAT). And the documents also emerge when Afghanistan's neighbors have grown increasingly worried about closer relations between Afghanistan and Pakistan, a fact that may change due to political pressure generated by the documents' release (Wash Post, Guardian, WSJ).

Back and forth

U.S. forces searched furiously this weekend in Afghanistan's Logar province after two U.S. Navy personnel went missing Friday (LAT, Wash Post, NYT). While U.S. officials said the men were still listed as missing, a Taliban spokesman said and Afghan officials confirmed that one sailor was killed in a firefight, while Taliban forces were detaining the other (CNN, Wash Post, WSJ, LAT, Bloomberg).

The Taliban took control of the village of Barg-e-Matal in the isolated E Afghan province of Nuristan on Saturday, for the second time in recent months (Tolo, Wash Post). Reports Sunday night indicated that U.S. and Afghan forces were engaged in combat with Taliban elsewhere in the same district, and the Afghan Defense Ministry said Afghan forces had retaken the village (AP).And the Afghan government will investigate reports that an unidentified rocket struck a village in Helmand province, killing 40-45 civilians (Dawn).

Arrivals and departures

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Adm. Mike Mullen took a whirlwind trip to India, Pakistan and Afghanistan this weekend, where he urged a crackdown on militant groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba and the Haqqani Network, toured NW Pakistan by air, and expressed the U.S. commitment to Afghanistan and support for President Karzai's plan to reconcile some Taliban elements (VOA, RFI, CNN, ToI).

In a ceremony marked by VIPs, humor, and some regret at the way his career ended, Gen. Stanley McChrystal retired from the U.S. Army on Friday in a ceremony at Ft. McNair (LAT, Wash Post). And a new study of 15 months of data from Afghanistan has concluded that McChrystal's restrictive rules of engagement curbing air strikes and operations led to a drop in insurgent violence in some areas of Afghanistan (BBC).

Drones, drones, drones

Two suspected U.S. drones struck a house in the Angoor Ada area of South Waziristan Saturday, killing at least 16 fighters of unknown nationality (ET, BBC, AJE, CNN). Three subsequent strikes occurred Sunday, one in Shaktoi just inside South Waziristan, another the other near Miram Shah in North Waziristan, killing at least 19 fighters, and a third also reportedly struck targets in South Waziristan (BBC, AP, Dawn, WSJ). These strikes would mark 101 under Obama, and 50 this year.

Elsewhere, Pakistani forces claim to have killed 34 militants in bombing raids in Kurram and Orakzai agencies, while in the Naushehra district of Khyber-Pukhtunkhwa province, the Taliban allegedly killed the son of the province's Information Minister, who was openly critical of the group (Dawn, AP). A suicide bomber struck near the minister's home Monday, killing at least seven but missing the minister, who was not home at the time (AP, Dawn, AJE, ET). Partisan killings continued this weekend in Pakistan's financial capital of Karachi (Dawn, Daily Times, Geo TV). And Pakistani officials separately acknowledged that failed Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad met with Pakistani Taliban leader Hakimullah Mehsud and other leading figures (AFP).

At least 30 Pakistanis have been killed in flooding in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, while the AP reports on Pakistan's worsening water crisis (CNN, AP).

Peace through fruit

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's offer last week to help Pakistan export mangos to the U.S. is only the latest instance of using mangoes to bridge gaps between Pakistan and others (ABC). The U.S. will help finance a $21 million program to upgrade Pakistan's mango farming and processing infrastructure, though it is unclear if that will help the image of the U.S. in the country.

LINK
WIKILEAKS

 

[MASTERBAKER]

The Horror Of War Leaked In Detail; Wikileaks Boss Defends Release

CLOSE [X]
(CNN) -- Journalists and other observers around the world spent Monday poring over a vast cache of documents a whistleblower website says are U.S. reports that exhaustively chronicle the twists, turns and horror of the 9-year-old war in Afghanistan.

The whistleblower website WikiLeaks.org published more than 75,000 of the reports on Sunday. The documents date from between 2004 and January 2010, More.. and are divided into more than 100 categories. Tens of thousands of pages of reports document attacks on U.S. troops and their responses, relations between Americans in the field and their Afghan allies, intramural squabbles among Afghan civilians and security forces, and concerns about neighboring Pakistan's ties to the Taliban.

The "direct fire" category accounts for the largest number -- at 16,293 reports -- while "graffiti," "mugging," "narcotics" and "threat" each account for one. And WikiLeaks has another 15,000 documents that it plans to publish after editing out names to protect people, according to the website's founder and editor in chief, Julian Assange.

He told CNN's "Larry King Live" that the first-hand accounts represent "the cut and thrust of the entire war over the past six years," from the military's own raw data -- numbers of casualties, threat reports and notes from meetings between Afghan leaders and U.S. commanders.

"We see the who, the where, the what, the when and the how of each one of these attacks," Assange said. That includes, he said, possible evidence of war crimes by both U.S. troops and the Taliban, the Islamic militia that has been battling U.S. troops since 2001.

Assange said some events listed in the reports are "very suspicious," such as reports of skirmishes in which "a lot of people are killed, but no people taken prisoner and no people left wounded."

"In the end, it will take a court to really look at the full range of evidence to decide if a crime has occurred," he said. But earlier, he noted, "This material does not leave anyone smelling like roses, especially the Taliban."

CNN has not independently confirmed the authenticity of the documents. The White House condemned the release of the documents as "a breach of federal law," but simultaneously dismissed them as old news.

"I don't think that what is being reported hasn't in many ways been publicly discussed -- whether by you or by representatives of the U.S. government -- for quite some time," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters. But he said an investigation into the source of the leak had begun by last week.

"There is no doubt that this is a concerning development in operational security," he said.

The reports tend to be filled with jargon, like this one that describes a border incident from September 4, 2005:

"The Pakistan LNO [liaison officer] reports that ANA [Afghan National Army] troops are massing and threatening the PAKMIL [Pakistani military] 12km NE of FB Lwara [Firebase Lwara, a U.S. military base] ..."

And that's not even the entire first sentence.

Assange said WikiLeaks withheld some documents that dealt with activity by U.S. Special Forces and the CIA, "and most of the activity of other non-U.S. groups," Assange said. But he said the documents reveal the "squalor" of war, uncovering how a number of small incidents have added up to huge numbers of civilian deaths.

"What we haven't seen previously is all those individual deaths," he said. "We've seen just the number. And like Stalin said, 'One man's death is a tragedy, a million dead is a statistic.' So, we've seen the statistic."

The release of the documents is being called the biggest intelligence leak in history, drawing comparison to the disclosure of the Vietnam-era "Pentagon Papers."

"There hasn't been an unauthorized disclosure of this magnitude in 39 years," said Daniel Ellsberg, the onetime Pentagon official who leaked that multi-volume secret history of the conflict. He said he wished the WikiLeaks documents had come out earlier, but, "Better late than never."

Others disagreed with the comparison. Bruce Riedel, an analyst at the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at

the Brookings Institution, noted that the Pentagon Papers were part of a document prepared for U.S. leaders that analyzed how the United States got into Vietnam, "which assessed successes and failures in a comprehensive way."

"This is really the raw material of the war -- unassessed, raw, fragmentary data that I think in each case, you have to be very careful how much of a larger picture you can conclude from these fragments and snippets," Riedel said.

And CNN Terrorism Analyst Peter Bergen said the Pentagon Papers revealed "a huge disconnect between what the American government was saying officially and internally."

"Here, all sorts of American government officials are saying the war is not going very well. No one is disagreeing with that," Bergen said.

But Ellsberg said the documents, "low-level as they are," raise the question of whether the United States has a winning strategy in Afghanistan and whether it should continue to pursue the war.

"They do give us the sense of the pattern of failure, of stalemate, and why we're stalemated -- civilian casuatlies that recruit or the Taliban for us and raise the question of what we're doing there," he said.

The United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan in 2001 after the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington. The attacks were carried out by the Islamic terrorist network al Qaeda, which operated from bases in Afghanistan with the approval of the Taliban, the fundamentalist movement that ruled most of the country at the time.

The invasion swiftly toppled the Taliban, but al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar escaped and remain at large. Meanwhile, the Taliban regrouped along the rugged border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, which is now battling its own Taliban insurgency as well.

Gary Berntsen, who led a CIA commando team in Afghanistan in the hunt for al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, told CNN's "Rick's List" that the documents "probably are accurate." But Berntsen, now a Republican candidate for a U.S. Senate seat in New York, said the reports are likely to be a propaganda coup for the Taliban and "sap morale in the United States."

"It does paint a bleak picture on this," he said. "But it doesn't mean this fight is less worth fighting and trying to make progress on."

And Paul Rieckhoff, founder of Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, said the information should be put "in context" and that journalists should avoid publishing anything that could harm U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Assange, he said, "is an anti-war activist who has repeatedly cast a very unfair light on the American military and on the American population in general."

"There are American troops in harm's way getting shot and killed," Rieckhoff said. "If WikiLeaks is endangering them, we need to push back, and the American public needs to push back."

Once the jargon of the report is pierced, the stories can be eye-opening.

In a February 5, 2008, incident, Task Force Helmand reported that an Afghan National Policeman [ANP] was in a public shower smoking hashish when two members of the Afghan National Army walked in.

"ANP felt threatened and a fire fight occurred," the report says. "The ANP fled the scene and was later shot. ANP and ANA commanders held meetings to contain the incident."

An October 15, 2007, incident describes an ANP highway police officer's shooting of another Afghan national police officer in the shoulder and leg, not seriously. "The shooting was not accidental the policeman had been arguing with each other for a few days," the report said.

In a March 19 2005 incident, "FOB [Forward Operating Base] Cobra received a local national boy who had received a gunshot wound to his stomach," another report said.

"He had been shot during a green-on-green [Afghans attacking Afghans] firefight in Jangalak Village. The boy and his older brother had heard shooting outside of their compound and went outside to check it out, at which point the boy was shot in the stomach. Another brother had also been shot and died at the compound. No adult males had accompanied the brothers, and only the older brother of the injured boy could provide information on the incident. The older brother explained that men in the village were having personal disputes with each other and had then began shooting at each ones' compounds."

The New York Times reported Sunday that military field documents on WikiLeaks suggest that Pakistan, an ally of the United States in the war against terror, has been running a "double game" by allowing its powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency to meet with the Taliban. The talks included "secret strategy sessions to organize networks of militant groups that fight against American soldiers in Afghanistan, and even hatch plots to assassinate Afghan leaders," reported the newspaper, which had prior access to the documents.

Though it is not news that Pakistan has a relationship with the Taliban, "the extent of it, the depth of it, the texture of that relationship is now laid out in copious detail," Riedel said. "We already had a very strained relationship in Pakistan over this issue, for several years. This is going to pressure that relationship even more."

But Pakistan's ambassador to the United States, Husain Haqqani, said the government now in power in Pakistan is committed to battling the Taliban.

"The misgivings of past cannot always easily be overcome," he said. "But what we can change is the future, and that's what we will do," he added.

"This government was voted in on a platform in which we said very clearly, 'We will fight terrorists, and we will defeat them. And as long as this government has the legitimacy and support of parliament, that's exactly what it will do," Haqqani told CNN's "The Situation Room." He blamed the leak on unnamed parties he said are "trying to give Pakistan a bad name," but said raw intelligence reports "cannot be the basis of undermining what is now emerging as a truly meaningful partnership in our region."

"You know that things are getting a lot better, and Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United States are working together right now to essentially defeat the terrorists," he said.

But Afghanistan's government expressed amazement at the documents.

"The Afghan government is shocked with the report that has opened the reality of the Afghan war," said Siamak Herawi, a government spokesman. He said Washington needed to deal with the ISI, which he said had "a direct connection with the terrorists," including al Qaeda.

"These reports show that the U.S. was already aware of the ISI connection with the al Qaeda terrorist network," he said. "The United States is overdue on the ISI issue, and now the United States should answer."

Numerous reports name Gen. Hamid Gul, the former head of Pakistan's intelligence service. But Gul rejected the accusations Monday.

"These reports are absolutely and utterly false," Gul said . "I think they [the United States] are failing and they're looking for scapegoats."

Assange said the documents were "legitimate," but said it was important not to take their contents at face value.

"We publish CIA reports all the time that are legitimate CIA reports. That doesn't mean the CIA is telling the truth," he said.

He declined to tell CNN where he got the documents, and says the identities of his sources are less important than the authenticity of the documents they provide. And he denied that WikiLeaks has put troops in danger, and said the documents' publication will help people make informed decisions about whether to support the war.

Assange, an Australian, said the site is coming under "significant pressure" from authorities, including several recent "surveillance events." But he said that due to the response the latest release has received, "It is not politically feasible to interfere with us at a high level."

<object width="450" height="370"><param name="movie" value="http://www.liveleak.com/e/3f6_1280200623"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.liveleak.com/e/3f6_1280200623" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" allowscriptaccess="always" width="450" height="370"></embed></object>

 

[COINTELPRO]

Hypocrisy...DOD Condemnation of Wikileaks

The DOD doesn't leak information to the media in violation of the law?

Tripp sued the Department of Defense and the Justice Department for releasing information from her security file and employment file to the news media in violation of the Privacy Act of 1974.

On March 14, 1998, it was revealed that Linda Tripp was arrested when she was 19 years old in Greenwood Lake, New York in 1969 on charges of stealing $263 in cash as well as a wristwatch worth about $600. The charges were eventually dismissed before coming to trial.[9] Although never convicted in 1969, years later Tripp answered "no" to the question "Have you ever been either charged or arrested for a crime?" on the Department of Defense security clearance form.

Shortly before Tripp was scheduled to appear before the grand jury in the Lewinsky investigation, in March 1998, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, Kenneth Bacon, and his deputy, Clifford Bernath, leaked to reporter Jane Mayer of New Yorker magazine Tripp's answer to the arrest question on her security clearance form. Following the Bacon-Bernath leak to Mayer, the Department of Defense leaked to the news media other confidential information from Tripp's personnel and security files. The Department of Defense Inspector General investigated the leak of Tripp's security clearance form information and found that Bacon and Bernath violated the Privacy Act, and the DoD IG concluded that Bacon and Bernath should have known that the release of information from Tripp's security file was improper.[10]


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Tripp

My information, part of my background check which should have been confidential was leaked out to people that had no business, in violation of the law. CIA agents being outed for opposing the war in Iraq, why should people respect the law regarding top secret information?

 

[COINTELPRO]

Re: Hypocrisy...DOD Condemnation of Wikileaks

Assassination Attempt #5. The DOD are ruthless vatos, they do not respect nada, it got their fingerprint all over it. Wikileaks needs to watch out for this type of tactics.

I get a call to come down to VA to interview when the serial killer was running around from some company with a bunch of military contracts. They pushed confirming the interview time to the last second, this lady knew I was out of town. This headhunter mentioned a previous company that wanted me to come down and stood me up, to make me factor coming down early.

Four days later, I finally get confirmation and the job application that took awhile to complete, a day before the interview. I had to take care of other things to get ready, and finally ending up leaving at night to interview in the morning, just as planned.

I guess these fools wanted me to drive 8 hours and fall asleep crashing on the side of the road trying to get there on time. Damn there could have been a cross and flowers on the side of the road marking where I died...

 

[QueEx]

WikiLeaks Founder Rape Charge

Sweden seeks WikiLeaks founder arrest in rape case

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
gives a seminar at the Swedish
Trade Union Confederation head-
quarters in Stockholm, Sweden,
in this Aug. 14, 2010 file photo. A
spokeswoman for the Swedish
prosecutors office says WikiLeaks
founder Julian Assange is wanted
on suspicion of rape and he should
contact police for questioning.
Spokeswoman Karin Rosander tells
The Associated Press that a pro-
secutor in Stockholm issued an
arrest warrant for Assange late
Friday Aug. 20, 2010 and that
authorities have not yet heard from
him. (AP Photo / Bertil Ericson /
SCANPIX)


The Associated Press
By KARL RITTER
August 21, 2010


STOCKHOLM — The founder of WikiLeaks was accused of rape in a Swedish arrest warrant Saturday that turned the spotlight onto the former hacker who's infuriated governments with his self-proclaimed mission to make secrets public.

The accusation was labeled a dirty trick by Julian Assange and his group, who are preparing to release a fresh batch of classified U.S. documents from the Afghan war.

Swedish prosecutors urged Assange — a nomadic 39-year-old Australian whose whereabouts were unclear — to turn himself in to police to face questioning in one case involving suspicions of rape and another based on an accusation of molestation.

They issued a warrant for his arrest, a move that doesn't necessarily mean that criminal charges will be filed. Investigators want him in custody because they believe there is a risk he will obstruct the probe by destroying evidence, said Karin Rosander, a spokeswoman for the Swedish Prosecution Authority.

"The next step is that we interrogate him," she said. "Then we'll see what happens."

Assange has no permanent address and travels frequently — jumping from one friend's place to the next. He disappears from public view for months at a time, only to reappear in the full glare of the cameras at packed news conferences to discuss his site's latest disclosure.

He was in Sweden last week seeking legal protection for the whistle-blower website, which angered the Obama administration for publishing thousands of leaked documents about U.S. military activities in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Assange dismissed the rape allegations in a statement on WikiLeaks' Twitter page, saying "the charges are without basis and their issue at this moment is deeply disturbing."

The first files in its "Afghan War Diary" revealed classified military documents covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010. Assange said Wednesday that WikiLeaks plans to release a new batch of 15,000 documents from the Afghan war within weeks.

The Pentagon says the information could risk the lives of U.S. troops and their Afghan helpers and have demanded WikiLeaks return all leaked documents and remove them from the Internet.

On its official blog, WikiLeaks appeared to suggest that that work would go on despite the allegations against Assange.

"While Julian is focusing on his defenses and clearing his name, WikiLeaks will be continuing its regular operations," said a statement signed by "The WikiLeaks team."

Little is known about Assange's private life — he declined to talk about his background at a news conference in Stockholm a week ago. Equally secretive is the small team behind WikiLeaks, reportedly just a half-dozen people and casual volunteers who offer their services as needed.

A WikiLeaks spokesman, who says he goes by the name Daniel Schmitt in order to protect his identity, told The Associated Press in a telephone interview from Iceland that the "extremely serious allegations" came as a complete surprise and that efforts to find lawyers for Assange are under way.

"We are currently looking into the matter," Schmitt said. It will be resolved within the coming weeks and months, he added.

WikiLeaks also commented on the allegations on its Twitter page. Apart from the comment from Assange, the page had a link to an article in Swedish tabloid Expressen, which first reported the allegations.

"We were warned to expect 'dirty tricks.' Now we have the first one," it said.

"Expressen is a tabloid; No one here has been contacted by Swedish police. Needless to say this will prove hugely distracting," said another posting.

Assange was in Sweden last week partly to apply for a publishing certificate to make sure the website, which has servers in Sweden, can take full advantage of Swedish laws protecting whistle-blowers.

He also spoke at a seminar hosted by the Christian faction of the opposition Social Democratic party and announced he would write bimonthly columns for a left-wing Swedish newspaper.

___

Associated Press Writer Juergen Baetz in Berlin contributed to this report.

http://www.ajc.com/business/sweden-seeks-wikileaks-founder-596422.html

 

[thoughtone]

Re: WikiLeaks Founder Rape Charge

CIA Fails!​

source: The Guardian

Rape warrant against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange cancelled

Swedish authorities withdraw an arrest warrant for the founder of the whistleblowers' website on suspicion of rape


Swedish authorities have withdrawn an arrest warrant for Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, stating that the accusation of rape against him was unfounde

The move came just a day after a warrant was issued by Sweden's prosecutors' office in Stockholm in response to accusations of rape and molestation in two separate cases.

"I don't think there is reason to suspect that he has committed rape," the chief prosecutor, Eva Finne, said.

She made no comment on the status of the molestation case, a less serious charge that would not lead to an arrest warrant.

Assange has denied both accusations, first reported by the Swedish tabloid Expressen, which were described as dirty tricks on the Wikileaks' Twitter account

He implied that they were linked to the release by the whistleblowers' website of a huge cache of US military records on the Afghan war, which were published in collaboration with the Guardian and two other newspapers.

Assange wrote: "The charges are without basis and their issue at this moment is deeply disturbing."

Earlier postings on the Twitter account implied the accusations were part of a dirty tricks campaign against the Wikileaks founder, who has been strongly criticised by the Pentagon.

Expressen is a tabloid; No one here has been contacted by Swedish police. Needless to say, this will prove hugely distracting.

We were warned to expect 'dirty tricks'. Now we have the first one."

Last month Wikileaks released around 77,000 secret US military documents on the war in Afghanistan.

US authorities criticised the leak, saying it could put the lives of Nato troops and Afghan informants at risk.

Assange has said that Wikileaks intends to release a further 15,000 documents in the coming weeks - a pledge condemned by the Pentagon, which has demanded the deletion of the files from the website.

Assange, an Australian citizen, was in Sweden last week to apply for a publishing certificate to make sure the website, which has servers in Sweden, can take full advantage of Swedish laws protecting whistleblowers.

He also gave a talk about his work and defended the decision by Wikileaks to publish the Afghan war logs.

 

[QueEx]

Re: WikiLeaks Founder Rape Charge

<object width="480" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/m07Z0wZMY0A?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/m07Z0wZMY0A?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="480" height="385"></embed></object>

 

[QueEx]

Re: WikiLeaks Founder Rape Charge

<font size="6"><center>
WikiLeaks - Iraq<font size></center>

<font size="4">
WikiLeaks plans 'major' announcement within hours
as Pentagon braces for massive Iraq war leak</font size>


The Canadian Press
By Pauline Jelinek (CP) – 28 minutes ago

LONDON — The WikiLeaks website is poised to release what the Pentagon fears is the largest cache of secret U.S. documents in history — hundreds of thousands of intelligence reports that could amount to a classified history of the war in Iraq.

U.S. officials condemned the move and said Friday they were racing to contain the damage from the imminent release, while NATO's top official told reporters he feared that lives could be put at risk by the mammoth disclosure.

<font size="4">
Wikileaks Planned Document Release
Poses National Security Risk, U.S. Says</font size>


Bloomberg
By Tony Capaccio
Oct 22, 2010

Pentagon officials said . . . The material still poses a risk to U.S. national security and relations with Iraq, said Pentagon spokesman Colonel David Lapan. Lapan told reporters today the documents might contain the names of Iraqis who worked closely with the U.S.

“Our concern is the threat to individuals, our people and our equipment,” he said. “But in terms of the insight captured -- incidents of innocent Iraqis killed, detainee abuse -- all of those things have been very well chronicled. Iraq is still trying to form a government. There are sensitivities there. So who knows what the impacts might be.”

He said the material, which may be released early tomorrow, includes U.S. message traffic on tensions between Arabs and Kurds over contested boundaries, Iranian interference in Iraq and killings of imprisoned Iraqis by their countrymen.


Political Figures

“I’d really be worried if, as looks to be the case, you have Iraqi political figures named in a context or a connection that can make them politically and physically vulnerable to their adversaries,” said Crocker, now dean of the Bush School of Government and Public Service at Texas A&M University in College Station.

“That just has an utterly chilling effect on the willingness of political figures to talk to us, not just in Iraq but anywhere in the world,” Crocker said.

WikiLeaks.org receives confidential material that governments and businesses want to keep secret and posts the information on the Internet.


‘Raw Observations’

“These are raw observations from the tactical level of combat operations,” Lapan said. He said they include casualty reports from roadside bomb explosions and “information on working with Iraqis.”

The documents the Pentagon examined don’t include high- level U.S. political-military analysis or details on sensitive U.S. special forces commando operations conducted by the classified Joint Special Operations Command, Lapan said.

<font size="4">
Wikileaks Hacked By “Very Skilled” Attackers</font size>


Forbes
October. 22, 2010


Someone is trying to spring a leak in Wikileaks.

As the whistle-blower organization prepared earlier this week for a Saturday press conference that some believe will announce a major release of secret data regarding the Iraq war, a staffer wrote Wednesday on the organization’s twitter feed that its “communications infrastructure is currently under attack,” adding the cryptic message “Project BO move to coms channel S. Activate Reston5.”


A Wikileaks source who asks to remain anonymous now says that the organization’s XMTP server in Amsterdam, used to host its encrypted instant messaging communications, was compromised earlier this week by an unknown attacker, and the chat service had to be relocated to another server in Germany. “The server got attacked, hacked, and the private keys got out,” says the source. “We needed new private keys. Now it’s back online and secure.”

The source added that the attack represented the first breach in Wikileaks’ history, and that “the people who are behind it are very skilled,” declining to comment further on the details of the hack.

 

[QueEx]

Re: WikiLeaks Founder Rape Charge

Iraq

WikiLeaked

<IFRAME SRC="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/iraq-war-logs" WIDTH=780 HEIGHT=1500>
<A HREF="http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/iraq-war-logs">link</A>

</IFRAME>

 

[MCP]

Huge Wikileaks release shows US 'ignored Iraq torture'


SEE: "http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11611319


.

 

[gene cisco]

Re: WikiLeaks 1000's of Afghan War Documents; NOW Iraq Document Dump

......They also reveal how the military kept searching for WMD's -- the original pretext for invasion -- for several years after it became clear Saddam Hussein didn't have the weapons program that U.S. intelligence agencies and Bush administration officials claimed......


It's been 7 years since I pulled out the count and said "I count zero WMDs!" Those apple pie times were crazy back then. Very few wanted to stand up against this war.

 

[QueEx]

Re: WikiLeaks 1000's of Afghan War Documents; NOW Iraq Document Dump

......They also reveal how the military kept searching for WMD's -- the original pretext for invasion -- for several years after it became clear Saddam Hussein didn't have the weapons program that U.S. intelligence agencies and Bush administration officials claimed......


It's been 7 years since I pulled out the count and said "I count zero WMDs!" Those apple pie times were crazy back then. Very few wanted to stand up against this war.

The Count, The Count, The Count !

 

[thoughtone]

Re: WikiLeaks 1000's of Afghan War Documents; NOW Iraq Document Dump

All of this is a conspiracy theory concocted by the Clintons, according to Greed.

 

[QueEx]

New WikiLeaks release will do most harm yet


U.S. officials:
New WikiLeaks release will do most harm yet


McClatchy Newspapers
By Nancy A. Youssef
November 27, 2010


WASHINGTON — U.S. diplomats and officials said they're bracing Sunday for at least three newspapers and WikiLeaks to publish hundreds of thousands classified State Department cables that could drastically alter U.S. relations with top allies and reveal embarrassing secrets about U.S. foreign policy.

U.S. diplomats frantically have been reaching out to their counterparts around the world as intelligence officials pleaded with WikiLeaks and the newspapers, including The New York Times, the Guardian in London and Der Spiegel, a German newsweekly, to not publish information that could endanger lives and U.S. policy. Some of the documents are expected to reveal details about how some U.S. diplomats feel about top foreign leaders.

While this is the third time this year that WikiLeaks has released a large batch of documents related to U.S. foreign policy, officials told McClatchy that Sunday's expected release will be far more damaging than the first two combined.

The first batch dealt with Afghanistan and the second with Iraq. Both releases largely gave details about what many thought the U.S. military was doing in those wars. This batch however, is expected to include never released private cables between diplomats.

Publicly, State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley warned that releasing the documents could put "lives and interests at risk." But privately, administration officials are far more concerned about what they contain and implications of releasing them.

NBC News reported Friday that some of the documents would reveal damaging details about U.S. efforts to renegotiate the START nuclear arms treaty with Russia and U.S. anti-terrorism efforts in Yemen.

Speculation is rampant in Washington about what's in the documents.

Germany's Der Spiegel briefly published a story on its website Saturday saying that the documents include 251,287 cables and 8,000 diplomatic directives, most of which date after 2004. About 9,000 documents are from the first two months of this year, the newspaper said.

About 6 percent of the documents were classified as secret, the newspaper said before taking down its story. The majority was unclassified, the newspaper said, but all were intended to remain confidential.

The newspaper said it would release all the documents at 4:30 p.m. EST. WikiLeaks and the newspapers are expected to release the documents and their findings at the same time. However, the release time has changed several times over the past few days.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reached out Friday to leaders in Germany, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Britain, France and Afghanistan, Crowley said via Twitter. Diplomats throughout the State Department have spent days reaching out and warning allies of what's coming.

Newspapers in Canada, the United Kingdom, Italy, India, Pakistan, Israel and Belgium, among others, said they expect the leaked documents to include details about U.S. relations with their countries.

Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told CNN in an interview to be broadcast Sunday that: "I would hope that those who are responsible for this would, at some point in time, think about the responsibility that they have for lives that they're exposing."

Although WikiLeaks hasn't said how it obtained the documents, U.S. officials think that Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, while a 22-year-old intelligence office stationed in Iraq, downloaded thousands of documents, at times pretending he was listening to music by Lady Gaga.

Manning and other soldiers had access to the documents as part of an effort by the military to get as much information as possible to soldiers on the battlefield about their communities so that they had the best intelligence possible.

Manning has been charged with illegally downloading thousands of classified documents and is being held in a military jail.

(Shashank Bengali contributed to this article from Baghdad.)


http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2010/11/27/104388/us-officials-new-wikileaks-release.html

 

[Gunner]

Re: New WikiLeaks release will do most harm yet

Being that you love Obama and all


gatewaypundit.rightnetwork.com


Wikileaks Report Reveals Obama’s Flawed Assessment of Iranian Nuclear Threat
Posted by Jim Hoft on Sunday, November 28, 2010, 5:03 PM
Barack Obama Owes George Bush An Apology–

Back in 2007 it was common knowledge that Iran was working on a nuclear weapons program.
That’s why it was such a shock in December 2007 that National Intelligence Estimate assessment released a controversial report that claimed Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003.


(AFP)
Far left Senator Barack Obama attacked then President Bush after the report was released:

“It is absolutely clear that this administration and President Bush continues to not let facts get in the way of his ideology.. They need, now, to aggressively move on the diplomatic front… They should have stopped the saber rattling — should never have started it.”

Now, thanks to the Wikileaks document dump, we find out that this report by leftists in the NIE was horribly inaccurate. In fact less than four months after the NIE report was released the Saudi regime was begging the US to “cut off the head of the snake” and put an end Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

The far left Guardian posted the document:

Here’s the transcript:

10. (S) The King, Foreign Minister, Prince Muqrin, and Prince Nayif all agreed that the Kingdom needs to cooperate with the US on resisting and rolling back Iranian influence and subversion in Iraq. The King was particularly adamant on this point, and it was echoed by the senior princes as well. Al-Jubeir recalled the King’s frequent exhortations to the US to attack Iran and so put an end to its nuclear weapons program. “He told you to cut off the head of the snake,” he recalled to the Charge’, adding that working with the US to roll back Iranian influence in Iraq is a strategic priority for the King and his government.

Obviously, this shows that Barack Obama and the far left were on the wrong side of history once again.
…And, Bush was right.

 

[Gunner]

Re: New WikiLeaks release will do most harm yet

Que aren't you a big fan of Hillary?


More Smart Diplomacy: Hillary Clinton Ordered Spying on Countries at UN
Posted by Jim Hoft on Sunday, November 28, 2010, 6:45 PM
This must be more of that smart power they promised…
Hillary Clinton ordered spying on countries at the United Nations and now the whole world knows it.
Speigel Online reported:

The US State Department gave its diplomats instructions to spy on other countries’ representatives at the United Nations, according to a directive signed by Hillary Clinton. Diplomats were told to collect information about e-mail accounts, credit cards and passwords, among other things.

US diplomats are alleged to have been requested by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to spy on the diplomats of other countries at the United Nations. That was the purpose of the “National Humint Collection Directive,” which has been seen by SPIEGEL. The document was signed by Clinton and came into force on July 31, 2009.

The information to be collected included personal credit card information, frequent flyer customer numbers, as well as e-mail and telephone accounts. In many cases the State Department also required “biometric information,” “passwords” and “personal encryption keys.” In the US, the term biometric information generally refers to fingerprints, passport photos and iris scans, among other things.

The US State Department also wanted to obtain information on the plans and intentions of UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and his secretariat relating to issues like Iran, according to the detailed wish list in the directive. The instructions were sent to 30 US embassies around the world, including Berlin.

The detailed document also reveals which UN issues most interested the US government. These included: “Darfur/Sudan,” “Afghanistan/Pakistan,” Somalia, Iran and North Korea. Other top issues included Paraguay and the Palestinian Territories, eight West African states including Burkina Faso, Mauritania and Senegal, as well as various states in Eastern Europe.

As justification for the espionage orders, Clinton emphasized that a large share of the information that the US intelligence agencies works with, comes from the reports put together by State Department staff around the world.

 

[NnubianN]

Re: New WikiLeaks release will do most harm yet

...Obviously, this shows that Barack Obama and the far left were on the wrong side of history once again.
…And, Bush was right.

I swear...you war mongorers never get enough. Now I'm guessing Pres Obama's NEXT move is to bomb Pyongyang? What do you think MIGHT've happened if Bush had invaded Iran while already engaged in wars with Iraq AND Afghanistan? Syria would've bombed Israel; Lebanon would've been embroiled by attacks on the government from Hezbollah; all out civil war instigated by Iranian insiders would've destroyed Iraq; Palestinian territories would be in flames.

As if the Middle East wasn't unsettled enough, you right wing war lovers wanted to pour gasoline onto a barbecue grill. More troops, more weapons factories, more defense spending, MORE NATIONAL DEBT! Oh, wait...you'd've paid for the war by cutting taxes on the millionaires and billionaires so more JOBS would be created...but wait...wasn't there was this thing called a MELTDOWN that crashed the stock market, sent the housing market collapsing in on itself and forced major lending houses to beg and borrow from a nearly depleted government?

I'm guessing you blamed that on then Senator/Candidate/President Elect Obama also?

Amazing

 

[NnubianN]

Re: New WikiLeaks release will do most harm yet

Que aren't you a big fan of Hillary?


More Smart Diplomacy: Hillary Clinton Ordered Spying on Countries at UN
Posted by Jim Hoft on Sunday, November 28, 2010, 6:45 PM
This must be more of that smart power they promised…
Hillary Clinton ordered spying on countries at the United Nations and now the whole world knows it...

This so called "news story" has so many holes in it if one tried reading between the lines you'd fall through to the other side. Jim Hoft? JIM HOFT??!!


Jim Hoft: DUMBEST Man on the Internet http://mediamatters.org/blog/201009210034
Jim Hoft...MISLEADER http://thinkingmeat.net/2008/05/14/busted-jim-hoft-posts-another-deliberately-misleading-chart

Need more?

Jim Hoft: Race Baiter http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/...ting-and-his-ties-to-white-supremacist-groups
Jim Hoft: Super Genius http://tbogg.firedoglake.com/2010/0...m-hoft-is-some-kind-of-political-supergenius/
Jim Hoft: Internet's Dimmest Bulb? http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/37245_Jim_Hoft-_Internets_Dimmest_Bulb

 

[Lamarr]

Re: New WikiLeaks release will do most harm yet

Hillary Clinton Ordered Diplomats to Steal UN Officials’ Credit Card Numbers

Among the leaks was something called the “National Humint Collection Directive,” a secret document signed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last year. The document orders officials at the State Department to conduct mass surveillance and in some cases outright theft against high ranking UN officials.

Incredibly, beyond the simple collection of secret information about officials including UN chief Ban Ki-moon, the directive also calls for State Department officials to try to steal credit card data from a number of top officials, as well as passwords and personal encryption keys. They also sought to collect DNA samples from UN members.

 

[rikdicoulesmarv]

Re: New WikiLeaks release will do most harm yet

http://cablegate.wikileaks.org/

 

[QueEx]

Re: New WikiLeaks release will do most harm yet

Que aren't you a big fan of Hillary?

I need to check your application to join this site. Obviously, you gave false information about your age. Children are not permitted on this site. Clearly, age verification needs to be tightened.

Nevertheless, you are challenged (not only present mental/maturity) but here factually to post: where have I ever said anything in favor of Hillary Clinton.

Lets take this even further: If you can't show it, I ban you forever? <font size="3">Deal ???</font size>

QueEx

 

[Gunner]

Re: New WikiLeaks release will do most harm yet

I need to check your application to join this site. Obviously, you gave false information about your age. Children are not permitted on this site. Clearly, age verification needs to be tightened.

Nevertheless, you are challenged (not only present mental/maturity) but here factually to post: where have I ever said anything in favor of Hillary Clinton.

Lets take this even further: If you can't show it, I ban you forever? <font size="3">Deal ???</font size>

QueEx

You Mad!!!
You called me out now you can't take it.

 

[QueEx]

Re: New WikiLeaks release will do most harm yet

You Mad!!!
You called me out now you can't take it.

Look man (presuming that you are adult), stop acting like a child. Stop with the childish-like games. Respond like an adult, discuss, rebut, etc., like an adult. I'm no where near mad -- but I don't enjoy wasting time with simpleton shit.

QueEx

 

[Gunner]

Re: New WikiLeaks release will do most harm yet

Well if that is the case , why did you go out of your way to bookmark the statements of AA and myself. You started the game then you were dunked on, now you want to adhere to the rules.

 

[QueEx]

Re: New WikiLeaks release will do most harm yet

`

<font size="3">WikiLeaks founder could be charged under Espionage Act

<font size="3">Federal authorities are investigating whether WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange violated criminal laws in the group's release of government documents, including possible charges under the Espionage Act, sources familiar with the inquiry said Monday.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said the Justice Department and Pentagon are conducting "an active, ongoing criminal investigation.'' Others familiar with the probe said the FBI is examining everyone who came into possession of the documents, including those who gave the materials to WikiLeaks and also the organization itself. No charges are imminent, the sources said, and it is unclear whether any will be brought.

Former prosecutors cautioned that prosecutions involving leaked classified information are difficult because the Espionage Act is a 1917 statute that preceded Supreme Court cases that expanded First Amendment protections. The government also would have to persuade another country to turn over Assange, who is outside the United States.</font size>

 

[Upgrade Dave]

Re: New WikiLeaks release will do most harm yet

I swear there's so much sturm and drang when these Wikileaks come out but when you read them, they turn out to be much ado about nothing. It always turns out to be gossipy crap or stuff that's already been leaking. The only interesting parts is when they put names to info they had only previously been credited to "unnamed sources".

Though it was jacked up when they released names of Afghans that were helping them in previous leaks. That was reckless.

 

[QueEx]

Re: New WikiLeaks release will do most harm yet

I swear there's so much sturm and drang when these Wikileaks come out but when you read them, they turn out to be much ado about nothing. It always turns out to be gossipy crap or stuff that's already been leaking. The only interesting parts is when they put names to info they had only previously been credited to "unnamed sources".

Though it was jacked up when they released names of Afghans that were helping them in previous leaks. That was reckless.

I agree, though I don't know if we've seen the worst of it yet.

What I don't understand is how easy it was for the soldier to download and redistribute the message traffic in the first instance. I spent several years in Naval Intel and NSA and I was shocked at the apparent ease this was accomplished. Of course, its seems most of what is being released was unclassified -- but, if it stands to cause the kind of damage officials allege, then it should have had some minimal protection, at least confidential and some minimal real-time security features could have been easily incorporated to alert that the data was being downloaded.

QueEx

 

[thoughtone]

Wikileaks Next Target, Bank

source: Forbes


Exclusive: WikiLeaks Will Unveil Major Bank Scandal


First WikiLeaks spilled the guts of government. Next up: The private sector, starting with one major American bank.

In an exclusive interview earlier this month, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange told Forbes that his whistleblower site will release tens of thousands of documents from a major U.S. financial firm in early 2011. Assange wouldn’t say exactly what date, what bank, or what documents, but he compared the coming release to the emails that emerged in the Enron trial, a comprehensive look at a corporation’s bad behavior.

“It will give a true and representative insight into how banks behave at the executive level in a way that will stimulate investigations and reforms, I presume,” he told me.

Read Forbes’ full interview with Assange and our cover story on what he and WikiLeaks means for business here.

“You could call it the ecosystem of corruption,” Assange added. “But it’s also all the regular decision making that turns a blind eye to and supports unethical practices: the oversight that’s not done, the priorities of executives, how they think they’re fulfilling their own self-interest.”

WikiLeaks recent priority has clearly been the publication of hundreds of thousands of government documents: 76,000 classified documents from the war in Afghanistan, another 392,000 from Iraq, and on Sunday, the first piece of an ongoing exposure of what will likely be millions of diplomatic messages sent between the U.S. State Department and its embassies.

But that government focus doesn’t mean WikiLeaks won’t embarass corporations, too. Since October, WikiLeaks has closed its submissions channel; Assange says the site was receiving more documents than it could find resources to publish. And half those unpublished submissions, Assange says, relate to the private sector. He confirmed that WikiLeaks has damaging, unpublished material from pharmaceutical companies, finance firms (aside from the upcoming bank release), and energy companies, just to name a few industries.

Whether and when those secrets come out is solely a matter of Assange’s discretion. “We’re in a position where we have to prioritize our resources so that the biggest impact stuff gets released first.”

 

[thoughtone]

Re: Wikileaks Next Target, Bank

source: Huffington Post


Bank Of America Stock Takes Hit After WikiLeaks Rumors, Then Rebounds


UPDATE: Bank of America's stock rebounded in early trading Wednesday, rising .50 percent.

ORIGINAL POST: Bank of America's stock took a hit on Tuesday, as rumors circulated that WikiLeaks could release a trove of the bank's secret -- and potentially "unethical" -- documents next year.

As WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange cooly contemplates how best to "present" the data he says he has, investors in Bank of America are nervous: The bank's share price dropped 3.18 percent on Tuesday. The information-leaking organization is sitting on a massive pile of internal documents from one of the big U.S. banks, Assange told Forbes, and an interview he gave last year suggests the big bank could be the country's biggest, Bank of America.

According to Assange, his organization had five gigabytes of Bank of America documents in 2009, which the New York Times notes is roughly equivalent to 600,000 pages of information.

"You could call it the ecosystem of corruption," Assange told Forbes about the upcoming release. "There will be some flagrant violations, unethical practices that will be revealed." He noted, also, that "the great value is seeing the full spectrum" of how the bank operates.

Bank of America released a statement that expressed skepticism.

"More than a year ago WikiLeaks claimed to have the computer hard drive of a Bank of America executive," the statement says. "Aside from the claims themselves we have no evidence that supports this assertion."

If the documents do contain embarrassing information, they'll come at a bad time for the bank -- or perhaps they won't reveal much that the public doesn't already know. Amid disclosures that it employed "robo signers," who approved thousands of foreclosure documents without reading them, the bank temporarily halted its foreclosures, and it now faces a Federal racketeering lawsuit. In a recent court case, a bank employee said the mortgage company that Bank of America now owns failed to deliver key mortgage documents when it sold those mortgages.

As the mortgage and foreclosure controversy drags on, investors and homeowners alike are challenging the way Bank of America handled vitally important paperwork.



<SCRIPT type=text/javascript>(function(){var a = YAHOO.util.Dom.getElementsByClassName('contin_below');YAHOO.util.Dom.setStyle(a, 'display', 'none');}())</SCRIPT>

 

[thoughtone]

Re: New WikiLeaks release will do most harm yet

So much for transparency and freedom of speech!


source: Huffington Post

Amazon Blocks Wiki Leaks
Online Giant Reported Bows To Political Pressure, Disables Wikileaks Servers ​

Amazon pulled the plug on hosting WikiLeaks today amidst increasing political pressure.
The Associated Press reports:

Amazon.com Inc. forced WikiLeaks to stop using the U.S. company's computers to distribute embarrassing State Department communications and other documents, WikiLeaks said Wednesday.
The ouster came after congressional staff had questioned Amazon about its relationship with WikiLeaks, said Sen. Joe Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut.

WikiLeaks confirmed it hours after The Associated Press reported that Amazon's servers had stopped hosting WikiLeaks' site. The site was unavailable for several hours before it moved back to its previous Swedish host, Bahnhof.
​

WikiLeaks tweeted in response: "WikiLeaks servers at Amazon ousted. Free speech the land of the free--fine our $ are now spent to employ people in Europe," and later, "If Amazon are so uncomfortable with the first amendment, they should get out of the business of selling books."

Keep up with the latest WikiLeaks news in our continuously-updated live blog below.

 

[QueEx]

Re: New WikiLeaks release will do most harm yet

<font size="4">

Italian Prime Minister Berlusconi took Putin kickbacks, cables allege</font size>

US diplomats have reported startling suspicions that Silvio Berlusconi could be "profiting personally and handsomely" from secret deals with the Russian prime minister, Vladimir Putin, according to cables released by WikiLeaks.

Exasperated by Berlusconi's pro-Russian behaviour, American embassy staff detail allegations circulating in Rome that the Italian leader has been promised a cut of huge energy contracts.

The two men are known to be personally close, but this is the first time allegations of a financial link have surfaced.

Hillary Clinton's state department in Washington sent a special request to the Rome embassy this year, asking for extra intelligence-gathering on the allegations about the men: "What personal investments, if any, do they have that might drive their foreign or economic policies?".

References to Berlusconi's "financially enriching relationship" originated both from members of his own political party and from the hostile government of Georgia, according to the leaked cables.

The US ambassador in Rome, Ronald Spogli, first reported the claims in a series of dispatches in 2008-09. He said the prime minister had taken "single-handed" control of Italy's dealings with Moscow, with the over-riding aim of pleasing the Russian leader.

Berlusconi acted as a "mouthpiece" for Putin, he reported, supporting him in public when Russia was being criticised.

Personal ties between the two were close, "with Putin's family spending long visits at the Berlusconi family mansion in Sardinia at Berlusconi's expense". Berlusconi in turn has the rare privilege of being invited to Putin's dacha in the Black Sea resort of Sochi for what the embassy speculated on one occasion would be a "blow-out party". A contact in Berlusconi's office told the embassy of "exchanges of lavish gifts".

FULL STORY

 

[MASTERBAKER]

A Look Inside The WIKILEAKS-CAVE...

A Look Inside The WIKILEAKS-CAVE...

<object width="450" height="370"><param name="movie" value="http://www.liveleak.com/e/703_1291465807"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.liveleak.com/e/703_1291465807" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" allowscriptaccess="always" width="450" height="370"></embed></object>

An inside look at a James Bond-like cave in Sweden which now hosts some of WikiLeaks' servers.

 

[theoriginalgreatone]

Re: A Look Inside The WIKILEAKS-CAVE...

for some reason i can't go to the site, is it down?

 

[QueEx]

Re: New WikiLeaks release will do most harm yet

<font size="5">
Army opens probe of its role
in WikiLeaks security breach
</font size>


McClatchy Newspapers
By Nancy A. Youssef
December 23, 2010


WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army has launched a wide-ranging investigation into how
a private allegedly downloaded hundreds of thousands of secret reports and diplomatic
cables and handed them to WikiLeaks, McClatchy has learned. The probe could result
in a recommendation that other soldiers should face criminal charges in the case.


An Army official familiar with the investigation told McClatchy that the six-member task
force has been given until Feb. 1 to complete a report that will look at everything from
how Pfc. Bradley Manning was selected for his job and trained to whether his superiors
missed warning signs that he was downloading documents he had no need to read.



`

 

[MASTERBAKER]

Julian Assange interview on MSNBC, 2010-12-22

Julian Assange interview on MSNBC, 2010-12-22

<object width="450" height="370"><param name="movie" value="http://www.liveleak.com/e/f1e_1293463722"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.liveleak.com/e/f1e_1293463722" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" allowscriptaccess="always" width="450" height="370"></embed></object>

Discussion about the 1917 Espionage Act, U.S. political leaders including V.P. Biden, Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee and PFC Bradley Manning, who is a political prisoner being held under solitary confinement over the leaks, since May 2010.