Pentagon Manhunt for Wikileaks Publisher

[Hatha Sunahara]

The guy in Iraq who leaked the Collateral Murder video to Wikileaks was caught a few days ago, and for some reason the Pentagon believes he released 260,000 sensitive documents to Wikileaks. So, they are hunting down Julian Assange. the Wikileaks publisher, hoping he will cooperate with them. I might find those documents very interesting to read. Could do a lot of damage to their facade. Here's the article and link:

Hatha

June 12th, 2010 11:35 AM
Pentagon Manhunt

1 of 1

By Philip Shenon / Daily Beast

(This story has been updated to reflect new developments on Assange's whereabouts, including the cancelation of a scheduled appearance in Las Vegas.)

Pentagon investigators are trying to determine the whereabouts of the Australian-born founder of the secretive website Wikileaks for fear that he may be about to publish a huge cache of classified State Department cables that, if made public, could do serious damage to national security, government officials tell The Daily Beast.

The officials acknowledge that even if they found the website founder, Julian Assange, it is not clear what they could do to block publication of the cables on Wikileaks, which is nominally based on a server in Sweden and bills itself as a champion of whistleblowers.

American officials said Pentagon investigators are convinced that Assange is in possession of at least some classified State Department cables leaked by a 22-year-old Army intelligence specialist, Bradley Manning of Potomac, Maryland, who is now in custody in Kuwait.

And given the contents of the cables, the feds have good reason to be concerned.

As The Daily Beast reported June 8, Manning, while posted in Iraq, apparently had special access to cables prepared by diplomats and State Department officials throughout the Middle East, regarding the workings of Arab governments and their leaders, according to an American diplomat.


(More here:) http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/must-read/pentagon-manhunt

[Quantum]

He needs to post it, before they get him or "neutralize" him.

[willie pete]

He needs to post it, before they get him or "neutralize" him.



Or he's found Heart-Attacked

[Grand Master Melon]

Let's hope they're more exciting than the 9 11 phone and beeper messages.

[Twisted Titan]

He is a dead man either way

May as well take down as many of the rat bastards as possible

[Hatha Sunahara]

Assange may have 260,000 sensitive classified documents to leak. He denies it, but his behavior casts doubt on his denial. The Pentagon may arrange for him to disappear. I hope he publishes everything.

Hatha

[Steal]

Dont know how i missed it, but I never saw that vid before.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rXPrfnU3G0

[woodman]

Notice the phrase, "We just 'engaged' about 8 individuals." What he is really saying is "We just blew 8 innocent people to bits." So murder is called engaging now. Definitely Orwellian.

[Saul Mine]

I think his behavior is entirely reasonable. After all, he has done nothing illegal and yet the pentagon is trying to run him down, likely with "extreme prejudice". It's not safe to embarrass a regime, you know.

[Buddha]

Notice the phrase, "We just 'engaged' about 8 individuals." What he is really saying is "We just blew 8 innocent people to bits." So murder is called engaging now. Definitely Orwellian.


Exactly, to me an engagement is two or more people fighting and knowing what is going on. If I just walked up to a bunch of people on the street and blew them away I would not consider that an engagement. Newspeak is great huh? It is a euphemism for murder.

This wikileaks guy has obviously done nothing wrong, besides going against the current PTB.

[Hatha Sunahara]

I think the Pentagon also doubts his denial of having the leaked documents. That's why they are 'looking for' him. This is what I consider 'asymmetric warfare'. If he has the leaked documents, he can do infinitely more damage to the real rulers of America than they can do to him. Surely, they can kill him, but he can, with the leaked documents destroy their legitimacy. He can turn all the people in the world against them. He can make them look like the ogres they are.

Try to remember that they cannot prevail, or even use their power to save themselves if the people of the world see convincing evidence that these people are monsters. This guy can take off their masks. Here is a recent article on maintaining a human face behind their actions.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19709

I'm would hope that Assange is making arrangements for what happens to the documents if anything happens to him.


Hatha

[zusn]

Notice the phrase, "We just 'engaged' about 8 individuals." What he is really saying is "We just blew 8 innocent people to bits." So murder is called engaging now. Definitely Orwellian.
Yeah, and those people in the van shouldn't have brought their children to a battle! I still like how cameras suddenly became AK47s and RPGs. Like cops that shoot up innocent people and defend it by saying, "I felt my life was in danger" or "the subject appeared to be reaching for a weapon." Bastards.

[Hatha Sunahara]

I think this Wikileaks story is a big thing. Bradley Manning outs the psychopaths. Assange feeds it to the masses. Leaders are afraid masses will turn against them, and start looking for asses to kick.

I want access to the 260,000 state department documents that were compromised. I want to get a good close look at this ogre that calls itself the government.

You can find a lot of items related to Wikileaks, Assange, and Manning at http://cryptome.org/

For example, I found a link to this:

http://fdlaction.firedoglake.com/2010/06/11/transcript-daniel-ellsberg-says-he-fears-us-might-assasinate-wikileaks-founder/




Transcript: Daniel Ellsberg Says He Fears US Might Assassinate Wikileaks Founder
By: Jane Hamsher Friday June 11, 2010 3:21 pm

Daniel Ellsberg, the former US military analyst who released the pentagon papers in 1971, appeared on MSNBC today with Dylan Ratigan. He said he fears for the safety of Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, who is reportedly on the verge of leaking secret State Department cables. The Daily Beast reports that Assange is currently being sought by the Pentagon, and Ellsberg advises him not to reveal his whereabouts.

“We have after all for the first time, that I ever perhaps in any democratic country, we have a president who has announced that he feels he has the right to use special operations operatives against anyone abroad, that he thinks is associated with terrorism,” says Ellsberg. “Now as I look at Assange’s case, they’re worried that he will reveal current threats. I would have to say puts his well-being, his physical life, in some danger now. And I say that with anguish. I think it’s astonishing that an American president should have put out that policy and he’s not getting these resistance from it, from Congress, the press, the courts or anything. It’s an amazing development that I think Assange would do well to keep his whereabouts unknown.”

Full transcript:

RATIGAN: Do you see direct parallels between what’s developing here and what you went through?

ELLSBURG: Yes, there does seem to be an immediate parallel between me and whoever leaked the video on the assault on the 19 or 20 Iraqis. Someone–allegedly, it was Bradley Manning–did feel that that deserved to be out. the “Reuters,” whose newspapermen were killed in the course of that, had been trying to get that through the freedom of information act for two years, as I understand it and had been refused. Let’s say whoever did it, hypothetically, Bradley Manning, showed better judgment in putting it out than the people who kept is secret from the American people and from the Iraqis.

RATIGAN: What is your sense of disclosure of information to the American people today, compared to the period of time that you lived through, where there was similar issues with, with the perception of reality of information being withheld from the public?

ELLSBURG: Look, there’s no doubt at all, that enormous amounts of energy that should be made public are being withheld and that hundreds, probably thousands of people, I’m speaking now of the run-up to the Iraq war, which has a very great similarity to the lying and the secrecy that got us into Vietnam. I think if many people had recognized that their oath of office, which called them in to support the Constitution, really contradicted their promise to keep certain secrets, when those secrets concealed lies, concealed deception to the American public and getting us into a hopeless war, they should have given priority to the oath of office and they should have put that information out to Congress and the public. They should have done what I wish I had done much earlier than I did I had been in that position, too. I knew years before the Pentagon Papers came out that the Americans were being lied in to an essentially hopeless war. I’m not proud of the fact that it didn’t occur to me that my oath of office, which was to support the Constitution, called on me to put that information out and say, ‘64, when the war might have been avoided. But I certainly am glad that I finally came aware of what my real responsibilities were there. And I did put it out years later. At times, at that time, which published it, the “Times,” and the 18 other newspapers, which defied President Nixon’s injunctions and did put it out, were in the position of Julian Assange is in now. I’m very happy that he put it out and I congratulate him for it.

RATIGAN: What was your conclusion as to the direct liability for you? I know that at one point you faced life imprisonment. What do you perceive to be the liability for whoever the leak may be to asange, Mr. Manning or anybody else?

ELLSBURG: I didn’t understand that we don’t have an official secrets act in this country, criminalizing the disclosure of certain information. Except with certain narrow forms of information which is not involved in the pentagon papers or in this. The nuclear weapons data. The identities of covert agents, those things are subject to law. The classification system as a whole is an administrative system that doesn’t have legal force in this country. We’re almost alone among countries in that. I didn’t know that at the time. I assumed I must be breaking some law, that we had some equivalent. And so i didn’t know to start with, that I was the first person ever prosecuted for a leak. The first person to have the Espionage Act provisions used not for espionage, but for revealing information to the American public. There have only been a couple of people who have been indicted since then. Samuel Loring Morrison. And the APEC under George W. Bush. The only cases and conviction was for Morrison. President Obama, who came in promptsing transparency in government, and an end to the excessive secrecy has totally violated that pledge. and it so happens that he’s not only brought two indictments, more than any other president for leaking before any other president had done. but with now, with Bradley Manning, under arrest, if he’s under prosecution, that will be three. A new, a new record for President Obama. That’s really not the kind of change I voted for when I voted for him.

RATIGAN: Phillip, what is your understand of where Mr. Assange is right now and how highly desired he is as a target, of either state department or pentagon investigators?

SHENON: We in the press corps would like to know where he is, we have no idea. He was supposed to speak at a panel in Las Vegas, but he apparently canceled on them at the last minute. He was supposed to appear in New York last week at a separate conference you made reference to. He chose not to attend and was apparently in his native Australia.

RATIGAN: His absence is one thing, an understanding of the degree of interest is one thing, and federal government is the other. Do you have a sense of whether his absence correlates to avoiding the American authorities in any way?

SHENON: Yeah, he said last week, at this New York gathering that he had been instructed by his lawyers not to return to the United States.

ELLSBURG: You know, may I say, the expression he used, I was supposed to do a dialogue with him at that conference, that’s why I went to New York. And he explained, the explanation he used was that he was understood that it was not safe for him to come to this country. And then later he explained now when the Bradley Manning arrest was announced, he said now you understand why I didn’t come. I think it’s worth mentioning a very new and ominous development in our country. I think he would not be safe, even physically entirely, wherever he is. We have after all for the first time, that I ever perhaps in any Democratic country, we have a president who has announced that he feels he has the right to use special operations operatives against anyone abroad, that he thinks is associated with terrorism. That he suspects of it. And that includes American citizens. One American citizen has even been named. Now Assange is not an American citizen. But I listen to that with a special interest. Because I was in fact the subject of a White House hit squad in November on May 3rd, 1972. A dozen Cuban assets were brought up from Miami with orders, quote, quoting the prosecutor, to incapacitate Daniel Ellsberg totally. on the steps of the capital, it so happens when i was in a rally during the vietnam war. And I asked the prosecutor, what does that mean, kill me? And he said, the words were “to incapacitate you totally.” But you should understand, these guides, meaning these c.i.a. operatives never use the word “kill.” i actually think it was to silence me at that particular time. For worries they had that I would leak president Nixon’s nuclear threats, which he was making at that precise time in 1972. Now as I look at Assange’s case, they’re worried that he will reveal current threats. I would have to say puts his well-being, his physical life, in some danger now. And I say that with anguish. I think it’s astonishing that an American president should have put out that policy and he’s not getting these resistance from it, from congress, the press, the courts or anything. it’s an amazing development that I think Assange would do well to keep his whereabouts unknown.

[Grand Master Melon]

All over the news today they referred to him as a "fugitive." On FOX this morning they also felt the need to mock his hair, how grown up of them. :oo-->

Sadly, this guy is probably screwed.

[DMac]

WikiLeaks founder drops 'mass spying' hint (http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/06/22/2933892.htm?section=justin)

Echelon! Been ranting about Echelon to family since the late 90's...



"I can give an analogy. If there had been mass spying that had affected many, many people and organisations and the details of that mass spying were released then that is something that would reveal that the interests of many people had been abused."

He agreed it would be of the "calibre" of publishing information about the way the top secret Echelon system - the US-UK electronic spying network which eavesdrops on worldwide communications traffic - had been used.

Mr Assange also confirmed that WikiLeaks has a copy of a video showing a US military bombing of a western Afghan township which killed dozens of people, including children.

He noted, though, it was a very intricate case "substantially more complex" than the Iraq material WikiLeaks had released - referring to the gunship video.