CIA Director Mike Pompeo Touted Kidnapping, Killing Of Julian Assange In Response To Publication Of CIA Leaks
from the kill-'em-all-and-let-god-try-to-get-the-natsec-gag-order-lifted dept
WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service. It has encouraged its followers to find jobs at CIA in order to obtain intelligence. It directed Chelsea Manning in her theft of specific secret information. And it overwhelmingly focuses on the United States, while seeking support from anti-democratic countries and organizations.
It is time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is – a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia. In January of this year, our Intelligence Community determined that Russian military intelligence—the GRU—had used WikiLeaks to release data of US victims that the GRU had obtained through cyber operations against the Democratic National Committee. And the report also found that Russia’s primary propaganda outlet, RT, has actively collaborated with WikiLeaks.
The rhetoric worked. A couple of months after this impromptu rant, the Senate Intelligence Committee decided Wikileaks was a certified Enemy of the People™:
The committee… wants Congress to declare WikiLeaks a “non-state hostile intelligence service,” which would open Julian Assange and the pro-transparency organization – which most of the U.S. government considers a handmaiden of Russian intelligence – to new levels of surveillance.
Some crazy shit, to be sure. But it gets crazier. While doing business as a division of Trump Holdings, LLC, the CIA and other agencies got high AF (presumably) and came up with all sorts of answers to the question, "How do you solve a problem like Maria Wikileaks?"
Some senior officials inside the CIA and the Trump administration even discussed killing Assange, going so far as to request “sketches” or “options” for how to assassinate him. Discussions over kidnapping or killing Assange occurred “at the highest levels” of the Trump administration, said a former senior counterintelligence official. “There seemed to be no boundaries.”
Welp. I guess this explains why the killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi by Saudi security forces was largely ignored by the Trump administration. The government had its own plans to do serious harm to a journalist it suddenly found inconvenient only months after embracing Assange and Wikileaks as truth-to-power-tellers when it leaked a virtual boatload of DNC emails.
That was only part of the wide-ranging proposals. Other suggestions went ahead as planned, though. The IC aggressively targeted Wikileaks, ramping up surveillance and seizing electronic devices from suspected members of the transparency group. Apparently every option was on the table, including extraordinary rendition.
This Yahoo News investigation, based on conversations with more than 30 former U.S. officials — eight of whom described details of the CIA’s proposals to abduct Assange — reveals for the first time one of the most contentious intelligence debates of the Trump presidency and exposes new details about the U.S. government’s war on WikiLeaks. It was a campaign spearheaded by Pompeo that bent important legal strictures, potentially jeopardized the Justice Department’s work toward prosecuting Assange, and risked a damaging episode in the United Kingdom, the United States’ closest ally.
Risk it, Pompeo didn't. A wise move, but probably not due to any actual wisdom Pompeo possesses. Kidnapping and/or killing a non-brown, non-Muslim so-called "enemy of the people" wouldn't have played well anywhere, possibly not even back home in one nation under Trump.
The CIA doesn't want to talk about this. Neither does Mike Pompeo, who seemed more than willing to do everything but drone strike the embassy Assange resided in prior to his arrest.
The plans never materialized or this post would never have been written. Instead, we'd have presented a long series of posts about the US deciding it was appropriate to kidnap or kill someone who published leaked documents -- the obvious and inevitable nadir of government power expansion under a variety of national security authorities.
That is was ever considered -- even momentarily -- shows just how dangerous the wrong person in the wrong position can be, especially when encouraged and coddled by an administration that openly displayed its hatred for the press. This is an authoritarian's spank bank. It should never have been allowed to escape this fantasy world and become a regrettable part of the history the ostensibly free world."
Filed Under: assassination, ceo, intelligence, julian assange, leaks, mike pompeo, transparency
Companies: WikiLeaks
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One Source
Kidnapping, assassination and a London shoot-out: Inside the CIA's secret war plans against WikiLeaks
The CIA’s fury at WikiLeaks led Pompeo to publicly describe the group in 2017 as a “non-state hostile intelligence service.” More than just a provocative talking point, the designation opened the door for agency operatives to take far more aggressive actions, treating the organization as it does adversary spy services, former intelligence officials told Yahoo News. Within months, U.S. spies were monitoring the communications and movements of numerous WikiLeaks personnel, including audio and visual surveillance of Assange himself, according to former officials.
‘Beyond the pale’: Americans horrified by report that CIA under Trump discussed assassinating Julian Assuage
Following the release of the report, the Freedom of the Press Foundation issued a statement calling the CIA “a disgrace,” adding, “The fact that it contemplated and engaged in so many illegal acts against WikiLeaks, its associates, and even other award-winning journalists is an outright scandal that should be investigated by Congress and the Justice Department.”
The foundation also called on President Joe Biden and his administration to immediately drop all charges against Assange, describing the CIA’s alleged plans as “beyond the pale.”
Our statement at @FreedomofPress on the appalling revelations in the @YahooNews investigation into the CIA's actions against WikiLeaks and other journalists: https://t.co/48R9qC4OOapic.twitter.com/KZs9fLabbs
— Freedom of the Press (@FreedomofPress) September 26, 2021
Horrified journalists, political commentators, and analysts from around the world also expressed shock at the details contained in the report.
Stop what you're doing and read this. The CIA developed plans to kill or kidnap an award-winning journalist whose work they did not like — before they charged him with a crime.The case against Julian Assange must be dropped—and condemned.https://t.co/5TCFks1p95
— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) September 26, 2021
So while Trump was talking about how he loved Wikileaks in 2016, he and his administration were plotting to kidnap or kill Assange. The amorality and malleability of Trump and his movement is beyond anything else we’ve seen in politics. https://t.co/n1ART0ruSqpic.twitter.com/w9XUG9KQta
— Richard Hanania (@RichardHanania) September 26, 2021
Some people might be surprised he contemplated killing Assange because Trump campaigned on being anti-establishment. But when you get enough power you become the establishment. This is why no president has divulged Saudi Arabia’s role on 9/11.
— Max Abrahms (@MaxAbrahms) September 26, 2021
“You cannot extradite somebody you plotted to assassinate,” reacted The Intercept’s Washington DC Bureau chief Ryan Grim, while journalist Glenn Greenwald tweeted, “Behavior like this from the CIA and now from the Biden DOJ is what *real press freedom attacks* look like.”
As I've said before, behavior like this from CIA and now from the Biden DOJ is what *real press freedom attacks* look like. I've had mean tweets posted about me by many people, including Bolsonaro. I know the difference. I hope some day the US media will learn it, too. pic.twitter.com/TTh6GwSmNp
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 26, 2021
Assange was forcibly removed from the embassy in 2019 by London’s Metropolitan Police and incarcerated in the maximum-security Belmarsh prison, where he remains to this day as the US government attempts to extradite him to face charges, including violating the Espionage Act, despite the fact he is an Australian citizen.
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