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Is Assange an American Agent?

Editorial of The New York Sun | November 28, 2010

Part way through our afternoon’s reading in the latest document dump from Wikileaks the thought occurred to us that maybe Julian Assange is an American agent. We don’t have anything to suggest such a thing, other than the thought that when one digs through all the chaff here there’s not much that makes American look bad. There are, however, number of things that seem destined, when they start percolating into the diplomatic dialogue, to work to our advantage.

For starters, feature the disclosure that the Arabs want an attack on Iran’s nuclear program. Heretofore this point has been getting only vague focus. Via Wikileaks, however, this is put into sharp relief, with the disclosure of what the Jerusalem Post called a secret diplomatic cable from the American embassy at Riyadh about a meeting in 2008 between the Saudi king, Abdullah, and the American ambassador, Ryan Crocker, and General Petraeus.

According to the Post, the cable quotes a former Saudi envoy in the U.S., Abdel al-Jubeir, as recalling “the King’s frequent exhortations to the US to attack Iran and so put an end to its nuclear weapons program.” Quoth the king, according to Wikileaks document dump: “Cut off the head of the snake.” Ordinarily it would be awkward for American to get this kind of diplomatic cable traffic out in public. Now we have Mr. Assange to the rescue.

Or take the disclosures about the United Nations. The U.N., after all, is a body that has taken American money for years — and in incredible abundance — but has become a runaway institution. How could Americans get it through to the cynics in Turtle Bay just how low is the disrepute in which they are held by even a left-of-center American administration? Why not have old Julian Assange leak a trove of documents?

...

No doubt it is ridiculous to imagine that Mr. Assange is an American agent. But if one were trying to put into the field someone to pose as an enemy of America, who would more clearly fit the part than the earnest Australian? The key question is that old poser of forensics, “Who benefits?” The tip-off is that everyone from President Obama to Secretary of State Clinton to Defense Secretary Gates has denounced what Mr. Assange has been doing. But neither Mr. Obama, Mrs. Clinton, nor Mr. Gates has done anything about it.

WikiLeaks releases 250,000 classified documents...WITHOUT actually releasing them.

The future has its burdens but it also its delights, even if they are a bit rindish and sour.

Case in point: Today, the WikiLeaks organization released 250,000 diplomatic cables which will shake the pillars of international relations for decades to come.

Or did they? Well, it turns out they didn't. It turns out, what they actually released were 220 (two-hundred and twenty) documents, some only partially. You can see this for yourself on the official CableGate web page.

The Guardian, which had drawn readers in with the lure of being able to download the classified cables had a little surprise in store for the thousands of people who...well...who actually tried to download them:

You couldn't.

In fact, what the Guardian is allowing people to download is (wait for it), 250,000 dates, times & tags. No content, whatsoever. No content, at all.

The actual cables- where are they? Turns out they're no-where to be found. In every story you read today, even if you read them all, they would all say that WikiLeaks has released, dumped, leaked 250,000 sensitive diplomatic cables into the public domain when they haven't done any such thing. In fact the only actual cables can be found at the WikiLeaks site. Does anyone have the 250,000 secret cables?

Well, yes. Yes, it appears that The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, etc. all have copies of the data sets which, at least in the New York Times' case, delivered anonymously to them by WikiLeaks so they could begin their investigations. But they don't appear to be sharing, which I find interesting. I mean, release them or don't but don't say they've been released if they haven't. That sounds sensible, doesn't it? None of this tomfoolery was involved with the previous WikiLeaks releases and I don't think anyone expected this release would be much different.

Ok, why haven't they dumped the documents if this is their plan all along. It differs depending on whose page you read. From WikiLeaks' page:
The embassy cables will be released in stages over the next few months. The subject matter of these cables is of such importance, and the geographical spread so broad, that to do otherwise would not do this material justice.


Hrm, let's say worst-case is 6 months for all of these to spool out. And let's say they release in weekly chunks. Four releases a month. That's around 10,000 documents dropped into the public's hands, per week.

Well, that doesn't seem to make any sense either. The only way they're going to get some kind of analysis on 10,000 cables a week is by crowdsourcing with the rest of the planet who are still unable to actually access these documents.

Bottom Line: The embargo hasn't been lifted, the 250,000 documents haven't been released. All there is, so far anyway, is the trumpet which heralds a mad dash by a small number of newspapers to pick and choose the stories they want to pursue, and little else.

But I don't typically trust the mainstream media for that very reason. If the current rash of stories is any indicator of their stewardship, it would appear we're in for months (at least) of stories about how much political figure X likes political figure Y. Or a salacious quote from political figure Z...the cross-referencing and further research of which will remain entirely in the hands of a select few.

PB

I'm open to all sorts of ideas of what may be going on, as long as people aren't transparently jumping to their own a priori conclusions in the absence of evidence or argument.

JackRiddler wrote:

Jeff wrote:Just State Department cables, right? It's like reading a diary aloud. Embarrassing, but it hardly gives the game away. The Deep State rolls along.

Jeff, you're doing #1 from the OP. ("They aren't releasing what a given critic would consider important.")

And you couldn't buy this spin. Well, we couldn't:

WikiLeaks documents reveal Arab states' anxiety over Iran

That one's covered too: the spin belongs to others.

Spin is amazing, no? Show me the same cables, and I see corrupt US-propped dictators and kings baying for another American war on another Muslim country. How do you think their subjects are likely to react to that?.

nathan28 wrote:
...I would like to know if it's possible to browse any of the old stuff uploaded to wikileaks. Like police reports, college fraternity documents, internal white papers by autocratic regimes, etc. You know, the "everyday" stuff, like memoranda not released to the public on symbols commonly used by pedophile organizations, or white power groups, etc. Right now the only things I can navigate to from the front page are the war logs and war diaries. With google I can get to the "cables" that just broke, and that's it.

Where'd everything go? Have I just over-done my browser security settings? Is the site not compatible with chromium? Is my Google-fu that weak? Is this the new, "streamlined" Wikileaks? If it's not just me being stupid and lazy, forget paranoid ONOZ WIKILEKES IS TEH THEM I HURD IT ON WEBSTR TARPLAY OMG nonsense, this could be obnoxious corporate-style "branding" gone into PR 'scandal' overdrive.

THE COMPLETE IDIOT'S GUIDE TO WIKILEAKS LATEST DOCUMENT DUMP

Michael Rivero



Wikileaks, following much media fanfare (reason for suspicion right there) has just released a huge number of documents supposedly leaked to WikiLeaks and no other websites. The media is denouncing this as a threat to the United States while US politicians wring their hands and wonder when they will be free of the curse of the First Amendment and all that troublesome nonsense about Freedom of Speech. Many observers think this is a propaganda set up and that neither Julian Assange or WikiLeaks should be taken at face value. After all, Julian Assange keeps insisting there was no 9-11 conspiracy and the 9-11 truth movement a "distraction." Apparently Julian Assange has patented conspiracy and nobody else may expose one except himself!

Of course, there is really not that much that is new in this latest dump. Like prior WikiLeaks dumps, most of it is old news mixed with some rather dubious claims. In his last such dump, Julian Assange included a claim that Osama bin Laden is still alive and controlling Al Qaeda. Of course, it is well documented outside the United States that Osama bin Laden has been dead for many years and that Al Qaeda itself is a fake front group created to hoax Americans into endless wars of conquest, much as the fictional Emmanuel Goldstein was used in George Orwell's "1984."

As for the present batch of documents, again it is a rehash of stories already known to the blog-o-sphere. Even those people who did not know US diplomats spy on their United Nations counterparts did not find it surprising or in any way a new idea.

So what is the real purpose of Assange's little charade? Propaganda.

Propaganda is like rat poison. 95% of it is tasty, healthy food. But the purpose is to get you to swallow the poison. The same is true of the WikiLeaks document dump. The bait are all these old stories which we already knew about, used to convince us that the entire pile is "tasty, healthy food," except that it isn't. Buried in the pile of delicious, albeit past the expiration date morsels are the bits of poison which the US Government knows you will no longer accept at face value from the controlled media, but hope you will eat if handed to you by a con artist posing as hostile to the government.

So, given that 95% of the current WikiLeaks is really old news, as a public service I will point out the bits of poison that Julian hopes you will eat.

1. Iran is bad so you should all want to kill them.

2. Saudi Arabia is bad because they are funding Al Qaeda so you should all want to kill them.

3. North Korea is bad because they gave really long range missiles to Iran for Iran to put their nuclear warheads in, so you should all want to kill them.

4. China is messing with your computers, so you should all want to kill them.

That about sums it up.

Funny thing about rat poison. After a while the rats learn to eat the food and leave the poison behind. Link

Sunday, November 28, 2010
Wikileaks Claims Osama Bin Laden Still Alive

In proving to be one of the most useful tools for the Pentagon, Wikileaks resurrects "Bearded Time Lord" Osama Bin Laden and places him as one of the key masters of the resistance to U.S. occupation in Afghanistan. This assertion is made despite the fact that 92% of the population in Afghanistan have never heard of 9/11.

Wikileaks documents claim that Osama Bin Laden has been personally overseeing the use of suicide bombers and roadside bombs targeting U.S. troops since the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan. According to documents "leaked" by Wikileaks, Osama Bin Laden has been conducting monthly meetings with up to twenty people at a variety of locations. Apparently, the Pentagon's intelligence network discovered each monthly meeting after they occurred and have never been able to gain foreknowledge of these meetings to capture Bin Laden, who was known to be on kidney dialysis in 2001.

As stated in the Telegraph, these documents provided by Wikileaks contradicts CIA director Leon Panetta's position that there had been no intelligence on the al-Qaeda leader since the “early 2000s”. Wikileak documents also contradict a number of credible sources (including Pakistan's President Musharrof and Afghan President Karzai ) for Bin Laden's death in December, 2001. Link

Simulist wrote:When Julian Assange dismissed 9/11 as a "false conspiracy," he tipped his hand a bit too much, as far as I am concerned.