The Criminals Remain Free While the Whistleblowers Suffer
While George W. Bush is being venerated by the establishment, Julian Assange remains in prison even as new reporting reveals the CIA's reckless plot to get back at WikiLeaks.
Last week, a video went viral of Iraq War veteran and Empire Files journalist Mike Prysner courageously interrupting George W. Bush's speech at a fundraiser to demand recognition and apologies from the former president whose lies started the pointless war that killed millions of people.
Still, in the aftermath of the pull out from Afghanistan-- a story about an end to an ugly, unjust, and corrupt war that was largely misrepresented across the wide reach of the news media-- and even more recent, in the aftermath of 9/11, it seems even more fitting that old W. should get such a heckle-- for that, sadly, was all that was to the former president, who, in all likelihood, slept like a baby that night.
Making matters worse as he so often does, Bush-- ironically, the only former president to speak on the anniversary of the attacks-- gave a speech at the 9/11 memorial in Shanksville, PA, where United Flight 93 went down. In the speech, he compared the January 6 riot-- which had plenty of foresight and intelligence, including FBI informants, involved-- to the September 11 attacks. And having the nerve to beat the same drum-- that same drum that started the ill-fated war on terror-- without any honesty or guilt.
And the worst detail of all in this criminal-on-the-run story is the fact that among the media and many politicians, from Liz Cheney to Nancy Pelosi, George W. Bush is lifted up as the sanctimonious patron saint of golf drives and painting who could never and has never done anything wrong.
While he's walking around freely, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange remains in Belmarsh Prison. The journalist that published troves upon troves of documents that revealed the corruption that was withheld and the malignant lies that were told in nearly every foreign policy endeavor taken from Bush onward.
If there was ever a nasty job, it's exposing the U.S. government-- but someone has got to do it. Over the summer the key witness in the U.S. government's initial indictment of Assange admitted he was lying in order to appease the FBI and get special immunity despite a laundry list of offenses including fraud and molestation. Audio recordings were released of his admissions.
Since the release of the Collateral Murder video that showed U.S. military firing at and killing a group of innocent people, including two Reuters journalists, Assange has had to deal with hurdle after hurdle. Now, key reporting from Yahoo! News journalists Zach Dorfman, Sean D. Naylor, and Michael Isikoff confirms just how rough a road Assange was being dragged down.
"Kidnapping, assassination and a London shoot-out: Inside the CIA's secret war plans against WikiLeaks" was the name of the story released on Sunday. Yahoo! News spoke with over 30 former senior intelligence officials, and in the report it's detailed how Mike Pompeo's CIA amped up efforts to get revenge on Assange and WikiLeaks for leaking some documents from the agency's Vault 7 that showed how they were exploiting iPhone, Android, Windows, and Samsung TV microphones by using them as "cyberweapons" for covert surveillance.
For a long time at first, the CIA had little fear of WikiLeaks and mocked the State Department and Pentagon for falling victim to the organization. That tone changed with the publication of the details regarding these "hacking tools" because it was then that the CIA finally felt the bite as is apparent considering the Vault 7 story was dubbed, from the inside, "the largest data loss" in the history of the agency.
As director, Pompeo declared WikiLeaks a "non-state hostile intelligence service" in 2017, initiating the war on the media organization. He and the agency became hellbent on getting revenge on Assange and, in the process, became "completely detached from reality because they were so embarrassed about Vault 7."
The classification of WikiLeaks as a "non-state hostile intelligence service" by the director of the CIA meant that there would not need to be any presidential approval to interfere with Assange because, to them, he was another spy service, not a foreign actor, so the actions were taken as what's called "offensive counterintelligence." And as a result, this meant that the CIA could increase their global and domestic efforts to collect information on WikiLeaks. This led to the CIA tracking the movements of Assange and WikiLeaks officials' movements and communications, expanding tech capability, and recruiting more manpower.
The question for the CIA was how to actually secure their target. Infiltration into the security-conscious WikiLeaks organization was unlikely, and sowing discord never came to fruition.
What about kidnapping?
That's what the CIA asked themselves. It'd be called "rendition," i.e. abducting Assange and bringing him back to the U.S. via a 3rd country. However, this was diplomatically stupid given that it's an aggressive action that would be taking place in the U.K.'s capital and against an Australian national. The United Kingdom, the submissive partner that they are, was so close to letting it occur, but ultimately didn't want it in their territory.
Of course, as even the worst lawyer could tell you, such an operation would face issues of legality. Several officials from the National Security Council believed it was blatantly illegal; if indeed Assange were to be rendered an adversarial spy, it would permit spy-versus-spy activity, and not "war on terror" crap.
What about killing him?
That's what President Trump was curious about at the time, requesting "options." How serious these queries were is unknown, but the practicality and legality of it was at least discussed. And this was, again, in an effort to take down Assange and WikiLeaks, so other journalists and officials at the organization were also at threat of being subjected to these barbaric considerations.
This, in turn, actually expedited the Justice Department's work on the extradition case out of fear that the CIA's recklessness would spoil the opportunity to even get their hands on the journalist.
Late in 2017 these plans were disrupted when U.S. officials spotted what they perceived to be signs of an imminent threat Russianplans to sneak Assange out of the U.K. and over to Moscow. Ecuador was on the verge of granting Assange diplomatic status as a means to facilitate this escape plot pulled straight from a Cold War era spy movie.
Both the CIA and the White House got to work preparing a list of scenarios to defend against and deter the plot. This included potential gun fights with Russian operatives out on the London streets, weaponizing a car to crash into the one transporting Assange in order to snag him, shooting at the tires of the plane set for Moscow had Assange gotten on it, and co-conspiring with the British who were more than ready to assist them.
One former senior U.S. official said they told Trump that the situation was "going to get ugly." Some White House officials were worried about the government's determination to get revenge on a journalist. "Where does this stop?" one asked.
Spanish security agency UC Global was employed with protecting the Ecuadorian embassy in 2015, and by mid-2017 they were supplying material to the U.S. government, including surveillance and audio from bugs. So when the Russian escape plan was being finalized, UC Global alerted the U.S. of Ecuador's plans to grant diplomatic passport to Assange and that he'd be assigned to the Moscow embassy.
The escape plan was cancelled when it was known that the U.S. had gotten wind of it.
Despite the Russian escape scare, the U.S. government never stopped brainstorming ideas to strike back at Assange. They went so far as to consider poisoning him. Naturally, not even presidential approval could secure such an operation's legality in all cases and the discussions ultimately went nowhere, but still, this was a deep, twisted intent that was widely felt-- Assange was rattled by the thought of assassination. Since only a selected set of documents from Vault 7 were released, Assange actually requested the release the unpublished material if he were killed.
But that sort of flip-of-the-switch end never arrived and, instead, Assange has had to bear a more grueling process that is equally vicious and careless.
Soon enough, as we all know, came the asylum revocation in 2019 followed by the eviction from the embassy in London and the arrest.
Even as the judge ruled against extradition this past January, Assange remains locked up. . . even as the main witness from the initial charges has admitted to lying, even as revelations of U.S. government's unrelenting, war-like effort to aggressively get back at and penalize him are brought to life, he remains locked up. . . even as George W. Bush walks freely after a presidency of lies that killed millions of innocent people and enriched a small group of heartless individuals, Julian Assange, the man who uncovered many of Bush's heinous crimes, remains locked up.
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