WikiLeaks about to hit the fan

Case Against WikiLeaks Part Of Broader Campaign
(Carrie Johnson, National Public Radio, May 11, 2011)

A federal grand jury in Virginia is scheduled to hear testimony Wednesday from witnesses in one of the government's biggest criminal investigations of a national security leak.

Prosecutors are trying to build a case against WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, whose website has embarrassed the U.S. government by disclosing sensitive diplomatic and military information.

The WikiLeaks case is part of a much broader campaign by the Obama administration to crack down on leakers.

National security experts say they can't remember a time when the Justice Department has pursued so many criminal cases based on leaks of government secrets.

Steve Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists has been following five separate prosecutions, part of what he calls a tremendous surge by the Obama administration.

"For people who are concerned about freedom of the press, access to national security information, it's a worrisome development," says Aftergood, who writes for the blog Secrecy News.

Aftergood says some of the most important disclosures of the past decade, including abuses by the U.S. military at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, came out because people concerned about overreach blew the whistle on the government.

"Leaks serve a very valuable function as a kind of safety valve," he adds. "They help us to get out the information that otherwise would be stuck."

The Obama Justice Department doesn't agree.

With the investigation into disclosures by WikiLeaks, a federal grand jury in Virginia is exploring possible charges including conspiracy to transmit national defense information; knowingly accessing a computer without authorization; and stealing from a federal agency, according to a subpoena and related documents first made public by Salon.com. The documents say the latest grand jury session is scheduled for Wednesday.

Aside from the ongoing WikiLeaks investigation, federal prosecutors have brought criminal charges against four other people, including former State Department employee Stephen Kim; former CIA operative Jeffrey Sterling; one-time National Security Agency analyst Thomas Drake, who is going to trial next month in Baltimore; and former FBI translator Shamai Leibowitz, who pleaded guilty and was sentenced to almost two years in prison.

Aftergood says despite the burst of activity within the Justice Department, there are still calls for more action against leakers.

"As aggressive as the Obama administration has been in pursuing and prosecuting leakers, the signal that the administration is getting from Congress is, why aren't you doing more?" he says.

At a pair of oversight hearings last week, Republicans blasted the Justice Department for deciding not to prosecute Thomas Tamm, a former government lawyer who admitted to telling the New York Times about a secret electronic surveillance program.

Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley says the case raises questions about whether prosecutors went soft on leaks.

"I am concerned that the decision not to prosecute anyone related to this specific leak may indicate a reluctance to enforce the law. Leaks of classified information threaten the lives of our agents and allies in the field," Grassley says.

The House and Senate intelligence committees have proposed directing the intelligence community to create new computer systems to detect leaks and give government officials the power to yank away the pensions of suspected leakers.

Abbe Lowell is a Washington defense attorney at the Chadbourne & Parke law firm. He's defending Kim, the former State Department employee, in an ongoing leak prosecution.

"Going after leakers of classified information, if you will, is low-hanging fruit to show that you're tough in national security issues," Lowell says. "Other than the media, who are willing recipients of this material, there's not a constituency out there who basically is outraged when you go after a leaker."

Lowell outlines some of the defense arguments that he has been making in court: first, that government employees have First Amendment rights to share information or talk to people as part of their job.

Lowell adds that many federal employees shake their heads at double standards, where bosses can leak information to favorite reporters with no punishment, but federal workers face a crackdown if they do it.

"It is so arbitrary and capricious for the prosecutors to decide that some leaks are criminal and other leaks are what we actually want to have happen," Lowell says.

Advocates for open information say the government should use less severe tools, such as financial penalties or removing a worker's security clearance, before pulling out all the stops and bringing an indictment.

Laura Sweeney, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, says federal workers can't take the law into their own hands.

"There are specific, authorized ways for a government employee to report possible concerns about classified programs, which include notifying inspectors general, specific congressional committees and other specified entities," Sweeney said in a written statement. "It is never appropriate, however, for government employees who are trusted with the nation's most valuable and sensitive information to mishandle classified information in any manner that puts the nation's security at risk."

The WikiLeaks case is part of a much broader campaign by the Obama administration to crack down on leakers.

Julian Assange hoped that his latest gamble with the lives of intelligence professionals, military personnel and terrorist informants would embarrass the U.S. government and inhibit its ability to strike our enemies. But the WikiLeaks documents, coupled with what we know about how bin Laden’s hiding place was discovered, may be among the clearest vindications yet of the Bush administration’s policies in the struggle to protect America and the free world from more terrorist attacks. They may prove the strongest arguments for keeping open the invaluable asset that is Guantanamo Bay.

Noam Chomsky: My Reaction to Osama bin Laden's Death

By Noam Chomsky
May 7, 2011

We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush's compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic.

It's increasingly clear that the operation was a planned assassination, multiply violating elementary norms of international law. There appears to have been no attempt to apprehend the unarmed victim, as presumably could have been done by 80 commandos facing virtually no opposition - except, they claim, from his wife, who lunged towards them. In societies that profess some respect for law, suspects are apprehended and brought to fair trial. I stress "suspects." In April 2002, the head of the FBI, Robert Mueller, informed the press that after the most intensive investigation in history, the FBI could say no more than that it "believed" that the plot was hatched in Afghanistan, though implemented in the UAE and Germany. What they only believed in April 2002, they obviously didn't know 8 months earlier, when Washington dismissed tentative offers by the Taliban (how serious, we do not know, because they were instantly dismissed) to extradite bin Laden if they were presented with evidence - which, as we soon learned, Washington didn't have. Thus Obama was simply lying when he said, in his White House statement, that "we quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al Qaeda."

Nothing serious has been provided since. There is much talk of bin Laden's "confession," but that is rather like my confession that I won the Boston Marathon. He boasted of what he regarded as a great achievement.

There is also much media discussion of Washington's anger that Pakistan didn't turn over bin Laden, though surely elements of the military and security forces were aware of his presence in Abbottabad. Less is said about Pakistani anger that the US invaded their territory to carry out a political assassination. Anti-American fervor is already very high in Pakistan, and these events are likely to exacerbate it. The decision to dump the body at sea is already, predictably, provoking both anger and skepticism in much of the Muslim world.

We might ask ourselves how we would be reacting if Iraqi commandos landed at George W. Bush's compound, assassinated him, and dumped his body in the Atlantic. Uncontroversially, his crimes vastly exceed bin Laden's, and he is not a "suspect" but uncontroversially the "decider" who gave the orders to commit the "supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole" (quoting the Nuremberg Tribunal) for which Nazi criminals were hanged: the hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of refugees, destruction of much of the country, the bitter sectarian conflict that has now spread to the rest of the region.

There's more to say about [Cuban airline bomber Orlando] Bosch, who just died peacefully in Florida, including reference to the "Bush doctrine" that societies that harbor terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists themselves and should be treated accordingly. No one seemed to notice that Bush was calling for invasion and destruction of the US and murder of its criminal president.

Same with the name, Operation Geronimo. The imperial mentality is so profound, throughout western society, that no one can perceive that they are glorifying bin Laden by identifying him with courageous resistance against genocidal invaders. It's like naming our murder weapons after victims of our crimes: Apache, Tomahawk ... It's as if the Luftwaffe were to call its fighter planes "Jew" and "Gypsy."

There is much more to say, but even the most obvious and elementary facts should provide us with a good deal to think about.

Obama administration outlines international strategy for cyberspace
(By Ellen Nakashima, The Washington Post, May 17, 2011)

The White House on Monday unveiled an international strategy for cyberspace that stresses developing norms of responsible state behavior to promote a secure, open Internet and other critical computer networks.

Drawing on President Obama’s principle of global engagement, the strategy marks the first time any administration has attempted to set forth in one document the U.S. government’s vision for cyberspace, including goals for defense, diplomacy and international development.

“A new era of global engagement and vigilance has begun,” said Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., one of several senior administration officials who introduced the strategy to an audience of foreign and U.S. officials, as well as representatives from industry and civil society groups.

The 30-page document, which argues that expanded access to secure networks is essential to economic prosperity, is a broad, aspirational strategy intended as a guide for more detailed policies. Its release follows the U.S. decision last summer to change its position on cybersecurity , agreeing to work with other nations to reduce threats to computer networks. Previously, the United States resisted proposals limiting possible military use of cyberspace.

“This is just the beginning of a conversation within governments, between governments, the private sector and beyond,” said Howard Schmidt, the White House cybersecurity coordinator, who also spoke Monday.

The document is crafted to signal other countries that the United States wants to collaborate in securing digital networks, not dominate them, said James A. Lewis, a senior fellow and director of the Technology and Public Policy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“This is a departure from the Bush administration, which refused to engage on these issues,” Lewis said. “The Obama administration is turning around and saying not only will we engage, but here’s where we’d like to end up.”

It is also a “counterbalance” to fears that the United States, by recently setting up a military “cyber command” to defend military networks was seeking to dominate cyberspace, said Greg Rattray, former White House director of cybersecurity and a partner at Delta Risk, a cyber-security consulting firm.

Two years ago, Obama made a nationally televised speech proclaiming the nation’s networks and computers “a strategic national asset,” and saying that protecting them would be a national security priority. “We will ensure that these networks are secure, trustworthy and resilient,” he said at the time.

The international strategy is an effort to build on that speech. It states that the United States will, with other nations, “oppose those who would seek to disrupt networks and systems, dissuading and deterring malicious actors, and reserving the right to defend these vital national assets as necessary and appropriate.”

It says the United States will help other countries strengthen their abilities to defend their networks and foster an open Internet.

The strategy noted that the norms should be based on principles such as recognizing that states have an inherent right of self defense that may be triggered by certain aggressive acts in cyberspace, and that states should act within their authorities to help ensure that the Internet remains accessible to all.

One challenge will be working with nations such as China, which exercise state control over the Internet in the name of national security, Rattray said. “On balance,” he said, “this is a major step forward.”

Leslie Harris, president of the Center for Democracy and Technology, said “some principles outlined in the strategy will sometimes come into conflict — one measure of who we are as a nation will be how those conflicts are resolved.”

....According to a ten-count indictment delivered against him in April, 2010, Drake violated the Espionage Act—the 1917 statute that was used to convict Aldrich Ames, the C.I.A. officer who, in the eighties and nineties, sold U.S. intelligence to the K.G.B., enabling the Kremlin to assassinate informants. In 2007, the indictment says, Drake willfully retained top-secret defense documents that he had sworn an oath to protect, sneaking them out of the intelligence agency’s headquarters, at Fort Meade, Maryland, and taking them home, for the purpose of “unauthorized disclosure.” The aim of this scheme, the indictment says, was to leak government secrets to an unnamed newspaper reporter, who is identifiable as Siobhan Gorman, of the Baltimore Sun. Gorman wrote a prize-winning series of articles for the Sun about financial waste, bureaucratic dysfunction, and dubious legal practices in N.S.A. counterterrorism programs. Drake is also charged with obstructing justice and lying to federal law-enforcement agents. If he is convicted on all counts, he could receive a prison term of thirty-five years...................

..........Few people are more disturbed about Drake’s prosecution than the others who spoke out against the N.S.A. surveillance program. In 2008, Thomas Tamm, a Justice Department lawyer, revealed that he was one of the people who leaked to the Times. He says of Obama, “It’s so disappointing from someone who was a constitutional-law professor, and who made all those campaign promises.” The Justice Department recently confirmed that it won’t pursue charges against Tamm. Speaking before Congress, Attorney General Holder explained that “there is a balancing that has to be done . . . between what our national-security interests are and what might be gained by prosecuting a particular individual.” The decision provoked strong criticism from Republicans, underscoring the political pressures that the Justice Department faces when it backs off such prosecutions. Still, Tamm questions why the Drake case is proceeding, given that Drake never revealed anything as sensitive as what appeared in the Times. “The program he talked to the Baltimore Sun about was a failure and wasted billions of dollars,” Tamm says. “It’s embarrassing to the N.S.A., but it’s not giving aid and comfort to the enemy.”

Mark Klein, the former A.T. & T. employee who exposed the telecom-company wiretaps, is also dismayed by the Drake case. “I think it’s outrageous,” he says. “The Bush people have been let off. The telecom companies got immunity. The only people Obama has prosecuted are the whistle-blowers.”

Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/05/23/110523fa_fact_mayer#ixzz1Mnr27SJL

(Press Release, PBS.org)

FRONTLINE INVESTIGATES THE STORY OF PRIVATE BRADLEY MANNING AND THE WIKILEAKS CONTROVERSY

FRONTLINE presents
WikiSecrets
Tuesday, May 24, 2011, at 9 P.M. ET on PBS

Bradley Manning Facebook Page Shows What He Talked About For Nearly 3 Years
(Chris Crum | WebProNews | May 24, 2011)

Frontline on PBS is airing a program tonight called WikiSecrets, which explores the events surrounding the WikiLeaks publishing of over half a million classified documents, in what is commonly known as the largest intelligence breach in U.S. history. Ahead of the program, Frontine has posted an edited, yet substantial version of Bradley Manning’s Facebook Wall. Manning, is of course the Army intelligence analyst who has been charged with leaking the documents.

The Wall is a pretty interesting read.

The postings start on July 22, when he says, “Just created a new facebook.” The early posts are your pretty much your basic, mundane status updates. Things like: “playing EVE online,” “working at Starbucks,” “taking a nap,” “sleeping,” “at home,” “working at Abercrobmie & Fitch,” “ready to scream!,” travelling to Chicago for Lollapalooza,” etc.

Finally, on November 5, his first mention of the military makes its appearance: “is still in the Army, but suspended with injuries from Basic Training.” Shortly after that, came:

“Sorry about not being in contact with anyone. Anyway, I got pulled from my Basic Training at Ford Leonard Wood. I’m not sure what my status in the Army is right now, but I’m currently being treated by the hospital’s neurology departmentt for some kind of nerve injury causing my left arm to go weak and almost completely numb.

Also, i’m suffering from dropfoot, meaning my left foot is numb, and unable to walk correctly without a limp.

Anyway, I’m hanging in here, and as far as I know I’m not yet going to be discharged from the Army, and may be recycled for training by January!

Peace out everyone

On April 4, He posted, “hey, i finally graduated basic training everybuddiez…i’ve now moved on to Fort Huachuca in AZ. Hit me up on thephonezors if you can!”. Frontline says this is when he’s sent to receive intelligence training, which when completed, gave him security clearance that gave him access to top-secret databases. They point to a Wired article, indicating Manning was reprimanded for revealing sensitive info on YouTube while he was at Fort Huachuca.

*********************************************

Late in 2008, after completing intelligence training and getting into fights and getting reprimanded again (for throwing chairs and yelling at soldiers), he posted various Prop 8 protest material and continued throughout 2009 to discuss political issues and gay rights fairly frequently.

On October 23, 2009, he wrote, “is getting a little tired of pinging major ISPs at 750 m/sec. Hopefully Iraq qill have faster Internet.” He had previously posted that he was in Kuwait. On October 29, he arrived In Iraq. On October 31, he wrote, “is in his new room. with his high speed Internet”.

On November 4: “feels betrayed…again.” On November 24, he posted photos from the “official promotion ceremony from Private First Class to Specialist”. “it’s no biggie,” he commented. “when i get sergeant it will be a much bigger deal.”

January 13 2010: “feels so alone.”

On January 21, Manning headed back to the U.S. for a couple weeks, at which time he attended the BUILDS event, where he is believed to have given up the infamous war logs.

The postings go on up until June 5. Frontline does an excellent job of adding a timeline alongside the postings, highlighting relevant events.

The page will be explored in the film WikiSecrets, airing tonight on PBS.

Assange seems dangerously inflexible even to those who share his ideals.

PBS falls victim to hackers with false Tupac Shakur story
(Josh Halliday, The Guardian, 31 May 2011)

Computer hackers on Monday broke into the website of the US public service broadcaster PBS and published a fake article claiming rapper Tupac Shakur was alive and living in New Zealand.

A group named the Lulz Boat claimed responsibility for the attack, claiming it was retribution following the network's recent documentary on Julian Assange and the whistleblowers' site WikiLeaks.

PBS on Tuesday said three of its websites – NewsHour, Frontline and PBS – "remain under attack by hackers" and that it was attempting to restore normal service.

The article about Tupac, who was murdered in Las Vegas in 1996, was removed from the broadcaster's website – but login information for two internal PBS sites was stolen and published online.

David Fanning, the executive producer of the PBS Frontline programme, described the attack as "irresponsible and chilling".

He added: "From our point of view, we just see it as a disappointing and irresponsible act, especially since we have been very open to publishing criticism of the film … and the film included other points of view."

The PBS WikiLeaks documentary, called WikiSecrets, attracted criticism after it first aired last week from those sympathetic to the site's founder, Julian Assange.

The pro-WikiLeaks group of hackers have previously claimed responsibility for attacks on Fox, Sony and the US X Factor website. A message – which has now been removed by PBS – posted by the group on the broadcaster's website during the hack attack read: "Greetings, Internets. We just finished watching WikiSecrets and were less than impressed.

"We decided to sail our Lulz Boat over to the PBS servers for further … perusing. As you should know by now, not even that fancy-ass fortress from the third … Pirates of the Caribbean movie (first one was better!) can withhold our barrage of chaos and lulz.

"Anyway, unnecessary sequels aside … wait, actually: second and third Matrix movies sucked too! Anyway, say hello to the insides of the PBS servers, folks. They best watch where they're sailing next time."

The group also managed to create a new page on the PBS website, called "lulz", where it wrote "Free Bradley Manning **** Frontline".