WikiLeaks about to hit the fan

WikiLeaks reveals all, media groups criticize move
(By RAPHAEL G. SATTER, Associated Press, September 2, 2011)

WikiLeaks disclosed its entire archive of U.S. State Department cables Friday, much if not all of it uncensored — a move that drew stinging condemnation from major newspapers who in the past collaborated with the anti-secrecy group's efforts to expose corruption and double-dealing.

Many media outlets, including The Associated Press, previously had access to all or part of the uncensored tome. But Wikileaks' decision to post the 251,287 cables on its website makes potentially sensitive diplomatic sources available to anyone, anywhere at the stroke of a key. American officials have warned that the disclosures could jeopardize vulnerable people such as opposition figures or human rights campaigners.

A joint statement published on the Guardian's website said that the British publication and its international counterparts — The New York Times, Spanish daily El Pais and German newspaper Der Spiegel — "deplore the decision of WikiLeaks to publish the unredacted State Department cables, which may put sources at risk."

Le Monde, the French daily which also published some of WikiLeaks' documents, will join other media partners in signing the statement, according to executive editor Sylvie Kauffmann.

Previously international media outlets — and WikiLeaks itself — had redacted the names of potentially vulnerable sources, although the standard has varied and some experts warned that even people whose names had been kept out of the cables were still at risk.

But now many, and possibly even all, of the cables posted to the WikiLeaks website carried unredacted names, making it easy to identify dissidents in authoritarian countries such as Russia, China or Myanmar.

WikiLeaks staff members have not returned repeated requests for comment sent in the past two days. But in a series of messages on Twitter, the group seemed to suggest that it had no choice but to publish the archive because copies of the document were already circulating online following a security breach.

WikiLeaks has blamed the Guardian for the blunder, pointing out that a sensitive password used to decrypt the files was published in a book put out by David Leigh, one of the paper's investigative reporters and a collaborator-turned-critic of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

But the Guardian, Leigh and others have rejected the claim. Although the password was in fact published in Leigh's book about seven months ago, Guardian journalists have suggested that the real problem was that WikiLeaks posted the encrypted file to the Web by accident and that Assange never bothered to change the password needed to unlock it.

In their statement, the Guardian's international partners lined up to slam the 40-year-old former computer hacker.

"We cannot defend the needless publication of the complete data — indeed, we are united in condemning it," the statement read, before adding: "The decision to publish by Julian Assange was his, and his alone."

The media organizations' rejection is a further blow to WikiLeaks, whose site is under financial embargo and whose leader remains under virtual house arrest in an English country mansion pending extradition proceedings to Sweden on unrelated sexual assault allegations.

WikiLeaks, an anti-secrecy site devoted to unveiling corruption and conspiracy, has in the past relied on mainstream partners to organize and promote its spectacular leaks of classified information — including U.S. intelligence documents detailing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Amid the latest controversy, the press freedom group Reporters Without Borders said it had temporarily suspended its WikiLeaks "mirror site." Such sites act as carbon-copies of their originals, relieving pressure due to heavy traffic and preserving data in case of attack.

In a statement, Reporters Without Borders said it had "neither the technical, human or financial resources to check each cable" for information that could harm innocent people and thus "has to play safe."

The U.S. State Department has also condemned the latest release.

A joint statement published on the Guardian's website said that the British publication and its international counterparts — The New York Times, Spanish daily El Pais and German newspaper Der Spiegel — "deplore the decision of WikiLeaks to publish the unredacted State Department cables, which may put sources at risk."

One has to wonder where the good, honest, law abiding, upstanding US citizens are too.

US planned nerve gas attack on Australian troops
By Greg Ansley
5:00 AM Monday Jul 7, 2008

CANBERRA - The United States planned to gas Australian troops in experiments with two of the most lethal nerve gases ever devised, newly declassified files have revealed.

Previously top secret documents have shown that even as the world was outlawing chemical weapons at the height of the Cold War, Washington sought Canberra's permission to test sarin and VX gas on diggers in remote Queensland.

...

The other nerve gas named in the US proposals for Australian tests, VX, is regarded as the most toxic nerve agent ever produced, and was manufactured in large volumes by America during the early 1960s.

Channel Nine reported that Washington had asked Holt to allow testing of the two gases against Australian troops, probably in the Iron Range rainforest near Lockhart River in far north Queensland.

It said planning was very advanced in the US, which wanted the operation to be kept secret because the weapons were illegal under international law.

...

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=10520276

Wasn't that under GW Bush's reign?

Not surprising; the US makes every effort to hide their crimes, but their secrets cannot be kept under wraps forever.

Did The U.S. Drop Nerve Gas?

By April Oliver and Peter Arnett. Additional reporting by Amy Kasarda, associate producer for NewsStand, and Jack Smith, senior producer for NewsStand Monday, June 15, 1998

...

The enemy troops had appeared suddenly on a nearby ridge, and were about to cut off the Americans as they tried to reach a rice paddy where rescue helicopters would land to fly them out of officially neutral Laos, back to their base in Vietnam. "The enemy was coming at us. We were out of ammo," recalls platoon leader Robert Van Buskirk, then a 26-year-old lieutenant. His only recourse was to call for help from the air. He radioed an Air Force controller above to call in two waiting A-1 Skyraiders to drop the "bad of the bad."
Within seconds, the Skyraiders swooped over the advancing enemy and dropped gas canisters, scoring a direct hit. The G.I.s heard the canisters exploding and saw a wet fog envelop the Vietnamese soldiers as they dropped to the ground, vomiting and convulsing. As the rescue choppers lifted his unit off, Van Buskirk manned a machine gun, scanning the elephant grass for targets, but there were none. "All I see is bodies," he recalls. "They are not fighting anymore. They are just lying, some on their sides, some on their backs. They are no longer combatants."


...

As many as 60 of the Montagnards died in Operation Tailwind, but all 16 Americans got out alive, although every one of them suffered some wounds.

Odd that, all 16 Americans survived but their colored "allies" perished. "Sorry guys, the copter is overloaded. Can you fly? See ya."

Van Buskirk and McCarley earned the Silver Star for valor. Van Buskirk personally briefed General Creighton Abrams, the top U.S. commander in Vietnam, on the mission. But when the lieutenant wrote his after-action report, a superior officer, now deceased, advised him to delete the part about dropping the white phosphorus grenade--a "willy pete," in Army lingo--on the American defectors in the tunnel.
Confirming the use of sarin, Moorer says the gas was "by and large available" for high-risk search-and-rescue missions. Sources contacted by NewsStand: CNN & TIME report that GB was employed in more than 20 missions to rescue downed pilots in Laos and North Vietnam. Concludes Moorer: "This is a much bigger operation than you realize."
Melvin Laird, Secretary of Defense at the time of Operation Tailwind, says he has no specific recollection of GB being used, but adds, "I do not dispute what Admiral Moorer has to say on this matter." And the admiral points out that any use of nerve gas would have had approval from the Nixon national-security team in Washington. Henry Kissinger, National Security Adviser at the time, declined to comment.
As for the defectors and the policy of killing them, Major General John Singlaub, U.S.A. (ret.), a former SOG commander, confirms what was the unwritten SOG doctrine in effect at the time: "It may be more important to your survival to kill the defector than to kill the Vietnamese or Russian." The defectors' knowledge of U.S. communications and tactics "can be damaging," he explains.
"There were more defectors than people realize," says a SOG veteran at Fort Bragg. No definitive number of Americans who went over to the enemy is available, but Moorer indicated there were scores. Another SOG veteran put the number at close to 300. The Pentagon told NewsStand: CNN & TIME that there were only two known military defectors during the Vietnam War.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,988536,00.html

New arrests in Anonymous, LulzSec probes
(CBS News and Associated Press, September 2, 2011)

British police on Thursday arrested two men as part of a trans-Atlantic investigation into attacks carried out by the hacking groups Anonymous and Lulz Security.

Scotland Yard said a 24-year-old and a 20-year-old were arrested at two separate U.K. addresses as part of a continuing investigation in collaboration with the FBI and other law-enforcement agencies.

"The arrests relate to our enquiries into a series of serious computer intrusions and online denial-of-service attacks recently suffered by a number of multi-national companies, public institutions and government and law enforcement agencies in Great Britain and the United States," said Detective Inspector Mark Raymond from the Metropolitan Police's Central e-Crime Unit.

Hacking group Lulz Security has claimed responsibility for attacks on targets such as Sony Corp., the CIA and Britain's Serious Organized Crime Agency.

The group is a spin-off of Anonymous, an amorphous group of activists, hackers and prankster whose targets have included Visa and MasterCard.

Anonymous cut its teeth with attacks on the music industry and the Church of Scientology but has lately turned its focus to law enforcement, intelligence and military-related sites.

Police said the two men arrested Thursday remain in custody and a computer seized in the investigation is being examined.

The arrests come amid a trans-Atlantic crackdown on Anonymous and its supporters. Dozens of arrests linked to the ad hoc international hacking collective have been made in recent weeks, including a cross-country FBI sting earlier this summer in which 14 alleged cybercriminals were arrested.

Earlier Thursday, British police said two more men have been charged in relation to denial-of-service attacks carried out by Anonymous.

The charges against Christopher Jan Weatherhed, 20, and Ashley Rhodes, 26, are considered part of a separate from the joint FBI investigation.

Weatherhed and Rhodes will appear at City of Westminster Magistrates Court on Sept. 7 alongside two others previously charged with the same offense.

Denial-of-service attacks choke websites with traffic the same way a telephone line might be jammed with thousands of crank calls.

Anonymous likens such attacks to online civil disobedience, but penalties can be severe. The maximum sentence for a conviction on such a charge is 10 years in prison.

but penalties can be severe. The maximum sentence for a conviction on such a charge is 10 years in prison.

Julian Assange faces arrest in Australia over unredacted WikiLeaks cables
(James Ball, The Guardian, September 2, 2011)

Julian Assange could face prosecution in Australia after publishing sensitive information about government officials amongst the 251,000 unredacted cables released this week.

WikiLeaks published its entire cache of US diplomatic cables without redactions to protect those named within, a move condemned by all five of the whistleblowing website's original media partners.

Australia's attorney general, Robert McClelland, confirmed in a statement on Friday that the new cable release identified at least one individual within the country's intelligence service. He added it is a criminal offence in the country to publish any information which could lead to the identification of an intelligence officer.

"I am aware of at least one cable in which an ASIO officer is purported to have been identified," he said. "ASIO and other Government agencies officers are working through the material to see the extent of the impact on Australian interests.

"On occasions before this week, WikiLeaks redacted identifying features where the safety of individuals or national security could be put at risk. It appears this hasn't occurred with documents that have been distributed across the internet this week and this is extremely concerning."

The new development adds to the pressure on the WikiLeaks founder, who is currently fighting extradition from the UK to Sweden to answer allegations of sexual misconduct. Assange will be unable to remain in the UK if his extradition appeal is successful, as his visa will by then have expired.

Assange already faces legal action in the US, where a grand jury has been convened in Virginia to decide whether to prosecute the founder of the whistleblowing website. Bradley Manning, the alleged source of the document, remains in custody in the US facing 34 separate charges.

The newly published archive contains more than 1,000 cables identifying individual activists; several thousand labelled with a tag used by the US to mark sources it believes could be placed in danger; and more than 150 specifically mentioning whistleblowers.

The cables also contain references to people persecuted by their governments, victims of sex offences, and locations of sensitive government installations and infrastructure.

The Guardian, New York Times, El País, Der Spiegel and Le Monde, who worked with WikiLeaks publishing carefully selected and redacted documents in December last year, issued a joint statement condemning the latest release.

"We deplore the decision of WikiLeaks to publish the unredacted state department cables, which may put sources at risk," it said.

"Our previous dealings with WikiLeaks were on the clear basis that we would only publish cables which had been subjected to a thorough joint editing and clearance process. We will continue to defend our previous collaborative publishing endeavour. We cannot defend the needless publication of the complete data – indeed, we are united in condemning it.

"The decision to publish by Julian Assange was his, and his alone."

Nicaragua: A Tortured Nation

By Richard Grossman

In the twentieth century, the Central American country of Nicaragua saw civil wars, foreign interventions, dictatorship, and revolution. Tens of thousands died violent deaths and many faced various forms of extreme political violence, or torture. United States interventions played a crucial role in the ongoing violence and U.S. policies greatly contributed to the use of torture. This article will briefly trace this tortured history of Nicaraguan.

By the beginning of the 20th century, the United States became concerned about Nicaragua since it was a prime sight for an inter-oceanic canal and U.S. Marines intervened and occupied Nicaragua in 1909, 1912, and again in 1926. In order to stabilize the country and facilitate U.S. control, the U.S. Marines created the Guardia Nacional de Nicaragua. The U.S. Marines conceived, created and commanded the Guardia; however the soldiers were to be Nicaraguans. The Guardia became the key instrument of U.S. influence for the next fifty years.

In 1927 a handful of Nicaraguan patriots decided to resist U.S. occupation. Their leader was Augusto C. Sandino, who organized the Ejército Defensor de la Soberanía Nacional de Nicaragua (EDSNN-Army in Defense of the National Sovereignty of Nicaragua). Sandino led a guerrilla war against both the Marines and the Guardia that lasted until 1933.

The United States Marines and the Guardia launched a counter insurgency war against the forces of Sandino. While he unquestionably organized a nationalist resistance force, U.S. policy makers defined Sandino and his soldiers as bandits. This decision helped define the military tactics that were to be used. Since the U.S. was not fighting a legitimate military foe, the rules of war (such as they were) did not apply. The Marines and Guardia made little distinctions between the Sandinistas and the civilian population: not only combatants but civilians were targets and subjected to the regular use of excessive force and torture.

Not only did the U.S. create the Guardia, Marines trained all the Guardia soldiers and commanded most of the patrols. When the war started in 1927, the Marines and Guardia launched a wave of death and destruction against the Nicaraguan population. For example, one Guardia patrol reported seeing people around a "suspicious" house. They opened fire, with no return fire, and the report then noted, "a woman apparently sixty or seventy years of age was found dead." The Marine commander stated that the shooting was "quite justified." In another example, an unarmed peasant was questioned by another Guardia patrol. This patrol's Marine officer reported that he "refused to divulge name of jefe nor could we get more information from him. He was left where he fell, seriously wounded, jaw broken, right arm broken also shot through back." The report does not say why he was shot or how his jaw and arm were broken, but the implication is that these wounds were the results of torture by the Guardia.

Beatings by the Guardia and Marines were the most common form of torture. These included the use of fists and feet since a number of prisoners were also kicked or stomped. A form of water torture, which consisted of forcing water down a prisoner's throat until the prisoner choked, also occasionally occurred. Peasant women were raped. Psychological torture was also used since Nicaraguans were routinely threatened with beatings and executions, including decapitation. These were more than idle threats. Ironically (given the horrified outcries at the beheading of U.S. citizens in Iraq today), photos of Marines and Guardia soldiers displaying the severed heads of Sandinistas they had killed were published in Nicaragua and throughout Latin America.


http://www.historiansagainstwar.org/resources/torture/grossman.html

Julian Assange and WikiLeaks: no case, no need:

Condemnation for WikiLeaks decision to publish US government cables in unredacted form:

Ironically (given the horrified outcries at the beheading of U.S. citizens in Iraq today), photos of Marines and Guardia soldiers displaying the severed heads of Sandinistas they had killed were published in Nicaragua and throughout Latin America.