US envoys forced to apologise in advance as Wikileaks release looms - TheNewTopical.com - current events, politics, culture, ethics, economics discussion forum

Francois Cellier · #1 (**permalink**) 27-11-10, 07:15 AM

From the Independent

US envoys forced to apologise in advance as Wikileaks release looms

America fears disclosure of diplomatic cables will offend allies

By Jerome Taylor
Saturday, 27 November 2010

Frantic behind the scenes wrangling was under way last night as US officials tried to stem the fallout from the expected release of up to three million confidential diplomatic communiques by the Wikileaks website.

Over the past 48 hours, American ambassadors have had the unenviable task of informing some of the country's strongest allies that a series of potentially embarrassing cables are likely to be released in the coming days.

The latest tranche of documents, described by Wikileaks as being seven times as large as its last exposé – the 400,000 secret war logs from Iraq that were published last month – are thought to be cables taken from SIPRNet, the Pentagon's global secret-level computer network which is accessible online for those with clearance.

US officials say the publication of such reports, which often contain candid assessments from embassy staff and ambassadors about foreign governments and leaders, has the potential to harm relations between Washington and its allies.

Downing Street yesterday confirmed that the US ambassador in London had already briefed the Government on what might be contained in the files. Similar meetings were also reported in Turkey, Israel, Canada, Denmark, Norway and Australia.

Wikileaks has made no official confirmation other than through brief messages posted on its Twitter page claiming that the Pentagon was "hyperventilating again over fears of being held to account".

It is not clear whether the whistle-blowing website will black-out the names of people who might face persecution if they were known to be co-operating with American embassies abroad. A source at Wikileaks said that the website was "proceeding with caution, as always" with regard to the details it would put into the public domain, suggesting that some form of redaction would be used.

But US officials have nonetheless reacted angrily, arguing that any publication of the cables would make diplomacy in sensitive parts of the world much more difficult.

"WikiLeaks are an absolutely awful impediment to my business, which is to be able to have discussions in confidence with people," said James Jeffrey, US ambassador to Baghdad. "I do not understand the motivation for releasing these documents. They will not help, they will simply hurt our ability to do our work here."

Early indications suggest the communiqués – thought to be from the last five years – could be a major source of embarrassment both for Washington and its allies, shining a light on the kind of candid opinions and policies that governments like to keep secret.

Quoting a Wikileaks "administrator", the London-based Arabic newspaper Al-Hayat said some of the cables suggested that Turkey had been turning a blind eye to fighters from the group Al-Qa'ida in Iraq slipping across into Turkey from the south. According to the same report, separate cables also reveal that Washington has been allowing fighters from the Kurdish separatist group the PKK safe havens in northern Iraq to stage attacks on Turkey.

Sources familiar with the US State Department reports told Reuters that some of the missives are thought to contain allegations against politicians in Russia, Afghanistan and other Central Asian nations.

The Russian daily business newspaper Kommersant said that the cables will contain general assessments of the political situation in Russia and "unflattering characteristics" of Russian leaders.

Italy's Foreign Minister, Franco Frattini, also admitted yesterday during a Cabinet meeting in Rome that the Wikileaks documents could have "negative repercussions" on the country's embattled Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi.

That Wikileaks is in possession of the secret communications has been suspected by US officials ever since Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning was arrested six months ago on charges of leaking confidential information to the whistleblowing website.

In an online chat with former hacker Adrian Lamo, who eventually turned Manning in to the authorities, the Iraq-based analyst boasted how he had handed over a cache of secret foreign policy documents that revealed "almost-criminal political back dealings" by US officials.

In the online chat made available by Lamo, Manning added: "Hillary Clinton and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning, and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format, to the public."

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has always denied receiving any information from Manning, although the website has campaigned for his release from detention.

So where is Assange?

Since the publication of nearly 400,000 Iraq war logs last month, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has been keeping a low profile.

The Australian-born campaigner leads a nomadic existence, rarely staying in the same place for more than a couple of nights, and frequently relying on friends and supporters for shelter.

On Thursday a court in Sweden upheld an arrest warrant on rape charges, although an appeal against the charge is continuing.

Assange, 39, has always strongly denied the charges against him. He says they are part of a smear campaign to discredit his whistleblowing organisation which has achieved worldwide fame this year following a string of leaks from the US military.

He is thought to be currently residing in Britain, although his UK lawyer Mark Stephens refused to say where his client was staying.

"I haven't confirmed where he is, but we have been in contact in the past 24 hours," Mr Stephens said.

Mr Assange's lawyer attacked the Swedish arrest warrant, adding that Mr Assange has already volunteered to be questioned by Swedish prosecutors either at an embassy or police station in Sweden. "The circumstances are all very bizarre," he said.

FredFredson · #2 (**permalink**) 27-11-10, 05:35 PM

Ah the terror of the roaches when the light is turned on.

F

roadkill · #3 (**permalink**) 28-11-10, 11:46 AM

Are apologies in advance worth much at all?

I suspect not.

Most people would think that if you were apologising in advance, you could have refrained from doing whatever it is that you are apologising about. In the world of fact that is not always possible. General Petreaus is not in a position to cause secret memos he wrote in the past to suddenly vanish from the face of the earth, but until the memos are disclosed we do not know whether he is apologising for calling Hamid Karzai "difficult" or for wrongly accusing Karzai of having a stable of prepubescent youths with whom he does unusual things.

The issue, as Wikileaks will point out, is more about the rights and wrongs of what actually occurred.

Zichao · #4 (**permalink**) 28-11-10, 12:00 PM

But they're not actually confessing in advance of sinning à la Guido da Montefeltro. They're just apologising in advance of the publication of the evidence.

Zichao · #5 (**permalink**) 28-11-10, 05:04 PM

Quote:

he series of revelations on the Wikileaks website – which are expected to begin tonight – will put a fresh strain on the "special relationship" between Britain and the United States.

The leaked diplomatic cables, dating from January 2009 to June 2010, cover a huge range of issues and include "lively commentaries" sent to Washington about a host of world leaders whose numbers are understood to include David Cameron and Gordon Brown.

Another series of leaks is thought to deal with Canada's "inferiority complex".

Whitehall sources expect them to be "drip fed" out over about a week.

The revelations about what US diplomats reported back on Gordon Brown's final months in power and the formation of the coalition after May's election are thought to be among the earliest to be made public in Britain.

A coalition source described the leaks as likely to be "embarrassing rather than damaging" for the current government.

However, he added: "The last Labour government has a lot more reason to be nervous."

Mr Brown's rocky relationship with President Barack Obama, which included a notorious visit to New York in September 2009 during which the White House was accused of "snubbing" the former prime minister, is almost certain to be mentioned, as is Britain's troop withdrawal from Iraq.

The Sunday Telegraph understands that frank assessments of the likelihood – or unlikelihood – of the coalition lasting are set to be included.

The source said: "There could be queries on whether the coalition would survive. But they only cover one month of the current administration."

US officials have warned that the latest tranche of documents will be far the most damaging of Wikileaks's output so far because of the potential harm they could do to relations with America's allies.

Previous leaks have included hundreds of thousands of secret Iraq war logs.

Louis Susman, the US Ambassador to London, has briefed senior British ministers on the content of the latest leaks.

The Sunday Telegraph has learnt that the first tranche of documents, to be published in full tomorrow after an initial release tonight, are expected to feature "lively commentaries" by US diplomats on world leaders, including Nelson Mandela, Robert Mugabe, the Zimbabwean president, Hamid Karzai, the president of Afghanistan, and Libya's Colonel Muammar Gaddafi of Libya.

Coalition sources say Tuesday's haul will deal with North and South Korea, as well as Guantánamo Bay, while Wednesday's tranche will include comments on Pakistan and counter-piracy operations in Djibouti.

Thursday will see attention focus on the Canadians and their "inferiority complex" while corruption allegations in Afghanistan will be under the spotlight on Friday. Saturday will cover Yemen while next Sunday will see the focus shift to China.

P J Crowley, the US State Department spokesman, said "We are all bracing for what may be coming and condemn Wikileaks for the release of classified material It will place lives and interests at risk. It is irresponsible.

"When this confidence is betrayed and ends up on the front pages of newspapers or lead stories on television or radio, it has an impact," he said.

The State Department "has known all along" that Wikileaks possesses classified documents, but it was not possible to predict exactly what information would be made public and what impact it would make, he said.

"We wish this would not happen, but we are obviously prepared for the possibility that it will," he added.

Hahahahaha

It's the clear patriotic duty of every country mentioned to act all offended and passive-aggressive about this for the coming weeks/months.

Francois Cellier · #6 (**permalink**) 28-11-10, 10:18 PM

From Politico

WikiLeaks reveals U.S. diplomatic secrets

By GLENN THRUSH & GORDON LUBOLD & LAURA ROZEN
11/28/10 2:15 PM EST

WikiLeaks has dropped its bombshell cache of U.S. diplomatic cables, ripping the cloak off scores of secret deals and duds – including clandestine North Korean support for Iran and the Bush administration’s failed attempt to remove nuclear material from Pakistan.

The disclosures – more than a quarter-million back-channel cables that include brutally candid assessments of world leaders and previously undisclosed details of nuclear and antiterrorism activity – represent the most embarrassing and potentially damaging disclosure of American diplomatic material in decades.

“I don’t see the world ending… but lots of red, sputtering faces in D.C., embassies and capitals,” a senior American diplomat told POLITICO early Sunday, just before the release of the documents, which chronicle the sprawling growth of the U.S. diplomatic and intelligence corps following the 2001 terrorist attacks.

The diplomat also predicted that governments and individuals overseas were likely to clam up following the disclosures, “since no one will trust us to keep a secret for a while” – while “various and sundry interest groups will cherry-pick whatever can be found in the documents to support whatever version of reality they are peddling.”

For weeks, the Obama administration had been pressuring WikiLeaks, and its controversial founder Julian Assange, to withhold publication of the documents, arguing that their publication could compromise the lives of U.S. service members and officials.

Assange, whose website came under cyber-attack Sunday, refused to comply - even ignoring an 11th-hour plea from the State Department’s legal adviser who said their publication was illegal and could undermine national security.

But they are also deeply embarrassing, providing the off-the-cuff assessments by American diplomats of world leaders, critiques that were only expected to be released decades from now. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is compared to Hitler, French President Nicolas Sarkozy was called an “emperor with no clothes," Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai is "driven by paranoia," according to the cables, while German Chancellor Angela Merkel earns high marks as a "Teflon" politician.

Perversely, the sheer size of the dump – a mountain of gossip, intrigue, high-stakes policy and low-brow humor – might ensure that some damaging revelations that might have been front-page stories if leaked one-by-one – get lost in the shuffle.

The long-expected release of the documents — scheduled to be released published simultaneously at around 4:30 p.m. EST by the New York Times, Der Spiegel, Spain’s El País, France’s Le Monde and Britain’s Guardian newspaper — was accelerated by a few hours after a German Twitter user obtained an early copy of Der Spiegel and began posting tidbits online.

The two previous releases of documents from WikiLeaks produced front-page stories – the recently disclosed Iraq war logs indicated that previous American estimates of the total number of Iraqi casualties were lower than the actual number – but overall, they contained few earth-shattering details.

The batch released Sunday, however, included vivid details about current operations and the sausage factory behind foreign policy, delivered by officials in 270 overseas posts worldwide over the last three years. The massive leak reportedly came from a service member with access to the documents.

Some of the material was so explosive that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spent much of the last week preparing foreign leaders for the fallout – and the Guardian pronounced it a “meltdown” of the U.S. diplomatic corps.

Saudi King Abdullah frequently pressed the U.S. to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities “to cut off the head of the snake," the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Adel al-Jubeir said, according to a report on Abdullah's meeting with Gen. David Petraeus, the senior U.S. commander in the Middle East, in April 2008.

One especially damaging revelation — previously unknown – details a conversation between Petraeus and the president of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh in which Saleh offers to claim U.S. airstrikes on suspected Al Qaeda militants were actually conducted by his forces.

That prompted Yemen’s deputy prime minister to “joke that he had just ‘lied’ by telling Parliament” that Yemeni forces had been behind the strikes.

In another cable, a U.S diplomat ruefully reports that an Afghan vice president carried $52 million in cash with him during a trip to the United Arab Emirates last year – without disclosing its origin or destination.

Yet another describes a State Department effort to coax Slovenia to accept a Guantanamo Bay detainee. In exchange top Slovenian officials were apparently offered a face-to-face meeting with President Obama himself.

In a statement soon after the New York Times published major excerpts on their web site, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs “condemn[ed] in the strongest terms” the release of the documents to the Times, Germany’s Der Spiegel and the Times of London – which followed the pattern of previous WikiLeaks’ document dumps on secret Iraq and Afghanistan war documents.

“By its very nature, field reporting to Washington is candid and often incomplete information,” wrote Gibbs. “It is not an expression of policy, nor does it always shape final policy decisions. Nevertheless, these cables could compromise private discussions with foreign governments and opposition leaders, and when the substance of private conversations is printed on the front pages of newspapers across the world, it can deeply impact not only US foreign policy interests, but those of our allies and friends around the world.”

“Cable traffic is inherently more sensitive than spot reporting,” said Rick “Ozzie” Nelson, a former naval officer who worked has worked at the National Security Council. “This is a little bit more subjective analysis,” he told POLITICO. The cables reveal the kinds of private dialogues that any nation has to have with itself, he said.

“This releasing of these sensitive cables does a disservice not only to us but our allies globally. Our government needs to be able to operate and have an open dialogue.”

Nelson, now a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that if the release of data was aimed at revealing a particularly egregious wrong the government had done, he could see its justification. In this case, it was just a dump of thousands of documents with no apparent purpose but to embarrass the U.S. government.

Among the other significant revelations:

--North Korea, currently embroiled in a knife’s edge confrontation with South Korea and the U.S., was able to smuggle 19 advanced, Russian-designed missiles, capable of delivering nuclear payloads, to Iran, according to a Feb. 24, 2010, cable detailing a meeting between Russian officials and a State Department nonproliferation expert. The shipment of some R-27 components was widely known in intelligence circles, but the WikiLeaks disclosures represent the first confirmation that Iran now possess complete missile systems.

--In May 2009, Anne Patterson, the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, reported that Pakistani officials were blocking an American attempt to remove fissile material from a reactor in the country for fear the effort would to leak the local press.

--A Chinese contact tipped off the U.S. embassy in Beijing that China’s Politburo OK'd a huge effort to hack into and eavesdrop on Google computers as part of a nearly decade-long cyber-sabotage effort aimed at American companies and supporters of the Dalai Lama.

--A 2007 warning by U.S. officials to Germany not to arrest CIA officials involved in the bungled rendition of an innocent German citizen who shared the same name as a wanted terror suspect.

--American diplomats in Rome reported on the close – and odd friendship developing between Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and Italy’s colorful billionaire leader, Silvio Berlusconi. A 2009 cable alleged the pair shared “lavish gifts,” valuable energy contracts. The cable also alleged that Putin wasn’t quite the strongman portrayed in the West – painting a picture of an autocratic leader with little hold over the huge, and largely unaccountable post-Soviet bureaucracy.

The New York Times defended its decision to go forward with their story, despite White House objections, noting that few of the documents were labeled “top secret” and passages that would have endangered individuals was redacted.

Of the candid cables themselves, the Times editors wrote, “We are less likely to censor candid remarks simply because they might cause a diplomatic controversy or embarrass officials.”

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman described the release as “the theft of huge amounts of classified data.”

He claimed that the leak was an unfortunate byproduct of “efforts to give diplomatic, military, law enforcement and intelligence specialists quicker and easier access to greater amounts of data have had unintended consequences” which makes “sensitive data more vulnerable to compromise."

Francois Cellier · #7 (**permalink**) 28-11-10, 10:37 PM

From the Guardian

US embassy cables leak sparks global diplomatic crisis

• More than 250,000 dispatches reveal US foreign strategies
• Diplomats ordered to spy on allies as well as enemies
• Hillary Clinton leads frantic 'damage limitation'

David Leigh
guardian.co.uk
Sunday 28 November 2010 18.13 GMT

The United States was catapulted into a worldwide diplomatic crisis today, with the leaking to the Guardian and other international media of more than 250,000 classified cables from its embassies, many sent as recently as February this year.

At the start of a series of daily extracts from the US embassy cables – many designated "secret" – the Guardian can disclose that Arab leaders are privately urging an air strike on Iran and that US officials have been instructed to spy on the UN leadership. These two revelations alone would be likely to reverberate around the world. But the secret dispatches which were obtained by WikiLeaks, the whistleblowers' website, also reveal Washington's evaluation of many other highly sensitive international issues.

These include a shift in relations between China and North Korea, high level concerns over Pakistan's growing instability and details of clandestine US efforts to combat al-Qaida in Yemen.

Among scores of disclosures that are likely to cause uproar, the cables detail:

• Grave fears in Washington and London over the security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme, with officials warning that as the country faces economic collapse, government employees could smuggle out enough nuclear material for terrorists to build a bomb.

• Suspicions of corruption in the Afghan government, with one cable alleging that vice president Zia Massoud was carrying $52m in cash when he was stopped during a visit to the United Arab Emirates. Massoud denies taking money out of Afghanistan.

• How the hacker attacks which forced Google to quit China in January were orchestrated by a senior member of the Politburo who typed his own name into the global version of the search engine and found articles criticising him personally.

• The extraordinarily close relationship between Vladimir Putin, the Russian prime minister, and Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, which is causing intense US suspicion. Cables detail allegations of "lavish gifts", lucrative energy contracts and the use by Berlusconi of a "shadowy" Russian-speaking Italian go-between.

• Allegations that Russia and its intelligence agencies are using mafia bosses to carry out criminal operations, with one cable reporting that the relationship is so close that the country has become a "virtual mafia state".

• Devastating criticism of the UK's military operations in Afghanistan by US commanders, the Afghan president and local officials in Helmand. The dispatches reveal particular contempt for the failure to impose security around Sangin – the town which has claimed more British lives than any other in the country.

• Inappropriate remarks by a member of the British royal family about a UK law enforcement agency and a foreign country.

The US has particularly intimate dealings with Britain, and some of the dispatches from the London embassy in Grosvenor Square will make uncomfortable reading in Whitehall and Westminster. They range from political criticisms of David Cameron to requests for specific intelligence about individual MPs.

The cables contain specific allegations of corruption, as well as harsh criticism by US embassy staff of their host governments, from Caribbean islands to China and Russia. The material includes a reference to Putin as an "alpha-dog", Hamid Karzai as being "driven by paranoia" while Angela Merkel allegedly "avoids risk and is rarely creative". There is also a comparison between Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Adolf Hitler.

The cables names Saudi donors as the biggest financiers of terror groups, and provide an extraordinarily detailed account of an agreement between Washington and Yemen to cover up the use of US planes to bomb al-Qaida targets. One cable records that during a meeting in January with General David Petraeus, then US commander in the Middle East, Yemeni president Abdullah Saleh said: "We'll continue saying they are our bombs, not yours."

Other revelations include a description of a near "environmental disaster" last year over a rogue shipment of enriched uranium, technical details of secret US-Russian nuclear missile negotiations in Geneva, and a profile of Libya's Muammar Gaddafi, who they say is accompanied everywhere by a "voluptuous blonde" Ukrainian nurse.

Clinton led a frantic damage limitation exercise this weekend as Washington prepared foreign governments for the revelations, contacting leaders in Germany, Saudi Arabia, the Gulf, France and Afghanistan.

US ambassadors in other capitals were instructed to brief their hosts in advance of the release of unflattering pen-portraits or nakedly frank accounts of transactions with the US which they had thought would be kept quiet. Washington now faces a difficult task in convincing contacts around the world that any future conversations will remain confidential.

As the cables were published the White House released a statement condemning their release. "Such disclosures put at risk our diplomats, intelligence professionals, and people around the world who come to the US for assistance in promoting democracy and open government. By releasing stolen and classified documents, WikiLeaks has put at risk not only the cause of human rights but also the lives and work of these individuals."

In London, a Foreign Office spokesman said: "We condemn any unauthorised release of this classified information, just as we condemn leaks of classified material in the UK. They can damage national security, are not in the national interest and, as the US have said, may put lives at risk. We have a very strong relationship with the US Government. That will continue".

The state department's legal adviser has written to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his London lawyer, warning that the cables were obtained illegally and that publication would place at risk "the lives of countless innocent individuals … ongoing military operations … and cooperation between countries".

The electronic archive of embassy dispatches from around the world was allegedly downloaded by a US soldier earlier this year and passed to WikiLeaks. Assange made them available to the Guardian and four other news organisations: the New York Times, Der Spiegel in Germany, Le Monde in France and El País in Spain. All five plan to publish extracts from the most significant cables, but have decided neither to "dump" the entire dataset into the public domain, nor to publish names that would endanger innocent individuals. WikiLeaks says that, contrary to the state department's fears, it also initially intends to post only limited cable extracts, and to redact identities.

The cables published today reveal how the US uses its embassies as part of a global espionage network, with diplomats tasked to obtain not just information from the people they meet, but personal details, such as frequent flyer numbers, credit card details and even DNA material.

Classified "human intelligence directives" issued in the name of Clinton or her predecessor, Condoleezza Rice, instruct officials to gather information on military installations, weapons markings, vehicle details of political leaders as well as iris scans, fingerprints and DNA.

The most controversial target was the UN leadership. That directive requested the specification of telecoms and IT systems used by top officials and their staff and details of "private VIP networks used for official communication, to include upgrades, security measures, passwords, personal encryption keys".

PJ Crowley, the state department spokesman in Washington, said: "Let me assure you: our diplomats are just that, diplomats. They do not engage in intelligence activities. They represent our country around the world, maintain open and transparent contact with other governments as well as public and private figures, and report home. That's what diplomats have done for hundreds of years."

The acting deputy spokesman for Ban Ki Moon, Farhan Haq, said the UN chief had no immediate comment: "We are aware of the reports."

The dispatches also shed light on older diplomatic issues. One cable, for example, reveals, that Nelson Mandela was "furious" when a top adviser stopped him meeting Margaret Thatcher shortly after his release from prison to explain why the ANC objected to her policy of "constructive engagement" with the apartheid regime. "We understand Mandela was keen for a Thatcher meeting but that [appointments secretary Zwelakhe] Sisulu argued successfully against it," according to the cable. It continues: "Mandela has on several occasions expressed his eagerness for an early meeting with Thatcher to express the ANC's objections to her policy. We were consequently surprised when the meeting didn't materialise on his mid-April visit to London and suspected that ANC hardliners had nixed Mandela's plans."

The US embassy cables are marked "Sipdis" – secret internet protocol distribution. They were compiled as part of a programme under which selected dispatches, considered moderately secret but suitable for sharing with other agencies, would be automatically loaded on to secure embassy websites, and linked with the military's Siprnet internet system.

They are classified at various levels up to "secret noforn" [no foreigners]. More than 11,000 are marked secret, while around 9,000 of the cables are marked noforn.

More than 3 million US government personnel and soldiers, many extremely junior, are cleared to have potential access to this material, even though the cables contain the identities of foreign informants, often sensitive contacts in dictatorial regimes. Some are marked "protect" or "strictly protect".

Last spring, 22-year-old intelligence analyst Bradley Manning was charged with leaking many of these cables, along with a gun-camera video of an Apache helicopter crew mistakenly killing two Reuters news agency employees in Baghdad in 2007, which was subsequently posted by WikiLeaks. Manning is facing a court martial.

In July and October WikiLeaks also published thousands of leaked military reports from Afghanistan and Iraq. These were made available for analysis beforehand to the Guardian, along with Der Spiegel and the New York Times.

A former hacker, Adrian Lamo, who reported Manning to the US authorities, said the soldier had told him in chat messages that the cables revealed "how the first world exploits the third, in detail".

He also said, according to Lamo, that Clinton "and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning and find an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available in searchable format to the public … everywhere there's a US post … there's a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed".

Asked why such sensitive material was posted on a network accessible to thousands of government employees, the state department spokesman told the Guardian: "The 9/11 attacks and their aftermath revealed gaps in intra-governmental information sharing. Since the attacks of 9/11, the US government has taken significant steps to facilitate information sharing. These efforts were focused on giving diplomatic, military, law enforcement and intelligence specialists quicker and easier access to more data to more effectively do their jobs."

He added: "We have been taking aggressive action in recent weeks and months to enhance the security of our systems and to prevent the leak of information."

Francois Cellier · #8 (**permalink**) 28-11-10, 10:47 PM

From TSRInfo

Julian Assange compte demander l'asile en Suisse

avec Darius Rochebin
ats/hof
05.11.2010 15:01

Julian Assange, le responsable de Wikileaks, révèle dans une interview exclusive à la TSR qu'il envisage de demander l'asile politique en Suisse. "C'est une possibilité que nous envisageons sérieusement", déclare-t-il, estimant que la Suisse est un des très rares pays où WikiLeaks serait en sécurité.

"Le but d'une fondation de ce type serait de poursuivre nos activités mais à partir de la Suisse", explique Julian Assange. Le responsable du site explique qu'il examine personnellement une demande d'asile politique en Suisse.

"La demande a été rejetée en Suède et on reste en suspens", déclare-t-il. WikiLeaks a publié près de 500'000 documents secrets, notamment sur des bavures de l'armée américaine en Irak et en Afghanistan. Depuis lors, affirme son responsable, son équipe est menacée et utilise 70% de son budget pour assurer sa sécurité.

L'Australien a par ailleurs indiqué qu'il n'y avait que trois pays dans lesquels sa fondation pourrait travailler en toute sécurité, à savoir l'Islande, la Suisse et Cuba.

Plus tôt dans la journée, face à une affluence record d'une centaine de journalistes massés au Club suisse de la presse, le responsable de WikiLeaks a dénoncé à Genève le refus des Etats-Unis d'enquêter sur les allégations de tortures en Irak et en Afghanistan révélées par son site.

Il a critiqué les pressions américaines pour le faire taire. "Si les Etats-Unis veulent être un pays crédible pour la défense des droits de l'homme, ils doivent mener des enquêtes sur les violations présumées de ces droits", a-t-il déclaré.

"Au lieu d'enquêter sur ces abus, les autorités américaines ont adopté une attitude agressive à l'égard de mon organisation en la menaçant publiquement et en cherchant à la détruire", a ajouté le fondateur de WikiLeaks. "Les Etats-Unis sont en train de perdre leur réputation en matière de liberté d'expression et de droits de l'homme", a averti Julian Assange, à Genève à l'occasion de l'examen vendredi du rapport des Etats-Unis par le Conseil des droits de l'homme de l'ONU.

"C'est le moment pour les Etats-Unis de s'ouvrir plutôt que d'étouffer l'affaire", a dit Julian Assange. "Les lois adoptées par les Etats-Unis ne valent rien si elles ne sont pas appliquées. Or, des éléments du gouvernement américain ont violé ces lois", a affirmé l'Australien de 39 ans, entouré de gardes du corps.

Encore beaucoup de choses à publier

Son site a publié il y a six mois 90'000 documents américains sur la guerre en Afghanistan et il y a deux semaines 400'000 documents sur la guerre en Irak révélant des cas de tortures et d'assassinats de civils par les forces américaines.

Interrogé par la TSR, Julian Assange a indiqué jeudi soir "qu'il reste encore beaucoup de choses à publier". Wikileaks possède encore quelque "15'000 documents sur l'Afghanistan", ainsi que "des informations sur la Russie" et des pays européens.

Le militant a souligné qu'à la différence des Etats-Unis, d'autres pays, comme la Grande-Bretagne et le Danemark, ont annoncé leur intention d'enquêter à la suite des révélations faites par WikiLeaks. "Il est dans l'intérêt des Etats-Unis de mener des enquêtes", a-t-il insisté. Il a relevé qu'un grand nombre d'organisations des droits de l'homme, comme Human Rights Watch et Amnesty International, partagent son avis.

Il a espéré qu'à l'occasion de leur examen par le Conseil, les Etats-Unis auront l'occasion de montrer leur volonté de redresser leur image. Les abus dénoncés en Irak sur la période de janvier 2004 à décembre 2009 ne datent pas tous de l'administration de George W.Bush, a expliqué Julian Assange. "L'administration Obama a aussi violé la loi en transférant des prisonniers à des groupes connus pour pratiquer la torture", a-t-il affirmé.

Interrogé sur les résultats des élections de mardi, Julian Assange s'attend à un tour de vis supplémentaire. Selon lui, les républicains auraient l'intention de faire passer une loi selon laquelle la publication des documents tels que ceux de WikiLeaks constitue une forme d'espionnage.

Francois Cellier · #9 (**permalink**) 28-11-10, 10:51 PM

From InfoWorlds

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange may seek Swiss asylum

WIKILEAKS founder Julian Assange says he is considering requesting asylum in Switzerland and basing the whistleblowing website in the fiercely neutral Alpine country.

“That is a real possibility,” Assange said today when asked in an interview with Swiss TV station TSR about whether he and the website might relocate to Switzerland. He said Switzerland, and perhaps Iceland, were the only Western countries that his outfit feels safe in.

Assange told the TSR television that Wikileaks is examining the possibility of creating a foundation that would allow it operate out of Switzerland, and confirmed he might apply for asylum.

“That is correct. We are examining whether I should apply for asylum,” said Assange in the interview, excerpts of which were available on the station’s website.

WikiLeaks, which last month published an unprecedented 400,000 classified US documents on the Iraq war and posted 77,000 secret US files on the Afghan conflict in July, has said its people have come under pressure and been harassed.

An Australian national, Assange was turned down last month for a Swedish residency and work permit. He was accused by two woman of rape and molestation days after filing the application in what he called a “set-up” by the website’s enemies.

In another development, Assange urged US authorities today to investigate possible rights abuses committed by troops in Afghanistan and Iraq instead of pursuing those who have leaked information to his group.

He said the US hadn’t opened any probes into the alleged incidents detailed in secret documents published by WikiLeaks since the group began putting them online in July. Assange contrasted this with Britain and Denmark, whose governments he said had already taken some steps to examine possible wrongdoing from the leaked US war logs.

“It is time the United States opened up instead of covering up,” he told reporters near the UN’s European headquarters in Geneva, where tomorrow the US will face its first comprehensive human rights review by the global body.

A US Defence Department spokesman dismissed the suggestion that the leaking of the documents should prompt any further investigations into wrongdoing by American troops.

“They’re our internal reports,” said Major Chris Perrine. “The idea that we haven’t investigated any of these is false.”

In the five years from 2005 to June 2010, military criminal investigators had examined some 970 cases related to Afghanistan and Iraq. Eighty-eight of those resulted in “further disciplinary action,” said Major Perrine.

Assange said his group now devotes 70 per cent of its resources to defending itself from attacks against its collaborators and its financial infrastructure, which he said were “mostly by the US military and US intelligence.”

“We have never faced such difficulties as an organisation as in the past three months,” he said, flanked by two bodyguards.

Assange said future leaks would cover other countries, such as Russia and Lebanon, as well as the US.

Zichao · #10 (**permalink**) 28-11-10, 11:08 PM

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Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is compared to Hitler

Nice to see them keeping a sense of perspective.

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French President Nicolas Sarkozy was called an “emperor with no clothes,"

I'll nod through pretty much any criticism of Sarko you could care to come up with. Not this one, however.

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Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai is "driven by paranoia,"

Have to say that were I the President of Afghanistan I strongly suspect that I'd be driven by paranoia too.

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while German Chancellor Angela Merkel earns high marks as a "Teflon" politician.

Oben bleiben! Kein Stuttgart 21!

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Grave fears in Washington and London over the security of Pakistan's nuclear weapons programme, with officials warning that as the country faces economic collapse, government employees could smuggle out enough nuclear material for terrorists to build a bomb.

This was a secret?

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Suspicions of corruption in the Afghan government, with one cable alleging that vice president Zia Massoud was carrying $52m in cash when he was stopped during a visit to the United Arab Emirates. Massoud denies taking money out of Afghanistan.

Suspicions? No shit, Sherlock.

Incidentally, just how big a suitcase would you need to carry $52m in cash?

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How the hacker attacks which forced Google to quit China in January were orchestrated by a senior member of the Politburo who typed his own name into the global version of the search engine and found articles criticising him personally.

Hmm. Not sure I'm convinced by this one. Not because it doesn't sound like the sort of thing a member of the Politburo would do, but because I find it difficult to believe that any of them are capable of using the internet.

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• Inappropriate remarks by a member of the British royal family about a UK law enforcement agency and a foreign country.

Details.

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PJ Crowley, the state department spokesman in Washington, said: "Let me assure you: our diplomats are just that, diplomats. They do not engage in intelligence activities. They represent our country around the world, maintain open and transparent contact with other governments as well as public and private figures, and report home. That's what diplomats have done for hundreds of years."

I've done this joke before, but so many FCO statements lend themselves to it: