A journalist is saved by journalists
Old School advances to save the New School
[Image, Public Domain, completely ripped from Caitlin Johnstone’s article, see acknowledgements].
Scott Horton of the Libertarian Institute interviews Bjartmar Alexandersson the journalist behind the recent Stundin.is article showing that the key witness to the second superceeding indictment against Julian Assange, which was the one used in the September/October 2020 extradition hearing before Magistrate Baraitser in London, was a very unreliable witness.
If you are interested in the Assange case, you should listen to this interview. It can be downloaded in full.
Nomenclature: for brevity names are shortened; the interviewer as Horton, the journalist as Bjartmar, Julian Assange as 'JA', and the source/informant/criminal, Mr. Thordarson, by his nickname ‘Siggi’.
Two (*) and (**) footnotes are made. They are expanded on at the end. Of particular import is the second (**).
Background
The Obama administration had a “New York Times” problem with indicting JA, which was that JA was doing what national security reporters do every day. To get around this, the Trump administration embellished their final indictment with new more expansive claims portraying JA as a hacker. There were no changes to the charges, just the narrative around them, but this was important for it allowed them to proclaim to journalists that "we're not coming after you" because JA "is a hacker and you are not". Anyone who believed this was a complete fool.
The recent Studnin.is article was preceeded by another in which it is exposed that "Siggi" was a con artist and was guilty of fraud/embezzlement, forging his lawyer's signature and other things, not the least, sexual abuse of minors.
Having this understanding of Siggi, Bjartmar decides to question Siggi about his relationship with Wikileaks, and the FBI, regarding the USA Department of Justice’s (henceforth ‘DoJ’) use of his testimony in the final indictment against JA. He has been provided by Siggi with volumes of chat logs. There are 9 hours of recording over 4 interviews with Siggi and twelve thousand of pages of documents. Bjartmar states that the entire investigation took 3 months to produce two key articles. He also makes the point that the Icelandic version of the most recent article is far more detailed. (Hint: Assange defence lawyers, get this translated, in full, into English; oh, and you might have an ‘expert’ character witness for Siggi).
The Interview
Horton introduces the show, mispronounces the name of the magistrate and describes the allegations made in the indictment which were cited by the Baraitser in her judgement, as "facts", and so does not get off to a flying start, but we're here to listen to Bjartmar, so onwards.
Bjartmar obviously has a sense of humour and seems like a jovial fellow, but he is very careful about how he describes what he has learned. He states that it is obvious that Siggi is lying about many things especially related to the embezzlement investigation. When he questions Siggi about the incidents cited in the indictment against JA he declares that the indictment says one thing whilst Siggi is saying another. What Siggi is saying in the interview is sometimes corroborated by the chat logs, and sometimes obvious lies.
A few points are made:
Bjartmar confirms that Siggi has been found guilty of abuse of underage boys, and that other similar charges were not heard and one of those boys committed suicide.
After the FBI visiting Iceland again in 2019 and promising protection of Siggi his crime spree begins again.
Bjartmar says that "we have the agreement" (with the FBI), ‘we’ meaning Stundin, which states the FBI will not forward any (criminal) information about Siggi to other authorities.
The discussion then proceeds into Siggi's relationship with LulzSec, an offshoot of the distributed Anonymous collective. The chat logs which Bjartmar had been given by Siggi show his complete lack of computer skills and him asking other members of LulzSec, particularly Sabu, who by the time was an FBI informant, to lauch DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks (*) against Icelandic infrastructure, including an electricity provider.
In the final indictment against JA the DoJ attempts to link JA with these attacks, but there is both no evidence to support this assertion in the chat logs and Siggi also says that nobody asked him to do this. One DoJ assertion struck down.
Next is the first of the major contents of the discussion. Horton asks Bjartmar if Siggi had forgotten what he's said to the FBI or if perhaps they had embellished them. Again, Bjartmar's response is careful. He knows what Siggi told him (and that Siggi is a liar) but does not know what Siggi told the FBI. The summary is that Siggi almost certainly embellished what what going on when speaking with the FBI (he wanted protection), and it seems likely that the FBI and/or DoJ added more. How much of this is where in the chain is unknown. For some “hacking” claims used by the DoJ in the indictment Siggi claims that Assange personally asked him to do this, which makes no sense because Siggi has no computer skills. He's a con artist, and as John Shipton (JA's father) described him, a damaged (see video sources) individual.
The indictment refers to telephone recordings of Icelandic members of parliament that somehow JA was involved in. Bjartmar describes Siggi saying that they were given to him by a third party and that he did not even examine them, not even knowing if they were audio recordings. Siggi claims to have given them to JA. A point they do not investigate is, if these actually were audio recordings of parliamentarians, who would have the greatest possibility to acquire them? That, of course, would be the NSA/CIA. So, it is possible that the "third party" who supplied the files was actually via the NSA/CIA/FBI. This makes absolute sense, as it would be a lovely entrapment operation. But, this is all conjecture by myself and is not discussed in the interview.
Following a discussion about journalists asking sources for more information being standard practice we get something that may seem insignificant, but is new. The core of the CFAA charge against JA says that he'll try to assist Manning in cracking the local administrator password of her military computer. As has been acknowledged by many, this would have given no further access to defense information. Some claim it would "hide her tracks" to which I say, balderdash. The key understanding is that the source of the data Manning was accessing was on other computers (servers) which could be accessed over a network from the local computer, but to do this, one needs to provide some form of identification, and that identification must lead to an individual, not some "local account" (**). The sensible claims seem to have been about installing software on the local computer, which the local administrator account does have the privileges to do. Previous suggestions have been games, but Bjartmar says that it was music. It seems likely that it was software to play music which Manning wanted to install. This taints the DoJ claim about cracking the local administrator account as “access to more information” (which was already ludicrous) or “hiding her tracks” (again, bollocks), but supports the more reasonable assumption of “intention to install non-approved software” on the computer. This may actually be a crime under the CFAA, but that is not what the DoJ is asserting. They’re interested in conspiracy theories to crack hashes of local administrator accounts to improve access to remote information. The DoJ asserts and forging a key to your bicycle will provide access to your house.
There is another claim in the indictment about JA being involved, via Siggi or whichever intermediary, in "hacking" some documents from an Icelandic bank. This claim is completely demolished by Bjartmar in the discussion. His journalist friend and many others had this encrypted file before Siggi, and people were trying to decrypt it because it might provide more details as to the nature of the collapse of the banks in Iceland during the 2008 financial crisis. Another DoJ claim is destroyed.
Horton then asks a most important question. Has the FBI used Sabu and these DDoS attack to access Siggi, and what happened? Bjartmar claims that the FBI used the DDoS attacks that had happened, which they knew about because of their informant Sabu, to claim to Iceland that there were bigger ones coming and 'we can help'. They gain access to the Icelandic legal and law enforcement agencies via this "help" and use this access to go after JA/Wikileaks. The then Icelandic Interior Minister learns of this, which is illegal, and kicks the FBI out of Iceland. Despite having their visas cancelled and being asked to leave, the FBI stay for a further 5 days interviewing Siggi. This further weakens the already in tatters claims used by the DoJ via the FBI from Siggi as they were obtained under illegal circumstances.
There is a final twist or two. Siggi's 2011 crime sprees of abuse of minors and fraud/embezzlement has caught the attention of the Icelandic authorities, and he has burned his bridges with the criminals which he was con'ing along with everyone else, so he goes to the USA embassy in Iceland and speaks to the FBI. He is looking for protection. But, none is given. It is only in 2019, when the DoJ needs his testimony for their final indictment that the FBI revisit Iceland and sign a document providing some "protection" (see above). Before this, the chat logs show that both Siggi and Sabu, as FBI informants, were trying to entrap one another, neither knowing that the other was an informant.
Oh, what a tangled web was weaved. Now with light shining off it, all can see its underhanded, vindictive, internecine stupidity. All to prosecute a journalist and publisher for publishing the truth.
They key question here is not the tactics of the FBI; they are pretty nasty, but informants are an important part of evidence gathering for prosecuting sometimes very nasty characters. The question is the DoJ lawyers using this obviously unreliable informant’s statements as the basis for the narrative of the final indictment. I cannot conclude that they are incompetent, thus the conclusion is somewhere amongst malice and malpractice. Yet another damning clue that the whole thing has been politically motivated from the outset.
I would like to commend Scott Horton for organising the interview, Stundin for supporting Bjartmar Alexandersson in his investigative work, and finally Bjartmar himself for pushing the Siggi story just one bit further to get to the Wikileaks/JA side of it.
Ironically, it may be that "old school" investigative journalism will save the founder of "new school" investigative journalism. Long may they both continue.
Acknowledgements
The interview came across my radar because a the final link in a great article by Caitlin Johnstone looking at recent media blackouts. She cites many, and looks into the background for this.
She misses one; the complete lack of any decent reporting on the trial of JA itself by these old media dinosaurs. It gets worse. Detailed reporting of the trail was provided by some independent journalists (in English), including Craig Murray, Richard Medhurst, Kevin Gozstola and a few others whose names I forget (sorry), and ConsortiumNews as an independent news outlet. But, the limited places in the court were filled with reporters from major outlets who provided the scantest of reporting on it. Thus, the mainstream media were preventing reporting on the trial. Lest we forget this was the most important freedom of the press trial since the Pentagon Papers, and media are blocking access to it, and providing minimal coverage of it.
A Wider Picture
JA's father and brother, John and Gabriele Shipton, respectively, have just completed a two week tour of the USA trying to raise awareness of the injustice based on the First Amendment. Their tour, to support Caitlin's article, has received almost no attention from USA legacy media. The closest they got was an interview on DemocracyNow. But, it has been covered by the independent media.
In the background, all major press freedom and human rights organisations have stood behind JA, and even the silent MSM have issued editorials in support. The big recent developments are the creation of cross parliamentary groups in countries like Australia, Germany, UK, Spain and others demanding JA's release. This follows a whole sequence of open letters from collectives of people from various professions denouncing the insanity of the denial of due process and flimsy charges; doctors, parliamentarians, lawyers, etc..
As Scott Ludlam, former Australian Senator, emphasized in a recent webcast (see video sources), the tide is turning and a "tipping point" may be approaching. Now is not the time to rest on laurels, but to act more to force the approach of this tipping point.
Notes on Computer Related Statements
(*) A DDoS is a simple attack; you need lots of computers connected to the internet and then you contact the target, all at once. The target needs to deal with these communications attempts and gets bogged down, unable to handle the volume of requests. It thus denies the ability of the “server” to perform its job, and is thus a “denial of service”. The “distributed” part is that you have thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of computers participating in the attack causing each attacker no stress whatsoever but overloading the target. Hence, DDoS.
This all happened back in 2011 and things have moved on in the IT industry since, with services like CloudFlare and others providing DDoS prevention/insulation services. But, at the time there was an interesting discussion of whether this is not just a digital protest. Its a bit like a thousand people marching down a road, but the comparison fails because no “permit” is required.
Culturally, the simple tool used by LulzSec and others at the time to perform DDoS attacks was called the “Low Ion Cannon” which is a reference to the scene at the start of “The Empire Strikes Back” Star Wars movie in which the rebels escape their base passing through the “ion cannons” of the Empire. These were interesting times, as they say.
(**) Identity management in IT is perhaps the most important of all services, especially so for managing sensitive information. A small to medium enterprise will use the access control mechanisms to limit access to resources, but a serious enterprise handling sensitive information will also employ a form a logging. Each access to any sensitive data collection will be logged so that it can be audited in the event of any loss of or damage to data. Naturally the USA Military/Intelligence (MoD) come in the latter category and must have had these capabilities.
Identity management is handled by a distributed, federated database with various tricks to minimize having to enter your password for every item of information. But, you cannot access controlled information with a “local” account, you MUST use one from the Identity Management system, and these are tried to actual people with actual names and other security identifiers. I have run these systems, as a systems administrator, at a small to medium organisation, and I would never allow non-centrally managed identities (i.e. ‘local accounts’) to remotely access centrally data controlled data.
I can categorically state that cracking the local administrator account of some PC would NEVER have allowed access to central sensitive data. Using it would mean you get access to NO DATA, not more. None. Nada. We didn’t have the money to use the auditing capabilities which I expect the MoD used. But, I am certain that they both had them, and that if someone tried to use a local account to access this data it would have caused an immediate red flag and put Manning in FAR MORE DANGER.
This is why the CFAA charge in the indictment is complete rubbish. The MoD know this, and I expect the DoJ does too. But, it is there for a reason; “hacking” to lead away from “freedom of the press”. Know this to be true.
Sources
7/1/21 Bjartmar Alexandersson on the Lies of America’s Star Witness Against Julian Assange, The Libetarian Institute
Key witness in Assange case admits to lies in indictment, Stundin
Download link for the interview audio
Cornel West & Ryan Grim join John & Gabriel Shipton at the National Press Club, Assange Defense
The Horrifying Rise Of Total Mass Media Blackouts On Inconvenient News Stories, Caitlin Johnstone
Threats to the Freedom of the Press in 21st Century, ConsortiumNews