Vaulting Cablegate to the 7 Corners of the Revenge Cube : 30 Anonymous Officials Admit ... Stuff [updated]
30 Anonymous Officials Admit ... Stuff
[Image: Mr Fish]
Publication date: 2021-09-30
Updated 2021-10-01: added the Pushback interview between Aaron Mate and Michael Isikoff, and made some edits in the first paragraph to incorporate information from the interview and some background.
The recently published "yahoo! news" article has been making the rounds, as it should. The reporting team did some good work in getting 30 employees of various USA government agencies to talk about the plans formed by underlings of the "obsessed" Pompeo to capture, rendition, or assassinate Mr. Assange. The fact that they had to put the RussiaGoat scam in there informs us they either believe this rubbish or that this is required by their editors. [Update: the new source interview shows the Isikoff believes RussiaGoat; he vehmently states it (Russian intelligence “hacked” the DNC) and is annoyed by Mate’s insertion of “allegedly”]. It certainly informs us that they don't read The Grayzone. One of the lawyers behind the Goat scam is currently under indictment for lying to the FBI. [Don’t forget that the CEO of Crowdstrike Shaun Henry, hired by the DNC to inspect its servers rather than giving them to the FBI, under advice of his lawyers, admits in sworn testimony before a Senate inquiry that they found no evidence of any data being moved (exfiltrated) from the server.]
The eye catching snippets from the article are about street gun battles or shooting the tyres of a Russian diplomatic aeroplane with the full complicity of UK services. The whole “Russia” thing is bollocks, as declared by current Wikileaks Editor Kristinn Hrafnsson (see “Going Underground” source). Whatever. None of this is terribly new, just a few details. The case in Spain against UC Global, the "security contractor" to the Ecuadorian government for their London embassy has already demonstrated live video/audio spying on Assange, his lawyers, his doctors, or all visitors, and even a plot to poison him. UC Global has been connected back to the CIA via Sheldon Adelson, a major donor to former USA president Trump in an article published over a year ago in May 2020, again at the The Grayzone.
So, what does this new article give us? It shows that Pompeo was "obsessed" with getting at Wikileaks/Assange, and that this was because of the Vault 7 release, which this blog was talking about soon after its founding back in June 2021. The real interest is the way in which the CIA attempted to "legalize" their immoral behaviour.
Kevin Gozstola, along with currently imprisoned former UK diplomat Craig Murray, was among a very small group of people providing detailed reporting on the extradition trial of Julian Assange, for which I give them great credit. He, Kevin, is an excellent source of information on Assange related matters as he is very well informed and does not swallow the rubbish put out by the Mockingbird Media. His interview with CIA torture whistleblower Kiriaku (see sources) is worth every second of their 53 minute discussion as they explore the interesting components of the article, and particularly, this question of legal justification. Please watch it (and thank you Gozstola and Kiriaku).
Its all about the redefinition of terms. “Journalist” becomes "information broker" to escape 1st Amendment protections, and “News Publisher” becomes "non-state hostile intelligence service" for similar reasons.
This blog is proud to have adopted a variant of the latter phrase soon after its inception. This blog is a:
non-state hostile opinion service
Kill the CIA
There are calls for the CIA to be abolished and other silliness. Every government wishes for an effective intelligence service. The problem, as this blog has pointed out, is in the National Security Act, specifically Sec. 104A. [50 U.S.C. §403-4a] part (d) sub-section 4 which states:
(4) perform such other functions and duties related to intelligence affecting the national security as the President or the Director of National Intelligence may direct.
This "perform such other functions and duties" is what enables the operations side of the CIA. Interestingly, there are many reports of the CIA analysts and operatives wanting nothing to do with each other. Indeed, there are turnstiles in the Langley headquarters separating them! Why not just formalize the whole thing legally and geographically. Leave the analysts to gather and analyse data and produce reports, and put the operations folks elsewhere and under different authority?
A very related problem exists at the NSA (No Such Agency, as it is known). It is tasked with both spying on the world outside of USA borders (though that restriction broke down in the "gloves off" 9/11 aftermath as attested to by no less then their former Technical Director, William Binney) and with defending USA infrastructure against spying by the rest of the world. To facilitate the “external” spying, the agency hoards software vulnerabilities known as "zero day exploits" which the defensive side would like fixed to secure national information systems. It is an agency divided against itself because of the dual mission purpose.
Is it any wonder that you get leaks out of these agencies which are divided amongst themselves? Instead of fixing the mission objective conflicts the USA government goes after the whistleblowers and publishers. Purposeful incompetence or what?
The “I told you so” nature of this post is no comfort, whatsoever. The "west” is destroying the last remnants of its legitimacy, having already undermined international law. There is nothing left for resolving international conflict than militaries refusing to fight in the next global civil war, on principle alone.
Sources
Kidnapping, assassination and a London shoot-out: Inside the CIA's secret war plans against WikiLeaks, Zach Dorfman, Sean D. Naylor and Michael Isikoff, yahoo! news, 2021-09-26
With Clinton lawyer charged, the Russiagate scam is now under indictment, Aaron Maté, The Grayzone, 2021-09-20
‘The American friends’: New court files expose Sheldon Adelson’s security team in US spy operation against Julian Assange, Max Blumenthal, The Grayzone, 2020-05-14
Power is not to be fought, but feared, YesXorNo, This Blog, 2021-06-21
Former CIA Director Mike Pompeo Was Reportedly Obsessed With Killing Assange, Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter, 2021-09-27
CIA Plans To Kidnap Or Kill Assange And Destroy WikiLeaks Confirmed, Kevin Gozstola and John Kiriaku, Shadowproof, 2021-09-26
“National Security Act of 1947”, see Sec. 104A. [50 U.S.C. §403-4a] part (d) sub-section 4, Office of the Director of National Intelligence (USA)
The US Govt Contemplated KILLING Julian Assange With UK Complicity (Wikileaks’ Kristinn Hrafnsson), Going Underground, RT, 2021-09-29
[… the tyre smell of digital book burning by Alphabet Inc’s subsiduraries while they work with the USA’s intelligence organizations.]
The Wizard (For Julian), Caitlin Johnston, Her Substack site, 2021-06-02
[update]
Inside the CIA plot to kidnap, kill Julian Assange, Aaron Mate inteview’s Michael Isikoff (one of the authors of the yahoo! news article), Pushback / The Grayzone, 2021-09-30
Postscript
I dont know either how Aaron Mate arranged this interview, or why Isikoff agreed to it. Perhaps its all “audience building”. But it is quite a thing. On the one hand you have new corroboration of the already known, and that is useful. On the other you have the interviewer, Mate, who received the I. F. Stone Award for journalism for debunking RussiaGoat speaking with a staunch advocate for that theory.
In the end, this is a hope; well informed individuals discussing the murky, internecine bowels of government policy and action. Equal credit all around! The bravery award goes to Isikoff, for its Mate’s show and he gets to do the video editing. Personally, I think Isikoff is a power establishment shill, and this can be seen by his “walking a line” through the interview. I still have no idea as to why he agreed to the interview because there is only one outcome. It was when he brought up Seth Rich that I knew the wheels were coming off.
Here’s the Seth Rich story. He contacts Wikileaks with a cache of emails from the DNC. He gives them a “taster” and then asks for money for the full cache. I have no idea what happens thereafter, but Wikileaks publishes a fairly voluminous cache of emails which demonstrably show the rigging of the primaries by the DNC against Sanders and for Clinton, to the degree that 5 members of the DNC, including its chairwoman had to resign. So, case closed, right? But, no. Power to the brain infested Assange gets in touch with D. Trump Junior to try to extend the play. Clintonites go on a war path and construct the entire RussiaGoat thing. As McGovern wisely stated “its a two-fer” — shoot down the very annoying Wikileaks and target the Russian’s at the same time. This is information warfare at its core.
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