Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said the Justice Department and Pentagon are conducting “an active, ongoing criminal investigation.” Others familiar with the probe said the FBI is examining everyone who came into possession of the documents, including those who gave the materials to WikiLeaks and also the organization itself. No charges are imminent, the sources said, and it is unclear whether any will be brought.
Former prosecutors cautioned that prosecutions involving leaked classified information are difficult because the Espionage Act is a 1917 statute that preceded Supreme Court cases that expanded First Amendment protections. The government also would have to persuade another country to turn over Assange, who is outside the United States.
But the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the inquiry is rapidly unfolding, said charges could be filed under the act. The U.S. attorney’s office in Alexandria – which in 2005 brought Espionage Act charges, now dropped, against two former pro-Israel lobbyists – is involved in the effort, the sources said.
The Pentagon is leading the investigation and it remains unclear whether any additional charges would be brought in the military or civilian justice systems. Pfc. Bradley Manning, an Army intelligence analyst suspected of being the source of the WikiLeaks documents, was arrested by the military this year.
Holder was asked Monday how the United States could prosecute Assange, who is an Australian citizen. “Let me be very clear,” he replied. “It is not saber rattling.
“To the extent there are gaps in our laws,” Holder continued, “we will move to close those gaps, which is not to say . . . that anybody at this point, because of their citizenship or their residence, is not a target or a subject of an investigation that’s ongoing.” He did not indicate that Assange is being investigated for possible violations of the Espionage Act.
Although the Justice Department has taken the position that media organizations could be prosecuted for printing leaked classified information under the legislation, that prospect is unlikely because of official aversion to running afoul of the First Amendment, experts said. Indeed, the Justice Department has never brought such a case, they said.
“Whenever you’re talking about a media organization, the department is going to look very closely to ensure that any prosecution doesn’t undermine the valid First Amendment functioning of the press,” said Kenneth Wainstein, former assistant attorney general in the national security division.
But when it comes to Assange, Jeffrey H. Smith, a former CIA general counsel, said: “I’m confident that the Justice Department is figuring out how to prosecute him.”
Smith noted that State Department general counsel Harold H. Koh had sent a letter to Assange on Saturday urging him not to release the cables, to return all classified material and to destroy all classified records from WikiLeaks databases.
“That language is not only the right thing to do policy-wise but puts the government in a position to prosecute him,” Smith said. Under the Espionage Act, anyone who has “unauthorized possession to information relating to the national defense” and has reason to believe it could harm the United States may be prosecuted if he publishes it or “willfully” retains it when the government has demanded its return, Smith said.
If there is one thing wikileaks is actually guilty of is threatening all those intelligence jobs the world over – which is a pretty mean thing to do in a recession.
Yet that is a small price to pay for its potential to finally bury the cold war.
A spectre is haunting Europeā the spectre of Wikileaks. All the powers of the old world have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope Obama and Tsar Putin, China and South Korea, liberals and police-spies.
Wikileaks has indeed become the new Communism – the first truly international phenomenon since Marx and Engels that has been able to successfully unite the world; not East vs West, North vs South, Left vs Right – but States vs People. In doing so, it has starkly revealed the previous divisions to be mere red herrings, not worth wasting oneās time with. All states, Wikileaks reveals, are as bad as each other, and all are more interested in preserving the status quo than serving their people (indeed, are willing to sacrifice their own people to preserve the status quo). Assange can make us all into anarchists.
And just as during the first Red Scare, oneās support of wikileaks has become a litmus test of responsible debate, separating the respectable liberals (the former āanti-communist leftā) from the ālunatic fringeā.
In the old days of Blunt and Burgess, well-placed people who had serious qualms against their countries, societies or āthe systemā at large had only one sure-fire recourse: provide their secrets to the āother sideā – the USSR.
Sure, some people who did this were committed Communists who supported the Soviet Union, but in general it was a very diverse bunch: persecuted gays, stifled bureaucrats, people with petty office grievances, people who were blackmailed and most importantly, people who through their positions had found out so much about the crimes and abuses committed by their government in their name, and usually with some degree of personal involvement (through their work in intelligence or defence) that their conscience compelled them to speak out, and often the only voice that was listening were the Russians.
The downside to this was that when they were unmasked, the dirty secrets these people had revealed about their own governments were overshadowed and invalidated by the fact that they had been āenemy spiesā, even though few of them particularly cared for Russia, and were just driven into Soviet arms by their anger, powerlessness and sometimes, a misguided sense of civic duty.
Enter wikileaks. Now, those same people – the misfits, the disappointed zealots, the bitter and the dissidents – no longer have to compromise themselves through being used in theĀ interests of a foreign country. They can upload the dirt onto a value -neutral platform. Those who yesterday would have been driven to espionage have instead become whistleblowers. And whistleblowers are always good guys. Why? Because no matter what their intentions or motivations, itās what they blow the whistle on that counts.
Thatās why most governments are now so busy trying to tarnish the messengers – to distract attention from the message itself – spelled out in black and white on screens worldwide.
The U.S. is under attack by an enemy within. Skilled at game
theory warfare, this foe targets the most sensitive realm of U.S. national
security: its relations with other nations.
The online publication of a quarter-million documents
chronicling diplomatic exchanges is notable both for whats omitted and whats
included. To determine whether this latest release was a form of espionage,
analysts need only examine how this treasure trove of trivia was peppered with
documents certain to damage U.S. relations.
To identify its origins, analysts must answer a key
question: Cui Bono? To whose benefit?
One clue: the release of degrading and insulting language
about Turkish leaders soon after they insisted in late October that the U.S. no
longer share Turkish intelligence with Tel Aviv.
That request from a valued ally marks a critical step in
isolating Israel by requiring that the U.S. shut down Israeli operations inside
its 16 intelligence agencies, the White House and the Intelligence Committees
in both the House and Senate. Tel Aviv was not pleased.
Turks remain outraged at the lack of accountability for the
execution-style killing by Israel Defense Forces of nine Turkish citizens
aboard a humanitarian ship that was boarded in international waters while
sailing to Gaza with provisions to relieve an Israeli siege.
Was this release a tit-for-tat, Tel Aviv style? Is WikiLeaks
the visible face of an Israeli disinformation campaign? Whose interests were
served by disrupting U.S.-Turkish relations?
Intent is determinative
A leak on this scale is only a leak if it is a random data
dump. If items were purposely included or excluded based on their intended
effect, its an intelligence operation. Former National Security Adviser
Zbigniew Brzezinski points out how this release is seeded with information
that is surprisingly pointed.
Take for example the cables indicating that Chinese leaders
are inclined to cooperate with the U.S. in reunifying North and South Korea
under the leadership of the south. That information was guaranteed to embarrass
Chinas leaders, damage U.S. relations with Beijing and make reunification more
difficult.
From a game theory perspective, that damaging result was
fully foreseeable. With the U.S. economy teetering on a meltdown, the creation
of a rift with Americas largest trading partner was also an assault on the
economic strength required for the U.S. to sustain a viable defense.
Similarly, the pointed references to Arab leaders were
destined to weaken their political credibility at home while complicating
relations abroad. By exposing Arab displeasure with Iran, this operation also
sharpened the divide between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, a source of ongoing
tensions and a key barrier to forming a viable government in Iraq.
The effect was certain to complicate U.S. disengagement and
raise Americas costs in both blood and treasure.
The cables involving Saudi leaders were released soon after
Washington agreed to allow Riyadh to purchase $60 billion in U.S. aircraft and
armaments over a multi-year period. Tel Aviv was not pleased.
By targeting the credibility of both Saudi Arabia and the
U.S., this operation targeted the two nations pressing hardest for an end to
Israels occupation of Palestine.
Transparency is the biggest
threat
Has Tel Aviv panicked? After more than six decades of
nonstop provocations while routinely portraying itself as the perennial victim,
has Israels storyline lost traction?
Zionism faces an existential threat though not from Iran or
those Tel Aviv portrays as Islamofascists. The threat lurks in the
fast-emerging transparency that confirms pro-Israelis as the source of the
intelligence that took the U.S. to war on false premises.
A critical mass of disinformation persuaded the U.S. to wage
war in pursuit of an agenda long sought by Zionist extremists.
Steve Rosen, a former employee of the Israel lobby, has
promised to testify on the lobbys routine receipt of classified U.S.
intelligence. Is this massive release of classified materials meant to make the
lobbys intelligence-gathering operation appear routine?
Whats included in the WikiLeaks release is pointed. Whats
excluded is even more so: the lack of facts chronicling the role that Israel
has long played in undermining U.S. interests.
Israel has escaped accountability for more than six decades.
Was the WikiLeaks release seeded to discredit the U.S. at this time-critical
juncture? The evidence suggests that what we see is not a data dump but a
disinformation operation.
Last week, Israeli resistance to a peace plan was front-page
news. This week the news is all about war with Iran. The Jerusalem Post immediately crowed that WikiLeaks vindicated
Israel by citing Arab leaders concerns about Iran.
These latest releases even enabled Tel Aviv to suggest that
if U.S. intelligence was flawed on a nuclear-armed North Korea, how can anyone
trust America to contain a nuclear Iran?
To whom should this release be attributed? Who benefitted?
Jeff Gates is author of Guilt By Association —
How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War. See www.criminalstate.com.
A Russian woman working in the British parliament is to be deported after security services arrested her on suspicion of espionage, The Sunday Times reported.
Britain’s domestic intelligence service MI5 decided that Katia Zatuliveter, 25, who works for Mike Hancock, a Liberal Democrat member of the House of Commons defence select committee, was secretly working for the Russian intelligence service as a ‘sleeper’, the paper reported.
The arrest is believed to be the first time since the end of the Cold War that someone working in parliament has been accused of spying for Russia.
The newspaper said MI5 believes the attractive Zatuliveter was deliberately targeting Hancock, 64, who has a strong interest in Russia.
Hancock dismissed allegations that his assistant was a spy.
‘She is not a Russian spy. I know nothing about espionage, but she has been subjected to a deportation order. She is appealing it, because she feels, quite rightly, that she has done nothing wrong,’ he told the Press Association.
A spokesman for the Home Office, or interior ministry, said: ‘We do not routinely comment on individual cases.’
Zatuliveter, who underwent security vetting before taking up her job, was arrested by police and immigration officials last week and is being held at a secure facility awaiting deportation to Russia.
The move to deport her comes after she was stopped while re-entering Britain at London’s Gatwick airport in August. Before releasing her, security officials questioned her in depth about her work for Hancock, the report said.
A source told The Sunday Times: ‘Her presence here is not considered to be conducive to national security. There was unhappiness about what she could have access to. The intention is to show her the door.’
The report said the British MP employed Zatuliveter after meeting her in Strasbourg, where he often travels on business as a member of the parliamentary forum of the Council of Europe.
The deportation could place further strain on Britain’s diplomatic relations with Russia, which are only just emerging from an icy period after the murder by poisoning of the dissident Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko in London in 2006.
The privacy wagon is back in town, and justifiably irate and alarmed souls are jumping aboard, in protest against Google’s spy car as the latest in a seemingly endless stream of high-tech transgressions. Understanding this takes some unpacking.
If you’re lucky, you might have encountered a Google spy car — used to eavesdrop on your Wi-Fi signals. Google uses a variety of makes and models (in some places even bicycles). The spy car spotter should look for a sinister and obvious protruding mast — usually sticking squarely from the roof — sporting goofy lenses and antennas. Those interested might want to browse the collection of unfortunate burglars and surprised dogs who have encountered the spy car on its appointed rounds.
Google’s spying on Wi-Fi, brought to light when Google admitted it, has it facing investigations both in the United States and overseas, including a new investigation by the US Federal Communications Commission launched this month. The fracas came about because Google’s aim was to count and identify Wi-Fi signals the way you might when you open a laptop in a new location and see a list of what networks are available. But Google didn’t stop at counting Wi-Fi networks. Instead it apparently tapped some of them, too, capturing what is called “payload data.” Not content with watching the signals go by, it saved them. It’s even had the guts to claim that it has accidentally been saving them (“Quite simply, it was a mistake,” Google says). But Google’s interest in your wireless signals is well-founded in its corporate strategy.
Open your smartphone and you may be pleased to find that its mapping application now fixes your location quite accurately. Just a short year or two ago the GPS signals used by these devices were painfully inaccurate — particularly in the canyons of cities where we tend to want them most. Then came the remarkable insight (from companies like Loki) that when people buy Wi-Fi access points at Radio Shack and install them in their houses, they don’t move them around very often, or turn them off. Each Wi-Fi access point, it turns out, has a unique number that it broadcasts continuously in something called a beacon. The beacon, aptly named, flashes out with the regularity of a lighthouse.
Google wants to trawl the streets for Wi-Fi signals because if it can find these beacons and organize them, then the next time you drive by that same beacon it can guess where you are: Your phone in a pinch may use the pattern of Wi-Fi beacons near you as its local aid to navigation. All this works only if, in advance, Google has provided a proper chart.
Domestic Wi-Fi networks are very common — 86% of all Americans have one (according to the Pew Internet American Life Project) — and so they constitute a basis for more effective location-based services, notably, marketing and advertising. Location-based services are ablaze as corporations in many industries seek to turn your smartphone into a sales device.
Back to privacy, which of course in this context merits vigilant attention. “Privacy,” however, is not an adequate intellectual container for what’s happening with Google’s spy cars and with ubiquitous tracking software which, as the Wall Street Journal revealed in an invaluable investigation, is placed on web-surfers’ computers routinely by such sites as Dictionary.com and…Google.
What’s happening as each of these pinprick invasions accumulate and ramify is actually the reconstruction of the greater political economy, into what Robins and Webster decades back called “cybernetic capitalism.” Instead of probabilistic forecasts about media use and buying habits, real-time data based on records of individual behavior are increasingly the foundation for feedback into the corporate economy. Where gaps and uncertainties exist new forms of surveillance and tracking are generated. Google spy cars are one such initiative.
The forms of power and social control that are being established aren’t captured by the idea that it’s merely about the invasion of individual privacy. Why then should the infringement-of-privacy theme demonstrably possess such power to galvanize political opposition and public concern?
One little-noticed factor may pertain to pornography — with which the Internet is awash. Although it is extremely difficult to measure, by some reports more than 1 in 3 Internet users are seeking adult content. These users may be particularly concerned about revealing their surfing habits.
Google is explicit that its mission is to organize all of the world’s information. But much of that information is being created, today, for the first time — and Google is a big part of that story. The surprise is that Google has been at least partly checked by accusations that it has been reading our email — since its business for some years has been reading our email. But behind this there are, we have suggested, deeper issues.
