by Michael Moore

WikiLeaks, Web to Revolutionize Reporting, says Journalist and Filmmaker John Pilger

by Mike Collett-White

LONDON - Revelations on the WikiLeaks website which have enraged governments around the world should force the traditional media to rely less on official sources, award-winning journalist John Pilger said.

In an interview to discuss his film "The War You Don't See," the veteran Australian reporter told Reuters the internet, and more specifically WikiLeaks, would bring about a "revolution" in journalism which too often failed to do its job properly.

One reason the media did not challenge the U.S. and British governments' justification for going to war in Iraq in 2003, later shown to be misplaced, was their eagerness to believe the official version of events, Pilger argued.

He said the same was true of television coverage of the Israeli attack on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, when British broadcasters appeared willing only to use Israeli video rather than trawling the internet for alternative footage.

"That mindset that only authority can really determine the 'truth' on the news, that's a form of embedding that really now has to change," said Pilger, who has covered conflicts in Vietnam and Cambodia, written books and made several acclaimed documentaries.

"There's no question about the pressure on it to change coming from the internet and coming from WikiLeaks -- it will change," he added in the interview ahead of Tuesday evening's broadcast of his new film.

"That is the canker in all of this, it's the compulsion to quote, not necessarily believing the authority source. But then once you quote it and you put it out on the wires or you broadcast it, it takes on a sort of mantle of fact and that's where the whole teaching of journalism is wrong.

"Authority has its place, but the skepticism about authority must be ingrained in people."

In The War You Don't See, Pilger interviews leading broadcast journalists including Dan Rather and Rageh Omaar, who agree that journalists failed in their basic duties during the build-up to the Iraq conflict.

It seeks to highlight how British television reporters based in London were quick to accept what they were being told by officials in Westminster, which did not necessarily reflect what was happening on the ground in Iraq.

OTHER SIDE OF STORY

The film shows how independent journalists occasionally provided evidence that countered the official version, while WikiLeaks was a relatively new source of sometimes disturbing information with the potential to embarrass the authorities.

The documentary opens with extended clips from classified U.S. military video showing a 2007 attack by Apache helicopters that killed a dozen people in Baghdad, including two Reuters news staff. WikiLeaks released the footage in April.

Pilger also interviews WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, remanded in custody in Britain last week after Sweden issued a European arrest warrant.

Assange jokes that since it is officially wrong to retain information and to destroy it, his only choice was to publish.

Pilger, one of several prominent figures who offered a surety to secure bail for Assange, praised the recent publication of secret U.S. embassy documents which have attracted global media coverage.

"I think the WikiLeaks disclosures have been like watching a great parade of wonderful scoops," Pilger said in the interview.

"(It is) basic rich journalism that is telling people how the world works. It's not just telling them what a prime minister said. It's not framing it in how governments or other vested interests want us to think about something.

"It's giving us the story in their words. I think it's a revolution in journalism."

The War You Don't see is aired on ITV on Tuesday evening and is being screened at select theatres across Britain.

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

Journalists Begin, Finally, to Stand Up in Defense of WikiLeaks and Freedom of Information

by John Nichols

by Alice Ritchie and Danny Kemp

LONDON - London's High Court granted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange bail Thursday after rejecting an appeal to keep him in jail while he fights extradition to Sweden to answer allegations of sex crimes.

The 39-year-old Australian was in court to hear the judge reject an appeal on behalf of Swedish prosecutors against a ruling Tuesday by a lower court that he be bailed.

"I am going to grant conditional bail," judge Duncan Ouseley said.

He endorsed the stringent bail conditions imposed by the lower court, that Assange's supporters must pay a 240,000-pound (283,000-euro, 374,000-dollar) surety and he be subject to electronic tagging and a curfew.

The judge made a slight change to the arrangements for Assange to report regularly to police near a supporter's country mansion in eastern England where he must stay.

Bail was also only granted on condition that 200,000 pounds in cash of the surety is made available to the court by the end of the day.

Assange's lawyer, Mark Stephens, earlier indicated that he would have the money in time.

Sweden wants Britain to extradite Assange for questioning over claims of rape and sexual molestation against two women in Stockholm in August, offences which he denies and which his lawyers argue are politically motivated.

They cite the timing of his arrest, which coincided with the release by the whistle-blowing website of thousands of confidential US diplomatic cables that have caused huge embarrassment and anger in Washington.

Assange's mother, Christine, and supporters including campaigning journalist John Pilger, had packed out the courtroom for the hour-and-a-half hearing along with hordes of journalists.

"I appreciate all the support," Christine Assange told reporters afterwards.

Other supporters gathered in driving rain outside the Gothic court house shrieked with delight at news of the ruling and chanted "exposing war crimes is no crime".

Inside, the judge rejected the assertion by British lawyers acting on behalf of Sweden that Assange was a flight risk.

"The court does not approach this case on the basis that this is a fugitive from justice who seeks to avoid interrogation and prosecution," the judge said.

Another condition of bail was that Assange live at the country estate of Vaughan Smith, an ex-British army officer who founded the Frontline Club, a media club in London where WikiLeaks has based part of its operations.

He must stay there during the extradition proceedings, which may take months.

Speaking before the court hearing, Pilger said: "I hope he will be released -- he should be, he is an innocent man until proven otherwise."

Thailand's royal family was the subject of the latest WikiLeaks revelations Thursday, as a memo from the US embassy in Bangkok showed top palace officials expressed concern about the prospect of the crown prince becoming king.

Three influential Thai figures, including two senior advisers to revered King Bhumibol Adulyadej, "had quite negative comments about Crown Prince (Maha) Vajiralongkorn," said the memo dated January 2010.

Another leaked cable also revealed that an oil platform in Azerbaijan operated by BP suffered a well blowout and a huge gas leak around 18 months before the Gulf of Mexico spill.

US President Barack Obama has led worldwide condemnation of WikiLeaks, dubbing their actions as "deplorable", and Washington is pursuing an investigation into how the website obtained the information.

But WikiLeaks and its founder have also won global support -- hackers have attacked credit card and payment firms who restricted funds to the website, and more than 660,000 people have signed an online petition of support.

by Naomi Wolf

How do I know that Interpol, Britain and Sweden's treatment of Julian Assange is a form of theater? Because I know what happens in rape accusations against men that don't involve the embarrassing of powerful governments.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is in solitary confinement in Wandsworth prison in advance of questioning on state charges of sexual molestation. Lots of people have opinions about the charges. But I increasingly believe that only those of us who have spent years working with rape and sexual assault survivors worldwide, and know the standard legal response to sex crime accusations, fully understand what a travesty this situation is against those who have to live through how sex crime charges are ordinarily handled -- and what a deep, even nauseating insult this situation is to survivors of rape and sexual assault worldwide.

Here is what I mean: men are pretty much never treated the way Assange is being treated in the face of sex crime charges.

I started working as a counselor in a UK center for victims of sexual assault in my mid-twenties. I also worked as a counselor in a battered women's shelter in the US, where sexual violence was often part of the pattern of abuse. I have since spent two decades traveling the world reporting on and interviewing survivors of sexual assault, and their advocates, in countries as diverse as Sierra Leone and Morocco, Norway and Holland, Israel and Jordan and the Occupied Territories, Bosnia and Croatia, Britain, Ireland and the united States.

I tell you this as a recorder of firsthand accounts. Tens of thousand of teenage girls were kidnapped at gunpoint and held as sex slaves in Sierra Leone during that country's civil war. They were tied to trees and to stakes in the ground and raped by dozens of soldiers at a time. Many of them were as young as twelve or thirteen. Their rapists are free.

I met a fifteen-year-old girl who risked her life to escape from her captor in the middle of the night, taking the baby that resulted from her rape by hundreds of men. She walked from Liberia to a refugee camp in Sierra Leone, barefoot and bleeding, living on roots in the bush. Her rapist, whose name she knows, is free.

Generals at every level instigated this country-wide sexual assault of a generation of girls. Their names are known. They are free. In Sierra Leone and Congo, rapists often used blunt or sharp objects to penetrate the vagina. Vaginal tears and injuries, called vaginal fistulas, are rampant, as any health worker in that region can attest, but medical care is often unavailable. So women who have been raped in this way often suffer from foul-smelling constant discharges from infections that could be treated with a low-cost antibiotic -- were one available. Because of their injuries, they are shunned by their communities and rejected by their husbands. Their rapists are free.

Women -- and girls -- are drugged, kidnapped and trafficked by the tens of thousands for the sex industry in Thailand and across Eastern Europe. They are held as virtual prisoners by pimps. If you interview the women who spend their lives trying to rescue and rehabilitate them, they attest to the fact that these women's kidnappers and rapists are well known to local and even national authorities -- but these men never face charges. These rapists are free.

In the Bosnian conflict, rape was a weapon of war. Women were imprisoned in barracks utilized for this purpose, and raped, again at gunpoint, for weeks at a time. They could not escape. Minimalist hearings after the conflict resulted in slap-on-the-wrist sentences for a handful of perpetrators. The vast majority of rapists, whose names are known, did not face charges. The military who condoned these assaults, whose names are known, are free.

Women who testify to having been raped in Saudi Arabia, Syria and Morocco face imprisonment and beatings, and being abandoned by their families. Their rapists almost never face charges and are free. Women who testify to rape in India and Pakistan have been subjected to honor killings and acid attacks. Their rapists almost never face charges, are almost never convicted. They are free. A well-known case of a high-born playboy in India who was accused of violently raping a waitress -- who was willing to testify against him -- resulted in a cover-up at the highest levels of the police inquiry. He is free.

What about more typical cases closer to home? In the Western countries such as Britain and Sweden, who are uniting to hold Assange without bail, if you actually interviewed women working in rape crisis centers, you will hear this: it is desperately hard to get a conviction for a sex crime, or even a serious hearing. Workers in rape crisis centers in the UK and Sweden will tell you that they have deep backlogs of women raped for years by fathers or stepfathers -- who can't get justice. Women raped by groups of young men who have been drinking, and thrown out of the backs of cars, or abandoned after a gang-rape in an alley -- who can't get justice. Women raped by acquaintances who can't get a serious hearing.

In the US I have heard from dozens of young women who have been drugged and raped in college campuses across the nation. There is almost inevitably a cover-up by the university -- guaranteed if their assailants are prominent athletes on campus, or affluent -- and their rapists are free. If it gets to police inquiry, it seldom gets very far. Date rape? Forget it. If a woman has been drinking, or has previously had consensual sex with her attacker, or if there is any ambiguity about the issue of consent, she almost never gets a serious hearing or real investigation.

If the rare middle-class woman who charges rape against a stranger -- for those inevitably are the few and rare cases that the state bothers to hear -- actually gets treated seriously by the legal system, she will nonetheless find inevitable hurdles to any kind of real hearing let alone real conviction: either a 'lack of witnesses' or problems with evidence, or else a discourse that even a clear assault is racked with ambiguity. If, even more rare, a man is actually convicted -- it will almost inevitably be a minimal sentence, insulting in its triviality, because no one wants to 'ruin the life' of a man, often a young man, who has 'made a mistake'. (The few exceptions tend to regard a predictable disparity of races -- black men do get convicted for assault on higher-status white women whom they do not know.)

In other words: Never in twenty-three years of reporting on and supporting victims of sexual assault around the world have I ever heard of a case of a man sought by two nations, and held in solitary confinement without bail in advance of being questioned -- for any alleged rape, even the most brutal or easily proven. In terms of a case involving the kinds of ambiguities and complexities of the alleged victims' complaints -- sex that began consensually that allegedly became non-consensual when dispute arose around a condom -- please find me, anywhere in the world, another man in prison today without bail on charges of anything comparable.

Of course 'No means No', even after consent has been given, whether you are male or female; and of course condoms should always be used if agreed upon. As my fifteen-year-old would say: Duh.

But for all the tens of thousands of women who have been kidnapped and raped, raped at gunpoint, gang-raped, raped with sharp objects, beaten and raped, raped as children, raped by acquaintances -- who are still awaiting the least whisper of justice -- the highly unusual reaction of Sweden and Britain to this situation is a slap in the face. It seems to send the message to women in the UK and Sweden that if you ever want anyone to take sex crime against you seriously, you had better be sure the man you accuse of wrongdoing has also happened to embarrass the most powerful government on earth.

Keep Assange in prison without bail until he is questioned, by all means, if we are suddenly in a real feminist worldwide epiphany about the seriousness of the issue of sex crime: but Interpol, Britain and Sweden must, if they are not to be guilty of hateful manipulation of a serious women's issue for cynical political purposes, imprison as well -- at once -- the hundreds of thousands of men in Britain, Sweden and around the world world who are accused in far less ambiguous terms of far graver forms of assault.

Anyone who works in supporting women who have been raped knows from this grossly disproportionate response that Britain and Sweden, surely under pressure from the US, are cynically using the serious issue of rape as a fig leaf to cover the shameful issue of mafioso-like global collusion in silencing dissent. That is not the State embracing feminism. That is the State pimping feminism.

Copyright © 2010 TheHuffingtonPost.com, Inc.

Reporters Without Borders today announced that it will host a mirror website for the leaked US diplomatic cables being published by WikiLeaks.

Earlier this month, Reporters without Borders (RSF) said it condemned any measures taken to censor websites or news media which had published the material.

According to a report on the RSF website, the mirror site will be launched tomorrow at wikileaks.rsf.org, but it already appears to be available.

The organisation said it is hosting the site as a "gesture of support" for the WikiLeaks.

"This is a gesture of support for WikiLeaks' right to publish information without being obstructed," it said in a report.

"We defend the free flow of information on the internet and the protection of sources, without which investigative journalism cannot exist."

But it added the partnership will be "constantly reassessed" based on the future activities of WikiLeaks.

"We are doing this solely as part of the partnership that WikiLeaks has established with news media," it added.

According to WikiLeaks more than 2,000 mirror sites have been set up across the world at the time of writing, amid claims the main site is under "heavy attack".

http://www.journalism.co.uk

One aspect of the current crisis in classification policy is the growing discrepancy between what is secret and what is classified.  All too often, official classification controls are imposed (or retained) on information that is public, thereby generating confusion and loss of confidence in the integrity of the classification system.  The problem was underscored recently by the government's response to the publication of classified State Department cables by Wikileaks, which was to insist that they remain classified despite their broad availability.  "So, my grandmother would be allowed to access the cables, but not me," one official complained to us last month.

The increasing divergence between secrecy and classification is exacerbated by new media for disclosure and publication, and it is not at all limited to U.S. government secrecy policy.  A current controversy in Russia over the alleged publication of classified information provides a vivid illustration of the problem.

The Russian news magazine Kommersant-Vlast has twice been rebuked recently by the Russian Federal Service for Communications (Roskomnadzor) for publishing state secrets, placing the future of that publication in legal jeopardy.  But the purported secrets were all derived from open sources, the magazine explained (pdf), including sources such as Russian government websites.

One of the offending news stories, entitled "All About Missile Forces" and published in December 2009, described the deployment, composition and combat strength of Russian strategic missile forces.  The government said this story included Secret and Top Secret information, and therefore violated the Russian Federation Law on Mass Media.

But in its defense, Vlast-Kommersant argued that this Secret information was not, in fact, secret:  "One of the sources of 'state secrets' for Vlast was the official website of the RF President and Commander in Chief."

In a discussion of "Where to Find 'State Secrets'," Vlast writer Mikhail Lukin provided a detailed account of how his publication assembled the story on Russian missile forces by using public databases, search engines, previous news stories and scholarly works, and the public statements of government officials.  "It turns out that the President of Russia, the Minister of Defense, the RVSN Commander-in-Chief, the commanders of missile armies [and others] number among the divulgers of [ostensibly secret] information about [missile] deployment...."

Vlast presented all of this information to the Moscow City Court in a legal challenge to the warnings that it had received from the Russian government.  But in October 2010, the Court ruled against the news magazine, and in favor of the government.

In paradoxical terms that would be familiar to U.S. classification officials, the Moscow Court held that "the fact of the information being published in open sources does not in any way impact on its level of secrecy." 

An appeal to the Russian Supreme Court is pending. See "The Obvious Becomes Secret" by Mikhail Lukin, Kommersant-Vlast, October 26, 2010, translated by the National Virtual Translation Center and obtained by Secrecy News. The Russian original is here.

_______________________________________________
Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the Federation of American Scientists.

The Secrecy News Blog is at:
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by John F. Burns and Ravi Somaiya

LONDON — The United States Department of Justice has issued a subpoena for the Twitter account activity of several people linked to the WikiLeaks organization, including its founder, Julian Assange, according to the group and official documents.

The subpoena, issued last month, offers the most detail yet about how the United States government is conducting its investigation, and likely prosecution, of WikiLeaks officials and their anti-secrecy campaign to release classified and often highly sensitive documents on the Internet. A task force composed of dozens of Pentagon and justice department officials, among others, has been active for months in investigating the damage done to American diplomatic and military operations.

The quest to get the information from five prominent figures tied to the group was revealed Saturday when Birgitta Jonsdottir, a former WikiLeaks activist who is also a member of Iceland’s parliament, received a notification of the subpoena from Twitter, a social Web site that allows users to post short messages. The United States government, she said in a subsequent message, “wants to know about all my tweets and more since November 1st 2009.” The subpoena, obtained by the Web site Salon.com, was issued by the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia on Dec. 14 and asks for the complete account information of Pfc. Bradley Manning, the United States Army intelligence specialist awaiting a military court martial under suspicion of leaking materials to WikiLeaks, as well as Ms. Jonsdottir, Mr. Assange and two computer programmers, Rop Gongrijp and Jacob Appelbaum.

Mr. Appelbaum wrote on his Twitter account on Saturday that the lawyers for the short-messaging service had been responsible for getting the grand jury subpoena unsealed and warned followers against sending him private messages. “Do not send me Direct Messages,” he wrote. “My twitter account contents have apparently been invited to the (presumably-Grand Jury) in Alexandria.”

While many messages on Twitter are posted publicly, the service also allows users to send private or “direct” messages to other users.

The subpoena was unsealed on Jan. 5, which allowed Twitter to inform those concerned.

The facsimile of the subpoena showed that it had been authorized by the U.S. attorney’s office in Alexandria, Va., outside Washington, an office that has often been used by the federal government in highly sensitive criminal inquiries. Some published reports in recent weeks have suggested that the justice department may have secretly empanelled a grand jury in Virginia to take evidence in the WikiLeaks probe. But a tickbox on the subpoena saying “grand jury information” was left blank.

Ms. Jonsdottir did not immediately return messages seeking comment but has said in messages on Twitter that she will fight the subpoena.

Of the five individuals named in the subpoena, only two — Mr. Manning and Jacob Appelbaum — are American citizens. The others include an Australian, Mr. Assange, Ms. Jonsdottir, from Iceland, Mr. Gongrijp, a Dutch national. This immediately raised the possibility of a diplomatic row between the United States and allied nations whose citizens were among those covered by the subpoena. They could argue that American laws were being used to stifle free communications between individuals who were not American citizens, and who were not in the United States at the time of the messages that were the target of the subpoena.

An early indication of the potential for protest came from Ms. Jonsdottir, the Icelandic parliamentarian, who used her Twitter account to ask, “Do they realize I am a member of parliament in Iceland?” In a later Twitter messages, she said she had spoken to Iceland’s minister of justice, who, she said, was “now looking into the case.” She said she had also spoken to Iceland’s interior minister, Ogmundur Jonasson, who, she said, had described the subpoena as “very odd and grave.”

Twitter said it would not comment on the specific case, but noted that its policy is “to notify users about law enforcement and governmental requests for their information, unless we are prevented by law from doing so.”

In messages on its own Twitter feed, WikiLeaks confirmed the subpoena, and suggested that Google and Facebook might also have been issued with such legal demands. A communications official for Facebook said on Saturday that the company had no comment.

The unsealed subpoena offers the first window into how the United States has been maneuvering to build its case against Mr. Assange. The government, in seeking all information related to the accounts since Nov. 1, 2009, is likely hoping to discover private discussions about the leaks or details of timing to help prove that either Mr. Assange or one of his surrogates pushed Mr. Manning to leak the government documents.

The Justice Department has so far avoided discussing details its investigation into WikiLeaks and declined to outline any grand jury activity, though Attorney General Eric Holder said he authorized investigators to take “significant” steps.

But those familiar with the department’s actions said there is intense pressure to find some way of criminally prosecuting Mr. Assange as a co-conspirator in order to deter future large-scale leaks via the Internet. The subpoena, unsealed on Saturday, describes an “ongoing criminal investigation.”

By seeking to prove Mr. Assange was a conspirator in the leak, the government seeks to differentiate the actions of WikiLeaks from those of traditional news organizations or investigative journalists who also disclose government information.

The United States has also taken steps to protect against future leaks, including suggesting employees of various agencies that handle sensitive material take measures to evaluate the “trustworthiness” of co-workers, according to a memo circulated last week by the Office of Management and Budget.

The memo, distributed to the heads of all executive branch departments and agencies, urged managers to implement programs that can evaluate “insider threats” and “detect behavioral changes in cleared employees.”

“Do you use a psychiatrist or sociologist to measure despondence and grumpiness as a means to gauge waning trustworthiness?” the memo asks agencies to consider.

In a message on Saturday, WikiLeaks compared the subpoena to the Iranian government seeking information on activists in that country. Using the acronym for direct messages, the only messages on Twitter that are not publicly accessible for some users, it said, “If the Iranian govt asked for DMS of Iranian activists, State Dept. would be all over this violation of ‘Internet freedom.’ ”

Call comes after revelation that US has tried to force Twitter to release WikiLeaks members' private details

by Peter Beaumont

by Nancy A. Youssef

WASHINGTON — Not so long ago, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange could count on American journalists to support his campaign to publish secret documents that banks and governments didn't want the world to see.

But just three years after a major court confrontation that saw many of America's most important journalism organizations file briefs on WikiLeaks' behalf, much of the U.S. journalistic community has shunned Assange — even as reporters write scores, if not hundreds, of stories based on WikiLeaks' trove of leaked State Department cables.

Some call him a traitor, responsible for what's arguably one of the biggest U.S. national security breaches ever. Others say a man who calls for government transparency has been too opaque about how he obtained the documents.

The freedom of the press committee of the Overseas Press Club of America in New York City declared him "not one of us." The Associated Press, which once filed legal briefs on Assange's behalf, refuses to comment about him. And the National Press Club in Washington, the venue less than a year ago for an Assange news conference, has decided not to speak out about the possibility that he'll be charged with a crime.

With a few notable exceptions, it's been left to foreign journalism organizations to offer the loudest calls for the U.S. to recognize WikiLeaks' and Assange's right to publish under the U.S. Constitution's First Amendment.

Assange supporters see U.S. journalists' ambivalence as inviting other government efforts that could lead one day to the prosecution of journalists for doing something that happens fairly routinely now — writing news stories based on leaked government documents.

"Bob Woodward has probably become one of the richest journalists in history by publishing classified documents in book after book. And yet no one would suggest that Bob Woodward be prosecuted because Woodward is accepted in the halls of Washington," said Glenn Greenwald, a lawyer and media critic who writes for the online journal Salon.com. "There is no way of prosecuting Julian Assange without harming investigative journalism."

Woodward, who rose to fame by exposing the Watergate conspiracy that forced President Richard Nixon from office, told a Yale University law school audience in November that WikiLeaks' "willy-nilly" release of documents was "madness" and would be "fuel for those who oppose disclosure." But that appearance came before U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder launched a criminal probe against Assange. Woodward didn't respond to e-mails seeking comment.

Woodward's newspaper, The Washington Post, however, is one of the few that's editorialized against prosecuting Assange. "The government has no business indicting someone who is not a spy and who is not legally bound to keep its secrets," the Post said.

Assange increasingly has presented himself as a journalist in the weeks since Holder's threat to bring charges. He's the website's editor, and WikiLeaks publishes editorials.

Few could argue that WikiLeaks didn't perform journalistic functions in April when it released video taken from an Army helicopter of a 2007 incident where Army pilots fired on civilians in Baghdad, killing 17 Iraqis, including two employees of the Reuters news agency, and wounding two children. In addition to editing and captioning the video, WikiLeaks interviewed the Iraqi families about the incident. The release of the video, which Reuters had sought for years but had been denied, was widely covered by U.S. news organizations.

U.S. journalists have been far less zealous about WikiLeaks, however, in the ensuing months, as the Obama administration has mounted increasingly vocal attacks on the organization over three batches of leaked U.S. documents — military logs of events from the war in Afghanistan, including the names of Afghans who'd cooperated with the U.S.; initial incident reports from throughout the Iraq War; and most recently, thousands of diplomatic cables.

The problem with speaking up for WikiLeaks now, said Lucy Dalglish, the executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, one of the country's most prominent defenders of press freedom and one of the groups that backed WikiLeaks in its 2008 court case, is that she doesn't consider Assange to be a journalist.

Assange, she said, "has done some things that journalists do, but I would argue that what the New York Times does is more journalism. They vet the information. . . . They consider outside sources. They take responsibility. They publicly identify themselves. . . .They do some value added. They do something original to it," Dalglish said.

She added that part of her hesitation to back Assange is that the public knows so little about him and how he acquires information.

WikiLeaks "takes secrets. But they are secretive. We don't know who they are. I think one thing journalists pride themselves on is transparency. I think people are a little apprehensive because he was releasing information last summer he had an agenda to bring down the U.S. government," she said. "I think that makes people reluctant to jump into making a statement."

Greenwald rejects that argument. He noted that U.S. journalists often don't reveal their sources or how they gather information for stories.

Greenwald said he thinks journalists aren't rallying to defend WikiLeaks because it has no building, no ties to the U.S. and doesn't feel obliged to consult with the U.S. government before publishing. The issue, he said, is that American journalists too often befriend the government and seek its approval for their work.

Besides, he said, the Constitution protects everyone's right to publish.

"What matters is the activity itself and not who the person is. Bob Woodward is no more entitled to publish classified information than some random person out of the phone book," Greenwald said.

Greenwald's position is echoed by Joel Simon, the executive director of the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, another prominent U.S. advocacy group that's made one of the rare public arguments against prosecuting Assange.

Simon said he and his colleagues had an extensive debate about whether to speak up. In the end, they determined that debating whether Assange is a journalist is irrelevant.

"If he is prosecuted, it will be because he is a journalist," Simon said.

The group sent a letter to Holder on Dec. 17 urging him not prosecute Assange, warning that it could have a chilling effect around the world.

"There is a commonality of purpose," Simon said in an interview. "The function of WikiLeaks is to take information, particularly classified information, and distribute it to the public. From a legal perspective, it is essentially a journalistic function. We have to respond when there is a threat to journalism."

The current situation even has split former allies in the battle over press freedom. Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times in 1971, has come out strongly in support of WikiLeaks. But Floyd Abrams, who was the Times' attorney in its fight against the Nixon administration's efforts to block publication, has taken the opposite position.

In an opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal, Abrams noted that Ellsberg himself kept secret four volumes of the classified Pentagon history that became the Pentagon papers because he feared they'd harm diplomatic efforts to end the Vietnam War. Abrams said WikiLeaks' publication of so much secret material could lead to tougher restrictions for U.S. journalists.

"His activities have already doomed proposed federal shield-law legislation protecting journalists' use of confidential sources in the just-adjourned Congress," Abrams wrote. "An indictment of him could be followed by the judicial articulation of far more speech-limiting legal principles than currently exist with respect to even the most responsible reporting about both diplomacy and defense."

And if Assange isn't indicted or is acquitted of any charges, Abrams warned, Congress might pass "new and dangerously restrictive legislation."

There was no such debate in February 2008, when 12 journalism organizations, including the Associated Press and Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press, filed a brief on behalf of WikiLeaks and its domain register, Dynadot, in a case brought by a Swiss bank, Bank Julius Baer.

The bank filed the suit after WikiLeaks published hundreds of private documents on a land deal that suggested money laundering and tax evasion. It asked a U.S. district judge in California to enjoin WikiLeaks from publishing the documents and order Dynadot to stop hosting its website.

The judge agreed, but quickly reversed his order after the U.S. journalism organizations weighed in, calling the decision an affront to the First Amendment and WikiLeaks' right to publish.

The Justice Department now appears serious about building a case against Assange, though it remains unclear which law he violated — officials acknowledge that the Espionage Act of 1917 has never been used to prosecute anyone for publication of secret documents.

Last month, a U.S. magistrate in Alexandria, Va., issued a secret subpoena ordering the Twitter online messaging service to turn over all information it has about five of its users, including Assange and Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, 23, the one-time Baghdad-based intelligence analyst accused of unauthorized downloading of the hundreds of thousands of classified U.S. government documents WikiLeaks is now publishing.

The subpoena was unsealed Wednesday after Twitter said it intended to notify each of the account holders that their records had been sought and became public on Friday, when one of those account holders told The Guardian newspaper in London. In addition to Assange's and Manning's, the targeted accounts include those of an Icelandic member of parliament and two computer programmers. WikiLeaks, however, argued in a "tweet" posted Saturday that the records of all 670,000 of its Twitter "followers" are subject to the subpoena because it demands information about outgoing messages from the WikiLeaks account.

Dalglish said her organization might reconsider its silence if the U.S. files a criminal case against Assange. That will depend, she said, on a determination of the case's potential threat to journalism.

Alan Bjerga, the president of the National Press Club, said his organization also might take a stand depending on what the Justice Department does.

"The National Press Club is always concerned about any government action that would harm the ability of journalists to do their work, and any action against Julian Assange that would impede journalists is one we would oppose," he said in an e-mail Saturday. "It is difficult at this time to comment on the specifics of a case the government has yet to make."

Until then, it's fallen largely to foreign-based journalism organizations to defend WikiLeaks.

In August, Paris-based Reporters without Borders wrote a letter condemning Assange for publishing the names of Afghan informants, saying it could endanger lives.

But it decided last month to provide a mirror site to WikiLeaks' website after the WikiLeaks site came under attack.

The change came after lengthy discussion — and because WikiLeaks has since been more cautious about redacting the documents it posts.

"We think WikiLeaks is doing a public service," said Clothilde Le Coz, who directs the group's Washington office.

The idea of America, heralded as a beacon of press freedom internationally, prosecuting someone for publishing secret documents would have a chilling effect throughout the world, the Australian Newspaper Editors group wrote in a letter to Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, whose government also is considering charges against Assange, who's an Australian citizen.

"Any such action would impact not only on WikiLeaks, but every media organization in the world that aims to inform the public about decisions made on their behalf," the organization said in its Dec. 15 letter. "It is the media's duty to responsibly report such material if it comes into their possession. To aggressively attempt to shut WikiLeaks down, to threaten to prosecute those who publish official leaks, and to pressure companies to cease doing commercial business with WikiLeaks, is a serious threat to democracy, which relies on a free and fearless press."

by Esther Addley

Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, could be at "real risk" of the death penalty or detention in Guantánamo Bay if he is extradited to Sweden on accusations of rape and sexual assault, his lawyers claim.

In a skeleton summary of their defence against attempts by the Swedish director of public prosecutions to extradite him, released today, Assange's legal team argue that there is a similar likelihood that the US would subsequently seek his extradition "and/or illegal rendition", "where there will be a real risk of him being detained at Guantánamo Bay or elsewhere".

"Indeed, if Mr Assange were rendered to the USA, without assurances that the death penalty would not be carried out, there is a real risk that he could be made subject to the death penalty. It is well known that prominent figures have implied, if not stated outright, that Mr Assange should be executed."

The 35-page skeleton argument was released by Mark Stephens, Assange's lawyer, following a brief review hearing this morning at Belmarsh magistrates court.

The WikiLeaks founder, who is on conditional bail while his extradition case is being considered, appeared for no more than 15 minutes in the dock, while supporters including Jemima Khan and Bianca Jagger looked on and waved support from the public gallery.

He later emerged to give a brief statement to a large number of reporters, saying: "Our work with WikiLeaks continues unabated. We are stepping up our publications for matters relating to Cablegate and other materials.

"These will shortly be available through our newspaper partners around the world – big and small newspapers and human rights organisations."

The skeleton argument outlines seven points on which Assange's lawyers will contest his extradition, which was sought by the Swedish DPP, Marianne Ny, following accusations from two women that he had sexually assaulted them in separate incidents in August.

One accusation, that Assange had sex with one of the women while she was asleep, would amount to rape under Swedish law if proven. Both women had previously had consenting sex with Assange.

The other points of argument include:

• That the European arrest warrant (EAW) is not valid, because Ny is not the authorised issuing authority, and it has been sought for an improper purpose – ie "simply in order to question him and without having yet reached a decision on whether or not to prosecute him". This, they argue, would be in contravention of a well-established principle "that mere suspicion should not found a request for extradition".

• That there has been "abuse of process" as Assange has not had full disclosure of all documents relating to the case, in particular text messages sent by one of the women, in which she allegedly said she was "half asleep" (ie not fully asleep) at the time they had sex, and messages between the two women in which they allegedly spoke of "revenge".

• That the "conduct" of the Swedish prosecutor amounts to abuse of process. Assange's lawyers cite the fact that the rape allegations were initially dismissed and then reopened by a second prosecutor, that the prosecutor has refused Assange's offers of interview, and that it has not made documents available to Assange in English. They also cite the leak of part of the prosecution case to the Guardian as "a breach of Mr Assange's fair trial and privacy rights".

• That the alleged offences would not be considered crimes in the UK, and therefore, they argue, an EAW between the two countries would not be valid.

• That the extradition attempt is politically motivated, and that his trial would be prejudiced because of his political opinions or because, they argue, of his gender.

Assange's team will make their case on 7 and 8 February, when Assange will return to court for the full extradition hearing. The case for his extradition is being argued by the Crown Prosecution Service on behalf of the Swedish prosecutor; the full prosecution case is not expected to be released before that date.

District Judge Nicholas Evans agreed at this morning's hearing to ease the terms of his bail conditions, which require Assange to wear an electronic tag and report daily to a police station close to the stately home on the Suffolk/Norfolk border where he is staying. For the nights of 6 and 7 February Assange will be permitted to stay in London.

By Andrew Kreig /Project Director's Blog

Best-selling spy thriller author Thomas Bodström ─ an attorney who represents the two Swedish women making the notorious sex charges against WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange ─ knows better than most people that truth is stranger than fiction.

As Sweden’s Minister of Justice, Bodström helped his nation in 2001 secretly turn over to the Central Intelligence Agency two asylum-seekers suspected by the CIA of terror, according to materials recently obtained by the Justice Integrity Project that I lead and the Legal Schnauzer blog of Roger Shuler.  Shuler broke this story this morning in a blog headlined, ”Lawyer for Assange Accusers Has Apparent Ties to CIA and Torture.”

The CIA flew the terror suspects to Egypt for torture as part of the decade’s rendition effort requiring secret, high-level Swedish cooperation. Assange, the subject of a recent global manhunt by the Swedes seeking him for sex questioning and by the United States for spy charges, can take only cold comfort that Sweden eventually welcomed back the 2001 asylum seekers and awarded them damages for their torture. On Jan. 11, Assange’s attorneys spoke of their fears that if Great Britain sends their client to Sweden to Sweden for an inquiry on sex charges he could end up being sent by Sweden to the United States on spy charges. There, the defense lawyers said, Assange could face death or imprisonment at Guantanamo in Cuba, where the Bush and Obama administrations hold so-called terrorists almost indefinitely with minimal due process protections.

As a parallel development, the Obama administration has used the disclosures as rationale for a wide-ranging crackdown not simply against WikiLeaks but against anyone in government or the media, particularly the web-based, who might disclose secrets that the government regards as threatening national security. Our project summarized these developments this week in a column, “Whistleblower Says: Obama's DoJ Declares War on Whistleblowers.”

WikiLeaks Questions
Bodström is sometimes described as “The John Grisham of Sweden.”  He left his Social Democratic Party and his Parliament seat last fall to move to the United States for six months, citing a need for family time and to write another book, a curious posture for a lawyer at the center of one of the world’s most controversial cases.

Is Bodström again cooperating with U.S. authorities in their all-out effort to save the United States, Sweden – and perhaps Bodström himself – from further embarrassment caused by cables WikiLeaks might release from its still secret trove? Or are Swedish authorities proceeding normally, as they claim, in launching a global Interpol manhunt to capture Assange to question him about precisely how and why he engaged in sex-without-a-condom last summer with two women who invited him separately to stay with him in their beds while he was on a speaking tour? 

http://justice-integrity.org/

by Stephen Zunes

In my more than 15 years teaching at the University of San Francisco, I have found ROTC cadets to be among my favorite students, most of them being unusually bright, motivated, disciplined and a pleasure to work with. Indeed, I have felt honored to teach them.

It was with great consternation, therefore, to learn that, according to a memo sent to ROTC programs at the University of San Francisco and other colleges and universities last month, they have effectively been prohibited from completing any assignments that professors may make involving any material released through WikiLeaks.

According to a Dec. 8 memo from Col. Charles M. Evans, commanding officer of the 8th Brigade, U.S. Army Cadet Command, "using the classified information found on WikiLeaks for research papers, presentations, etc. is prohibited." A follow-up memo from the cadet commander at the University of San Francisco advised against even talking about it, precluding ROTC students from taking part in classroom discussions regarding WikiLeaks material.

The rationale appears to be that downloading, reading, referencing or discussing WikiLeaks material could jeopardize receiving a security clearance. This has little rational basis, however, since much of the material was apparently made available by a U.S. Army private who had access to it and -- for better or worse -- this material is now widely available publicly.

It strains credulity as to what harm would be caused by cadets viewing material easily accessible to everyone else, including America's enemies.

Whatever the reason, this puts both professors and students in a dilemma.

Those of us teaching courses in such fields as constitutional law, U.S. foreign policy, Middle Eastern politics and media studies are considering using WikiLeaks material in the coming semester. This means that if any of us were to give such an assignment, ROTC students would be forced to choose between not completing it or putting their careers in jeopardy.

I could make special accommodations for ROTC cadets. I could offer an alternative reading assignment. I could not reduce participation grades if the students did not take part in a discussion. I could excuse them from viewing a documentary that might include film clips, images or other proscribed contents. I could write up special quizzes or exams.

However, in doing so, I would effectively be allowing the military to control part of my curriculum. This raises sensitive issues regarding academic freedom. If the military can effectively tell its cadets to refuse to complete assignments by civilian professors, it sets a very dangerous precedent.

Indeed, if they can prohibit ROTC cadets from reading material from WikiLeaks, what would stop them from prohibiting students from, for example, reading material critical of U.S. military actions in Iraq or Vietnam?

The University of San Francisco administration appears to be taking this threat against academic freedom seriously and has asked for clarifications from ROTC commanders and others in the federal government. Thus far, however, nothing has been forthcoming.

There are plenty of thoughtful and diverse opinions at the University of San Francisco and elsewhere regarding the legality, ethics and wisdom of releasing classified material via WikiLeaks. Since the material is now in the public domain, however, the U.S. military has no right to dictate how it might be used in the classroom. Indeed, this kind of interference has no place in a democracy.

Stephen Zunes is Middle East editor for Foreign Policy In Focus. He is a professor of Politics at the University of San Francisco and the author of Tinderbox: U.S. Middle East Policy and the Roots of Terrorism (Common Courage Press, 2003.)

by Steven Aftergood

Americans who have accessed the WikiLeaks web site may have violated the Espionage Act, under an extreme interpretation of the law advanced by Air Force officials last week.

Many government agencies have instructed their employees not to download classified materials from the WikiLeaks web site onto unclassified computer systems.  The government's position is that although the material is in the public domain, its classification status is unaffected.  Therefore, to preserve the integrity of unclassified systems, the leaked classified information should not be accessed on such systems.  If it is accessed, it should be deleted.

But on February 3, Air Force Materiel Command (AFMC) at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base issued startling new guidance stating that the leaked documents are protected by the Espionage Act and that accessing them under any circumstances is against the law, not simply a violation of government computer security policy. 

"According to AFMC's legal office, Air Force members -- military or civilian -- may not legally access WikiLeaks at home on their personal, non-governmental computers, either. To do so would not only violate the SECAF [Secretary of the Air Force] guidance on this issue,... it would also subject the violator to prosecution for violation of espionage under the Espionage Act," the AFMC legal office said.

Then, in an astounding interpretive leap, the AFMC went on to say that similar prohibitions apply to the relatives of Air Force employees.

"If a family member of an Air Force employee accesses WikiLeaks on a home computer, the family member may be subject to prosecution for espionage under U.S. Code Title 18 Section 793."

This is a breathtaking claim that goes far beyond any previous reading of the espionage statutes.

"That has to be one of the worst policy/legal interpretations I have seen in my entire career," said William J. Bosanko, director of the Information Security Oversight Office, by email.

If taken seriously for a moment, the AFMC guidance raises a host of follow-on questions.  What if a family member accessed WikiLeaks on a computer outside the home?  What if a non-family member accessed WikiLeaks on the home computer?  What if one learns that a neighbor has accessed WikiLeaks in the neighbor's home?  Is the Air Force employee obliged to intervene or to report the violation to authorities?  And how could any of this possibly be constitutional?

Since the AFMC guidance is not based in existing case law or past practice, these questions have no immediate answers.

Last December, a Department of Homeland Security official complained to Secrecy News that government policy on WikiLeaks produced the incongruous result that "my grandmother would be allowed to access the cables but not me."  But if the new Air Force guidance can be believed, this is incorrect because the official's grandmother would be subject to prosecution under the Espionage Act.

In reality, there does not seem to be even a remote possibility that anyone's grandmother would be prosecuted in this way.

Instead, ironically enough, the real significance of the new AFMC guidance could lie in its potential use as evidence for the defense in one of the pending leak prosecutions under the Espionage Act.  Defendants might argue that if the Espionage Act can be seriously construed by Air Force legal professionals to render a sizable fraction of the American public culpable of espionage, then the Act truly is impermissibly broad, vague and unconstitutional.

For a standard view of the general subject see "The Protection of Classified Information: The Legal Framework" (pdf), Congressional Research Service, January 10, 2011.

_______________________________________________Secrecy News is written by Steven Aftergood and published by the Federation of American Scientists.The Secrecy News Blog is at:     http://www.fas.org/blog/secrecy/To SUBSCRIBE to Secrecy News, go to:     http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/subscribe.htmlOR email your request to saftergood@fas.orgSecrecy News is archived at:     http://www.fas.org/sgp/news/secrecy/index.html

by Steve Ragan

Dr. Alex Karp, the Co-Founder and CEO of Palantir Technologies, one of three data intelligence firms who worked to develop a systematic plan of attack against WikiLeaks and their supporters, has severed all ties with HBGary Federal and issued an apology to reporter Glenn Greenwald.

The move comes just twenty-four hours after The Tech Herald reported on the plans, thanks to a tip from Crowdleaks.org

After the tip from Crowdleaks.org, The Tech Herald learned that Palantir Technologies, HBGary Federal, and Berico Technologies, worked together with law firm Hunton and Williams to develop a proposal for Bank of America in order to deal with the “WikiLeaks Threat.”

Hunton and Williams were recommended to Bank of America’s general counsel by the Department of Justice, according to the email chain viewed by The Tech Herald. The law firm was using the meeting to pitch Bank of America on retaining them for an internal investigation surrounding WikiLeaks.

“They basically want to sue them to put an injunction on releasing any data,” an email between the three data intelligence firms said. “They want to present to the bank a team capable of doing a comprehensive investigation into the data leak.”

Hunton and Williams would act as outside counsel on retainer, while Palantir would take care of network and insider threat investigations. For their part, Berico Technologies and HBGary Federal would analyze WikiLeaks.

Some of the things mentioned as potential proactive tactics against WikiLeaks include feeding the fuel between the feuding groups, disinformation, creating messages around actions to sabotage or discredit the opposing organization, and submitting fake documents to WikiLeaks and then calling out the error.

“Create concern over the security of the infrastructure. Create exposure stories. If the process is believed to not be secure they are done. Cyber attacks against the infrastructure to get data on document submitters. This would kill the project. Since the servers are now in Sweden and France putting a team together to get access is more straightforward,” the proposal said.

Moreover, reporter Glenn Greenwald, who writes for Salon.com, was singled out in the proposal as a person offering a level of support to WikiLeaks that needed to be disrupted. This disruption would include making Greenwald, and others in similar situations, choose between professional preservation and cause.

Our original coverage on this topic can be viewed here.

On Thursday evening, Dr. Alex Karp sent The Tech Herald a statement on the events and information presented in the story.

“As the Co-Founder and CEO of Palantir Technologies, I have directed the company to sever any and all contacts with HB Gary,” the statement starts.

Dr. Karp explains that Palantir Technologies provides a software analytic platform for the analysis of data. They do not provide – “nor do we have any plans to develop” – offensive cyber capabilities.

In addition, the statement says that Palantir does not build software that is designed to allow private sector entities to obtain non-public information, engage in so-called cyber attacks, or take other offensive measures.

“I have made clear in no uncertain terms that Palantir Technologies will not be involved in such activities. Moreover, we as a company, and I as an individual, always have been deeply involved in supporting progressive values and causes. We plan to continue these efforts in the future,” Dr. Karp added.

“The right to free speech and the right to privacy are critical to a flourishing democracy. From its inception, Palantir Technologies has supported these ideals and demonstrated a commitment to building software that protects privacy and civil liberties. Furthermore, personally and on behalf of the entire company, I want to publicly apologize to progressive organizations in general, and Mr. Greenwald in particular, for any involvement that we may have had in these matters.”

Palantir Technologies’ statement comes at a time when HBGary has refused to talk about the WikiLeaks proposal, or any other topic for that matter, related to the security incident caused by Anonymous after HBGary Federal’s Aaron Barr went to the press claiming he had infiltrated the loosely associative group.

The only statement from the company on the incident appeared on their website before it was fully restored.

“HBGary, Inc and HBGary Federal, a separate but related company, have been the victims of an intentional criminal cyberattack. We are taking this crime seriously and are working with federal, state, and local law enforcement authorities and redirecting internal resources to investigate and respond appropriately,” the statement said at the time.

“To the extent that any client information may have been affected by this event, we will provide the affected clients with complete and accurate information as soon as it becomes available. Meanwhile, please be aware that any information currently in the public domain is not reliable because the perpetrators of this offense, or people working closely with them, have intentionally falsified certain data.”

It is unlikely that Anonymous would forge thousands and thousands of emails or attachments. Yet, the complete severance of ties by Palantir Technologies, and the public apology to Greenwald, leaves little room for doubt that the information seen by The Tech Herald, Crowdleaks.org, and many others is legitimate.

© 2010 The Tech Herald

by Glenn Greenwald

(updated below -  Update II)

As I noted on Friday, the parties implicated in the smear campaigns aimed at WikiLeaks supporters and Chamber of Commerce critics have attempted to heap all the blame on HBGary Federal ("HBGary") and its CEO, Aaron Barr.  Both Bank of America and the Chamber -- the intended clients -- vehemently deny any involvement in these schemes and have harshly denounced them.  The other two Internet security firms whose logos appeared on the proposals -- Palantir Technologies and Berico Technologies -- both issued statements terminating their relationship with HBGary and insisting that they had nothing to do with these plots.  Only Hunton & Williams and its partner, John Woods -- the central cogs soliciting these proposals -- have steadfastly refused to comment.

Palantir, in particular, has been quite aggressive about trying to distance itself.  They initially issued a strong statement denouncing the plots, then had their CEO call me vowing to investigate and terminate any employees who were involved, then issued another statement over the weekend claiming that "Palantir never has and never will condone the sort of activities that HBGary recommended" and "Palantir did not participate in the development of the recommendations that Palantir and others find offensive."  Such vehemence is unsurprising:  the Palo-Alto-based firm relies for its recruitment efforts on maintaining a carefully cultivated image as a progressive company devoted to civil liberties, privacy and Internet freedom -- all of which would be obviously sullied by involvement in such a scheme.

But as Salon's Justin Elliott reports, there are newly emerged facts which directly contradict Palantir's denials.  On Sunday night, Anonymous released an additional 25,000 emails from HBGary, and Forbes' Andy Greenberg was the first to make this discovery:

The emails also show that it was Barr who suggested pressuring Salon.com journalist Glenn Greenwald, though Palantir, another firm working with HBGary Federal, quickly accepted that suggestion and added it to the PowerPoint presentation that the group was assembling.

Greenberg is referring to this series of emails, first from HBGary's Barr -- addressed to Palantir's Matthew Steckman and Eli Bingham along with Berico's Sam Kremin (click image to enlarge):

This was the reply from Palantir's Steckman to that email:

Roughly 15 minutes later, Steckman sent another email to Barr:  "Updated with Strengths/Weaknesses and a spotlight on Glenn Greenwald...thanks Aaron!" -- indicating he had included the slide featuring this scheme.  So much for Palantir's insistence that they "did not participate in the development of the recommendations."  As Elliott noted, "Steckman's role in creating the slideshow -- which, it should be noted, also carries Palantir's logo -- would seem to contradict the company's" denials.

Last night, both Elliott and I sent emails to Palantir's General Counsel asking the company to reconcile this obvious contradiction.  In response, they issued a statement announcing that they "have decided to place Matthew Steckman, 26 year old engineer, on leave pending a thorough review of his actions."  They added that Palantir "was not retained by any party to develop such recommendations and indeed it would be contrary to Palantir’s ethics, culture and policies to do so" (Elliott has posted Palantir's full statement).

So apparently, if Palantir's new version is to be believed, a 26-year-old engineer went off on his own and -- without any supervision or direction -- participated in the development of odious smear campaigns intended for two of the nation's deepest-pocket organizations (Bank of America and the Chamber), potential clients which the emails repeatedly emphasize would be very lucrative.  I'll leave it to others to decide how credible that version is, but I will note that several facts undermine it: 

First, another Palantir employee besides Steckman-- Eli Bingham -- was one of the recipients of Barr's original email proposing this smear campaign.  Second, this proposal was being developed immediately before (and for consideration at) a conference call that included Hunton & Williams' Woods, HBGary's Barr, a Berico official, and both Steckman and Bingham on behalf of Palantir (see the bottom email here); was a 26-year-old mid-level engineer the only Palantir official aware of what they were proposing to H&W in order to attract the Bank and the Chamber's business?  Third, there's no question -- as this article yesterday from The San Francisco Business Times documents -- that at least three Palantir employees (Steckman, Bingham and Ryan Castle) were all sent emails containing the proposals to smear critics of the Chamber of Commerce, including ThinkProgress.  That article notes that these newly released emails "suggest that staff at Palantir Technologies, a high-profile data analysis company co-founded by ex-PayPal CEO Peter Thiel, may have helped prepare a proposal for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to undermine a pro-labor publication called ThinkProgress with dirty tricks."  Whatever else is true, Palantir's knowledge of and involvement in these proposals is more extensive than it originally claimed, and extends beyond the 26-year-old scapegoat just placed on leave.

But the real party here which deserves much more scrutiny is Hunton & Williams -- one of the most well-connected legal and lobbying firms in DC -- and its partner John Woods.  Using teams of people scouring all the available emails, FDL has done its typically thorough job of setting forth all the key facts and the key players -- including from Booz Allen -- and Woods is at the center of all of it:  the key cog acting on behalf of the Bank of America and the Chamber.  It's Woods who is soliciting these firms to submit these proposals, pursuant to work for the Chamber and the Bank; according to Palantir emails, H&W was recommended to the Bank by the Justice Department to coordinate the anti-WikiLeaks work.

Despite being at the center of this increasingly disturbing scandal, Woods and H&W steadfastly refuse to comment to anyone.  As The New York Times noted on Saturday when reporting this story:  "A Hunton & Williams spokesman did not comment."  For a lawyer to be at the center of an odious and quite possibly illegal scheme to target progressive activists and their families, threaten the careers of journalists as a means of silencing them, and fabricate forged documents intended for public consumption -- and then steadfastly refuse to comment -- is just inexcusable.  Perhaps some polite email and telephone encouragement from the public is needed for Woods to account for what he and his firm have done.  In exchange for the privileges lawyers receive (including the exclusive right to furnish legal advice, represent others, and act as officers of the court), members of the Bar have particular ethical obligations to the public.  At the very least, the spirit -- if not the letter -- of those obligations is being seriously breached by a lawyer who appears to be at the center of these kinds of pernicious, lawless plots and then refuses to account to the public for what he did.

Given my involvement in this story, I'm going to defer to others in terms of the reporting.  But -- given the players involved and the facts that continue to emerge -- this story is far too significant to allow to die due to lack of attention.  Many of the named targets are actively considering commencing civil proceedings (which would entail compulsory discovery) as well as ethical grievances with the relevant Bar associations.  As the episode with Palantir demonstrates, simply relying on the voluntary statements of the corporations involved ensures that the actual facts will remain concealed if not actively distorted.  The DOJ ought to investigate this as well, but for reasons I detailed on Friday, that is unlikely in the extreme.  Entities of this type routinely engage in conduct like this with impunity, and the serendipity that led to their exposure in this case should be seized to impose some accountability.  That this was discovered through a random email hack -- and that these firms felt so free to propose these schemes in writing and, at least from what is known, not a single person raised any objection at all -- underscores how common this behavior is.

Yesterday, I did a 20-minute interview with Sam Seder about this case and its significance, which can be heard on the player below (the transcript is here); see also, these important new facts discovered by Marcy Wheeler.  I also recorded a 30-minute discussion yesterday with MSNBC's Dylan Ratigan, which he will post later today (I'll provide the link when he does), and I'll also be on MSNBC at roughly 4:00 pm EST discussing this and related matters.

UPDATE:  The Guardian now joins The New York Times in reporting on this story, and supplies some new, interesting details (and, naturally, Hunton & Williams failed to respond to requests to comment). 

UPDATE II:  Writing in Wired, Nate Anderson of Ars Technica has a truly superb account of what happened here, with a focus on the responsibility and knowledge of the executives at the implicated firms.  The whole article should be read, but here's a sample:

By October 2010, Barr was under considerable stress. His CEO job was under threat, and the e-mails show that the specter of divorce loomed over his personal life.

On Oct. 19, a note arrived. HBGary Federal might be able to provide part of "a complete intelligence solution to a law firm that approached us." That law firm was DC-based powerhouse Hunton & Williams, which boasted 1,000 attorneys and terrific contacts. . . .

The three firms [HBGary, Berico and Palantir] needed a name for their joint operation. One early suggestion: a “Corporate Threat Analysis Cell.” Eventually, a sexier name was chosen: Team Themis.. . .

Team Themis decided to ask for $2 million per month, for six months, for the first phase of the project, putting $500,000 to $700,000 per month in HBGary Federal's pocket.

But the three companies disagreed about how to split the pie. In the end, Palantir agreed to take less money, but that decision had to go "way up the chain (as you can imagine)," wrote the Palantir contact for Team Themis. "The short of it is that we got approval from Dr. Karp and the Board to go ahead with the modified 40/30/30 breakdown proposed. These were not fun conversations, but we are committed to this team and we can optimize the cost structure in the long term (let’s demonstrate success and then take over this market :) )."

The leaders at the very top of Palantir were aware of the Team Themis work, though the details of what was being proposed by Barr may well have escaped their notice. Palantir wasn't kidding around with this contract; if selected by H&W and the Chamber, Palantir planned to staff the project with an experienced intelligence operative, a man who "ran the foreign fighter campaign on the Syrian border in 2005 to stop the flow of suicide bombers into Baghdad and helped to ensure a successful Iraqi election. As a commander, [he] ran the entire intelligence cycle: identified high-level terrorists, planned missions to kill or capture them, led the missions personally, then exploited the intelligence and evidence gathered on target to defeat broader enemy networks" . . . .

But before H&W made a decision on Chamber of Commerce plan, it had another urgent request for Team Themis: a major U.S. bank had come to H&W seeking help against WikiLeaks (the bank has been widely assumed to be Bank of America, which has long been rumored to be a future WikiLeaks target.)

"We want to sell this team as part of what we are talking about," said the team’s H&W contact. "I need a favor. I need five to six slides on Wikileaks -- who they are, how they operate and how this group may help this bank. . . ."

After the Anonymous attacks and the release of Barr’s e-mails, his partners furiously distanced themselves from Barr's work. Palantir CEO Dr. Alex Karp wrote, "We do not provide — nor do we have any plans to develop -- offensive cyber capabilities . . . ." Berico said (PDF) that it "does not condone or support any effort that proactively targets American firms, organizations or individuals. We find such actions reprehensible and are deeply committed to partnering with the best companies in our industry that share our core values. Therefore, we have discontinued all ties with HBGary Federal."

But both of the Team Themis leads at these companies knew exactly what was being proposed (such knowledge may not have run to the top). They saw Barr's e-mails, and they used his work. His ideas on attacking WikiLeaks made it almost verbatim into a Palantir slide about "proactive tactics."

Anderson has written the definitive account thus far about the facts showing the involvement of each of these companies, and I encourage everyone to read his whole article.

the Associated Press