by Julie Lévesque
December 20, 2010
from
GlobalResearch Website
Julie Lévesque is a journalist
at Global Research, Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).
Julie Lévesque is a frequent contributor to
Global Research. |
Global Research Editor's Note
Progressive organizations have praised the WikiLeaks endeavor. Our own
website Global Research has provided extensive coverage of the WikiLeaks
data banks and their implications, particularly with regard to US-NATO war
crimes.
The
WikiLeaks Project is heralded as an immeasurable victory against
corporate media censorship, without examining its organizational structure.
A distinction should be made between the WikiLeaks data banks, which
constitute a valuable source of information in their own right, and the
mechanisms whereby the leaks, used as source material by the
corporate
media, are transformed into news.
WikiLeaks from the outset has collaborated closely with several
mainstream
media.
This article by Julie Lévesque focuses on the nature and organizational
structures of the WikLeaks project.
“In politics, nothing happens by
accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt
After the publication of a series of
confirmations rather than revelations, there are some crucial unanswered
questions regarding the nature and organizational structure of WikiLeaks.
Shrouded in secrecy, the now famous whistleblowing site and its director
Julian Assange are demanding "transparency" from governments and
corporations around the world while failing to provide some basic
information pertaining to WikiLeaks as an organization.
Who is Julian Assange?
In the introduction to the book
Underground - Hacking, Madness and Obsession
on the Electronic Frontier (1997), by Julian Assange and Suelette
Dreyfus, Assange begins with the following quotes:
"Man is least himself when he talks in his
own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth."
Oscar Wilde
"What is essential is invisible to the eye."
Antoine De Saint-Exupery
From the start, Assange states that he undertook
the research for the book; however, he fails to mention that he was actually
one of the hackers analyzed in the book, going by the name of Mendax, a
Latin word for “lying, false...”.
Although we cannot confirm that the above quotes referred to him, they
nonetheless suggest that Assange, at the time, was hiding his true identity.
We know very little about the cryptographer Julian Assange. He is indeed
very cryptic when it comes to revealing who he is and where he worked prior
to the WikiLeaks project.
On the list of board members published
previously by WikiLeaks, we can read that Julian Assange:
-
has “attended 37 schools and 6
universities”, none of which are mentioned by name
-
is “Australia's most famous ethical
computer hacker”. A court case from 1996 cited abundantly in the
mainstream press is
available on the Australasian Legal Information
Institute. Contrary to all the other cases listed on the afore
mentioned link, the full text of Assange’s case is not available
-
“in the first prosecution of its type...
[he] defended a case in the supreme court for his role as the editor
of an activist electronic magazine”. The name of the magazine, the
year of the prosecution, the country where it took place are not
mentioned
-
allegedly founded “'Pickup' civil rights
group for children”. No information about this group seems to be
available, other than in reports related to WikiLeaks. We don’t know
if it still exists, where it is located and what are its activities
-
“studied mathematics, philosophy and
neuroscience”. We don’t know where he studied or what his
credentials are
-
“has been a subject of several books and
documentaries”. If so, why not mention at least one of them?
One could indeed argue that Assange wishes to
remain anonymous in order to protect himself, the whistleblowers and/or the
members of his organization. On the other hand, he cannot realistically
expect people to trust him blindly if they do not know who he really is.
The most interesting thing about Julian Assange is that his former employers
remain unknown.
His bio states that he is a,
“prolific programmer and
consultant for many open-source projects and his software is used by most
large organizations and is inside every Apple computer”.
Was he working
freelance? Who did he work for?
An
old email exchange from 1994 between Julian Assange and NASA award winner
Fred Blonder raises questions regarding Assange’s professional activities
prior to launching WikiLeaks.
This exchange is available on the website of the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology:
Date: Fri, 18 Nov 1994 03:59:19 +0100
From: Julian Assange <proff@suburbia.apana.org.au>
To: Fred Blonder <fred@nasirc.hq.nasa.gov>
Cc: karl@bagpuss.demon.co.uk, Quentin.Fennessy@sematech.org, fred@nasirc.hq.nasa.gov,
mcn@c3serve.c3.lanl.gov, bugtraq@fc.net
In-Reply-To: <199411171611.LAA04177@nasirc.hq.nasa.gov>
On Thu, 17 Nov 1994, Fred Blonder wrote:
[EXCERPT]
> From: Julian Assange <proff@suburbia.apana.org.au>
>
> .
> Of course, to make things really interesting, we could have n
files,
> comprised of n-1 setuid/setgid scripts and 1 setuid/setgid binary,
with
> each script calling the next as its #! argument and the last
calling the
> binary. ;-)
>
> The '#!' exec-hack does not work recursively. I just tried it
under SunOs 4.1.3
> It generated no diagnostics and exited with status 0, but it also
didn't execute
> the target binary....
> Proff
Julian Assange's e-mail to Fred Blonder was sent
to an address ending with “nasirc.hq.nasa.gov”, namely NASA.
The e-mail was also sent (cc) to Michael C.
Neuman, a computer expert at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), New
Mexico, a premier national security research institution, under the
jurisdiction of the US Department of Energy.
At the time, Fred Blonder was working on a cyber security program called
“NASA Automated Systems Incident Response Capability” (NASIRC), for which he
won the
NASA Group Achievement Award in 1995.
A report from June 2, 1995 explains:
NASIRC has significantly elevated
agency-wide awareness of serious evolving threats to NASA's
computer/network systems through on-going threat awareness briefings and
in-depth technical workshop sessions and through intercenter
communications and cooperation relating to the responsive and timely
sharing of incident information and tools and techniques.
(Valerie L. Thomas, “NASIRC Receives NASA
Group Award”, National Space Science Data Center, June 2, 1995)
Is there any relation between Assange’s
prosecution for hacking in 1996 and this exchange?
Was he collaborating with these institutions?
For example, in his e-mail, Assange updates Blonder on his work, referring
to “other platforms I have not as yet tested”, seemingly indicating that he
was collaborating with the NASA employee.
One thing we can confirm is that Julian Assange
was in communication with people working for NASA and the Los Alamos Lab in
the 1990s.
Who's Who at WikiLeaks? The Members of the Advisory Board
Here are some interesting facts about several members listed in 2008 on the
WikiLeaks advisory board, including organizations to which they belong or
have links to.
Philip Adams
Philip Adams, among other things, “held key posts in Australian
governmental media administration” (WikiLeaks' Avisory Board,
WikiLeaks.org, 27 March 2008), chaired the Australia Council and
contributed to The Times, The Financial Times in London and The New York
Times.
Confirmed by several
reports, he is the
representative of the International Committee of Index on Censorship. It
is worth mentioning that WikiLeaks was awarded the 2008 Economist Index
on Censorship Freedom of Expression award. (Philip Adams, Milesago.com)
Adams worked as a presenter for ABC (Australia) Radio's Late Night Live
and as columnist for The Australian since the 1960s. The Australian is
owned by News Corporation, a property of Rupert Murdoch, member of the
Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).
Adams also,
“chairs the Advisory Board of the
Centre
for the Mind at Sydney University and the Australian National
University”.
CFR member Michael Spence also serves on
this board and Rupert Murdoch’s son, Lachlan Murdoch, has served as well
until 2001.
The 2008 Distinguished Fellow of the Center
for the Mind was former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who has faced
a slew of accusations for war crimes. Does Adams have conflicting
allegiances: serving on the advisory board of the WikiLeaks organization
whose mandate is to expose war crimes, yet at the same time sitting on
another board which honors an accused war criminal.
According to
an article in The Australian:
Adams, who has never met Assange, says he quit the board due to
ill-health shortly after WikiLeaks was launched and never attended a
meeting.
“I don't think the advisory board has
done any advisoring,” he quips.
CJ Hinke
CJ Hinke,
“writer, academic, activist, has lived
in Thailand since 1989 where he founded Freedom Against Censorship
Thailand (FACT) in 2006 to campaign against pervasive censorship in
Thai society.”
(WikiLeaks' Avisory Board,
WikiLeaks.org, 27 March 2008)
FACT is part of Privacy International, which
includes among others on its
Steering Committee or
advisory board, the
American Civil Liberties Union and the Index on Censorship.
In the US, Privacy International is “administered through the Fund for
Constitutional Government in Washington DC.” (About Privacy
International, 16 December 2009).
One of the board members of this fund is Steven Aftergood, who wrote one
of the first articles on WikiLeaks before the website was even
functional.
In a
report
from Technology Daily dated January 4, 2007, it is stated that,
“WikiLeaks recently invited Steven
Aftergood, a government secrecy researcher at the Federation of
American Scientists [FAS], to serve on its advisory board.”
Ben Laurie
“’WikiLeaks allegedly has an advisory
board, and allegedly I'm a member of it... I don't know who runs
it...’ Laurie says his only substantive interaction with the group
was when Assange approached him to help design a system that would
protect leakers' anonymity.”
(David Kushner,
Inside WikiLeaks'
Leak Factory, Mother Jones, 6 April, 2010)
This article appeared in Mother Jones in
April 2010.
An article of the
New York Daily News dated December 2010
quotes Ben Laurie as follows:
“‘Julian's a smart guy and this is an
interesting tactic,’ said Ben Laurie, a London-based computer
security expert who has advised WikiLeaks.”
Despite his denial of being an advisor to
WikiLeaks, his name still appears on the list of advisory board members,
according to reports.
It is also worth noting that Ben Laurie is
a,
“Director of Security for
The Bunker
Secure Hosting, where he has worked since 1984 and is responsible
for security, cryptography and network design.”
He is also a Director of
Open Rights Group,
funded by the Joseph Rowntree Reform Trust Ltd and the
Open Society
Foundation.
Chinese and Tibetan
Dissidents on the Advisory Board
Tashi Namgyal Khamsitsang
Tashi Namgyal Khamsitsang, a “Tibetan exile & activist” is a former
President of the Washington Tibet Association, and was a member of the
Tibetan Government-in-Exile. In July of this year he was appointed by
the Governor of Washington State to the State Commission on Asian
Pacific American Affairs.
(A Tibetan Appointed to the Washington
State Commission on Asian Pacific American Affairs, Tibetan Association
of Washington, 17 July 2010)
Wang Youcai
Wang Youcai co-founded the Chinese Democracy Party and is another leader
of the Tienanmen Square protests. Imprisoned for “conspiring to
overthrow the Government of China... he was exiled in 2004 under
international political pressure, especially from the United States.
He
is also a,
“member of Chinese Constitutional Democratic Transition
Research and a member of the Coordinative Service Platform of the China
Democracy Party”
(WikiLeaks' Avisory Board, WikiLeaks.org,
27 March 2008)
Xiao Qiang
Xiao Qiang, is one of the Chinese dissidents listed on the WikiLeaks
board.
He,
“is the Director of the Berkeley China Internet
Project...[He] became a full time human rights activist after the Tienanmen Massacre in 1989... and is currently vice-chair of the
Steering Committee of the World Movement for Democracy”, according to
WikiLeaks’ description.
He received the MacArthur Fellowship from the
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in 2001 and is a
commentator for Radio Free Asia.
(Wikilieaks' Avisory Board, WikiLeaks.org,
27 March 2008)
Xiao Qiang is also the "founder and publisher of China Digital Times"
(Biographies, National Endowment for Democracy), which is a grantee of
the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)
(Directives from China's Ministry of
Truth on Liu Xiaobo winning Nobel, Democracy Digest, October 8, 2010).
The Steering Committee of the World Movement for Democracy is an
initiative of the Washington, DC-based NED. (World Movement for
Democracy). In 2008, Xiao Qiang was part of a discussion panel
entitled
"Law Rights and Democracy in China: Perspectives and Leading Advocates",
held by NED before the Democracy Award Ceremony.
(2008 NED Democracy Award Honors Heroes
of Human Rights and Democracy in China, National Endowment for
Democracy, June 17, 2008).
Radio Free Asia is funded by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG)
which describes itself as a body that “encompasses all U.S. civilian
international broadcasting, including the Voice of America (VOA), Radio
Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), Radio Free Asia (RFA), Radio and TV
Martí, and the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN) - Radio Sawa and
Alhurra Television.” Eight of its nine members are appointed by the
President and confirmed by the U.S. Senate; the ninth is the Secretary
of State, who serves ex officio”.
(Broadcasting Board of Governors)
RFE/RL no longer hides its covert origins: “Initially, both RFE and RL
were funded principally by the U.S. Congress through the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA)... In 1971, all CIA involvement ended and
thereafter RFE and RL were funded by Congressional appropriation through
the Board for International Broadcasting (BIB) and after 1995 the
Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG).
(A Brief History of RFE/RL)
Interestingly, in a report from 2002, the CFR suggested “creating a
Public Diplomacy Coordinating Structure (PDCS) to help define
communications strategies and streamline public diplomacy structures.
‘In many ways, the PDCS would be similar to the National Security
Council’... PDCS members would include the secretaries of State,
Defense, Treasury and Commerce, as well as the director of the Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) and BBG chairman”, a suggestion officially
objected by the BBG “to preserve the journalistic integrity.”
(BBG Expresses Concern With Report
Recommendations on U.S. International Braodcasting, 31 July 2002)
Wang Dan
Among the Chinese dissidents once listed on the board is Wang Dan. He
was a leader of the Tienanmen Square democracy movement, which “earned
him the top spot on China’s list of ‘21 Most Wanted Beijing Student
Leaders’.” He was imprisoned for his subversive activities and “exiled
in 1998 under international political pressure to the United States.”
(Wikilieaks'
Avisory Board, WikiLeaks.org, 27 March 2008)
He is chairman of the Chinese Constitutional Reform Association, and
sits on the editorial board of
Beijing Spring, a magazine funded by NED,
the,
“chief democracy-promoting foundation” according to an
article by
Judith Miller in The New York Times. One of the founders of NED was
quoted as saying “A lot of what we [NED] do today was done covertly 25
years ago by the CIA.”
(quoted in William Blum, Rogue State: A Guide to
the World's Only Superpower, 2000, p. 180).
In 1998, Wang Dan was granted the NED's Democracy Award "for
representing a peaceful alternative to achieve democracy and for [his]
courage and steadfastness in the cause of democracy".
(1998 Democracy
Award honors Heroes of Human Rights and Democracy in China, National
Endowment for Democracy)
The Battle for
"Transparency"
In 2007, WikiLeaks
described itself as an,
“uncensorable Wikipedia for untraceable mass
document leaking and analysis.”
Its priority?
“[E]xposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the
former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East.”
Like the advisory board member list, this
description no longer appears on WikiLeaks’ website. The organization also
claimed to be,
“founded by Chinese dissidents, journalists,
mathematicians and startup company technologists, from the US, Taiwan,
Europe, Australia and South Africa.”
(WikiLeaks.org, 17 December 2007)
In the currently available description, the
reference to the Chinese dissidents and the origins of the other members has
been removed. WikiLeaks rather puts the emphasis on not being a covert
operation.
Assange encourages blind faith in WikiLeaks as he puts a lot of emphasis on
the trustworthiness of his opaque organization.
In the words of Assange:
“Once something starts going around and
being considered trustworthy in a particular arena, and you meet someone
and they say ‘I heard this is trustworthy,’ then all of a sudden it
reconfirms your suspicion that the thing is trustworthy. So that’s why
brand is so important, just as it is with anything you have to trust.”
(Andy Greenberg,
An Interview with WikiLeaks' Julian Assange, Forbes, 29 October, 2010)
"People should understand that WikiLeaks has
proven to be arguably the most trustworthy new source that exists,
because we publish primary source material and analysis based on that
primary source material," Assange told CNN. "Other organizations, with
some exceptions, simply are not trustworthy."
(The secret life of Julian Assange, CNN,
2 December 2010)
While WikiLeaks no longer discloses the names of
the members of its advisory board, nor does it reveal its sources of
funding, we have to trust it because according to its founder Julian Assange,
it,
“has proven to be the most trustworthy news
source that exists”.
Moreover, if we follow Assange’s assertion that
there are only a few media organizations which can be considered
trustworthy, we must assume that those are the ones which were selected by
WikiLeaks to act as "partners" in the release and editing of the leaks,
including The New York Times, Der Spiegel, The Guardian, El País, Le Monde.
Yet The New York Times, which employs members of the Council on
Foreign Relations (CFR)
including WikiLeaks’ collaborator David E. Sanger, has proven more
than once to be a propaganda tool for the US government, the most infamous
example being the Iraqi WMD narrative promoted by Pulitzer Prize winner
Judith Miller.
In an interview, Assange indicates that WikiLeaks chose a variety of media
to avoid the use of leaks for propaganda purposes. It is important to note
that although these media might be owned by different groups and have
different editorial policies, they are without exception news entities
controlled by major Western media corporations.
A much better way to avoid the use of leaks for disinformation purposes
would have been to work with media from different regions of the world (e.g.
Asia, Latin America, Middle East) as well as establish partnership
agreements with the alternative media. By working primarily with media
organizations from NATO countries, WikiLeaks has chosen to submit its leaks
to one single "worldview", that of the West.
As a few critics of WikiLeaks have noted, the WikiLeaks project brings to
mind the "recommendations" of Cass Sunstein, heads the Obama White
House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA).
Sunstein is the author of an authoritative
Harvard Law School essay entitled “Conspiracy Theories: Causes and Cures”.
As outlined by Daniel Tencer in
Obama
Staffer Calls for "Cognitive Infiltration" of " 9/11 Conspiracy Groups":
Sunstein “argued that the government should
stealthily infiltrate groups that pose alternative theories on
historical events via ‘chat rooms, online social networks, or even
real-space groups and attempt to undermine’ those groups”.
Sunstein means that people who believe in conspiracy theories have a
limited number of sources of information that they trust. Therefore,
Sunstein argued in the article, it would not work to simply refute the
conspiracy theories in public — the very sources that conspiracy
theorists believe would have to be infiltrated.
Sunstein, whose article focuses largely on the 9/11 conspiracy theories,
suggests that the government “enlist nongovernmental officials in the
effort to rebut the theories. It might ensure that credible independent
experts offer the rebuttal, rather than government officials themselves.
There is a tradeoff between credibility and control, however. The price
of credibility is that government cannot be seen to control the
independent experts.”
Links to The
Intelligence Community
Wikleaks feels the need to reassure public opinion that it has no contacts
with the intelligence community.
Ironically, it also sees the need to define the
activities of the intelligence agencies and compare them to those of
WikiLeaks:
"1.5 The people behind WikiLeaks
WikiLeaks is a project of the Sunshine Press. It's probably pretty clear
by now that WikiLeaks is not a front for any intelligence agency or
government despite a rumor to that effect. This rumor was started early
in WikiLeaks' existence, possibly by the intelligence agencies
themselves.
WikiLeaks is an independent global group of
people with a long standing dedication to the idea of a free press and
the improved transparency in society that comes from this. The group
includes accredited journalists, software programmers, network
engineers, mathematicians and others.
To determine the truth of our statements on this, simply look at the
evidence. By definition, intelligence agencies want to hoard
information. By contrast, WikiLeaks has shown that it wants to do just
the opposite. Our track record shows we go to great lengths to bring the
truth to the world without fear or favor."
(WikiLeaks)
"Is WikiLeaks a CIA front?
WikiLeaks is not a front for the CIA,
MI6, FSB or any other agency. Quite the opposite actually. […] By
definition spy agencies want to hide information. We want to get it out
to the public."
(WikiLeaks.org, 17, December 2007)
Quite true. But by definition, a covert
operation always pretends to be something it is not, and never claims to be
what it is.
WikiLeaks' Entourage.
Who Supports WikiLeaks?
The people gravitating around WikiLeaks have connections and/or are
affiliated to a number of establishment organizations, major corporate
foundations and charities.
In the
WikiLeaks’ leak published by John Young,
a correspondence dated January 4, 2007, points to WikiLeaks' exchange with
Freedom House:
"We are looking for one or two initial
advisory board member from FH who may advise on the following:
-
the needs of FH as consumer of leaks
exposing business and political corruption
-
the needs for sources of leaks as
experienced by FH
-
FH recommendations for other
advisory board members
-
general advice on funding, coalition
building and decentralized operations and political framing
These positions will initially be unpaid,
but we feel the role may be of significant interest to FH."
The request for funding from various
organizations triggered some doubt among WikiLeaks collaborators.
John Young became very skeptical concerning the WikiLeaks project
specifically with regard to the initial fund-raising goal of 5 million
dollars, the contacts with elite organizations including Freedom House and
the National Endowment for Democracy and the alleged millions of documents:
"Announcing a $5 million fund-raising goal
by July will kill this effort. It makes WL appear to be a Wall Street
scam.
This amount could not be needed so soon except for suspect purposes.
I'd say the same about the alleged 1.1 million documents ready for
leaking. Way too many to be believable without evidence. I don't believe
the number. So far, one document, of highly suspect provenance."
Young finally quit the organization on January
7, 2007.
His final words:
“WikiLeaks is a fraud... working for the
enemy”.
Four years after its creation, we still don’t
know who funds the whistleblower site.
WikiLeaks, Hackers,
and “The First Cyberwar”
The shady circumstances around Julian Assange’s arrest for “sex crimes” have
triggered what some mainstream media have called the “first cyberwar”.
The Guardian for instance, another WikiLeaks
partner, warns us with this shocking title: “WikiLeaks backlash: The first
global cyber war has begun, claim hackers".
Some people suspect that this is a false flag operation intended to control
the Internet. It is no secret that hackers are often recruited by
governmental authorities for cyber security purposes.
Peiter Zatko a.k.a. “Mudge” is one of
them.
Here is an excerpt of a Forbes interview with
Assange regarding his connection to Peiter Zatko:
Assange: Yeah, I know Mudge. He’s a very
sharp guy.
Greenberg: Mudge is now leading a project at the Pentagon’s Defense
Advanced Research Projects Agency to find a technology that can stop
leaks, which seems pretty relative [sic] to your organization. Can you
tell me about your past relationship with Mudge?
Assange: Well, I... no comment.
Greenberg: Were you part of the same scene of hackers? When you were a
computer hacker, you must have known him well.
Assange: We were in the same milieu. I spoke with everyone in that
milieu.
Greenberg: What do you think of his current work to prevent digital
leaks inside of organizations, a project called Cyber Insider Threat or
Cinder?
Assange: I know nothing about it.
Peiter Zatko is an expert in cyber warfare.
He worked for BBN Technologies (a subsidiary of
Raytheon) with engineers,
“who perform leading edge research and
development to protect Department of Defense data... Mr. Zatko is
focused on anticipating and protecting against the next generation of
information and network security threats to government and commercial
networks.”
(Peiter "Mudge" Zatko,
Information
Security Expert Who Warned that Hackers "Could Take Down the Internet in
30 Minutes" Returns to BBN Technologies, Business Wire, 1 February 2005)
In another Forbes interview, we
learn that Mr. Zatko is,
“a lead cybersecurity researcher at the
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency [DARPA], the mad-scientist
wing of the Pentagon.”
His project “aims to rid the world of
digital leaks”.
(Forbes)
There also seems to be a connection between
Zatko and former hacker Jacob Appelbaum, a WikiLeaks spokesperson.
Zatko and Appelbaum were
purportedly part of a hacker group called Cult of
the Dead Cow.
Appelbaum currently works for the
Tor Project, a United States Naval
Research Laboratory initiative.
The
sponsors of that project listed on its
website are:
-
NLnet Foundation (2008-2009)
-
Naval Research Laboratory (2006-2010)
-
an anonymous North American ISP
(2009-2010), provided up to $100k
-
Google (2008-2009)
-
Google Summer of Code (2007-2009)
-
Human Rights Watch, Torfox (2009)
-
Shinjiru Technology (2009-2010) gave in
turn up to $50k.
Past sponsors includes:
-
Electronic Frontier Foundation
(2004-2005)
-
DARPA and ONR via Naval Research
Laboratory (2001-2006)
-
Cyber-TA project (2006-2008)
-
Bell Security Solutions Inc (2006)
-
Omidyar Network Enzyme Grant (2006)
-
NSF via Rice University (2006-2007)
Zatko and Assange know each other. Jacob
Appelbaum also played a role at WikiLeaks.
The various connections tell us something regarding Assange's entourage.
They do not, however, provide us with evidence that people within these
various organizations were supportive of the WikiLeaks project.
Recent Developments -
The Role of the Frontline Club
Over the last seven months, the London based Frontline Club has served as de
facto U.K "headquarters" for WikiLeaks. The Frontline Club is an initiative
of Henry Vaughan Lockhart Smith, a former British Grenadier Guards
captain.
According to NATO, Vaughan Smith became an
"independant video journalist [...] who
always hated war, but remained [...] soldier-friendly".
(Across the Wire, New media: Weapons of
mass communication, NATO Review, February 2008)
Upon his release from bail, Julian Assange was
provided refuge at Vaughan Smith's Ellingham Manor in Norfolk.
The Frontline Club is an establishment media outfit. Vaughan Smith writes
for the NATO Review. (See
NATO Web TV Channel and NATO Nations: Accurate,
Reliable and Convenient). His relationship to NATO goes back to 1998 when he
worked as a video journalist in Kosovo.
In 2010, he was,
"embedded with a platoon from the British
Grenadier Guards" during Operation Moshtarak in Afghanistan's Helmand
Province.
(PBS NewsHour, February 19, 2010).
According to the New York Times, The
Frontline Club "has received financing for its events from the Open
Society Institute".
(In London, a Haven and a Forum for War
Reporters - New York Times, 28 August 2006)
Concluding Remarks - The
Cyber Warfare Narrative
WikiLeaks is now being used by the authorities, particularly in the US, to
promote the cyber warfare narrative, which could dramatically change the
Internet and suppress the freedom of expression WikiLeaks claims to defend.
Peter Kornbluh, analyst at The National Security Archive,
argues that,
"there's going to be a lot of screaming
about WikiLeaks and the new federal law to penalize, sanction, and put
the boot down on organizations like WikiLeaks, so that their reactions
can be deemed illegal."
Ultimately, WikiLeaks could spark off,
intentionally or not, entirely new rules and regulations.