By Oscar Grenfell
June 25, 2020 "Information
Clearing House" - The Department of Justice
today issued a superseding indictment against Julian
Assange in the latest salvo of a decade-long campaign by
the US government and its intelligence agencies to
destroy the WikiLeaks founder and besmirch his
reputation.
The new indictment does not contain any charges
additional to those filed in May 2019. The 17 Espionage
Act counts over WikiLeaks’ publication of documents
leaked by Chelsea Manning exposing historic war crimes
in Iraq and Afghanistan and illegal global diplomatic
intrigues remain. These represent the greatest attack on
press freedom and the First Amendment of the US
Constitution in decades, directly targeting the right of
all journalists to publish “national security” material.
The indictment also contains one charge of conspiracy
to commit computer intrusion. It was the first US count
unveiled against Assange after he was dragged by British
police from Ecuador’s London embassy in April 2019.
The additional material added to the introductory
section of the new indictment is a desperate attempt to
bolster that count, and the broader narrative that
Assange is a “hacker,” not a publisher or journalist.
Its inclusion follows the public discrediting of the
computer intrusion allegation, including in the first
week of Assange’s British extradition hearings last
February. According to the indictment, in March 2010,
Manning asked Assange for assistance with cracking a
hash value, or a password, that would have enabled her
to log into the US army computer network anonymously.
It is now almost universally acknowledged that the
hash value was never hacked. Manning, moreover, had by
that point already gathered the material that she would
provide to WikiLeaks. The purpose of her request,
apparently made half in jest, was to browse the internet
and download music anonymously.
The new indictment further exposes the attempt to
extradite Assange to the US as a dirty-tricks political
operation, rather than any sort of legal proceeding.
Are You Tired Of
The Lies And
Non-Stop Propaganda?
|
It paints a picture of US government operatives
pouring through decade-old tabloid gossip and
dredging up the most unsavoury creatures of their
own intelligence agencies to fling mud at Assange.
It is an attempt to salvage their claim that he is a
“hacker,” more than a year after they first
publicly-unveiled charges against him.
Almost all of the new material has been on the public
record in one form or other, for six years or longer.
Points four through six, for instance, reference
Assange’s speeches to public conventions of computer
experts in the Netherlands and Malaysia, in 2009 and
2010. The indictment claims that he encouraged those
present to use their computing abilities to access
classified material. To assert that such a statement,
made in public, constitutes evidence of a “conspiracy,”
is laughable.
However, the accusation continues the strand that
runs throughout the indictment of seeking to criminalise
standard journalistic practices, including encouraging
sources and potential sources to provide a media
organisation with newsworthy information in the public
interest.
Sections F and G similarly allege that Assange and
WikiLeaks associates encouraged administrators and
others with access to computer systems to expose illegal
activities by the intelligence agencies and corporate
malfeasance. They are, again, based on statements at
public gatherings spanning from 2013 to 2016, some of
which have been viewable on the internet ever since.
Significantly, none of the events was held in the
United States, but are cited as evidence of intent, or
conspiracy, to violate American laws. This is in line
with the unprecedented assertion of extraterritorial
jurisdiction on which the entire indictment is based.
The Justice Department is essentially arguing that
domestic US laws apply to all individuals and gatherings
in every part of the world.
Unlike the previous indictment, the latest US charge
sheet condemns Assange over WikiLeaks’ role in assisting
Edward Snowden to travel from Hong Kong to Russia in
2013, where he successfully obtained political asylum.
Snowden is a multi-award winning whistleblower, who
exposed illegal global surveillance operations by the US
National Security Agency.
The document complains that WikiLeaks publicised its
role in defending Snowden to display its commitment to
whistleblower protection. This alone brands the new
indictment as a further assault on fundamental
journalistic practices.
A substantial part of the new material in the
indictment appears to be based on testimony and
information provided by two acknowledged informants of
the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI): Sigurdur
“Siggi” Thordarson, named in the document as “Teenager,”
and Hector Monsegur, known by the online pseudonym
“Sabu.”
In June 2019, WikiLeaks issued a statement reporting
that the US government could be preparing a new
indictment against Assange, based on testimony from
Thordarson. The Icelandic man had made it known on
social media that he was being ferried to the US for
discussions with American government agencies. In
subsequent press interviews, he revealed that Monsegur
was also involved. WikiLeaks’ warning has now come to
pass.
The indictment alleges that in early 2010, “Teenager”
provided Assange with information stolen from a bank. It
claims that the WikiLeaks founder “asked Teenager to
commit computer intrusion and steal additional
information, including audio recordings of phone
conversations between officials in NATO Country-1,
including members of parliament…”
The country being referenced is Iceland. The
allegation that WikiLeaks attempted to surreptitiously
record parliamentary conversations there has been in
circulation for years. The story was only publicly
promulgated after Thordarson began secretly working with
the FBI. Its transparent purpose was to jeopardise
WikiLeaks’ activities in a relatively liberal country
where it enjoyed high levels of popular support.
Assange, moreover, has never been accused, let alone
charged with a crime by any Icelandic agency. Senior
government officials, however, including then Interior
Minister Ögmundur Jonasson, have stated that FBI
dirty-tricks operations were afoot against WikiLeaks.
Jonasson has testified that in June 2011, he blocked
a plane load of FBI agents who had been sent to seek
“our cooperation in what I understood as an operation to
set up, to frame Julian Assange and WikiLeaks.” The
frame had been accompanied by warnings of a plot to hack
Icelandic government infrastructure.
The related new strand of the indictment asserts ties
between WikiLeaks and computer hackers. The first set of
alleged contacts, from December 2010 until the end of
2011, all involved “Teenager,” i.e., Thordarson, who
claims to have been acting under the direction of
Assange.
The most significant of those, beginning in June
2011, was with Lulzsec, a loose affiliation of US
hackers. The supposed contact between WikiLeaks and the
group was again brokered by Thordarson. The indictment
alleges that Assange encouraged Lulzsec to hack into
private security companies, including Intelligence
Consulting Company, and provided them with scripts to
search material gathered. It does not claim that Assange
was involved in the computer intrusion.
That WikiLeaks published material obtained by Lulzsec
has been known for years. In 2012, one of the hackers
Jeremy Hammond was arrested and convicted for hacking
into Stratfor, a private company dubbed a shadow CIA.
WikiLeaks released emails from the firm showing that it
had spied on activists and revealing its close relations
to US government agencies.
The threadbare character of the allegations, however,
is overshadowed by the fact that when Thordarson first
made contact with Lolzsec, it was already effectively
controlled by the FBI. Monsegur (“Sabu”), its leader,
had been arrested on June 7, 2011, and had immediately
agreed to collaborate with the US government.
A Justice Department press release accompanying the
indictment coyly states: “In 2012, Assange communicated
directly with a leader of the hacking group LulzSec (who
by then was cooperating with the FBI)...” This is a
gross understatement. By that stage, Monsegur had been
frantically burning associates for over six months, to
avoid decades in prison, and had agreed to transform
Lulzsec into a US government entrapment service.
It is not yet known whether Thordarson (“Teenager”)
was already cooperating with the FBI when he made
contact with Lulzsec. If he was, the conversations were
between two FBI assets seeking to frame Assange.
Thordarson had insinuated himself into WikiLeaks as a
17-year-old volunteer in early 2010. In August 2011,
Thordarson claims that he contacted the US embassy in
Reykjavik, offering to assist in the “ongoing criminal
investigation in the United States” against Assange.
By his own admission, Thordarson met with FBI agents
multiple times in Reykjavik between 2011 and 2012.
During that period, US authorities flew him to Denmark
three times and to the US on one occasion, for secret
meetings about WikiLeaks. He handed over WikiLeaks
hard-drives and received thousands of dollars.
Some WikiLeaks collaborators who encountered him have
stated that Thordarson’s behaviour was strange from the
beginning, raising the possibility that he was sent into
WikiLeaks as a plant.
Either way, Thordarson is an individual who could
never be deemed a credible witness. WikiLeaks has
alleged that he stole at least $50,000 from the
organisation.
In 2014, he pled guilty in an Icelandic court to 18
counts of fraud, embezzlement and theft, some of them
relating to his missapropriations from WikiLeaks. The
combined offenses carried a dollar value estimated at
$US240,000. Thordarson was also convicted of
impersonating Assange.
The following year he pled guilty to a raft of sexual
offences, after admitting that he had coerced underage
boys into performing sexual acts on him. A
court-appointed psychologist found that he was a
sociopath suffering from a “severe anti-social
personality disorder.”
In Thordarson, a convicted paedophile and conman, and
Monsegur, a former petty criminal turned stool pigeon,
the US government has found the fitting representatives
of its campaign against Assange. The reliance on
testimony from both men demonstrates that the US
extradition request should be dismissed as a criminal
operation, involving individuals who themselves should
be in prison.
The British courts and government, however, have made
clear their support for the US-led vendetta against
Assange, underscoring that it is up to the working class
to take forward the fight for his freedom.
Copyright © 1998-2020
World Socialist Web Site - All rights
reserved
Post your comment below