By F. William Engdahl | Global Research | August 11, 2010
Since the dramatic release of a US military film of a US airborne shooting of unarmed journalists in Iraq, Wiki-Leaks has gained global notoreity and credibility as a daring website that releases sensitive material to the public from whistle-blowers within various governments. Their latest “coup” involved alleged leak of thousands of pages of supposedly sensitive documents regarding US informers within the Taliban in Afghanistan and their ties to senior people linked to Pakistan’s ISI military intelligence. The evidence suggests however that far from an honest leak, it is a calculated disinformation to the gain of the US and perhaps Israeli and Indian intelligence and a cover-up of the US and Western role in drug trafficking out of Afghanistan.
Since the posting of the Afghan documents some days ago the Obama White House has given the leaks credibility by claiming further leaks pose a threat to US national security. Yet details of the papers reveals little that is sensitive. The one figure most prominently mentioned, General (Retired) Hamid Gul, former head of the Pakistani military intelligence agency, ISI, is the man who during the 1980’s coordinated the CIA-financed Mujahideen guerilla war in Afghanistan against the Soviet regime there. In the latest Wikileaks documents, Gul is accused of regularly meeting Al Qaeda and Taliban leading people and orchestrating suicide attacks on NATO forces in Afghanistan.
The leaked documents also claim that Osama bin Laden, who was reported dead three years ago by the late Pakistan candidate Benazir Bhutto on BBC, was still alive, conveniently keeping the myth alive for the Obama Administration War on Terror at a point when most Americans had forgotten the original alleged reason the Bush Administration invaded Afghanistan to pursue the Saudi Bin Laden for the 9/11 attacks.
Demonizing Pakistan?
The naming of Gul today as a key liaison to the Afghan “Taliban” forms part of a larger pattern of US and British recent efforts to demonize the current Pakistan regime as a key part of the problems in Afghanistan. Such a demonization greatly boosts the position of recent US military ally, India. Furthermore, Pakistan is the only Muslim country possessing atomic weapons. The Israeli Defense Forces and the Israeli Mossad intelligence agency reportedly would very much like to change that. A phony campaign against the politically outspoken Gul via Wikileaks could be part of that geopolitical effort.
The London Financial Times says Gul’s name appears in about 10 of roughly 180 classified US files that allege Pakistan’s intelligence service supported Afghan militants fighting Nato forces. Gul told the newspaper the US has lost the war in Afghanistan, and that the leak of the documents would help the Obama administration deflect blame by suggesting that Pakistan was responsible. Gul told the paper, “I am a very favourite whipping boy of America. They can’t imagine the Afghans can win wars on their own. It would be an abiding shame that a 74-year-old general living a retired life manipulating the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan results in the defeat of America.” [...]
As well, in a UPI interview on September 26, 2001, two weeks after the 9-11 attacks, Gul stated, in reply to the question who did 9/11, “Mossad and its accomplices. The US spends $40 billion a year on its 11 intelligence agencies. That’s $400 billion in 10 years. Yet the Bush Administration says it was taken by surprise. I don’t believe it. Within 10 minutes of the second twin tower being hit in the World Trade Center CNN said Osama bin Laden had done it. That was a planned piece of disinformation by the real perpetrators…” [1] Gul is clearly not well liked in Washington. He claims his request for travel visas to the UK and to the USA have repeatedly been denied. Making Gul into the arch enemy would suit some in Washington nicely.
Who is Julian Assange?
Wikileaks founder and “Editor-in-chief”, Julian Assange, is a mysterious 29-year-old Australian about whom little is known. He has suddenly become a prominent public figure offering to mediate with the White House over the leaks. Following the latest leaks, Assange told Der Spiegel, one of three outlets with which he shared material from the most recent leak, that the documents he had unearthed would “change our perspective on not only the war in Afghanistan, but on all modern wars.” He stated in the same interview that ‘”I enjoy crushing bastards.” Wikileaks, founded in 2006 by Assange, has no fixed home and Assange claims he “lives in airports these days.”
Yet a closer examination of the public position of Assange on one of the most controversial issues of recent decades, the forces behind the September 11, 2001 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center shows him to be curiously establishment. When the Belfast Telegraph interviewed him on July 19, he stated,
“Any time people with power plan in secret, they are conducting a conspiracy. So there are conspiracies everywhere. There are also crazed conspiracy theories. It’s important not to confuse these two….” What about 9/11?: “I’m constantly annoyed that people are distracted by false conspiracies such as 9/11, when all around we provide evidence of real conspiracies, for war or mass financial fraud.” What about the Bilderberg Conference?: “That is vaguely conspiratorial, in a networking sense. We have published their meeting notes.” [2]
That statement from a person who has built a reputation of being anti-establishment is more than notable. First, as thousands of physicists, engineers, military professionals and airline pilots have testified, the idea that 19 barely-trained Arabs armed with box-cutters could divert four US commercial jets and execute the near-impossible strikes on the Twin Towers and Pentagon over a time period of 93 minutes with not one Air Force NORAD military interception, is beyond belief. Precisely who executed the professional attack is a matter for genuine unbiased international inquiry.
Notable for Mr Assange’s blunt denial of any sinister 9/11 conspiracy is the statement in a BBC interview by former US Senator, Bob Graham, who chaired the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence when it performed its Joint Inquiry into 9/11. Graham told BBC, “I can just state that within 9/11 there are too many secrets, that is information that has not been made available to the public for which there are specific tangible credible answers and that that withholding of those secrets has eroded public confidence in their government as it relates to their own security.” BBC narrator: “Senator Graham found that the cover-up led to the heart of the administration.” Bob Graham: “I called the White House and talked with Ms. Rice and said, ‘Look, we’ve been told we’re gonna get cooperation in this inquiry, and she said she’d look into it, and nothing happened.’”
Of course, the Bush Administration was able to use the 9/11 attacks to launch its War on Terrorism in Afghanistan and then Iraq, a point Assange conveniently omits.
For his part, General Gul claims that US intelligence orchestrated the Wikileaks on Afghanistan to find a scapegoat, Gul, to blame. Conveniently, as if on cue, British Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, on a state visit to India, lashed out at the alleged role of Pakistan in supporting Taliban in Afghanistan, conveniently lending further credibility to the Wikileaks story. The real story of Wikileaks has clearly not yet been told.
Notes
[1] General Hamid Gul, Arnaud de Borchgrave 2001 Interview with Hamid Gul, Former ISI Chief, UPI, reprinted July 2010 on http://www.veteranstoday.com/2010/07/28/arnaud-de-borchgrave-2001-interview-with-hamid-gul-former-isi-chief/
[2] Julian Assange, Interview in Belfast Telegraph, July 19, 2010.
Aletho News adds:
Pakistanis find it curious, having reviewed the massive cache of documents, that none reference either India’s RAW or Israel’s MOSSAD agencies. If the material is selected and at the same time offers credibility for warmongering on Pakistan and/or Iran we simply have a new means of transmission for propaganda now that Judith Miller’s “anonymous sources” are no longer credible.
Also see: Wiki-Leaks is Israel
WickedLeaks
Wikileaks Story Down to a Whisper
I'm sure the MSM will be screaming it again soon.
"WikiLeaks set to release more Afghan files; US military, rights groups blast decision" by Raphael G. Satter and Anne Flaherty, Associated Press | August 13, 2010
LONDON — WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said yesterday that his organization is preparing to release the rest of the secret Afghan war documents it has on file....
Who cares about agenda-pushing clutter?
The leaks exposed unreported incidents of Afghan civilian killings by NATO forces and covert operations against Taliban figures. Assange has said that hundreds of those reports should be investigated by the media for evidence of war crimes.
They only do that if you are some poor African patsy or poor white that won't play the globalist game.
They PROMOTE and CONCEAL the TRULY BIG WAR CRIMES by Bliar, Bush, and the war criminal leaders of Israel.
WikiLeaks’ supporters say the blow-by-blow account of the conflict reveals the horror of the campaign’s daily grind. Detractors say the site has recklessly endangered the war effort and Afghan informants working to stop the Taliban.
The Pentagon has a task force of about 100 people reading the leaked documents to assess the damage done and to alert Afghans who might be identified by name and could be in danger.
YOUR TAX DOLLARS at work, America!
Taliban spokesmen have said they would use the material to try to hunt down people who have been cooperating with coalition forces, which the Taliban consider a foreign invader. That has aroused the concern of several human rights groups operating in Afghanistan — as well as Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders, which yesterday accused Wikileaks of recklessness.
Who cares about the concerns of s*** bag western reporters anymore?
Related: Somalis Sieze French Spies
Well, they are ALL SPIES now.
It's what is known as NON-OFFICIAL COVER!
Jean-Francois Julliard, the group’s secretary-general, said that WikiLeaks showed “incredible irresponsibility.’’
“WikiLeaks has in the past played a useful role by making information available . . . that exposed serious violations of human rights and civil liberties which the Bush administration committed in the name of its war against terror,’’ Julliard said. “But revealing the identity of hundreds of people who collaborated with the coalition in Afghanistan is highly dangerous.’’Like they don't already know it seeing as they live with them.
******
The Taliban has promised to use the material to track down people it considers traitors....
--more--"
"WikiLeaks won’t back off, will publish more records" by Keith Moore, Associated Press | August 15, 2010
STOCKHOLM — The organization WikiLeaks.org will publish its remaining 15,000 Afghan war documents within a month, despite warnings from the US government, the group’s founder said yesterday.
The Pentagon has said that secret information will be even more damaging to security and risk more lives than WikiLeaks’s initial release of some 76,000 war documents.
“This organization will not be threatened by the Pentagon or any other group,’’ Julian Assange told reporters in Stockholm....
Yeah, I'm sure he doesn't have to worry, either.
In an interview, Assange said that if US defense officials want to be seen as promoting democracy, then they “must protect what the United States’ founders considered to be their central value, which is freedom of the press.’’
“For the Pentagon to be making threatening demands for censorship of a press organization is a cause for concern, not just for the press but for the Pentagon itself,’’ the Australian added....
WikiLeaks would be working with media partners in releasing the remaining documents, he said, but declined to name them.
Oh, did working with the New York Times wreck the first Wikileak?
The first files in WikiLeaks’s “Afghan War Diary’’ laid bare classified military documents covering the war in Afghanistan from 2004 to 2010. The release angered US officials, energized critics of the NATO-led campaign, and drew the attention of the Taliban, which has promised to use the material to track down people it considers traitors.
That has aroused the concern of several human rights group operating in Afghanistan and the Paris-based media watchdog Reporters Without Borders, which has accused WikiLeaks of recklessness. Jean-Francois Julliard, the group’s secretary general, said last week that WikiLeaks showed “incredible irresponsibility’’ when posting the documents online.
WikiLeaks describes itself as a public service organization for whistle-blowers, journalists, and activists.
“There are no easy choices for our organization,’’ Assange said. “We have a duty to the people most directly affected by this material, the people of Afghanistan, and the course of this war, which is killing hundreds every week. We have a duty to the broader historical record and its accuracy and its integrity.... ’’
It all reads well, doesn't it?
Assange said that while no country has taken steps to shut down WikiLeaks, some have been gathering intelligence on the organization.
“There has been extensive surveillance in Australia,’’ Assange said. “There has been surveillance in the United Kingdom. There has been the detainment of one of our volunteers who entered the United States a week and a half ago. But he was released after four hours.’’ He did not give details of that incident.
In addition to speaking at a seminar, Assange was in Sweden to investigate assertions that the website was not covered by laws protecting anonymous sources in the Scandinavian country.
Assange confirmed that WikiLeaks passes information through Belgium and Sweden to take advantage of press freedom laws there. But some analysts say the site does not have the publishing certificate needed for full protection in Sweden....
--more--"Just the fact that Wikileaks MAKES the NEWSPAPER is CAUSE for SUSPICION when you think of all the sitEs the MSM IGNORES!
