Has Wikileaks Been Infiltrated by Russian Spies?

[struggle4progress]

Leak group has a troubling history with the Kremlin
Joshua Foust in War is Boring

... the chain of events leading up to Snowden’s flight, and his decision in Hong Kong to flee to Russia, of all places, strongly suggest that Russian intel has co-opted him to a remarkable degree ...

Assange got his Kremlin show after he threatened to publish embarrassing documents on Russia’s political elite in 2010, but relented after an FSB official hinted at violent reprisal against Wikileaks. Those documents were never published.

Months later, Israel Shamir, a Belarussian anti-Semite who publicly identifies himself as Wikileaks’ Russian-language representative, sent a tranche of documents about democracy activists to Belarussian tyrant Alexander Lukashenko. He was selling them for a reported $10,000 ...

When Snowden landed at the Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow on June 23, Putin was surprised. “It was completely unexpected for us,” he told reporters. But it is difficult to square that statement with the Kommersant report alleging Snowden’s days-long stay in the Russian consulate — or even Putin’s statement earlier in June that he would welcome Snowden’s asylum ...

https://medium.com/war-is-boring/b876a8bc035a

[Whisp]

1. what a coincidence...

Wikileaks’ ties to Snowden journalists

After being repeatedly threatened in 2010, banks and credit card companies declined to process any donations for Wikileaks. By the end of 2012 Wikileaks was running perilously short on cash. A new U.S.-based group, the Freedom of the Press Foundation, launched with the explicit purpose of funneling cash to Wikileaks.

On its board of directors are Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, the two journalists to whom Snowden chose to leak his documents. In an interview with Harper’s, Greenwald, the only human being followed by the Wikileaks account and a long-time defender and correspondent of Assange, says Snowden initially emailed him around the same time this foundation launched. He says he initially ignored them.

[struggle4progress]

3. Holocaust denier in charge of handling Moscow cables

Extract from WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy discloses the antics of Israel Shamir, who pilloried the Swedish women who complained of rape
David Leigh and Luke Harding
The Guardian, Monday 31 January 2011 15.01 EST

Julian Assange's security over the diplomatic cables, which he once described as worth at least $5m to any foreign intelligence agency, seemed less than watertight. At Ellingham Hall, the Norfolk country house where he is staying while on bail, Assange was seen handing over batches of them to visiting foreign journalists, including someone who was simply introduced as "Adam" ...

Shamir claims to be a renegade Russian Jew, born in Novosibirsk, but currently adhering to the Greek Orthodox church. He is notorious for Holocaust denial and publishing a string of antisemitic articles. He caused controversy in the UK in 2005, at a parliamentary book launch hosted by Lord Ahmed, by claiming: "Jews … own, control and edit a big share of mass media." Internal WikiLeaks documents, seen by the Guardian, show Shamir was not only given cables, but he also invoiced WikiLeaks for €2,000 (£1,700), to be deposited in a Tallinn bank account, in thanks for "services rendered - journalism". What services? He says: "What I did for WikiLeaks was to read and analyse the cables from Moscow."

Shamir's byline is on two previous articles pillorying the Swedish women who complained about Assange. On 27 August, in Counterpunch, a small radical US publication, Shamir said Assange was framed by "spies" and "crazy feminists". He alleged there had been a "honeytrap". On 14 September, Shamir then attacked "castrating feminists and secret services", writing that one of the women involved, whom he deliberately named, had once discussed the Cuban opposition to Castro in a Swedish academic publication "connected with" someone with "CIA ties".

Subsequently, Shamir appeared in Moscow. According to a reporter on Russian paper Kommersant, he was offering to sell articles based on the cables for $10,000 (£6,300). He had already passed some to the state-backed publication Russian Reporter. He travelled on to Belarus, ruled by the Soviet-style dictator Alexander Lukashenko, where he met regime officials. The Russian Interfax news agency reported that Shamir was WikiLeaks' "Russian representative", and had "confirmed the existence of the Belarus dossier" ...

[Whisp]

17. Truthout is on the front page of the FofPF for donations

One among 4 listed. That's a familiar name.
I wonder if the donations go directly to the listed there or do the listed then funnel the money to Wiki as is suspected.

[msanthrope]

22. Does Glenn disclose this financial arrangement anywhere? nt

[pnwmom]

2. However Snowden began, he ended up being just another Russian defector.

And Wikileak's was the facilitator.

[Recursion]

4. Was Wikileaks started by Russian spies?

"infiltrated" may not be the right word.

[struggle4progress]

5. Pandodaily has a piece saying NSA funded some of Assange's crypto-file work, then stopped

and that Assange became royally pizzed. If this is true, Assange had some early intelligence contacts, and it becomes plausible he was willing to pursue further such options later


... Given that I hadn’t seen Julian in more than a decade, I greeted him, and we agreed to grab some dinner and catch up. After reminiscing about the old gang – he and I had been part of the same hacker “milieu,” as Julian would say – I asked why he had skipped out on the hacking scene to form Wikileaks ... Julian told me his graduate work had been funded by a US government grant, specifically NSA and DARPA money, which was supposed to be used for fundamental security research. It was a time when the Bush Administration and Department of Defense were seen to be classifying a great deal of fundamental research and pulling back on university funds ... As you can imagine this did not sit well with Julian, because his work had also been funded by one of these fundamental research funding lines and yanked ...
How the US government inadvertently created Wikileaks
By Peiter Zatko
On September 14, 2013

[leveymg]

26. Author should use an English-language dictionary. The work he's searching for is "coopted."

The amateur sleuthing by this bunch is really lame. If any of you guys showed any talent -- or could articulate a single good reason why anyone should do so -- I'd help you.

[intaglio]

6. Probably and also ...

US, Chinese, Israeli, British, French, German, Australian ...

[Marr]

7. lol.

Pathetic.

[struggle4progress]

8. Could be. Then, again, the author at least provides fact after fact, arranged in a coherent

and logical order, to make his argument -- with links provided

That, of course, does not provide conclusive proof that the author's thesis is correct, but it is much more helpful (to those of us, who are still trying to understand the realities underlying l'affaire Snowden) than your derisive snort, pathetic! -- the reason being that the article contains information, staged in a rational manner, rather than merely attempting to discourage any careful consideration of the matter

[treestar]

9. Putin is admitting they have no control of their borders

Since it is a surprise as to who can get on a plane and land there.

[KharmaTrain]

10. Ya Mean Like This Guy???

Remember Mathias Rust? He flew right into Red Square in 1987. At least Rust figured his way out of Russia...Mr. Snowden...not so much...

[treestar]

15. And that was during the Cold War

Which makes it even more incompetent. They had missiles. But no control over Red Square.

[TheKentuckian]

11. Straining2RedBait

[struggle4progress]

12. um ... what? the ussr collapsed a quarter century ago, and the communist party holds barely 20%

of the duma, while putin's state-created united russia party holds a majority of the seats

[TheKentuckian]

21. Which is why one must strain to red bait.

[struggle4progress]

25. You evidently do not know what "redbaiting" is. I'll give you a clue:

the first of many times anybody called me a "communist" was many decades ago, back when I was still in elementary school, at a time many folk in the US were upset by the prospect of integration, and I expressed the opinion that integrating schools was a good thing and something everybody should support

[Whisp]

13. Freedom of the Press Foundation:

https://pressfreedomfoundation.org/

Front page is asking for donations for:

WikiLeaks

Bureau of Investigative Journalism

Center for Public Integrity

Truthout (o?)

Board of Directors:

Daniel Ellsberg

Glenn Greenwald

John Cusack

John Perry Barlow

Josh Stearns

Laura Poitras

Rainey Reitman

Trevor Timm

Xeni Jardin

[Whisp]

14. Snowden, NSA, and Counterintelligence - September 4, 2013

John R. Schindler is professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, where he’s been since 2005, and where he teaches courses on security, strategy, intelligence, terrorism, and occasionally military history.

http://20committee.com/2013/09/04/snowden-nsa-and-counterintelligence/

Ever since the remarkable case of Edward Snowden broke into the limelight at the beginning of the summer that’s now winding down, I’ve had a great deal to say about it here, on Twitter, and on radio and television. As one of the very few former NSA officers who’s in the public eye and willing to talk about Snowden, I’ve had an audience. As a former NSA counterintelligence officer with experience dealing with the Russians, I’ve been pretty much a solo act.

From nearly the outset I’ve stated that Snowden is very likely an agent of Russian intelligence; this was met with howls of indignation which have died down in recent weeks as it’s become apparent that Ed’s staying in Russia for some time, along with whatever classified materials he had on his person. (Since Glenn Greenwald’s partner when stopped by British authorities at Heathrow had 58,000 highly classified documents on him, thanks to Ed, one can only wonder how big the initial haul actually was.) That Snowden was in contact with the Russian consulate in Hong Kong during his pre-Moscow visit there, including spending his 30th birthday with his new friends, is now admitted. Even President Vladimir Putin has conceded that Ed’s contacts with Russian officials did not commence when he landed at Sheremtyevo airport, rather before.
---
Simply put, one must wonder, after nearly five years of Delisle selling the Russians all the Five Eyes TOP SECRET/ SCI data he could get his hands on, how much there really was about NSA, GCHQ, et al, that Moscow didn’t already know. Perhaps Snowden is, if not exactly a patsy, a none-too-clever fellow – Putin today called Ed “a strange guy” – whose main purpose is causing pain and suffering to Washington, DC. Which, let it be said, he has done rather well, thanks to the propaganda offensive waged by Greenwald, Poitras, and their helpers in several countries, with Ed’s purloined information, and who have masked their radical activism under the (thin) guise of post-modern journalism.

good read.

[Whisp]

16. ..enormous damage assessment..

It is possible that Snowden’s appearance on the radar of Russian intelligence – presumably late in 2012, almost certainly through Wikileaks – actually represents a cover mechanism of sorts for Moscow. Tasked now with an enormous damage assessment and trying to uncover if Snowden had any helpers inside NSA, it seems unlikely that IC counterintelligence experts will have the resources or manpower anytime soon to find the Russian moles who may be deeply embedded inside NSA and related U.S. intelligence agencies.

If that sounds far-fetched, it shouldn’t, because Moscow has done exactly this sort of thing before, with considerable success. Very little can be said with certainty at this point, though a clearer picture will emerge with time. Suffice to say that experienced counterintelligence hands, accustomed to living with the vaunted “wilderness of mirrors” that comes with playing spygames with Moscow, are asking the right questions.

[rhett o rick]

18. Let me see if I have this straight. The theory is that there is a conspiracy of Russian

Spies infiltrating Wikileaks. Wow. That's some theory. Some might think that is a Conspiracy Theory. Someone should tell Sid.

[struggle4progress]

19. Perhaps you can explain the behavior of "Israel Shamir"?

See #3 upthread

[leveymg]

27. Greed and opportunism, but doesn't prove squat about the original purposes of Wikileaks

All that Shamir's offer to the Russians shows is what this guy has been reduced to since Wikileaks was busted up by western law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

[struggle4progress]

28. It was reported back in December 2010

[leveymg]

31. Quite a lot of busting up predated that January 2011 article. Come on, you're the one who's been

obsessing about this - you should know your timeline by now: http://www.euronews.com/2012/08/16/julian-assange-and-wikileaks-timeline-of-events/

April 2010: Wikileaks releases a video of a 2007 US military helicopter strike on Baghdad, Iraq, and the casualties that resulted from this. Bradley Manning, an American soldier, is charged and arrested for leaking the information.

July 2010: Wikileaks releases classified US military documents on the war in Afghanistan revealing details of civilian victims and alleged links between Pakistan and the Taliban.

August 2010: A Swedish court issues an arrest warrant for Assange on charges of rape made by two Swedish women, who were also former employees of Wikileaks but then decides to postpone the warrant until November.

October 2010: Wikileaks releases some 400,000 accounts written by American soldiers from 2004 to 2009 revealing that the US decided to ignore cases of torture by Iraqi authorities on civilians.

November 2010: Swedish prosecutor re-issues European arrest warrant for Assange. Ten days later, Wikileaks releases classified US diplomatic cables, revealing assessments of American officials on a range of issues together with views of other governments.

December 2010: Assange hands himself over to London’s police and is placed in custody pending a Swedish court’s ruling on the extradition request. A few days later, Assange is released on bail and tells media that the rape allegations are part of a politically-motivated campaign to undermine him. He was ordered by the court to live at a supporter’s country side mansion in eastern England.

[struggle4progress]

32. Your excerpt has zip to do with the behavior of "Israel Shamir" -- and Assange later got a show

on Russian-government-owned RT

[tammywammy]

20. Interesting. n/t

[Scurrilous]

23. Kick

[Rex]

24. Duh.

And Chinese spies and American spies.

[JackRiddler]

29. Did Wikileaks invent cancer?

Find out the astonishing answer on this thread!

[struggle4progress]

30. Your post seems to be the only one so far containing such bizarre speculation

[Madam45for2923]

33. Has Wikileaks Been Infiltrated by Russian Spies?