President Trump seemed to think Wikileaks was a fine establishment while on the campaign trail. As long as Wikileaks kept serving up DNC documents, it could do nothing wrong. Since his election, however, things have changed. The administration is plagued by leaks. Even though Wikileaks hasn't played a part in those leaks, it has continued to dump CIA documents -- something the White House isn't thrilled with.
Back in April, the new DOJ -- under the leadership of 80s throwback AG Sessions -- announced it had prepared charges to arrest Julian Assange. This was something Obama's administration talked about, but never actually got around to doing. Pursuing Assange and Wikileaks for publishing leaked documents would set a dangerous precedent, paving the way for domestic prosecutions of news agencies.
The committee… wants Congress to declare WikiLeaks a “non-state hostile intelligence service,” which would open Julian Assange and the pro-transparency organization – which most of the U.S. government considers a handmaiden of Russian intelligence – to new levels of surveillance.
On Friday, the committee quietly published its annual intelligence authorization, a bill that blesses the next year’s worth of intelligence operations. The bill passed the committee late last month on a 14-1 vote, with Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon as the lone dissenter, owing to what he calls the “legal, constitutional and policy implications” that the WikiLeaks provision may entail.
The latest intelligence authorization bill runs nearly 60 pages. Perhaps the committee members adding this toxic little pill thought no one would read it all the way to the end. The very last section of the bill (Section 623 to be precise) is titled "Sense of Congress on Wikileaks." It asks for legislators to take an official stance on the group.
It is the sense of Congress that WikiLeaks and the senior leadership of WikiLeaks resemble a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors and should be treated as such a service by the United States.
As Ackerman points out, the language in the bill channels CIA head Mike Pompeo, who is understandably (and continually) incensed by Wikileaks' publication of documents pertaining to CIA surveillance tools. Pompeo himself is a fair-weather friend of transparency, having tweeted his praise for Wikileaks while it was still dumping DNC documents.
This could put Wikileaks under (even more) surveillance and would likely allow site visitors, donors, and correspondents to become surveillance targets themselves.
“It would allow the intelligence community to collect against them the same way they collect against al-Qaeda,” [former House Intelligence Committee staffer Mieke] Eoyang said. “If you think you’re helping WikiLeaks to aid a transparency organization, the US government fundamentally disagrees with you and you could find yourself on other end of NSA scrutiny.”
As is usually the case when the Senate Intelligence Committee offers up questionable or terrible proposals, Senator Ron Wyden was the sole committee member to vote against the authorization bill.
The history of Wikileaks and its founder Julian Assange is a tortured one, to be sure. Once the darling of the left for exposing important misdeeds by the American government, the site then became a tool for the right in the last Presidential election with the publishing of emails stolen in a hack of the DNC. From there, some have accused Wikileaks of being an arm of Moscow's intelligence efforts, while the America government has made noise about prosecuting the site and Assange under the Espionage Act. Still others support the site for its efforts in exposing the secrets governments wish to keep hidden from the citizens to whom they are beholden.
Through it all, Assange and Wikileaks have remained firm in their mission to expose information and secrets that were previously kept from the public. Except, it seems, when that information has to do with Wikileaks itself. According to the makers of a documentary about Wikileaks entitled Risk, on the topic of Wikileaks, Wikileaks is chiefly interested not in open journalism and unvarnished truth, but rather on its own image. And apparently the site is willing to wield legal threats and lawyers in a way that is almost absurdly hypocritical.
We are the producers of Risk , a documentary film about Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. We unequivocally defend WikiLeaks’ journalistic right to publish true and newsworthy information...We were disturbed, however, to learn that Julian Assange and WikiLeaks sent cease and desist letters to our distributors demanding they stop the release of Risk: “We therefore demand that you immediately cease the use and distribution of all images of the Named Participants and that you desist from this or any other infringement of the rights of the Named Participants in the future.”
From there, the filmmakers go into what lengths they went to work directly with Wikileaks and Assange on the film starting back in 2011. Assange himself provided content to be used in the film and even signed a licensing agreement to use Wikileaks footage for it. Some people involved with Wikileaks requested not to be in the film and the filmmakers complied. People from the site and their lawyers have been shown screenings of the film before every regional release, including as recently as April of this year. There is no claim made thus far that any of the content of the film is false.
So, what is the weighty harm over which Wikileaks is firing off C&Ds? Its image and the image of Assange.
Since 2016, Assange and his lawyers have repeatedly demanded that we remove scenes from the film in which Assange speaks about the two women who made sexual assault allegations against him in 2010 and Sweden’s investigation which has since been discontinued. WikiLeaks’ comments have consistently been about image management, including: demands to remove scenes from the film where Assange discusses sexual assault allegations against him; requests to remove images of alcohol bottles in the embassy because Ecuador is a Catholic country and it looks bad; requests to include mentions of WikiLeaks in the 2016 U.S. presidential debates; and, requests to add more scenes with attorney Amal Clooney because she makes WikiLeaks look good.
The opinion that Assange is an egomaniac has been floating around for some time. With actions like these, there seems to be some evidence of that. But that charge aside, what should be abundantly clear is that the ideals of the site appear to have fallen by the wayside when it comes to a simple documentary that has refused to cinematically stroke Wikileaks to the degree it wishes. That's not a good look for a site that survives on people's belief that it is committed to open and honest information.
In fact, this looks to be the sort of thing that the Wikileaks from years gone by would have dug into and exposed.
Prosecutors seeking to justify a lengthy sentence (and the abuses that had already occurred) in the Chelsea Manning case insisted the documents she leaked had caused serious damage to those exposed by them. They said this even as multiple government officials admitted the most the United States had suffered was some embarrassment.
Regarding the hundreds of thousands of Iraq-related military documents and State Department cables provided by the Army private Chelsea Manning, the report assessed “with high confidence that disclosure of the Iraq data set will have no direct personal impact on current and former U.S. leadership in Iraq.”
This doesn't necessarily mean no damage was done. But the report confirms the United States didn't suffer from the Manning leaks.
The report also determined that a different set of documents that was published the same year, relating to the U.S. war in Afghanistan, would not result in “significant impact” to U.S. operations. It did, however, have the potential to cause “serious damage” to “intelligence sources, informants and the Afghan population” and U.S and NATO intelligence collection efforts.
The report [PDF] also notes investigators located the encrypted Wikileaks "insurance" file -- one Julian Assange says he'll release the key to if he feels his ability to disseminate information is threatened. (Stay tuned!) The assessment concludes it's unlikely this file contains anything damaging either.
Based on public statements by Assange, the IRTF assesses with moderate confidence that the "Insurance File" does not contain any USG data beyond what the IRTF has already reviewed.
The document dates back to 2011. It may have been some use in Manning's defense during the trial (a defense severely limited by the nature of espionage proceedings). As Leopold notes, Manning was not allowed to view this report. Instead, she was forced to fight the charges blind while prosecutors cherry-picked portions of the report to bolster their arguments.
Not that any of this matters at this point. The damage has already been done to Manning's life. And Manning's prosecution likely serves as a low-key chilling effect to dissuade potential leakers and whistleblowers from publicly humiliating the US government. But it does show the government is willing to use evidence that doesn't actually exist to secure a conviction.
In his testimony yesterday in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, FBI Director James Comey became the latest government official to speak out against Wikileaks. In doing so -- even though he very carefully worded his answers to Sen. Ben Sasse's softballs -- Comey also made a very dangerous insinuation about what separates "real" journalists from Wikileaks.
SASSE: [T]here is room for reasonable people to disagree about at what point an allegedly journalistic organization crosses a line to become some sort of a tool of foreign intelligence. There are Americans, well-meaning, thoughtful people who think that WikiLeaks might just be a journalistic outfit. Can you explain why that is not your view?
COMEY: Yes and again, I want to be careful that I don't prejudice any future proceeding. It's an important question, because all of us care deeply about the First Amendment and the ability of a free press, to get information about our work and -- and publish it.
To my mind, it crosses a line when it moves from being about trying to educate a public and instead just becomes about intelligence porn, frankly. Just pushing out information about sources and methods without regard to interest, without regard to the First Amendment values that normally underlie press reporting. And simply becomes a conduit for the Russian intelligence services or some other adversary of the United States just to push out information to damage the United States. And I realize, reasonable people as you said, struggle to draw a line…
So, where does the journalistic publishing of leaked documents cross the line into "intelligence porn?" Comey says the difference between real journalists and Wikileaks is real journalists seek input from the government before publishing.
Comey: [T]here's at least a portion and people can argue that maybe this conduct WikiLeaks has engaged in, in the past that's closer to regular newsgathering. But in my view, a huge portion of WikiLeaks's activities has nothing to do with legitimate newsgathering, informing the public, commenting on important public controversies, but is simply about releasing classified information to damage the United States of America. And -- and -- and people sometimes get cynical about journalists.
American journalists do not do that. They will almost always call us before they publish classified information and say, is there anything about this that's going to put lives in danger, that's going to jeopardize government people, military people or -- or innocent civilians anywhere in the world.And then work with us to try and accomplish their important First Amendment goals while safeguarding those interests. This activity I'm talking about, WikiLeaks, involves no such considerations whatsoever. It's what I said to intelligence porn, just push it out in order to damage.
The First Amendment contains no such requirement to run leaked documents past the government first. This can be an ethical decision on the part of the publisher, but the notion that the First Amendment only covers publishing after government input has been sought is a dangerous one. This assertion by Comey also just isn't true. As Trevor Timm pointed out on Twitter, Wikileaks hasattempted to contact the US government in the past before publication, but has been ignored.
Furthermore, Comey and Sasse both claim Wikileaks' publications have caused some sort of damage to government employees. They offered unproven assertions it has endangered lives, even though the evidence shows the worst the US government (and its employees) suffered is some embarrassment.
The only mitigating factor was Comey's assertion that the DOJ isn't interested in using espionage laws to prosecute journalists for publishing leaked documents. As he correctly points out, the culpability lies with the person leaking the documents, not the journalists publishing them. Of course, this statement isn't being made in a vacuum. It's being made in the current political climate where the president has expressed an interest in reducing free speech protections. The DOJ itself appears to be working towards prosecuting Julian Assange for publishing leaked documents. All that can really be gathered from Comey's assertions is that the DOJ may not prosecute journalists who run everything past the government before publication.
This delineation between "legitimate" journalism and "intelligence porn" is disturbing. It suggests the government still wants to have the final say on who is or isn't a journalist and punish accordingly. If this had been the attitude since the beginning of this nation, it's doubtful we'd have as many protections as we enjoy today. Rob Graham of Errata Security sums up Comey's statements in a single, unforgettable sentence:
If this were 1776, Comey would of course be going after Thomas Paine, for publishing "revolution porn", and not being a real journalist.
Obama waged a war on whistleblowers during his eight-year run. Sure, it was done under a sunny facade of "transparency," but the former president set the gold standard for whistleblower prosecutions, performing more than every other president until then… combined.
US authorities have prepared charges to seek the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, US officials familiar with the matter tell CNN.
For what, you may ask? Publication of leaked documents? Well, there's a little more to it than that.
The US view of WikiLeaks and Assange began to change after investigators found what they believe was proof that WikiLeaks played an active role in helping Edward Snowden, a former NSA analyst, disclose a massive cache of classified documents.
Hmm. But the Washington Post, Intercept, Guardian, and New York Times also did this. There's been some online speculation this actually refers to Assange's Russian-host-maneuvering and flight plan assistance -- that brief moment where journalists and g-men packed a plane to Cuba only to find themselves Snowden-less. But Ellen Nakashima's article for the Washington Post digs a little deeper into the proposed charges, citing evidence in Chelsea Manning's trial, where Assange assisted Manning with password cracking to sweep up digital breadcrumbs. (A 2012 DOJ warrant gives a bit more insight into the possible charges, which include espionage, CFAA violations, and "conversion" of stolen documents.)
But, again, this is nothing out of the ordinary for journalists who publish leaked documents. As Nakashima points out, helping sources erase their digital footprints is just something good journalists do. Prosecuting Assange for these efforts would set a terrible precedent.
[J]ournalists routinely employ methods — or tell sources to employ methods — that will help them avoid being identified. Justice Department officials in the previous administration believed that prosecuting Assange or other members of WikiLeaks could open the door to prosecuting news organizations and journalists who published classified information, and so they opted instead to target people, such as Manning, who had clearances to access such information and gave it to reporters.
Obama may have gone after a bunch of whistleblowers, but he was unwilling to cross the First Amendment line by punishing those who published leaked documents. Apparently, Trump and his DOJ have no such qualms.
Prosecutors have struggled with whether the First Amendment precluded the prosecution of Assange, but now believe they have found a way to move forward.
And they may have, without amending the First Amendment. But it will take a whole lot of cooperation to bring Assange in. The Ecuadorian embassy has managed to hold off Sweden for years and the country's government isn't exactly best friends with the US nor is it exactly respectful of US law.
Assange isn't a US citizen, so he's not automatically guaranteed First Amendment protections, even if the distribution of leaked documents is very much a journalistic enterprise. The US government doesn't automatically refuse to extend constitutional protections to foreign citizens, but it might be able to pick and choose which of those it wants to extend to Assange (though if he's charged in the US, he does get the benefit of all Constitutional protections). Even if the current DOJ can find a lawful way to prosecute Assange for still-unnamed charges related to leaked documents, this is an extremely dangerous direction for the federal government to be moving in.
This unofficial announcement by the DOJ is an implicit threat to journalists everywhere. You may hate Assange and/or Wikileaks, but it may be your favorite leak-friendly news sources facing charges next. Distinguishing your favorite source from Wikileaks is not nearly as easy as you might think.
The current administration is back to threatening free speech. On his way to being elected, Trump's passion for bogus defamation suits led him to declare he would "open up" libel laws to make it easier for him to sue people for saying things he didn't like.
WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service. It has encouraged its followers to find jobs at CIA in order to obtain intelligence. It directed Chelsea Manning in her theft of specific secret information. And it overwhelmingly focuses on the United States, while seeking support from anti-democratic countries and organizations.
It is time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is – a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia. In January of this year, our Intelligence Community determined that Russian military intelligence—the GRU—had used WikiLeaks to release data of US victims that the GRU had obtained through cyber operations against the Democratic National Committee. And the report also found that Russia’s primary propaganda outlet, RT, has actively collaborated with WikiLeaks.
This is an interesting change of heart for Pompeo. Last year, when he was running for re-election in Kansas, he seemed pleased with Wikileaks and its ability to obtain damning documents.
For posterity. Because Pompeo's hypocrisy today really undermined whatever he tried to achieve. pic.twitter.com/12qgpQlD4A
If you can't read/see the embedded, since-deleted tweet by Pompeo, it reads:
Need further proof the fix was in from Pres. Obama on down? BUSTED: 19,252 Emails from DNC leaked by Wikileaks.
So, Wikileaks is a non-hostile intelligence service when it serves Pompeo's ends, but not so much when it puts CIA hacking tools on public display. This was only part of Pompeo's rant, though. Once he was through being hypocritical, he went after the First Amendment. Here's Glenn Greenwald's take on Pompeo's comments:
Trump’s CIA Director stood up in public and explicitly threatened to target free speech rights and press freedoms, and it was almost impossible to find even a single U.S. mainstream journalist expressing objections or alarm, because the targets Pompeo chose in this instance are ones they dislike – much the way that many are willing to overlook or even sanction free speech repression if the targeted ideas or speakers are sufficiently unpopular.
Decreeing (with no evidence) that WikiLeaks is “a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia” a belief that has become gospel in establishment Democratic Party circles – Pompeo proclaimed that “we have to recognize that we can no longer allow Assange and his colleagues the latitude to use free speech values against us.” He also argued that while WikiLeaks “pretended that America’s First Amendment freedoms shield them from justice,” but: “they may have believed that, but they are wrong.”
He then issued this remarkable threat: “To give them the space to crush us with misappropriated secrets is a perversion of what our great Constitution stands for. It ends now.” At no point did Pompeo specify what steps the CIA intended to take to ensure that the “space” to publish secrets “ends now.”
Pompeo is now willing to go after publishers of secrets. No doubt he intends to go after whistleblowers and leakers as well, but he has publicly stated a desire to attack the messengers. Making this worse is Pompeo's hypocrisy, which means any targeting of publishers he attempts to engage in will be based on the content of the publications. Stuff he doesn't like will be targeted. Everything else will remain unaffected.
Of course, Pompeo's in the wrong branch of government to be engaging in First Amendment issues. The CIA is a foreign-facing intelligence agency. It should have nearly nothing to do with domestic whistleblower/leaker incidents, unless it happens to be CIA documents that are released. Even then, his agency won't be able to do anything more than an internal investigation. It's not a law enforcement agency, nor is it supposed to be engaged in domestic surveillance.
But Pompeo is the president's pick. He may think he's only speaking for himself and his agency, but his words echo the president's antipathy towards speech he doesn't like. And he has his president's hypocrisy: someone who loves Wikileaks when it's publishing documents that hurt the other team, but not so much when the leaks implicate people, parties, and agencies they hold dear.
As you've probably heard by now, this morning Wikileaks started releasing a new cache of information regarding CIA hacking tools. This is interesting on a variety of levels, but many of the reports focus on the claims that encrypted chat apps like Signal, Whatsapp and Telegram may be compromised. See the top two links in this screenshot:
Wikileaks itself may have contributed to this view with the following paragraph in its release:
These techniques permit the CIA to bypass the encryption of WhatsApp, Signal, Telegram, Wiebo, Confide and Cloackman by hacking the "smart" phones that they run on and collecting audio and message traffic before encryption is applied.
But the details don't seem to show that those apps are compromised, so much as that Android and iOS devices are compromised. It's always been true that if someone can get into your phone, the encryption scheme you use doesn't matter, because they can just pull keystrokes or grab data before you encrypt it -- in the same way that someone looking over your shoulder can read your messages as well. That's not a fault of the encryption or the app, but of the environment in which you're using the app itself.
And that should really be the bigger concern here. Over the years, nearly all of the focus on hacking mobile phones has been on the NSA and its capabilities, rather than the CIA. But it's now clear that the CIA has its own operations, akin to the NSA's hacking operations (kinda makes you wonder why we need that overlap). Except that the CIA's hacking team seems almost entirely unconcerned with following the federal government's rules on letting private companies know about vulnerabilities they've discovered.
Remember, the Obama White House put in place what it called a Vulnerabilities Equities Program in which the intelligence community is supposed to default to letting private companies know about vulnerabilities. And, yes, this was always something of a joke as there was a giant loophole involving "except for a clear national security or law enforcement need" that the NSA basically used to withhold vulnerabilities all the time. Still, at least the NSA appeared to get around to revealing some vulnerabilities eventually (probably once they were no longer useful).
Here, however, it looks like the CIA was hoarding some really serious vulnerabilities with wild abandon. In a chart released by Wikileaks you see that the CIA is getting these vulnerabilities from a variety of sources. Some it's finding itself, some it's purchasing, and some are shared via other agencies, such as the NSA or the UK's GCHQ. As Ed Snowden notes, there is now clear evidence (which many suspected, but which had not been proven) that the US government was secretly paying to keep US software unsafe and vulnerable. That's really dangerous. It's putting basically everyone in much more serious danger, just so the CIA, NSA and others can get in when they want to:
The CIA reports show the USG developing vulnerabilities in US products, then intentionally keeping the holes open. Reckless beyond words.
This is why the whole conversation about mandating backdoors and "going dark" was so dangerous in the first place. Those were plans to force even more of these vulnerabilities into the wild, just for the very very rare cases where they were needed by law enforcement or intelligence.
At a time when the President is suddenly acting as if he's concerned about domestic surveillance (at least of himself), perhaps now would be a good time to crack down on this kind of stuff. I'm not holding my breath -- but, for now, we're getting a lot more insight into the CIA's electronic surveillance methods, and it sounds like there's more to come.
Well, here's a surprise. President Obama has just commuted the bulk of Chelsea Manning's sentence, meaning she will be freed this May, rather than having to spend another three decades in jail. Manning, of course, was sent to prison for sharing a large chunk of US diplomatic cables with Wikileaks. Manning was sentenced to 35 years in prison nearly four years ago (with credit for the 3.5 years she'd already been held, often in solitary confinement). Many people were already outraged at the sentence, especially given that there was no evidence of any actual harm from the leaks.
There were two big campaigns going on over the past few months -- one to pardon Ed Snowden, and another to commute Manning's sentence. President Obama had already made it fairly clear that he had no interest in pardoning Snowden based on the totally false claim that he could not pardon Snowden prior to Snowden being convicted. In the past few weeks, however, there were at least a few hints and rumors that Obama was seriously considering commuting Manning's sentence, and that led to even more focus on the campaign. Ed Snowden himself also advocated for Manning, even ahead of his own case:
Mr. President, if you grant only one act of clemency as you exit the White House, please: free Chelsea Manning. You alone can save her life.
And yes, commuting the sentence (which shortens the sentence, but is not a full pardon...) is a form of clemency. So now there's a separate question to ask: will Assange agree to be extradited to the US (or will he just come here voluntarily?). Perhaps after Trump takes over later this week, that won't be such a huge concern, since Trump has magically morphed into a huge Wikileaks/Assange supporter.
Unfortunately, though, it does appear that the likelihood of a Snowden pardon is also almost nil. In discussing today's commutation of Manning's sentence, White House spokesperson Josh Earnest basically argued that what Snowden did was much worse than Manning, because he "fled":
"Chelsea Manning is somebody who went through the military criminal justice process, was exposed to due process, was found guilty, was sentenced for her crimes, and she acknowledged wrongdoing," he said. "Mr. Snowden fled into the arms of an adversary, and has sought refuge in a country that most recently made a concerted effort to undermine confidence in our democracy."
He also noted that while the documents Ms. Manning provided to WikiLeaks were "damaging to national security," the ones Mr. Snowden disclosed were "far more serious and far more dangerous." (None of the documents Ms. Manning disclosed were classified above the merely “secret” level.)
While I agree that there was a difference in the types of documents revealed, one might also make the argument that Snowden's leaks revealed much more serious problems and the impact of his leaks were much more important in revealing to the American public abuses by our own government. Separately, the whole "fled into the arms of adversary" thing is silly as well. As has been explained multiple times, Snowden ended up in Russia after the US pulled his passport while he was traveling. And, at the same time, a big part of the reason Snowden left the US was the unfortunate treatment of Manning by the military judicial process. Snowden properly surmised that he would not be treated fairly. And apparently that continues to this day.
Either way, it's good that Manning's sentence has been commuted. It's been clear from many reports that Manning was unlikely to survive the full sentence given to her, and she's been treated horribly in prison as well. It's still too bad that President Obama is unwilling to also pardon Snowden.
While many support the idea of Wikileaks, many now worry that the organization's supposed goal of total transparency often plays second fiddle to Julian Assange's ego and the group's often inconsistent behavior. But whatever you think of Assange as a human being, it's important to remember that the group wouldn't be necessary if the established media actually did its job. Groups like Wikileaks are just symptoms of a broader disease: the larger media's shift to banal infotainment, and the failure of these giant media conglomerates to hold companies and governments accountable to the truth.
That said, it's becoming downright comedic to watch Assange, Wikileaks and whistleblowers become increasingly vilified or deified -- depending entirely on what's being said, who it's being said about, or what color-coded partisan jumpsuit you're wearing.
For example, Assange was a hero to Democrats after exposing government misdeeds during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, but was demonized incessantly in the wake of the DNC hack (to the point where the actual data revealed was thoroughly ignored). Similarly, Assange was derided by Republicans as the very worst sort of scoundrel for the better part of the last decade, a position that has, well, softened in the wake of the Clinton campaign-crippling DNC hack. After all, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, for now, right?
In fact Assange has bizarrely become a temporary folk hero to many of the same folks that wanted his head on a pike just a few months ago. Sarah Palin, for example, in 2010 got very close to advocating that Assange be hunted down and killed, likening him to an "anti-American operative with blood on his hands." That position was forged, in part, after Wikileaks leaked Palin's Yahoo e-mails back in 2008 after a hacker gained access to the Alaskan government documents Palin had been storing on a private server.
This week, however, Palin took to Twitter and Facebook to lavish praise on Assange after the Wikileaks founder was interviewed on Fox News, an outlet that has also, on occasion, advocated that Assange be put to death. Apparently, that's all water under the bridge now:
To Julian Assange: I apologize.
Please watch Sean Hannity's interview with Julian Assange (Wikileaks).... https://t.co/UZpt4MMX2J
Palin took things even further over on Facebook, where she not only apologized for her past comments on Assange, but actually encouraged people to go watch the "Snowden" movie:
"Exposing the truth re: the Left having been oh-so-guilty of atrocious actions and attitudes of which they've falsely accused others. The media collusion that hid what many on the Left have been supporting is shocking. This important information that finally opened people's eyes to democrat candidates and operatives would not have been exposed were it not for Julian Assange. I apologize for condemning Assange when he published my infamous (and proven noncontroversial, relatively boring) emails years ago.
ps. If you get the chance, catch the movie "Snowden." That movie and Hannity's interview tonight are quite enlightening."
For the record she didn't "condemn" Assange, she suggested he be treated like al Qaeda and Taliban leaders (read: violence). And while it's nice that Palin now sees (or pretends to see) that her past anti-whistleblower positions were violently misguided, it's unlikely that this is any kind of lasting sea change. After all, the real message being sent here is that whistleblowers and leakers are the very worst sort of villains when they're saying things we don't want to hear, but they're heroes of the highest order when they leak data that damages our enemies or props up the weekly partisan narrative du jour.
And while this positional flip flop on a certain front is incredibly entertaining in a David Lynch sort of way, transparency and truth don't work that way. While leaking organizations and whistleblowers themselves are certainly fallible, the truths they reveal are non-negotiable, and don't care about partisan patty cake. In other words, these same folks suddenly lavishing praise on whistleblowers now because it's tactically convenient, will be back arguing for assassination by drone strike the moment the next whistleblower reveals truths they'd prefer remain hidden.
Look, it's getting ridiculous that Hillary Clinton defenders keep insisting that the John Podesta emails released by Wikileaks are full of fakes and doctored content. With most other leaks, including the one of Colin Powell's emails, the victims (and, yes, they are victims) eventually admit that the leaked content is legit. Not so with the Podesta emails. But that's dumb. As Robert Graham points out, it's
totally possible to validate many of the emails. And they do validate.
Whether you like or dislike Wikileaks, whether you think Julian Assange is a wonderful or horrible person, whether you think Wikileaks is just a propaganda tool of Russia or a powerful force for transparency -- one thing you cannot say is that the organization has been caught releasing fake or doctored information. It (and Assange) do have a history of overhyping releases, or misrepresenting their significance. And Assange does seem to be pretty quick to jump on conspiracy theories that don't hold up under much basic scrutiny. But, to date, pretty much everything that Wikileaks has actually leaked has checked out as legit.
So it's been a bit bizarre watching people try to insist that the troves of John Podesta emails that Wikileaks has been releasing are somehow fake, doctored or manipulated. We recently wrote about Newsweek reporter Kurt Eichenwald going crazy insisting that he had proved that Wikileaks and the Russians teamed up to "manipulate" an email. Of course, the reality turned out to be that a young American part-time reporter for a Russian-owned news site, had simply misread a tweet and turned it into an article. No big conspiracy. No manipulation. And, certainly, none of that has anything to do with Wikileaks (amusingly, Eichenwald then deleted all his tweets claiming proof that Wikileaks was a part of this conspiracy, and apparently tried to silence the young reporter by telling him he'd try to get him a job elsewhere).
Perhaps even more ridiculous is DNC chair Donna Brazile trying to deny any information from any email released by Wikileaks, including one specific one that she sent, apparently revealing a CNN primary debate question to the Clinton campaign prior to the debate (Brazile worked as a commentator on CNN at the time). This video is absolutely cringeworthy, starting at about five and a half minutes into this video. Brazile tries to avoid answering the question about sending debate questions to the Clinton campaign, first barely feigning ignorance of the issue, and then insisting multiple times that the emails are fake/doctored/not verified, and insisting that she did not send the email in question.
Being interviewed by Megyn Kelly, here's how Brazile tries to claim that the emails are not real, but basically comes out with a word salad of nothing, rather than simply admitting that the email is legit.
MEGYN KELLY: You're accused of receiving a debate question whether a CNN town hall where they partnered with TV One that you had this question on March 12th, that verbatim, verbatim was provided by Roland Martin to CNN the next day. How did you get that question, Donna?
DONNA BRAZILE: Well, Kelly, as I play straight up and with you, I did not receive any questions from CNN.
KELLY: Where did you get it?
BRAZILE: First of all, what information are you providing to me that will allow me to see what you're talking about? Everybody's....
KELLY: You've got the Wikileaks showing you messaging the Clinton campaign with the exact wording of a question asked at the March 13th CNN TV One Townhall debate.
BRAZILE: Kelly, Kelly, Kelly. You know, as a Christian woman, I understand persecution, but I will not sit here and be persecuted. Because your information is totally false.
KELLY: I'm getting it from Podesta's email.
BRAZILE: What you're -- well, Podesta's e-mails were stolen. You're so interested and talking about stolen material, you're like a thief that wants to bring into the night the things that you found that was in the gutter. I'm not...
KELLY: Donna. CNN's Jake Tapper came out and said this was unethical. "Someone was unethically helping the Clinton campaign." He said "I love Donna Brazile, but this is very, very upsetting. My understanding is that the email..."
BRAZILE: I love CNN
KELLY: This is Jake Tapper: 'My understanding is that the e-mails came from Roland Martin or someone around Roland Martin." He said "this is very upsetting and troubling." That's your own colleague at CNN. It's not Megyn Kelly. Who gave you that question?
BRAZILE: Megyn, once again, I said it and I said it on the record and I'll say it on the record and I'll keep saying it on the record. I am not going to try to validate falsified information. I have my documents. I have my files. Thank God I have not had my personal e-mails ripped off from me and stolen and given to some criminals to come back altered. I have my records and files. And as i said repeatedly, CNN, in the 14 years I was associated with CNN, I've never received anything. If I had a blank piece of paper, that would basically be the end of this conversation. I never get documents from CNN. Period.
KELLY (eye roll): Your email to the Clinton campaign said 'sometimes I get the questions in advance.'
BRAZILE: Uh, ma'am. Y'know. You know what...
KELLY: And CNN is saying Roland Martin gave them to you. Or someone at TV One. And they were provided to Hillary before that town hall.
BRAZILE: Well anybody who knows me... and... and... and there are a number of your colleagues as well. They know me very well. I know how I play it. I know what I do before every debate. I know what I do before every show -- even this show. I do my homework. I communicate. I talk.
KELLY: I understand.
BRAZILE: But I just, once again, let you know that... as far as I know that... that... that CNN has never provided me with questions. Absolutely. Ever. Nada. Sorry.
KELLY: Well, when you said "from time to time I get the questions in advance," what were you referring to? Because in that email you offered the exact question that one of the moderators, Roland Martin, then proposed the next day.
BRAZILE: So. So. My, my, my reference back to you, ma'am, with all respect -- and I respect you greatly --
KELLY: And I respect you too.
BRAZILE: The... the... the validity of those emails -- if I can only tell you one things, because you know, this whole episode is under criminal investigation -- but I can just tell you one thing: a lot of those emails, I would not give them the time of the day. I've seen so many doctored emails. I've seen things that come from me at two in the morning, that I don't even send. There are several email addresses that I once used, and I'm so sorry that we... these have not been verified. This is... nobody will. This is...
KELLY: I got it.
BRAZILE: This is under investigation. And let me just tell you something. If there's anything that I have, I will share. I don't have an agenda to smear anybody...
KELLY: Alright. I've got to run because we have another guest waiting...
Okay, so, here's the problem. She did send the email. And it's verified. Graham proves it in his post. The trick is DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) signatures. DKIM was a system set up a while back to try to fight spam by cryptographically proving that the account that says it sent the mail actually sent the email in question. Not all email systems use DKIM, but hillaryclinton.com does use it, which is great for transparency, but bad for Donna Brazile.
Graham looked up that email in particular and found that it validates, using a Thunderbird add-on to check these things:
Downloading the raw email from WikiLeaks and opening in Thunderbird, with the addon, I get the following verification that the email is valid. Specifically, it validates that the HillaryClinton.com sent precisely this content, with this subject, on that date.
Let's see what happens when somebody tries to doctor the email. In the following, I added "MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN" to the top of the email.
As you can see, we've proven that DKIM will indeed detect if anybody has "doctored" or "falsified" this email.
Graham also offered one whole bitcoin to anyone who can forge an email that still validates correctly under this method to show his confidence that the emails are verified as actually sent as is, despite Brazile's wacky performance.
Of course, the Clinton campaign keeps insisting that the emails are doctored, but fails to show any proof. Here's the campaign's Chief Strategist, Joel Benenson, saying many are not authentic:
BENENSON: Well, first of all, I'll tell you something, I haven't spent a lot of time reading through WikiLeaks e-mails.
But I will tell you this, what we know is that many are not authentic. We know that this is a hack, 17 of Russians -- no, because these e-mails, we have no idea whether they are authentic or not or whether they've been tampered with once the Russians, which 17 American intelligence agencies say are responsible for these hackings, have been manipulated. I have seen things -- I'm not going to go into details --
(CROSSTALK)
STEPHANOPOULOS: But you're not suggesting that those are --
BENENSON: They may well be. I don't know. I know I've seen things that aren't authentic, that we know aren't authentic. And it's not surprising. What's ridiculous about this whole conversation is that 17 intelligence agencies have said the Russians are responsible for this. Donald Trump refuses to accept it, refuses to condemn them.
Benenson is full of shit. Again, whether or not you like or dislike Wikileaks, or question Assange's motives, there's a simple fact here: the documents it's released have not been shown to be false, faked, doctored or inauthentic at all. And it's possible to verify many of them, and some have even written scripts to verify them in bulk.
The Clinton campaign, as it so often does, is making things worse for itself by being stupid. It's trying to cover up legitimate information, and the coverup always comes across worse than the original actions. Just admit that these emails are legit and move on. Lying about it is not a good look, even if that's just the way things go these days in politics.
