The Lies Spies Tell About Assange by
John Kiriakou for Consortium NewsOn more than one occasion… completely unfounded statements about Julian Assange, only to then have the neoliberal Washington swells nod in agreement, despite having literally no evidence to back up his assertions. He said, choosing his language carefully, for example, that “When I look at anything Julian Assange has done over the years, whatever it is has the hallmarks of a Russian intelligence operation.
Notice the language there. He didn’t say that Julian was a Russian agent. He didn’t say that WikiLeaks was working for or on behalf of the Russians. He said that it all had the hallmarks of something that Russian intelligence would do.
The language is meant, of course, to bring the DNC/MSNBC crowd over to his point of view. And judging by the reception he got, he was mostly successful.
[These] disingenuous and damaging statements reminded me very much of an open letter published in October 2019 and signed by more than 50 retired senior C.I.A. and other Intelligence Community officials, saying that the Hunter Biden laptop “had all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”They ignored the fact that Hunter Biden said that it was his laptop. These esteemed intelligence professionals offered no proof of an intelligence operation, of course, even though most, if not all, currently maintain their security clearances.
It wasn’t flunkies who signed this letter. It was otherwise serious people, including National Press Club conference host Hayden; former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper; former Secretary of Defense and C.I.A. Director Leon Panetta (himself a well-documented leaker); torture-supporter and former C.I.A. Director John Brennan; torture apologist and former Acting C.I.A. Director Mike Morrell; among others.
They offered no proof of any ties between the Hunter Biden laptop and Russia, between Trump’s election as president in 2016 (which they went on about at length) and Russia, or between WikiLeaks and Russia.
We’re just supposed to take their word for it because they’re important, smart and well-placed. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard the likes of these signatories say, when somebody disagrees with them, “Well, if you could only see the information that I see…,” or “If you had access to the information that I have access to … .”
It’s time to call a spade a spade. They’re lying. And they want us to believe their lies.
J Edgar Hoover’s Evil Brainchild by
John Kiriakou for Consortium NewsCOINTELPRO, an abbreviation for Counter-Intelligence Program, was the illegal brainchild of the F.B.I.’s first and longest-serving director, J. Edgar Hoover, whose obsession with communism and “subversion” allowed him to justify violating the civil rights and civil liberties of millions of Americans.
Under COINTELPRO, which Hoover initiated in 1956, the F.B.I. surveilled, infiltrated, discredited, disrupted, burglarized and harassed American citizens and organizations as diverse as the Communist Party USA, anti-Vietnam War protestors, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., the Black Panther Party, the Nation of Islam, the American Indian Movement, environmentalists, animal rights organizations, Puerto Rican nationalists and even the National Lawyers’ Guild.
The program continued until 1971, when a group of progressive activists broke into an F.B.I. field office in Media, Pennsylvania, stole documents related to COINTELPRO, and sent them to the press. Nobody in the F.B.I. was ever punished for the program’s many illegalities, but the “burglars” who revealed the program were hunted for decades. None were ever caught.
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