Yahoo! News just published an in-depth report: “Kidnapping, assassination and a London shoot-out: Inside the CIA’s secret war plans against WikiLeaks.”
KEVIN GOSZTOLA, kevin@
Managing editor of Shadowproof, Gosztola has extensively covered legal proceedings Against WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange. He said today: “What the Yahoo! News report confirms is that the CIA’s plot to destroy WikiLeaks went up to the highest levels. After the ‘Vault 7’ materials were published, CIA director Mike Pompeo was obsessed with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. He had the CIA label WikiLeaks as a ‘hostile entity.’ He proposed kidnapping Assange. He considered putting Assange on a rendition flight to the United States. And CIA officials even sketched out plans for assassinating a publisher.
“According to the report from Yahoo! News, the Justice Department was fearful of the CIA’s plans to kidnap or even kill WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. But rather than go to Congress or leak certain details to the press, the Justice Department decided it was best to indict Assange so the CIA would no longer be able to mount aggressive operations in the shadows. They ignored the conclusions of lawyers under Attorney General Eric Holder that there was a ‘New York Times problem’ and Assange could not be prosecuted without exposing editors of newspapers that published WikiLeaks documents to potential charges. It is as perverse as anything CIA director Mike Pompeo wanted agents to do to Assange.
“There were no criminal prosecutions for anyone in the CIA when they operated a torture program. The White House under President Barack Obama fully embraced a drone program that involved targeted assassinations. And now we learn the CIA has appointed itself the authority to redefine journalists as ‘information brokers’ and media organizations as ‘hostile entities’ to help them justify offensive operations intended to disrupt journalism. This is exactly why so many advocates did not think it was acceptable to move forward and not look backward.”
