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from the They-wouldn't-do-THAT...-would-they? dept.
CIA developed plans to kidnap Julian Assange, per report
The Trump administration's CIA actively developed plans to kidnap or assassinate Wikileaks founder Julian Assange during his seclusion in London's Ecuadorian embassy, according to a detailed new report from Yahoo News. Scenarios included abducting Assange from the embassy, intercepting a Russian effort to extract him, or an outright assassination attempt. While none of the operations were ever approved, they paint an alarming portrait of intelligence agencies' ongoing obsession with Wikileaks and its controversial founder.
As sources, Yahoo cites conversations with more than 30 former US officials. Among those, eight provided details on plans to kidnap Assange.
The report mostly details operations developed during the Trump administration, which placed fewer restraints on the CIA and was less troubled by the implications of launching direct operations against a figure many saw as a journalist. The issue became particularly heated in March of 2017, when Wikileaks published a catalog of hacking tools developed by the CIA. After that, "WikiLeaks was a complete obsession of Pompeo's," a source told Yahoo.
Also at The Guardian and The Hill.
Previously: Wikileaks and CIA Hacking Tools -- Security Firms Assess Impact as Tech Companies Offered Access
(Score: 5, Insightful) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday September 28 2021, @09:24PM (18 children)
Big shocker, all the Assange stuff turns out to be projection...
Remember when the DOJ under Obama concluded that he was protected by the First Amendment?
Pepperidge Farm remembers. [theintercept.com]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday September 28 2021, @09:37PM (6 children)
I remember "Can't we just drone him?"
Of course, Snopes and all the rest of the Dem-aligned "fact checkers" deny it ever happened.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 28 2021, @10:20PM (4 children)
Nice whataboutism, one administration stays in the law while the other attempts to go all fascist, and your first inclination is to circle the wagons and protect Derr Trumpfler.
You are a sad sad sad sad sad traitorous US citizen.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 28 2021, @10:56PM (1 child)
You ain't especially bright, are you Boyo? There was no Hillary administration. People smarter than you voted Trump in to keep her out.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 28 2021, @11:24PM
And still smarter people refused to vote for either turd.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Mykl on Tuesday September 28 2021, @11:18PM
I don't think it's whataboutism in this case. We had a Secretary of State who was actively exploring options to drone him, then the next administration giving the CIA the latitude to come up with kill plans. It's significant that these two events covered the two major parties (well, sort of - I think Trump is really his own party).
Senior representatives from "both sides" wanted to kill him. Fortunately, cooler heads were able to prevail in both cases and Assange is still alive.
(Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 29 2021, @05:31PM
If you think the presidents control the intelligence apparatus you are living in a dream world. The intel and military are controlled by The International Jew (and their shabbos goy pals).
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Tork on Tuesday September 28 2021, @10:21PM
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/julian-assange-drone-strike/ [snopes.com].
Snopes doesn't deny it, just says says "unproven" with some specifics of the context and how they arrived there. In short there is an email exchange that's about the topic at hand but is missing the 'drone' quip. In other words, she didn't say it on the record... which we already knew because there's not a damn thing preventing evidence of that from being posted ANYWHERE on the internet. However...
That's a wimpy ass "denial" on both Snopes' AND Clinton's part if you ask me. Hell I did a better job supporting your point WITH Snopes than you did by automatically ignoring it. Heh.
Slashdolt Logic: "25 year old jokes about sharks and lasers are +5, Funny." 💩
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Captival on Tuesday September 28 2021, @09:40PM (1 child)
Then surely the Obama Administration 2.0 that's in charge now will rush to release him then, right? Any second now.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday September 28 2021, @09:59PM
Just as soon as releasing him will get them more political capital than leaving his status at status quo.
Unfortunately, most people react poorly to change, so a change in status for Assenage will upset more people than it will please - so like most things, the politicians will ignore it.
As for the CIA making plans to kill him, newsflash: that's their job, to make these kinds of plans, to present possible scenarios, even if the scenarios are unlikely to be executed the options need to be planned out, analyzed, weighed and then someone like W: the deciderer, will decide which way to go - hopefully based on the best information and projections of the outcome.
The military has plans for how to blow up everything from the Kremlin to obscure towns all over the globe, what resources and time it will take to gain control of various targets, cities, etc. that's their job too.
Україна досі не є частиною Росії Слава Україні🌻 https://news.stanford.edu/2023/02/17/will-russia-ukraine-war-end
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Wednesday September 29 2021, @02:42AM (5 children)
The fact is that the US's efforts to imprison, torture, or murder Julian Assange have been bipartisan for a long time. When he released the famous "Collateral Murder" video, everybody in the US government who was supporting the Iraq War (i.e. almost everybody but a few fringe figures like Ron Paul and Dennis Kucinich) wanted to get rid of him, and the then-independent senator Joe Lieberman made a bunch of phone calls to the credit card companies to stop processing financial donations to Wikileaks. A few years later, somebody just happened to come forward with sexual assault charges in Sweden, and the Swedes insisted he had to be in physical custody in Sweden and wouldn't agree to not turn him over to the US government. And about a decade later, when the DNC emails were released, that ended his chances of anything resembling fair treatment if he ever ended up in US hands, as I'm sure he well knows.
A lot of projection has been going on in the US with regards to this case, including assuming that whatever party you normally support or politicians you voted in favor of had nothing to do with it. They would rather shut him up than, y'know, stop doing the sorts of things that would be worth leaking.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 5, Informative) by canopic jug on Wednesday September 29 2021, @06:47AM (1 child)
Close. Yes, he was wanted for questioning -- after the prosecutor was replaced and the new prosecutor reopened the case. And, yes, they refused to follow protocol and visit him or interview him via phone. Despite that, no, there were no charges against him in Sweden, ever, at any point. Tragically, that disinformation has been repeated so often that people start to accept that lie as fact.
Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday September 29 2021, @03:14PM
Thank you for that correction: Yes, it wasn't charges, it was an accusation that could have led to charges sometime down the road. The important thing was, they wanted the man in jail, largely for the contents of what he was reporting, never mind the First Amendment or EU Human Rights Conventions.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday September 29 2021, @01:57PM (2 children)
Yes, and this is the kind of thing that has gotten many talking about the "Deep State," that which transcends and controls both political parties in the US. It's the military industrial complex that wants to kill Assange, and the politicians are just along for the ride.
People across the political spectrum see the same force at work. They have different names for it, and have even been conditioned tribally to be triggered by the names the other tribe uses, but they're all talking about the same force. It's a bit like Christians scoffing at the term "Allah" while the Muslims scoff at "God," even though they're all talking about the same deity.
I hope that one day, after the Deep State (or whatever term you prefer) has been smashed, we can build a monument somewhere with Assange, Snowden, and possibly Binney on it to remind future generations. They are heroes of our age.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30 2021, @06:37PM (1 child)
There's definitely a Deep State and its reach is not just the USA. To me this was one of the incidents that can help give others an inkling of how deep and wide at minimum it is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evo_Morales_grounding_incident [wikipedia.org]
This was a really big incident. They forced a president's plane down and for what? They certainly don't bother doing such stuff for the many murderers and child rapists around.
So why did they go that far?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30 2021, @06:40PM
Compare and contrast with: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/airlines-shun-belarus-opposition-leader-says-journalist-tortured-2021-05-25/ [reuters.com]
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Wednesday September 29 2021, @07:39AM (2 children)
No, "all the Assange stuff" is not projection. There has been a decade-long plot to extradite the guy which is still ongoing. An old statement from the DOJ saying they don't feel like bringing whatever bs charges at that particular moment is meaningless when Assange was already trapped in the embassy and nobody had called off the attack dogs then or since. The US could have directed Sweden and the UK to call it off. They didn't.
BTW, this story seems to contradict the long running fake news [theatlantic.com] that Assange, Trump, and Russia were all in league together, doesn't it?
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday September 29 2021, @04:10PM (1 child)
Nope. The first administration to attempt extradition was Trump's.
(Score: 3, Touché) by shortscreen on Wednesday September 29 2021, @06:29PM
They started the legal process. The extralegal process was already underway.