Canadian government lawyers recently invited US whistleblower Chelsea Manning to travel to a hearing in Montreal so that border agents could then physically remove her from the country.

The bizarre request, which was eventually denied by an adjudicator, was made ahead of an immigration hearing set to begin on Thursday for Manning, whose previous attempts to enter Canada have been denied.

Manning, a former US intelligence analyst who leaked thousands of sensitive government documents and diplomatic cables about the American wars in Afghanistan and Iraq to WikiLeaks, was sentenced to 35 years in prison in 2013.

Her sentence was commuted in 2017, but she was recently denied entry into Canada because of her conviction.

Border officials can deem persons ineligible for entry into Canada if they have been convicted of crimes abroad that would have led to a jail sentence in Canada of 10 years or more.

Last week, lawyers for the government asked that she travel to the country so that if the government won its case, she could be removed. Mannings lawyers had said she would attend the hearing virtually, from her home in the United States.

The purpose of a removal order is to compel an individual who is found to be inadmissible to leave Canada. Should the [Immigration Review Board] issue a removal order against an individual who does not attend their hearing from a location in Canada, the government told the IRB in documents obtained by the National Post, arguing it would be impractical for CBSA to enforce the order.

But that line of reasoning made little sense to the IRB adjudicator Marisa Musto, who dismissed the governments motion on Monday.

If she were physically in Canada when the order was made, the requirement would be that she leave Canada. Given that she is already outside Canada, a fact which is not in question, it can be said that the objective of [immigration laws] would, de facto, be fulfilled, Musto said in her ruling, calling the governments request confounding.

Mannings lawyers have fiercely contested the ban on her entering Canada, arguing that an attempt by the countrys federal government to block one of the most well-known whistleblowers in modern history from entering the country would offend constitutional and press freedoms.

The hearing is expected to last two days, with a judgment issued in the coming weeks.

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Canada invited Chelsea Manning to country just so she could be thrown out - The Guardian

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The IRB adjudicator dismissed the governments motion, saying the intent of Parliament was simply for people who aren't allowed to be in Canada to not be here

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The government of Canada asked U.S. whistleblower Chelsea Manning to travel to Canada so border agents would be able to physically kick her out of Canada.

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The odd request was made by government lawyers last week in anticipation of an immigration hearing scheduled to begin Thursday for the former U.S. soldier who leaked thousands of U.S. documents that changed the publics view of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The hearing on whether Manning is eligible to visit Canada is to be held by video conference.

Lawyers on behalf of the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness asked the Immigration and Refugee Board (IRB) to postpone the hearing until Manning is in Canada for it, rather than participating over a video link from her home in the United States.

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The government said that if she wasnt physically in the country, Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) wouldnt be able to remove her, if the government wins its case.

The purpose of a removal order is to compel an individual who is found to be inadmissible to leave Canada. Should the (IRB) issue a removal order against an individual who does not attend their hearing from a location in Canada, the government told the IRB in written argument, it would be impractical for CBSA to enforce the order.

Mannings lawyers objected to the request.

In a decision Monday, IRB adjudicator Marisa Musto dismissed the governments motion, saying the intent of Parliament was simply for people who arent allowed to be in Canada to not be here.

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If Manning is found to be inadmissible after the hearing, the impact on Manning would be the same wherever in the world she was, Musto said.

If she were physically in Canada when the order was made, the requirement would be that she leave Canada. Given that she is already outside Canada, a fact which is not in question, it can be said that the objective of (immigration laws) would, de facto, be fulfilled, Musto said in her ruling.

Admissibility proceedings not only have the effect of removing inadmissible persons from Canadian territory but also to preclude them from entering.

Musto said there had already been plenty of admissibility hearings for people outside of Canada that the government did not object to.

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This inconsistency in the Ministers position is confounding.

Manning, a 33-year-old American citizen, was a military intelligence analyst deployed to Iraq in 2009 who became one of the best-known American whistleblowers after leaking a vast trove of documents through Wikileaks to major news organizations around the world.

The documents revealed undeclared civilian deaths, complicity in torture, significant human rights abuses and evidence contradicting the U.S. governments public versions of its wartime actions.

Manning was arrested and convicted under the U.S. Espionage Act and Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and sentenced to 35 years in prison, the longest sentence ever issued in the United States for leaking.

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In 2017, after seven years in prison, Mannings sentence was commuted by U.S. President Barack Obama.

Soon after her release, Manning tried to come to Canada but was stopped at the border. She was considered inadmissible by CBSA because she has been convicted of a serious criminal offence outside Canada.

A hearing on her admissibility is scheduled for two days, but a decision is not expected to be released immediately afterwards. Written submissions are expected from both Manning and the government following oral arguments.

On Sept. 17, Manning said she tested positive for COVID-19 despite being fully vaccinated.

I will be quarantined for the remainder of the month my symptoms are very mild thanks to being fully vaxxed in April, she said on Twitter.

On Oct. 1, Manning tweeted: off quarantine and feeling good.

Email: ahumphreys@postmedia.com | Twitter: AD_Humphreys

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Ottawa wanted U.S. whistleblower Chelsea Manning to come to Canada so she could be kicked out in person - National Post

The weekend of October 23-25, in anticipation of a UK court convening to re-consider a previous lower court decision to refuse Julian Assanges extradition to the U.S., Assange supporters will be mobilizing across the U.S. and worldwide demanding:Free Julian Assange! Drop the Charges! No to Extradition! Free Speech! Free Press! Free Journalists! No to Endless U.S. Wars! Seeassangedefense.orgfor details.

Of the estimated 1.4 million top security clearance U.S. personnel employed by one or another of the governments 18 braches of its $81 billion annually budgeted U.S. Intelligence Community, perhaps one or two individuals each year are designated as whistleblowers and persecuted to the high heavens. These include heroes like Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning today and Daniel Ellsberg, the renowned Vietnam-era Pentagon Papers defendant of yesteryear, whose revelations educated millions about the U.S. horrors committed against the Vietnamese people. Four million Vietnamese were murdered in this ten-year genocide, begun with the CIAs lie that a U.S. destroyer was attacked in Vietnams Tonkin Bay by the equivalent of a Vietnamese sampan or small fishing boat.

Another handful of heroes, likeWikiLeaksfounder and journalist/publisher Julian Assange, are similarly persecuted when they exercise their right to publish what the whistleblowers have revealed about U.S. war crimes around the world. In addition to the 1.4 million top secret U.S. government spies, another 4.25 million Intelligence Community employees have some type of special clearance but dont necessarily work in secure and undisclosed locations. Thats a total approaching some six million people in the U.S. spy business, not to mention the tiny proportion in the business of directly ordering and planning assassinations, kidnappings, death squad wars, covert and overt wars, drone wars, regime change military coups, cyber wars, media disinformation wars, industrial spying wars and all the rest.

Jim Laffertys October 5Los Angeles Progressivearticle entitled, With Military Actions in 159 Countries, America is Now the Worlds Police Force, adds yet another dimension to the U.S. national and international war crimes horrors. (Seesocialistaction.org). Lafferty is the recently retired 30+ year Los Angeles director of the National Lawyers Guild, a present board member of the LA area ACLU and a founder/steering committee member ofAssangedefense.org.

The recent article byYahoo Newsjournalists,Zach Dorfman,Sean D. NaylorandMichael Isikoffentitled, Kidnapping, Assassination and a London Shoot-Out: Inside the CIAs Secret War Plans AgainstWikiLeaks similarly reveals the deadly deeds routinely practiced in the U.S. spy system. (See:Inside the CIAs secret war plans against WikiLeaks)

The governments six million usually well-paid spies, along with its annual $1 trillion war budget including the CIAs estimated secret, or non-reported expenditures and its admitted cyber surveillance of literally everyone in the U.S. as Edward Snowden definitively revealed are justified in the name of defending U.S. national security interests. Citing the sanctity of these interests U.S. courts imprison with impunity and as a warning to all no matter how monstrous the governments crimes all truthtellers. In the case of Julian Assange CIA spies and government officials contemplated assassination but settled for bringing charges that would incarcerate him for 175 years.

U.S. courts imprison with impunity and as a warning to all no matter how monstrous the governments crimes all truthtellers.

Whistleblowers like Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Daniel Ellsberg are a rare breed indeed. They are among a precious few who appear, perhaps once in every generation, to reveal in microcosm, the abject horror of the daily functioning of the U.S. national security state. President Obama broke all records in prosecuting whistleblowers but their numbers were still limited to a handful. Fear takes a terrible toll in a society that aims at instilling conformity and obedience. Constituted to defend and advance U.S. imperialisms interests in all its national and international manifestations, the state power rarely recognizes any right to dissent to expose its war crimes, unless, that is, the dissent is backed by millions in the streets who increasingly understand that the U.S. government does not represent their interests and who set out to seriously explore political alternatives to the two-party system of rule. The ruling elite fear nothing more than organized mass movements that fight for the interests of the vast majority and are led by deeply-rooted conscious working class fighters intent on challenging the system itself.

Julian Assange, according to theYahoo Newsexpos, had been on the radar of U.S. intelligence agencies for years, but their plans for an all-out war against him were sparked byWikiLeaksongoingpublicationof extraordinarily sensitive CIA hacking tools, known collectively as Vault 7, which the agencyultimately concludedrepresented the largest data loss in CIA history.

Hacking tools refers to the CIAs capacity to use cyber war against any perceived enemy anywhere in the world. Indeed, as Edward Snowden revealed, the tools were used against enemies and allies alike, including surveillance in place against the entire U.S. population as well as heads of state like Germanys former Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The CIAs spying onWikiLeaks,according toYahoo News,aimed at sowing discord among the groups members, and stealing their electronic devices. Then President Trumps CIA Director, Mike Pompeo in 2017 had designatedWikiLeaksa non-state hostile intelligence service.

Yahoo Newsinvestigations were based on conversations with more than 30 former U.S. officials eight of whom described details of the CIAs proposals to abduct Assange. The CIAs campaign spearheaded by Pompeo bent important legal strictures, potentially jeopardize[ing] the Justice Departments work toward prosecuting Assange, and risk[ing] a damaging episode in the United Kingdom, the United States closest ally. TheYahooreporters did not generally reveal the names of their sources and took pains to add codicils that many of the internal CIA discussions were mere proposals to be considered rather than implemented.

Assanges revelations of U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, including some 250,000 U.S. diplomatic cables from U.S. embassies around the world, were particularly vexing to U.S. imperialisms hierarchy while winning wide acclaim from social justice and antiwar activists everywhere who aimed to contest the right of the U.S. imperialist behemoth to wage war against poor and oppressed people and nations.

Yahoo Newsreported that The CIA now considered people affiliated with WikiLeaks valid targets for various types of spying, including close-in technical collection such as bugs sometimes enabled by in-person espionage, and remote operations, meaning, among other things, the hacking of WikiLeaks members devices from afar.

WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service and has encouraged its followers to find jobs at the CIA in order to obtain intelligence, said Director Pompeo. Imagine that! A news agency infiltrating the CIA! In truth, isnt it the other way around? The record demonstrates that CIA operatives, as a matter of course, regularly provide stories and/or other material to the nations corporate media to promote the governments views. That was no doubt the case with regard to the 2003 Iraq War, when Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was charged in headline news reports across the U.S. with possessing weapons of mass destruction nuclear, biological and chemical weapons intended for use against the U.S. None were ever found! Years later in the run up to the 2020 elections candidate Joe Biden stated that his vote for war against Iraq was a mistake. Said Biden,I didnt believe [Hussein] had those nuclear weapons. I didnt believe he had weapons of mass destruction.

Yet Iraq was bombed to smithereens via an essentially bi-partisan vote; 1.5 million Iraqis were murdered and cities leveled withrealU.S. weapons of mass destruction and subsequently from deadly sanctions. Indeed, in most every instance when a major media outlet receives classified material from a rare whistleblower, they invariably submit this material to the government for pre-publication editing, if it is published at all.

Pompeos designation non-state hostile intelligence service allowed the CIAs work to proceed againstWikiLeaksfrom a target ofcollectionto a target ofdisruption according to theYahoo Newsreporters sources. [Emphasis added]. One might ask, operating on the nave presumption that we live in a free society with a free press with journalists free to pursue the truth about government functioning, whyanymedia,WikiLeaksincluded, should ever be anytarget.

In the case ofWikiLeaks,the core offensive counterintelligence actions considered against it included paralyzing its digital infrastructure, disrupting its communications, provoking internal disputes within the organization by planting damaging information, and stealingWikiLeaksmembers electronic devices.

Yahoo Newsadded: Agency executives requested and received sketches of plans for killing Assange and other Europe-based WikiLeaks members who had access to Vault 7 materials, said a former intelligence official. There were discussions on whether killing Assange was possible and whether it was legal, a former official said.

Yahoo Newsasked Trump directly if his government had contemplated assassinating Assange. Needless to say, Trump emphatically said No. Presidents are not in the business of publicly admitting to government atrocities! Indeed, sinceWikiLeakswas central to revealing the Democratic Partys internal emails exposing how the Hillary Clinton team manipulated the partys finances to promote her presidential campaign against Bernie Sanders, Trump is assessed by theYahoo Newsreporters as perhaps having a favorable attitude toWikiLeaks.Honor among thieves is indeed a rarity in capitalist politics.

Time and space do not allow a thorough accounting of the governments voluminous efforts, actual or contemplated, to punish Assange andWikiLeaksfor revealing the truth about the governmentsmodus operandi in the U.S. and around the world.

In truth, however, the governments assault onWikiLeaksnotwithstanding, we increasingly live in a Truman Show [Jim Carrey movie. Editor] or Potemkin Village world an Orwellian-like society saturated every minute by a kept corporate media in all its manifestations that manufactures and perpetuates the myth of an egalitarian democracy where the people rule and truth is forever prized. Tragically, the truth lies elsewhere. The U.S. is ruled by an elite few billionaires and their corporate entities whose twin parties periodically spend countless $billions in rigged elections between themselves, from which working people are excluded.

The U.S. war machine rains death and destruction everywhere its economic and political interests are challenged. Its corporate media monopoly operates to burnish or prettify and deflect capitalisms horrors, or to ignore or justify them outright.

Capitalisms endless wars are inseparable from its fossil fuel-induced climate catastrophes and its inherent racism, sexism and LGBTQI discrimination; all exist and are promoted to divide its natural working class opponents, who have zero interest in aligning with their oppressors.

Julian Assange andWikiLeaksare among the precious and special few who have exposed in incredible detail the daily operations of the imperialist war machine and its major corporate party players. That the U.S. today seeks his extradition from the UK to stand trial on spurious charges under the reactionary witch hunting wartime Espionage Act of 1917* is a legal and political atrocity. Assanges defense and freedom today must stand before us as a priority issue.

*The Espionage Act of 1917prohibited obtaining information, recording pictures, or copying descriptions of any informationrelating to the national defense with intent or reason to believe that the information may be used for the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation.

Jeff Mackler

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Julian Assange and the CIA-USA Daily Wars Against Humanity - LA Progressive

BY LINCOLN ANDERSON | Updated Oct. 8, 1 p.m.: Council Speaker Corey Johnson on Thursday finally spoke with East River Park activists who have been staging a weeklong protest outside City Hall. He talked with them for about 25 minutes, though claimed that he was not aware that they and allegedly two key councilmembers have been urging him to hold an emergency oversight hearing on the citys coastal-resiliency plan that would destroy the current 60-acre park.

Later on, after Johnson left, Chelsea Manning, the U.S. Army whistleblower and trans activist, dropped by to show support for the protesters and pose for photos with them, hanging out with them for about an hour.

Johnson spoke with three activists, Sarah Wellington, Eileen Myles and Sandy Charles. Tommy Loeb captured it on video.

First of all, Johnson said, the three councilmembers whose districts include or are near the park Carlina Rivera, Keith Powers and Margaret Chin must all agreed to hold the emergency hearing. He said this concept of member deference has been the norm in the City Council for the past 35 years, including under the previous four speakers.

Carlina wont respond to us on any level, one of the activists told him.

The activists say that Justin Brannan and James Gennaro, who respectively chair the Committee on Resiliency and Waterfronts and the Committee on Environmental Protection, have told them that they have told Johnson they want the hearing but Johnson said that wasnt the case.

My understanding is that no hearing has been requested, Johnson stated. He said there would need to be an official request for a hearing, then followed by a conversation within the body.

At a couple of points during the talk, Johnson, who wore a black face mask, took a few steps back and warned that he had to get a COVID test.

Charles, who lives in the Vladeck Houses, a Lower East Side public-housing development, broke into tears as she told the Council speaker how important the park has been to her, both physically and mentally, how she was able to drop from 210 pounds by being able to exercise there.

Tears streaming down her cheeks, she told him, You have [an alternate] way. There is a way to put the wall up by the F.D.R. and keep the water in the park.

At the end of the exchange, the activists pushed Johnson for a follow-up meeting.

Im very glad we had this conversation, he said. I will talk to some folks [in the City Council] and try to get some information.

Meanwhile, Wellington said the activists have to get things sorted out, too mainly by checking to see if Brannan and Gennaro really did ask Johnson to hold the hearing. Brannan has notably not responded to the protesters requests to stand with them in City Hall Park.

So whos lying? she asked.

City Hall Park has looked like a Houdini Con / outdoor dungeon albeit with bullhorns and festive trumpets this week as East River Park activists have been again chaining themselves to trees to protest the mayors contentious coastal-resiliency plan.

The previous week, two environmentalists, J.K. Canepa and jmac, locked themselves together in an embrace around one of the parks trees for 12 hours, demanding that someone from Johnsons office communicate with them about the East Side Coastal Resiliency plan.

East River Park activists have been calling for the City Council speaker to O.K. an emergency oversight hearing on the scheme, which would bury the existing 60-acre park under tons of landfill to raise it 8 feet to 10 feet above the floodplain and prevent another Sandy from swamping the East Village and Lower East Side. The activists endorse a much lower-impact plan that would not raise the park but just build earth berms along the east side of the F.D.R. Drive and add seawalls in other spots.

Meanwhile, work on the East River Park section of the citys E.S.C.R. megaproject (which spans from Montgomery Street to 23rd Street), slated at a whopping $1.3 billion, is set to start imminently, word has it sometime in the next two months, explaining the activists constant presence outside City Hall this past week. Under the plan, East River Parks nearly 1,000 mature trees with a tree canopy that was 80 years in the making would be clear-cut.

After Canepa and jmac unlocked themselves last Tuesday, Canepa warned that, unless Johnson or one of his staffers agreed to at least talk to them, they had better get used to the sight of environmentalists chained to trees outside of City Hall.

No one from Johnsons office had reached out to them. So the activists made good on their threat, protesting in the park every day this week, starting Monday.

Similarly, a Johnson spokesperson has ducked responding when asked by The Village Sun if the speaker would green-light the emergency hearing. The paper first asked the question back in August and asked again last week. But Johnson has not commented on the issue.

The City Hall Park protest will continue through this Friday, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., and the demonstrators are urging park activists to come join them. They are staging their actions just inside the park at Broadway and Warren Streets.

Wellington, one of the organizers, said the park activists have forged solidarity with a group of yellow taxi medallion owners who have been protesting outside City Hall for three weeks, 24 hours day, demanding debt relief. The two groups sometimes protest together.

Weve been saying, Save our cabbies! Save our parks!' she said. Theyre essential workers being left behind by de Blasio. Theres an epidemic of suicides among cabbies.

The background din in the video with Johnson is from the cab medallion owners protest.

As for East River Park, the idea of closing it off to the public even if the project, as planned, were done in two phases to keep part of it open is crazy, she said.

Where does de Blasio expect all these New Yorkers to go? she asked. They keep taking away public space.

Speaking Friday afternoon, Wellington said the activists, while chained up to the trees, are also now strategizing on how they will lie down in bulldozers if they show up to destroy East River Parks trees.

She said it was fitting that whistleblower Manning came by to show solidarity with them since the East River Park fight is all about transparency. A Value Engineering Report for the park was hidden from the public for a year and a half until the activists forced its release.

See original here:
Chain reaction: Corey Johnson finally talks with East River Park activists - The Village Sun

Image by Caitlin Johnstone from Pixabay

A hearing on an US appeal to strike down a court decision and allow the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will be held on 27 and 28 October at the High Court in London, according to a message from the Don't Extradite Assange campaign.

In a statement, the group said if the appeal court decided to uphold a British decision not to allow the extradition, then it would be difficult for the US to continue seeking to get him sent there for trial.

On 4 January, British District Judge Vanessa Baraister ruled that Assange should not be extradited, saying the risk he would commit suicide in a US jail were too high.

Assange faces criminal charges for publishing classified information that was leaked to WikiLeaks by an American soldier, then known as Bradley Manning, but now, after gender reassignment surgery, known as Chelsea Manning.

His asylum was withdrawn by Ecuador shortly before he was arrested and he appeared in court shortly thereafter. The US made a formal request for his extradition on 6 June 2019.

The DEA campaign requested people to assemble on 23 October at the BBC Broadcasting House in London and march to the High Court.

Supporters of the Australian hacker were also asked to gather outside the High Court at 9am on 27 October.

In September, a Yahoo! News report claimed that the CIA had discussed plans in 2017 to either kill or abduct Assange.

The detailed story said the American spy outfit was angry that WikiLeaks had leaked some of its hacking tools that year, which the whistleblower organisation called Vault 7.

Assange is one of Australia's best known hackers, having gained access to a number of organisations in the 1980s and 1990s, including NASA and the Melbourne master terminal of Canadian telco Nortel.

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US appeal on Assange extradition to be heard on 27 and 28 Oct - iTWire

Next month, British prosecutors, on behalf of the US government, will argue before a British High Court that a judges move to block the extradition of Australian journalist Julian Assange should be overturned. It will mark the latest in the United States legal attack against the WikiLeaks founder. Yet even as the High Court gets ready to hear arguments that will help decide whether Assange will stand trial in the United States, a fuller and darker picture has emerged of the US governments extralegal campaign against Assange.

A bombshell investigation by Yahoo News, based on interviews with over thirty former US officials, gives the most in-depth picture to date of the CIAs war on WikiLeaks. And its truly disturbing. The tactics weighed by the CIA under Mike Pompeo including kidnapping and assassinating were so extreme they even alarmed members of the National Security Council and White House lawyers, hardly Assange supporters.

Some became so concerned about the legality of what the CIA was proposing, they alerted congressional oversight committees. According to Michael Isikoff, one of the three reporters who worked on the Yahoo News story, the arguments over whether to kidnap Assange were one of the more contentious intelligence debates of the Trump presidency, and it was all done in secret. The public had no idea this was going on. Pompeo has publicly responded to the allegations by asserting that those who spoke to Yahoo should be prosecuted for exposingCIAactivities. But he conceded that pieces of it are true.

Assange has been in the US governments crosshairs ever since he published cables from the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (provided to WikiLeaks by Chelsea Manning). In 2011, the Justice Department convened a grand jury to contemplate indicting Assange.

But while the Obama administration waged an unprecedented war on journalists sources and whistleblowers, it decided against going directly after journalists like Assange, worried it could set a precedent for prosecuting major newspapers like the New York Times. In spite of the administrations enormous crackdown on press freedoms, here they drew a line. In addition to putting a stop on any prosecution of Assange, the Obama White House also limited what actions intelligence agencies like the CIA could take against WikiLeaks, arguing they were deserving of the protections afforded to news organizations.

Meanwhile, the intelligence community stewed. After the Guardian and Washington Post broke stories about illegal NSA surveillance the fruits of revelations by whistleblower Edward Snowden the intelligence community was again out for blood. The CIA lobbied the Obama administration to redefine certain figures previously considered journalists as information brokers, thus allowing greater investigatory actions against them and opening the door for potential criminal prosecutions.

The CIA wanted to label not just Assange and WikiLeaks information brokers, but also Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras, the journalists who broke the Snowden revelations. The Obama administration rebuffed these chilling requests, but okayed greater intelligence collection against WikiLeaks. No longer were warrants, subpoenas, or national security letters required to gain information about WikiLeaks. The CIA now had a WikiLeaks team.

The WikiLeaks revelations about Hillary Clinton provoked fanatical ire among many partisan Democrats. It also earned the organization praise on the campaign trail from Trump. Yet, it would be the Trump administration that would dramatically escalate both the legal and extralegal war on WikiLeaks.

Trump set the tone early. He appointed as his attorney general Jeff Sessions, a longtime surveillance hawk and First Amendment foe who made targeting leaks a top prosecutorial priority. For his CIA chief, Trump tapped Mike Pompeo. Pompeo had repeatedly attacked whistleblower Edward Snowden, at one point calling for him to be executed.

Sessions revived the criminal investigation into Assange and pressured prosecutors to bring charges against Assange in the Eastern District for the 2010 to 2011 disclosures. In April 2017, Sessions publicly announced that prosecuting the journalist was a top priority. When asked about the implications of such a move for outlets like the New York Times, Sessions appeared unfazed.

Just a week before Sessionss chilling announcement, Pompeo declared during a public address that WikiLeaks was a hostile non-state intelligence agency. Given the public setting, many dismissed the statement as hot air. But it turned out to be part of a much more disturbing legal theory.

About a month earlier, in the largest loss of data in CIA history, WikiLeaks published Vault 7, which detailed CIA hacking tools. The release infuriated Pompeo and the CIA. As the Yahoo News story makes painfully clear, Pompeo became obsessed with Assange and WikiLeaks. No plot, it seems, was too wild.

When the CIA takes covert action, they must receive authorization from the president in what is known as finding. Select members of Congress are notified. Yet, when the CIA deals with rival spy agencies, its measures are deemed offensive counterintelligence; and no such findings are required.

The CIA tried, but failed to tie WikiLeaks to Russian intelligence. Eager to evade any oversight, the CIA declared Wikileaks a non-state intelligence agency, thus allowing them to act without presidential approval or congressional notice. (The 2018 Intelligence Authorization Act, passed by Congress, declared 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. This raises serious questions about what Congress knew. No subsequent legislation contained similar language).

At this point the CIA obsession took a dark turn. Executives within the agency requested sketches on how to assassinate Assange and other WikiLeaks figures involved with Vault 7. These plans were scuttled and dont appear to ever have made it beyond internal CIA discussions. Nonetheless, the fact that CIA leaders were requesting that assassination plans be drawn up is alarming, to say the least.

While the assassination plans did not go far, the scheme to kidnap Assange made it to the White House it perplexed National Security Council lawyers who noted that Assange hadnt even been charged with a crime and that it was unclear under what authority the CIA could seize Assange or even where they would hold him. As one unnamed official who attended the National Security Council meetings told Yahoo News, Were we going to go back to black sites?

In 2017, the plans reached new levels of derangement. The CIA became convinced that the Russians would try to exfiltrate Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy in London and bring him to Russia.

Their imaginations running wild, the CIA thought that the Ecuadorians would release Assange onto the street. The Russians would be waiting most likely in a diplomatic car to spirit Assange to the airport and out of the country. One suggestion was to have CIA agents crash a car into another vehicle, thus creating a traffic jam and delaying the Russian diplomatic vehicle containing Assange. It was decided, however, while such an action was appropriate for Afghanistan, it was not appropriate for the streets of London.

While car crashes were too much, the CIA was fully preparing for a gun battle. Concerned about the optics of Americans engaging in a shootout with Russians on the streets of London, they requested their British counterparts handle all firing. The British obliged. (Firing on a Russian diplomatic vehicle would be an act of war.)

Had the Russians escaped from the hail of gunfire, made it to the airport and onto the tarmac, and gotten Assange into a plane, the CIA were preparing to shoot out the tires of the plane to prevent it from taking off. If the plane still managed to get into the air, the CIA was prepared to have EU countries deny the plane entry into their airspace a dirty trick the United States had previously used when they thought Bolivian president Evo Morales was secretly carrying Snowden onboard his presidential plane.

Stella Morris, Assanges partner, denies that the Russians were going to exfiltrate Assange. Nevertheless, as Isikoff stressed in an interview, the CIA believed it was real and their plans were deadly serious. So serious, in fact, that Trump himself was briefed on the plan by those who worried it would create an ugly, international incident.

The CIAs fear that Assange would flee was partly because WikiLeaks had only released some of the Vault 7 documents in their possession. The agency was concerned that Assange could escape to Russia with secrets. But the officials who spoke to Yahoo made clear that an equal or even greater concern was the geopolitical or propagandistic victory Vladmir Putin would purportedly score if Russia was sheltering not only Snowden, but also Assange. This appears to be the motivation behind the deeply irrational plan.

Assassination plans out of the Cold War, kidnappings and renditions out of the war on terror, an act of war against another government, all with one end in sight: to make sure Assange never escaped the clutches of the US empire.

The latest revelations are particularly shocking, but they join a growing list of outrages. In addition to National Security Council lawyers, the CIA also angered Sessions and the Justice Department. Their motives were not pure: the Justice Department viewed Assange as being on their turf and the CIAs actions as jeopardizing a potential criminal prosecution (the CIAs kidnapping scheme may have pressured the Justice Department to speed up seeking an indictment). Even before Sessions, the FBI and the CIA competed over jurisdiction for Assange. The FBI had been pushing for Assange to be charged since the Obama years.

However, the FBIs hands are far from clean. In June, Icelandic newspaper Stundin revealed that an FBI informant (who had himself been convicted of sex crimes) admitted that allegations in the US indictment against Assange were fabricated.

And earlier this year, Declassified UK exposed the existence of Operation Pelican, a UK Foreign Office plot to get Assange out of the Ecuadorian Embassy.

All of this comes as Spains High Court is investigating Spanish security firm UC Global. UC Global was hired to provide security at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, but it allegedly cooperated with US intelligence in its spying on Assange, his lawyers, and journalists who visited him. In fact, it was a former UC Global employee who first stated that the CIA discussed killing Assange.

The CIAs crimes must be understood within this wider war against Assange. But there is another important context. After revelations of the CIAs use of rendition and torture during the war on terror, there were calls for prosecutions. Instead, Obama opted to look forward, not backward.

For those who took on CIA war crimes, the calculation was quite different. The Obama administration, at the urging of the CIA, allowed the American Civil Liberties Union to be criminally probed after its lawyers representing clients at Guantanamo were able to successfully identify CIA torturers in court briefs. While the venerable civil liberties organization was cleared of wrongdoing, John Kiriakou, who blew the whistle on torture, was prosecuted, something the CIA requested of the Bush administration but was denied.

The decision to let CIA war criminals off the hook while treating whistleblowers, journalists, and others who expose US war crimes as enemies on par with spies or terrorists has consequences.

One of those consequences: a completely lawless CIA plotting to assassinate or kidnap a journalist.

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The US Considered Kidnapping and Even Assassinating Julian Assange - Jacobin magazine

San FranciscoThe Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is honored to announce that Kade Crockford, Director of the Technology for Liberty Program at the ACLU of Massachusetts, Pam Dixon, executive director and founder of World Privacy Forum, and Matt Mitchell, founder of CryptoHarlem, are recipients of the 2021 Pioneer Award for their work, in the U.S. and across the globe, uncovering and challenging government and corporate surveillance on communities.

The awards will be presented at a virtual ceremony on September 16 starting at 5 pm PT. The keynote speakers this year will be science fiction authors Annalee Newitz and Charlie Jane Anders, hosts of the award-winning podcast Our Opinions Are Correct. The ceremony will stream live and free on Twitch, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. Audience members are encouraged to give a $10 suggested donation. EFF is supported by small donors around the world and you can become an official member at https://eff.org/PAC-join. To register for the ceremony: https://www.eff.org/PAC-register

Activist Kade Crockford is a leader in educating the public about and campaigning against mass electronic surveillance. At the ACLU of Massachusetts, they direct the Technology for Liberty Project, which focuses on ensuring that technology strengthens rights to free speech and expression and is not used to impede our civil liberties, especially privacy rights. Crockford focuses on how surveillance systems harm vulnerable populations targeted by law enforcementpeople of color, Muslims, immigrants, and dissidents. Under Crockfords leadership, the Technology for Liberty Project has used public record requests to shine a light on how state and local law enforcement agencies use technology to surveil communities. Crockford oversaw the filing of over 400 public record requests in 2019 and 2020 seeking information about the use of facial recognition across the state, collecting over 1,400 government documents. They led successful efforts in Massachusetts to organize local support for bans on government use of face surveillance, convincing local police chiefs that the technology endangered privacy in their communities. Crockford worked with seven Massachusetts cities to enact preemptive bans against the technology and, in June 2020, working with youth immigrants rights organizers, succeeded in getting facial recognition banned in Boston, the second largest city in the world to do so at the time. Massachusetts lawmakers have credited Crockford for shepherding efforts to pass a police reform bill that reins on how police in the state can use facial recognition. They also led a project to file public record requests with every Massachusetts District Attorney and the state Attorney General to reveal how local prosecutors were using administrative subpoena, secretly and with no judicial review or oversight, to obtain peoples cell phone and internet records. Kade has written forThe Nation,The Guardian,The Boston Globe, WBUR, and many other publications, and runs the dedicated privacy websitewww.PrivacySOS.org.

Author and researcher Pam Dixon has championed privacy for more than two decades and is a pioneer in examining, documenting, and analyzing how data is utilized in ways that impact multiple aspects of our lives, from finances and health information to identity, among other areas. Dixon founded the World Privacy Forum in 2003, a leading public interest group researching consumer privacy and data, with a focus on documenting and analyzing how individuals data interacts within complex data ecosystems and the consequences of those interactions. She has worked extensively on privacy and data governance in the U.S., EU, India, Africa, and Asia. Dixon worked in India for a year researching and publishing peer-reviewed research on Indias Aadhaar identity system, which was cited twice in the Supreme Court of Indias landmark Aadhaar decision. She works with the UN and WHO on data governance, and with OECD in its One AI Expert Group. She was named a global leader in digital identity, which included her work in Africa on identity ecosystems. She is co-chair of the Data for Development Workgroup at the Center for Global Development, where she is working to bring attention to inequities faced by less wealthy countries with fragile data infrastructures when dealing with data privacy standards created by, and reflecting the priorities of, wealthy countries. Dixon co-authored a report in 2021 calling for a more inclusive approach to data governance and privacy standards in low- and middle-income countries. Her ongoing work in the area of health privacy is extensive, including her work bringing medical identity theft to public attention for the first time, which led to the creation of new protections for patients. She has presented her work on privacy and complex data ecosystems to the Royal Society, and most recently to the National Academy of Sciences.

Matt Mitchell is the founder of CryptoHarlem and a tech fellow for the BUILD program at the Ford Foundation. He is recognized as a leading voice in protecting Black communities from surveillance. Under his leadership, CryptoHarlem provides workshops on digital surveillance and a space for Black people in Harlem, who are over policed and heavily surveilled, to learn about digital security, encryption, privacy, cryptology tools, and more. He is a well-known security researcher, operational security trainer, and data journalist whose work raising awareness about privacy, providing tools for digital security, and mobilizing people to turn information into action has broken new ground. His work, Mitchell says, is informed by the recognition that theres a digital version of stop and frisk which can be more dangerous for people of color than the physical version, and that using social media has unique risks for the Black community, which is subject to many forms of street level and online surveillance. Cryptoharlem has worked with the Movement for Black Lives to create a guide for protestors, organizers, and activists during the 2020 protests against police brutality following the murder of George Floyd. Last year he was selected as a WIRED 25, a list of scientists, technologists, and artists working to make things better. In 2017 he was selected as a Vice Motherboard Human of The Year for his work protecting marginalized groups. As a technology fellow at the Ford Foundation, Mitchell develops digital security training, technical assistance offerings, and safety and security measures for the foundations grantee partners. Mitchell has also worked as an independent digital security/countersurveillance trainer for media and humanitarian-focused private security firms. His personal work focuses on marginalized, aggressively monitored, over-policed populations in the United States. Previously, Mitchell worked as a data journalist at The New York Times and a developer at CNN, Time Inc, NewsOne/InteractiveOne/TVOne/RadioOne, AOL/Huffington Post, and Essence Magazine.

EFF has been fighting mass surveillance since its founding 31 years ago, and weve seen the stakes rise as corporations, governments, and law enforcement increasingly use technology to gather personal information, pinpoint our locations, secretly track our online activities, and target marginalized communities, said EFF Executive Director Cindy Cohn. Our honorees are working across the globe and on the ground in local communities to defend online privacy and provide information, research, and training to empower people to defend themselves. Technology is a double-edged swordit helps us build community, and can also be used to violate our rights to free speech and to freely associate with each other without government spying. We are honoring Kade Crockford, Pam Dixon, and Matt Mitchell for their vision and dedication to the idea that we can challenge and disrupt technology-enabled surveillance.

Awarded every year since 1992, EFFs Pioneer Award Ceremony recognize the leaders who are extending freedom and innovation on the electronic frontier. Previous honorees have included Malkia Cyril, William Gibson, danah boyd, Aaron Swartz, and Chelsea Manning.

For past Pioneer Award Winners: https://www.eff.org/pioneer/past-winners

To register for this event: https://www.eff.org/PAC-register

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ACLU Advocate Reining in Government Use of Face Surveillance, Champion of Privacy Rights Research, and Data Security Trainer Protecting Black...

If you had to choose a physical item that represents what self-love means to you, what would it be? HBOs Euphorias Hunter Schafer picked a painting she made during quarantine while listening to one of her favorite trans musicians, Anohni. Starting today, you can actually buy her painting and dozens of other celebrities things in an auction called I love me.

Presented by the auction and retail facilitator Willbees and co-organized with actor Bobbi Salvr Menuez, I love me benefits G.L.I.T.S, a grassroots organization that offers housing and health services to people in the LGBTQ+ community. The auction also celebrates self-love as crucial for the well-being of queer communities, and each contributor shared personal statements on what that means to them. Self-love means perceiving and treating myself for what I am. When I let myself exist without projecting, without walls upland without a second thought, I think I am exhibiting self-love, Schafer said. Telfar Clemens added that self-love means loving yourself as much as you love others, but youre first.

Some standout items include three signed Telfar bags, the mask Barbie Ferreira wore on the first season of Euphoria, and Chelsea Mannings personal Dungeons & Dragons dice set from her time in prison. The full list of contributors includes: Aaron Philips, Angela Dimayuga, Barbie Ferreira, Bobbi Menuez, Buck Angel, Bunny Michael, Cayenne Doroshow, Chelsea Manning, Chloe Wise, Cyrus Simonoff, Donna Huanca, Emma Wyman, Gogo Graham, Hayden Dunham, Hunter Schafer, Jade Kuriki Olivo, John Waters, Kelsey Lu, Kiko Mizuhara, Leo Shang, Liz Hopkins, Logan Jackson, Michael Bailey-Gates, Miranda July, Miss Major, Nicole Eisenman, Precious Okoyomon, Quintessa Swindell, Richie Shazam, Rowan Blanchard, Ryan McGinley, Sarah Sophie Flicker, Sateen, Spiral Theory Test Kitchen, Telfar Clemens, Tommy Dorfman, Tosh Basco, Tourmaline, and Yeule.

Below, just a few of the auctions offerings. Bidding will end on June 29. See it all here.

Clockwise from left: Barbie Ferreiras mask from Euphoria. Photo: Logan JacksonRowan Blanchards Jimmy Choo shoes. Photo: Logan JacksonMichael Bailey-Gatess framed self-portrait. Photo: Logan Jackson

From top: Barbie Ferreiras mask from Euphoria. Photo: Logan JacksonMichael Bailey-Gatess framed self-portrait. Photo: Logan JacksonRowan Blanchards... more From top: Barbie Ferreiras mask from Euphoria. Photo: Logan JacksonMichael Bailey-Gatess framed self-portrait. Photo: Logan JacksonRowan Blanchards Jimmy Choo shoes. Photo: Logan Jackson

From left: Hunter Schafers painting. Photo: Logan JacksonGogo Grahams bag. Photo: Logan Jackson

From top: Hunter Schafers painting. Photo: Logan JacksonGogo Grahams bag. Photo: Logan Jackson

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A Celebrity Auction for a Good Cause - The Cut

Reality Winner, a former intelligence contractor jailed for leaking classified information, has been released from prison to serve her remaining sentence in a halfway house program. Winners attorney Alison Grinter tweeted the news this morning, and the Federal Bureau of Prisons website lists Winner in custody of San Antonios Residential Reentry Management field office, which oversees community-based programs for incarcerated people.

I am thrilled to announce that Reality Winner has been released from prison. She is still in custody in the residential reentry process, but we are relieved and hopeful, Grinter tweeted in a statement. Reality and her family have asked for privacy during the transition process as they work to heal the trauma of incarceration and build back the years lost. Her release is not a product of the pardon or compassionate release process, but rather the time earned from exemplary behavior while incarcerated.

Grinter said Winner is still barred from public statements or appearances, and the BOPs website still lists her release date as November 23rd, 2021.

In an email to The Verge, Grinter wrote that Winner would continue to seek a pardon. The Residential Reentry center is in charge right now and will manage her transition, but we are definitely still seeking commutation and pardon, she said. The fight continues and Ill still be taking meetings in Washington to press forward the case for commutation and pardon, but the family will be stepping back to concentrate on Reality and her health and healing. She became an aunt while she was behind bars, and she is going to spend as much time as she can bonding and tickling little feet as she adjusts to life in the world.

Winner pleaded guilty to espionage in 2018, one year after being arrested for leaking a National Security Agency report on US election security. The report detailed Russian attempts to hack US voting systems before the 2016 election, an issue then-President Donald Trump had downplayed in the following months. (It did not indicate whether the cyberattack had any concrete effect on the election.)

Federal law enforcement determined that Winner had printed the report and mailed it to The Intercept, and her plea deal included a five-year prison sentence under the Espionage Act a law thats difficult to mount a defense against, since defendants effectively cant argue that they disclosed information in the public interest. Both the Trump and Obama administrations have leveraged the Espionage Act against whistleblowers, including Chelsea Manning, who was sentenced to 35 years in prison before having her sentence commuted in 2017.

Winner unsuccessfully sought a release from prison during the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, and she tested positive for COVID-19 in July 2020. A documentary about her case, United States vs. Reality Winner, premiered at the SXSW film festival this spring.

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Reality Winner has been released from prison - The Verge

Legendary whistleblower Dan Ellsberg leaked the Pentagon Papers fifty years ago, a courageous act of truth-telling for which he later faced life in prison. He hasnt stopped since. Last May, just weeks after turning 90 years old, Ellsberg made yet another disclosure of classified national security information. He was speaking on a panel at the University of Massachusetts Truth, Dissent, & the Legacy of Daniel Ellsberg conference with whistleblower Edward Snowden, which one of us [Amy] moderated.

Let me tell a truth that Ive had for 50 years, Ellsberg said, before reading from a secret 1958 report describing the willingness of U.S. officials to launch a nuclear war. I copied that study. It was in my top-secret safe in 1969. And Ive had it ever since, he continued.

Ellsberg was working at the RAND Corporation and as a consultant to the Kennedy administration. He was also a U.S. Marine officer, and participated in combat missions in Vietnam.

In 1969, inspired by the growing anti-war and draft resistance movements, Ellsberg photocopied the Pentagon Papers, a secret, 7,000-page history of U.S. decision-making during the Vietnam war. Unable to find a U.S. Senator willing to take the documents, he leaked them to the New York Times.

The Times published its first Pentagon Papers piece on June 13th, 1971. Two days later, a federal court granted President Richard Nixons request for an injunction, blocking further publication. After Ellsbergs identity as the leaker became public, he and his wife Patricia went underground, as he continued to distribute copies of the documents to other newspapers.

Nixons national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, called Ellsberg the most dangerous man in America. Nixon, in a recorded Oval Office conversation with his Attorney General, said, weve got to keep our eye on the main ball. The main ball is Ellsberg. Weve got to get this son of a bitch.

On June 30th, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the New York Times, barring government censorship of the press and allowing continued publication of the Pentagon Papers.

Nixon intensified his campaign targeting the whistleblower, afraid of what he might release next. As Ellsberg recounted on Democracy Now!, He burglarized my former psychoanalysts office, sent 12 Cuban assets of the Bay of Pigs up to incapacitate me totally on the steps of the Capitol. On May 3rd, he overheard me on illegal, warrantless wiretaps. When the Nixon administrations misconduct was revealed, the judge threw out the espionage case against him.

Dan Ellsbergs example has encouraged other whistleblowers, among them Edward Snowden, who, while a contractor at the National Security Agency (NSA), participated in the development of the governments secret, global, dragnet surveillance program. He leaked a massive trove of documents in 2013, and has lived in exile in Russia ever since.

At the conference on May 1st, Snowden said of whistleblowers who inspired him, They had stood up at great personal risk to tell the public an essential truth that was being intentionally denied to them for political purpose. Eventually, you believe that this is what looks more right than going back into the office and perpetuating a system of injustice quietly, day after day.

Snowden continued, Reality Winner and Daniel Hale and Chelsea Manning, Thomas Drake, Terry Albury and others who have come forward in the last decades have vindicated Daniel Ellsbergs approachbecause the abuse of power is not something thats going away.

Reality Winner was an NSA contractor when she leaked information to the press describing alleged Russian interference in the 2016 elections. Imprisoned for over four years, she was released on June 2nd to a half-way house for the remaining months of her sentence. Her family is demanding a pardon.

Daniel Hale pled guilty to leaking documents about the U.S. drone program of targeted assassinations in Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq, which he participated in while in the Air Force. He will be sentenced in mid-July.

Ellsbergs May 1st disclosure was about a 1958 conflict over several small islands, between mainland China and Taiwan. The U.S., Ellsberg revealed, drew up plans to launch nuclear weapons against China to support Taiwan. The report predicted that a U.S. first-strike on China would provoke a nuclear counter-strike by the Soviet Union, killing millions.

At 90, Ellsberg is still tirelessly advocating for the rights of whistleblowers and a free press, calling on the Biden administration to drop its case against Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder who published leaked information documenting war crimes, and its prosecution of Daniel Hale.

He concluded his recent interview on Democracy Now!, Ive certainly been led, more than almost anyone, to appreciate the necessity of our First Amendment, the protection of the freedom of the press, the freedom of thought. You cant have democracy without it.

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The Pentagon Papers at 50: Press Freedom and Whistleblowers Still at Risk - Democracy Now!