Assange Labeled an ‘Enemy’ of the US in Secret Pentagon Documents By Dave Lindorff

[Demeter]

http://www.nationofchange.org/assange-labeled-enemy-us-secret-pentagon-documents-1349530607

An investigative arm of the Pentagon has termed Wikileaks founder and editor-in-chief Julian Assange, currently holed up and claiming asylum in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London for fear he will be deported to Sweden and thence to the US, and his organization, both “enemies” of the United States.

The Age newspaper in Melbourne Australia is reporting that documents obtained through the US Freedom of Information Act from the Pentagon disclose that an investigation by the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, a counter-intelligence unit, of a military cyber systems analyst based in Britain who had reportedly expressed support for Wikileaks and had attended a demonstration in support of Assange, refers to the analyst as having been “communicating with the enemy, D-104.” The D-104 classification refers to an article of the US Uniform Military Code of Military Justice which prohibits military personnel from “communicating, corresponding or holding intercourse with the enemy.” This is pretty dangerous language, referring to an Australian citizen who many consider to be no more than a working journalist who has been receiving information leaked by whistleblowers and disseminating that information to the public. As David Cole, a civil liberties attorney in the US associated with the Center for Constitutional Rights, notes, “The US military is not at war with Wikileaks or with Julian Assange.”

Certainly if a member of the US military were to go to a news organization like the New York Times -- or the Melbourne Age for that matter -- and leak some kind of damaging secret information exposing US military war crimes, it is hard to believe that the military would call that “communicating with the enemy” (though reportedly the Bush/Cheney administration considered, but then dropped the idea of bringing espionage charges against Times reporter James Risen for publishing in his book secret information about the government’s bungled effort to pass faulty A-bomb fuse technology to the Iranians). In any case, a military leaker could easily be charged under the military code with offenses like revealing national security secrets or some other serious charge, which would not involve charging any media organization that received the information. The decision by the Pentagon to instead use the D-104 code to classify Assange as an “enemy” in this context is dangerous because since 9-11-2001, the US government, with the general consent of the courts, has been treating “enemies” of the state in some very frightening extra-judicial ways. Enemies of the US these days can be summarily arrested and carted away to black-site prisons or to a place like Guantanamo without even a requirement that any notice be given to friends or relatives. They can be locked up indefinitely and denied access to a lawyer. They can even be subjected to what is euphemistically called “enhanced interrogation,” which most people, and which international law, call torture, as was done to Private Bradley Manning, charged with providing hundreds of thousands of pages of secret documents to Wikileaks.

SEE LINK FOR the page from the Pentagon file that labels Assange and Wikileaks as "enemies" of the US...News that Assange was labeled an “enemy” by the US (important information that has not been reported in any of the corporate US media), casts in a darker light rumors in the US and Australia that the US has already obtained a secret sealed indictment of Assange, and that it is trying to engineer his deportation from Britain to Sweden, where he is wanted by prosecutors for questioning concerning two controversial complaints of sexual assault, so that he can be then more easily extradited to the US...Many observers believe that the long captivity, including torture, and the delayed military prosecution of Pvt. Manning, all widely condemned including by the United Nations reporteur on human rights, is aimed at trying to coerce him into trying to cut a deal for a reduced sentence by fingering Assange as having lured or bribed him into revealing secret military documents -- something Assange denies, and which Manning has refused to do. Word that the US government, or at least the Pentagon, is considering Assange and his organization to be “enemies” of the US would appear to make his fear of extradition to Sweden, as well as the British authorities’ zeal to arrest him and hand him over to Swedish authorities, all the more justified...MORE

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Daniel Elsberg Redux

[bemildred]

2. As usual, the Pentagon conflates itself with the country.

L'etat c'est moi.

[Demeter]

6. The Pentagon thinks it is the government

I respectfully disagree. Of the People, and all that.

[bemildred]

7. Well, the most important part, anyway.

Somebody has to give them money still, apparently.

[Demeter]

8. Living off the land...foraging....

I can see it now.

[Demeter]

3. ANOTHER DEVELOPMENT: U.K. Blocks Extradition Of Hacker Accused Of Accessing Pentagon Computers

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/10/16/162997258/u-k-blocks-extradition-of-hacker-accused-of-accessing-pentagon-computers?ft=1&f=1001

Gary McKinnon, who the U.S. government says perpetrated the biggest military computer hack of all time, will not be extradited to the U.S. from Britain, CNN reports.

The network adds:

"Home Secretary Theresa May said McKinnon's Asperger syndrome and depressive illness meant 'there is such a high risk of him ending his own life that a decision to extradite would be incompatible with his human rights.'

"Gary McKinnon has admitted to breaking into computers at NASA and the Pentagon but says he did so to find out if the U.S. government was covering up the existence of UFOs.

"The 46-year-old has fought a decade-long battle against extradition."

May added that now it is up British prosecutors to determine whether McKinnon will face charges at home.

McKinnon's mother Janis Sharp was delighted at the news.

"Thank you Theresa May from the bottom of my heart. I always knew you had the strength and courage to do the right thing," she told the BBC.

This is a big deal, the BBC reports, because it is "the first time a home secretary had stepped in to block an extradition under the current treaty with the U.S."

[HooptieWagon]

4. Sounds like the US is trying to justify extraordinary rendition and indefinite detention...

if they get their hands on Assange in England or Sweden.

[struggle4progress]

5. Dave Lindorff can't read worth shit, and he lives in some bizarre fantasy world

While it may serve Assange's megalomania, and his fundraising objectives, to reinterpret everything that happens as if it were focused on him, that Assangist narrative can only muddle our thinking and prevent us from obtaining a clear-eyed grasp of actual facts -- which is required for clear-headed useful thinking

The documents nowhere identify Assange or Wikileaks as “enemies” of the US: the documents concern a member of the AF who was investigated as a security risk after she became infatuated with Assange or Wikileaks

In fact, of course, it is entirely obvious that -- after the release to Wikileaks of 750K military and diplomatic documents, apparently from military computers -- the US military does not plan to play nice with other service members who want explore relationships with Assange and Wikileaks: and that is what the story is really about

[AntiFascist]

9. We've been through this already...

are you sure your thinking hasn't been muddled by your hatred of Assange?

The investigation dealt solely with "communicating with the enemy" but nowhere in the FOI document did it seem to indicate that they were investigating any sort of connections to an actual enemy such as Al Qaeda. Megalomaniac or not, the entire investigation was focused on the subject's activities related to Assange, Wikileaks, and groups that supported Assange.

[struggle4progress]

10. There's not a country in the world today that would ignore the fact that a person with access to

restricted government documents had become loudly infatuated with Assange and Wikileaks

The woman in question was investigated as a security risk. Her security clearance was pulled. Investigators looked for evidence of espionage

The reasoning behind all that was entirely obvious -- however you might pretend not to understand it

[AntiFascist]

11. I understand it perfectly...

she was investigated for communicating with Assange. Of course they were also interested in whether she was preparing to divulge any classified information, but just the act of communicating would have been enough to get her into serious trouble. Fortunately, for her, she did not have any direct communication with Assange or Wikileaks personnel (as much as some of the anti-Assange crowd have desperately tried to argue otherwise). The reason her security clearance was pulled was, likely, because she had become emotionally compromised and had made statements against the US military.