Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

For The Record  

FTR #755 The Adventures of Eddie the Friendly Spook, Part 2: Dramatis Personae, Part 2 (WikiFascism, Part 3)

Dave Emory’s entire life­time of work is avail­able on a flash dri­ve that can be obtained here. (The flash dri­ve includes the anti-fas­cist books avail­able on this site.)

NB: This descrip­tion con­tains mate­r­i­al not in the orig­i­nal broad­cast.

Lisen: MP3

Side 1    Side 2

Intro­duc­tion: Due to the com­plex­i­ty of the analy­sis of “The Adven­tures of Eddie the Friend­ly Spook,” we begin the dis­cus­sion by high­light­ing the nature of the actors in this par­tic­u­lar dra­ma.

“Eddie the Friend­ly Spook” Snow­den is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with Wik­iLeaks and its milieu. (Cit­i­zen Green­wald is very close­ly con­nect­ed with Wik­iLeaks, as well.)

As dis­cussed  in FTR #‘s 732 and 745, Wik­iLeaks is a far-right, Nazi-linked intel­li­gence net­work. Although the vast major­i­ty of its adher­ents and those of the close­ly-con­nect­ed Pirate Bay and Pirate Par­ty milieux (as well as the over­lap­ping “Anony­mous” folks) would be described as “anarcho/Utopian” in  their polit­i­cal out­look, Wik­iLeaks tracks back to explic­it­ly fas­cist ele­ments.

Begin­ning with review of Julian Assange’s Nazi and fas­cist asso­ci­a­tions, the first side of the show recaps part of side “A” of FTR #745.

After high­light­ing the WikiLeaks/Snowden rela­tion­ship, the pro­gram details Nazi infil­tra­tion of, and par­tic­i­pa­tion in, the Pirate Par­ty which, as we have seen, is very close to Wik­iLeaks.

Next, we turn to the sub­ject of the fledg­ling Wik­iLeaks Par­ty in Aus­tralia. That par­ty’s endorse­ment of fas­cist and far-right polit­i­cal par­ties in the Aus­tralian elec­tion was delib­er­ate, and not an “admin­is­tra­tive error.”

The pro­gram con­cludes with exam­i­na­tion of Julian Assange’s endorse­ment of Ron and Rand Paul.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Ron Paul’s links to the failed white-suprema­cist Domini­ca inva­sion in 1981; Ron Paul’s asso­ci­a­tion with the Fati­ma Cen­ter, a holo­caust-deny­ing orga­ni­za­tion that rejects the notion that the earth orbits the sun; Ron Paul’s decades-long net­work­ing with David Duke; Ron Paul’s decades-long net­work­ing with Don Black and the Storm­front milieu; con­nec­tions between the milieu of Julian Assange’s holo­caust-deny­ing aide Joran Jer­mas and David Duke; con­nec­tions between Carl Lund­strom and the milieu of David Duke; the role of for­mer Wik­iLeaks asso­ciate James Ball in pre­cip­i­tat­ing the Snow­den psy-op; Joran Jer­mas’ son Johannes Wahlstrom’s upcom­ing tes­ti­mo­ny as a char­ac­ter wit­ness in Julian Assange’s rape tri­al.

1a. The pro­gram reviews Assange and Wik­iLeaks’ links to explic­it­ly Nazi and fas­cist ele­ments, recap­ping infor­ma­tion from FTR #745.

Begin­ning with the deci­sive role of Joran Jermas/Israel Shamir’s Nazi and anti-Semit­ic net­work in the estab­lish­ment of Wik­iLeaks in Swe­den, the pro­gram cites research uncov­ered by Expo, the mag­a­zine found­ed by Stieg Lars­son.

The “orga­ni­za­tion” referred to by Jermas/Shamir and embraced by Assange is almost cer­tain­ly the “Pirate Vor­tex.” Although com­posed of Utopi­an-mind­ed indi­vid­u­als, for the most part, that milieu has strong fascist/Nazi under­pin­nings.

“Revealed: Anti­semite was key to Wik­iLeaks Oper­a­tion” by Mar­tin Bright; Jew­ish Chron­i­cle; 6/2/2011.

The noto­ri­ous anti­se­mitic jour­nal­ist Israel Shamir was active­ly involved in devel­op­ing the Wik­iLeaks net­work — and was not just anoth­er free­lance writer who hap­pened to strike up a work­ing rela­tion­ship with the website’s founder Julian Assange, accord­ing to new­ly-revealed cor­re­spon­dence. [Empha­sis added.]

Emails seen by the Swedish anti-racist mag­a­zine, Expo, demon­strate that the two men co-oper­at­ed for sev­eral years. As ear­ly as 2008 Mr Shamir was asked to rec­om­mend poten­tial asso­ciates in Swe­den. [Empha­sis added.] He sug­gested his own son, Johannes Wahlström: “He is a Swedish cit­i­zen, and lives in Swe­den. Prob­a­bly, he’ll be able to give advice about press free­dom.”

Like his father, Mr Wahlström has devel­oped a rep­u­ta­tion for stri­dent anti­se­mitic views. In 2005, left-wing mag­a­zine Ord­front was forced to with­draw one of his arti­cles, which argued that Israel con­trolled the Swedish media.

An email from June 2010 shows that Mr Shamir was still play­ing a part in the Swedish Wik­iLeaks net­work at that point. “I have a lot of good guys who can help to ana­lyze the trea­sure and it would be good to start spread­ing the news,” he told Mr Assange. “I am now in Paris, and peo­ple want to know more! Tues­day I go to Swe­den, and there is a whole oper­a­tion for your ben­e­fit!” Mr Assange replied: “There cer­tainly is! Tell the team to get ready. Give them my best. We have a lot of work to do.” . . . [Empha­sis added.]

1b. It might be worth­while here, to briefly review the nature of Jermas/Shamir’s polit­i­cal out­look.

“Assange’s Extrem­ist Employ­ees: Why is Wik­iLeaks employ­ing a Holo­caust Denier and his dis­graced son?” by Michael C. Moyni­han; Rea­son Mag­a­zine; 12/14/2010.

. . . So let us quick­ly recap the foul­ness of Shamir’s polit­i­cal views. As I not­ed last week, he has called the Auschwitz con­cen­tra­tion camp “an intern­ment facil­i­ty, attend­ed by the Red Cross (as opposed to the US intern­ment cen­tre in Guan­tanamo),” not a place of exter­mi­na­tion. He told a Swedish jour­nal­ist (and fel­low Holo­caust denier) that “it’s every Mus­lim and Christian’s duty to deny the Holo­caust.” . . .

1c. Joran Jer­mas’ son Johannes Wahlstrom’s will be tes­ti­fy­ing as a char­ac­ter wit­ness in Julian Assange’s rape tri­al. As dis­cussed above, Wahlstrom is a bird of the same polit­i­cal feath­er as his father.

“Exclu­sive: For­mer Wik­iLeaks Employ­ee James Ball Describes Work­ing With Julian Assange” by James Ball; The Dai­ly Beast; 5/30/2013.

. . . . Dis­turbingly, Assange seems to have a per­sonal moti­va­tion for stay­ing friend­ly with Shamir. Shamir’s son, Johannes Wahlstrom, is appar­ently being called as one of Assange’s defense wit­nesses in his Swedish tri­al. That’s not the only time self has come before prin­ci­ple.

1d. The “oper­a­tion [in Swe­den] for [Assange’s] ben­e­fit appears to be the milieu of the Pirate Bay–referred to in FTR #732 as the “Pirate Vor­tex.” This milieu is inex­tri­ca­bly linked with Wik­iLeaks’ oper­a­tions, with the eco­nom­ic heavy lift­ing for Pirate Bay being done by Carl Lund­strom, Nazi/fascist financier of far right par­ties, includ­ing the Swe­den Democ­rats.

Lis­ten­ers are emphat­i­cal­ly encour­aged to care­ful­ly digest the mate­r­i­al in FTR #732. A grasp of that broad­cast will great­ly aid in under­stand­ing this pro­gram.

2a. It was a Guardian jour­nal­ist James Ball–a for­mer Wik­iLeaks associate–who helped cement the Snowden–Laura Poitras rela­tion­ship.

“How Edward Snow­den Led Jour­nal­ist and Film-Mak­er to Reveal NSA Secrets” by Roy Greenslade; The Guardian; 8/19/2013.

. . . . After Poitras made a video of Snow­den, duly post­ed on 9 June, he checked out of his hotel and went into hid­ing. A week lat­er, Poitras flew to Berlin, “where she could edit her doc­u­men­tary with­out wor­ry­ing that the FBI would show up with a search war­rant.”

And two weeks after that she flew to Brazil. It was there, in a Rio de Janeiro hotel, that Maass met her along with Green­wald, where they were work­ing with MacAskill and anoth­er Guardian jour­nal­ist, James Ball. . . .

2b. Next the pro­gram details the role of Wik­iLeaks in empow­er­ing Snow­den’s jour­ney from Chi­na to Rus­sia.

One of Wik­iLeaks’ finan­cial assis­tants has offered to fly Snow­den to Ice­land, in order to receive polit­i­cal Asy­lum. Ola­fur Vig­nir Sig­urvins­son, head of Dat­a­Cell (which has been accept­ing funds for Wik­iLeaks), is pony­ing up for the air­craft.

Sig­urvinsson’s Dat­a­Cell is presided over by Andreas Fink, a mem­ber of the Swiss Pirate Party–see text excerpt below. (The “Pirate Vor­tex,” as we call the Pirate Bay/Pirate Par­ty crowd, are of “anarcho/Utopian” polit­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion, but have been maneu­vered into back­ing hard-core fas­cist insti­tu­tions and under­tak­ings. Hell, they haven’t even come to terms with their Nazi finan­cial angel Carl Lund­strom’s activ­i­ties. Ger­many’s Pirate Par­ty has tak­en stock of the Nazi infil­tra­tion of its ranks.)

3. Not­ing the Pirate Par­ty’s close rela­tion­ship with Wik­iLeaks, we high­light that orgniza­tion’s infil­tra­tion by neo-Nazi ele­ments.

4. It should come as no sur­prise at all that the Aus­tralian Wik­iLeaks Par­ty chose far-right and fas­cist par­ties over its Green sup­port­ers in the recent elec­tion Down Under.

“Wik­iLeaks Party’s ‘Admin­is­tra­tive Errors’ Incense Greens” by Bernard Keane;  Crikey.com.au; 8/19/2013.

A deci­sion by the Wik­iLeaks Par­ty to direct pref­er­ences away from Julian Assange’s strongest polit­i­cal sup­porter has incensed sup­port­ers. They should have known bet­ter.

The fledg­ling Wik­iLeaks Par­ty has inflict­ed major dam­age on itself after a dis­as­trous pref­er­ence allo­ca­tion that saw it pref­er­enc­ing far-right par­ties, apol­o­gis­ing for an “admin­is­tra­tive error” and pref­er­enc­ing the WA Nation­als ahead of Julian Assange’s strongest polit­i­cal sup­porter, Greens Sen­a­tor Scott Lud­lam.

The Sen­ate pref­er­ence allo­ca­tions revealed yes­ter­day showed, in New South Wales, Wik­iLeaks had pref­er­enced the right-wing Shoot­ers and Fish­ers Par­ty and the extreme-right Aus­tralia First Par­ty, run by con­victed crim­i­nal and for­mer neo-Nazi Jim Saleam, ahead of the Greens and the major par­ties. Aus­tralia First wants to end all immi­gra­tion and to restore the death penal­ty.

Soon after the release of the pref­er­ences and a firestorm of crit­i­cism erupt­ed on social media, the par­ty issued a state­ment on its Face­book page blam­ing the pref­er­enc­ing on “some admin­is­tra­tive errors”.

The “error”, the exact nature of which remains unex­plained, appears to have par­tic­u­larly incensed pro­gres­sive vot­ers who had assumed Wik­iLeaks would be a left-wing, Greens-style par­ty. How­ever, Julian Assange has already crit­i­cised the Greens’ totemic asy­lum seek­er pol­icy as “sim­plis­tic and fool­ish” dur­ing the cam­paign and backed off­shore pro­cess­ing, while crit­i­cis­ing both the major par­ties on the issue. On the week­end, Assange said he admired US lib­er­tar­ian Repub­li­cans Ron and Rand Paul, though he expressed con­cern about their posi­tion on issues like abor­tion. Swap­ping pref­er­ences with minor par­ties of very dif­fer­ent ori­en­ta­tions is also stan­dard prac­tice for all par­ties. One par­ty source told Crikey the “admin­is­tra­tive error” in NSW was quite inten­tional and aimed at the Greens. . . .

. . . . Lud­lam has been Assange’s strongest sup­porter inside fed­eral Par­lia­ment, hound­ing the gov­ern­ment over its lack of sup­port for him and its deal­ings with the US over its cam­paign against Assange and Wik­iLeaks. Lud­lam trav­elled to Europe at his own expense in 2011 to talk to Swedish author­i­ties and Aus­tralian offi­cials in the UK about the case.

The deci­sion to pref­er­ence the Nation­als’ David Wirrpan­da ahead of Lud­lam, strength­en­ing the chances of the Nation­als snar­ing the sixth Sen­ate spot ahead of the Greens, is thus an extra­or­di­nary betray­al. . . .

“Wik­ileaks Par­ty Sen­ate Can­di­date: NSW Pref­er­ences a ‘Poor Judge­ment Call’, not Admin Error” by Ter­ence Huynh; Techgeek.com;  8/26/2013.

Ger­ry Geor­gatos, the num­ber one Sen­ate can­di­date for the Wik­ileaks Par­ty in West­ern Aus­tralia, has said that the Wik­ileaks Party’s New South Wales pref­er­ences fias­co was a “poor judge­ment call” and not an admin­is­tra­tive error.

It was not an admin­is­tra­tive error, it was a poor judge­ment call. I’m not [going to come out] here and bull­shit the audi­ence,” he told the Indy­media pro­gramme (24 min­utes into the pro­gramme) on Perth’s RTR yes­ter­day. His state­ment appears to con­tra­dicts the offi­cial posi­tion giv­en by the Wik­ileaks Par­ty that the pref­er­ences were an “admin­is­tra­tive error”.

In New South Wales, the Wik­ileaks Par­ty pref­er­enced the Shoot­ers and Fish­ers and far-right Aus­tralia First par­ty above the Greens – in direct con­tra­dic­tion to the deci­sions made by the Nation­al Coun­cil. The fias­co, in addi­tion to the West­ern Aus­tralian pref­er­ences, saw Leslie Can­nold, four Nation­al Coun­cil mem­bers and sev­eral vol­un­teers left the par­ty. . . . .

5. The pro­gram con­cludes with exam­i­na­tion of Assange’s sup­port for Ron and Rand Paul, the for­mer being Eddie the Friend­ly Spook’s Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date of choice.

The next pro­gram explores and reviews cen­tral points of the Ron and Rand Paul milieu.

The pro­gram then ana­lyzes some key points of the “Paulis­tin­ian Lib­er­tar­i­an Orga­ni­za­tion,” includ­ing:

  •  Ron Paul’s son Rand Paul is lead­ing the polit­i­cal charge over the Snow­den “dis­clo­sures” (note the quotes.) Rand Paul is lin­ing up as a GOP Pres­i­den­tial hope­ful for 2016, look­ing to cap­i­tal­ize on lib­er­tar­i­an pop­ulism as a vehi­cle for achiev­ing vic­to­ry. Again, expect to see L’Af­faire Snow­den play into the Repub­li­can theme of Obama/Democrats as spon­sors of “big gov­ern­ment” etc., etc. (Both the above-men­tioned Peter Thiel and Glenn Green­wald–Snow­den’s leak­ing jour­nal­ist of choice–network with the Koch broth­ers fund­ed Cato Insti­tute, an epi­cen­ter of lib­er­tar­i­an ide­ol­o­gy.) (See text excerpt in linked arti­cle.)
  • We have not­ed in past dis­cus­sion that one of the goals of this “op” is to alien­ate younger, more ide­al­is­tic vot­ers from the Demo­c­ra­t­ic par­ty. That appears to be one of Rand Paul’s strat­a­gems in his cam­paign bid. (See text excerpt in linked arti­cle.)
  • Rand Paul’s key staffer Jack Hunter is a for­mer chair­man of The League of the South, a racist neo-Con­fed­er­ate orga­ni­za­tion that advo­cates the seces­sion of the South and has links to the milieu behind the assas­si­na­tion of Mar­tin Luther King. Sarah Pal­in’s polit­i­cal milieu also has links to the League of the South. (See text excerpt in linked arti­cle.)
  • Jack Hunter is the for­mer blog­ger for–Ron Paul, Snow­den’s Nazi Pres­i­den­tial can­di­date of choice. (See text excerpt in linked arti­cle.)
  • Snow­den’s father Lon Snow­den has formed a polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion with Bruce Fein, a Ron Paul backer in 2008. (See text excerpt in linked arti­cle.)
  • Bruce Fein is also, appar­ent­ly, the lawyer for Edward Snow­den as well, han­dling legal maneu­ver­ing for Eddie the Friend­ly Spook while he is in Rus­sia. (See text excerpt in linked arti­cle.)
  • Fein was a coun­sel for Ron Paul’s Pres­i­den­tial cam­paign in 2012. (See text excerpt in linked arti­cle.)
  • Fein’s asso­ci­a­tion with Lon Snow­den appears to have derived from the elder Snow­den’s net­work­ing with Rand Paul’s orga­ni­za­tion.
  • Fein also net­worked with the Ger­man-based Schiller Insti­tute, run by the fas­cist orga­ni­za­tion of Lyn­don LaRouche. (See text excerpt in linked arti­cle.)
  • Fein also works on behalf of Turk­ish inter­ests, act­ing in con­junc­tion with forces alleged by Sibel Edmonds to be involved with mon­ey laun­der­ing on behalf of inter­ests that include Al-Qae­da. The prob­a­bil­i­ty is strong that Fein oper­ates in con­junc­tion with the Erdo­gan gov­ern­ment and–possibly–Fetul­lah Gulen. (See text excerpt in linked arti­cle.)
  • Wik­iLeaks founder Julian Assange–joined at the hip with Eddie the Friend­ly Spook–has endorsed both Ron and Rand Paul.
  • In an update, we note that Ron Paul will be attend­ing a fund-rais­er for a fas­cist splin­ter sect of Catholi­cism that endors­es Holo­caust denial, claims the Jews are try­ing to exter­mi­nate Gen­tiles and denies that the earth revolves around the sun. Paul’s asso­ci­a­tion with this group goes back to 1998. (See text excerpt in linked arti­cle.)
  • Anoth­er update flesh­es out Ron Paul’s racist asso­ciates and views.
  • Yet anoth­er update details some of the anti-demo­c­ra­t­ic views of the Lud­wig von Mis­es Insti­tute, as well as its pro­found links to the neo-Con­fed­er­ate move­ment. The Von Mis­es Insi­tute is the epi­cen­ter for the eco­nom­ic views of Ron and Rand Paul, as well as Eddie Snow­den.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Discussion

5 comments for “FTR #755 The Adventures of Eddie the Friendly Spook, Part 2: Dramatis Personae, Part 2 (WikiFascism, Part 3)”

  1. Edward Snow­den gave a series of inter­views just pub­lished in the New York Times about the events and moti­va­tions and some of the logis­tics involved. One of the things we’re learn­ing is that the key event for him in 2009 was stum­bling across a mis­placed clas­si­fied 2009 inspec­tor gen­er­al’s report on the NSA’s war­rant­less wire­tap­ping pro­gram dur­ing the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion. We also learned that Snow­den worked on Chi­nese tar­gets and appar­ent­ly even taught a class on Chi­nese cyber­coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence meth­ods while adding that he had “access to every tar­get, every active oper­a­tion [mount­ed by the N.S.A. against the Chi­nese]. Full lists of them”. Inter­est­ing, he claims to be very con­fi­dent that there’s a zero per­cent chance that the Rus­sians or Chi­nese received any of his data. The evi­dence he cites that no such data has been passed along is the fact that the NSA isn’t loud­ly denounc­ing spe­cif­ic dam­age caused by the leaks and has­n’t pub­licly declar­ing things like “the Chi­nese mil­i­tary has shut us out.” He also added that no files were tak­en to Rus­sia because he hand­ed them all off to his team of jour­nal­ists in Hong Kong.

    Adding to the ques­tion of “what did the Rus­sians get their hands on?”, there was an inter­view last week of Ray McGov­ern after he flew to Moscow to meet with Snow­den and give him an award. Accord­ing to McGov­ern, the four lap­tops Snow­den took to Moscow were all decoys. The real data was on thumb dri­ves hand­ed to Green­wald and Poitras back in Hong Kong:

    Lap­tops Snow­den took to Hong Kong, Rus­sia were a ‘diver­sion’

    By Mark Hosen­ball

    WASHINGTON | Fri Oct 11, 2013 2:14pm EDT

    (Reuters) — The four lap­top com­put­ers that for­mer U.S. spy con­trac­tor Edward Snow­den car­ried with him to Hong Kong and Moscow were a “diver­sion” and con­tained no secrets, accord­ing to an ex-CIA offi­cial who met with Snow­den in Rus­sia this week.

    The clas­si­fied doc­u­ments that Snow­den had down­loaded from the U.S. Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency were stored on small­er devices, such as hard dri­ves and thumb dri­ves, and they have not been turned over to the Russ­ian or Chi­nese author­i­ties, said Ray McGov­ern, a for­mer Cen­tral Intel­li­gence Agency ana­lyst.

    On Wednes­day, Snow­den held a six-hour meet­ing in Moscow with McGov­ern and three oth­er for­mer U.S. intel­li­gence and law enforce­ment offi­cials who have all become crit­ics of gov­ern­ment sur­veil­lance pro­grams.

    ...

    U.S. offi­cials have said that they were oper­at­ing on the assump­tion that any clas­si­fied mate­ri­als down­loaded by Snow­den have fall­en into the hands of Chi­na and Rus­si­a’s spy agen­cies, though the offi­cials acknowl­edge they have no proof of this.

    McGov­ern said Snow­den made it clear at their Wednes­day meet­ing that there was “noth­ing on” his lap­tops.

    The for­mer CIA ana­lyst had trav­eled to Rus­sia to give Snow­den an award for “Integri­ty in Intel­li­gence.” The oth­er Amer­i­cans who went with him were Coleen Row­ley, a for­mer FBI agent; Jes­se­lyn Radack, a for­mer Jus­tice Depart­ment offi­cial; and Thomas Drake, a for­mer NSA offi­cial who the U.S. gov­ern­ment had pros­e­cut­ed for alleged­ly leak­ing secrets about an NSA project called “Trail­blaz­er.”

    In a tele­phone inter­view from Moscow, McGov­ern said Snow­den told him that Drake was the “mod­el” for his deci­sion to leak U.S. secrets. The gov­ern­ment even­tu­al­ly dropped all but a rel­a­tive­ly minor charge against Drake, to which he plead­ed guilty.

    McGov­ern said Snow­den had “no regrets at all and he said it very con­vinc­ing­ly.”

    Snow­den is “well pro­tect­ed” but also said he “can do pret­ty much what I like” and can “get out and about,” accord­ing to McGov­ern.

    He declined to dis­cuss where and how they met with Snow­den, but he said that they had to pass through met­al detec­tors before the meet­ing and that Snow­den appeared to be attend­ed by some kind of offi­cial Russ­ian secu­ri­ty detail.

    Wik­iLeaks founder Julian Assange and his close col­lab­o­ra­tor Sarah Har­ri­son, a British jour­nal­ism stu­dent who has been help­ing Snow­den, played a major role in arrang­ing for the meet­ing, McGov­ern said.

    Har­ri­son remained with Snow­den as he spent sev­er­al weeks in legal lim­bo in a Moscow air­port tran­sit zone, and stayed in Rus­sia after he was grant­ed tem­po­rary asy­lum.

    ...

    There was also a piece by Jes­se­lyn Radack, one of the atten­dees of that meet­ing in Moscow, about her expe­ri­ences with Snow­den. It sounds like Snow­den is real­ly per­plexed by all of the inter­est into whether or not he could be pass­ing infor­ma­tion to the Rus­sians:

    The Nation
    My Vis­it With Edward Snow­den

    Although liv­ing in exile from the coun­try he loves, Snow­den is warm, cen­tered and engaged and fol­lows debates about sur­veil­lance with a keen legal acu­men.
    Jes­se­lyn Radack
    Octo­ber 17, 2013

    Last week I trav­eled to Rus­sia with three oth­er Amer­i­cans to present for­mer Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Agency con­trac­tor Edward Snow­den with the annu­al Sam Adams Asso­ciates Award for Integri­ty in Intel­li­gence. Ray McGov­ern (retired CIA ana­lyst), Thomas Drake (for­mer NSA senior exec­u­tive and whistle­blow­er), Coleen Row­ley (retired FBI agent and whistle­blow­er), and I felt it espe­cial­ly impor­tant that Snow­den receive this award from Amer­i­cans who served the gov­ern­ment in the nation­al secu­ri­ty and intel­li­gence fields. Being the first Amer­i­cans to see Snow­den since he left Hong Kong, we all had seri­ous con­cerns about our trip—not about get­ting into Rus­sia, but about get­ting back into our own coun­try. We left Wash­ing­ton, DC, hav­ing a lawyer on retain­er and no electronics—cell phones, lap­tops or any of today’s nor­mal lifelines—knowing that the Unit­ed States could geo-locate our where­abouts and find Snow­den, and also know­ing we could have our devices searched and con­fis­cat­ed upon our return.

    ...

    As for who is pro­vid­ing for his security—WikiLeaks? FSB?—this ques­tion is borne not out of a con­cern for his safe­ty, but rather a US desire to per­pet­u­ate a false nar­ra­tive that Snow­den is being con­trolled by the Rus­sians. I can say with cer­tain­ty: Edward Snow­den is not being con­trolled by the Rus­sians, or any­one for that mat­ter. He is fierce­ly inde­pen­dent and makes his own deci­sions, leav­ing him per­plexed and under­stand­ably frus­trat­ed by the con­tin­u­ous insin­u­a­tions that he is giv­ing the Rus­sians infor­ma­tion. He ticks off abun­dant evi­dence to the con­trary. First, he points out, he didn’t destroy his life to become a Russ­ian asset. Sec­ond, he’s in Rus­sia only because of the Unit­ed States, which revoked his pass­port while he was en route to Latin Amer­i­ca. Third, Wik­iLeaks jour­nal­ist Sarah Har­ri­son has been by his side the whole time, in part to bear wit­ness to the fact that he is not engaged in spy­ing activ­i­ty. Fourth, it is obvi­ous that he chose to give infor­ma­tion about NSA’s secret drag­net sur­veil­lance to the US peo­ple, not for­eign adver­saries. Fifth, and per­haps most sig­nif­i­cant­ly con­sid­er­ing the con­trary nar­ra­tive pro­mul­gat­ed in the Unit­ed States, he has not had access to the infor­ma­tion he revealed since he left Hong Kong. Here, ratio­nal log­ic fails and cog­ni­tive dis­so­nance clouds him from see­ing that the spy alle­ga­tion is just a more incen­di­ary ver­sion of the rou­tine smears always lev­eled against whistle­blow­ers. For why would your coun­try cru­ci­fy you when you’re try­ing to keep it on the right path?

    ...

    We did not dis­cuss par­tic­u­lar news arti­cles or rev­e­la­tions. But I was struck by some­thing I’ve always applaud­ed about Julian Assange. Despite what­ev­er per­il he was in, Assange always men­tioned con­cern for whistle­blow­ers, includ­ing Chelsea Man­ning, Drake, William Bin­ney and John Kiri­ak­ou, many of them my clients who were fac­ing espi­onage charges. They were grate­ful, as was I, for those words of sup­port in these very lone­ly bat­tles. Sim­i­lar­ly, Snowden—the most want­ed man on the planet—worried more about the crim­i­nal threats against oth­ers so piv­otal in his jour­ney: Wik­iLeaks, Julian Assange, Lau­ra Poitras, Glenn Green­wald and espe­cial­ly Wik­iLeaks jour­nal­ist Sarah Har­ri­son who has been his shep­herd, friend, pro­tec­tor and con­stant com­pan­ion since Hong Kong.

    ...

    So who knows whether or not Snow­den passed any­thing along to the Rus­sians, but when Sarah Har­ri­son has been his “shep­herd, friend, pro­tec­tor, and con­stant com­pan­ion since Hong Kong” it seems like we have to assume that Wik­iLeaks still does­n’t have any of Snow­den’s files. Because oth­er­wise....

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 17, 2013, 11:39 pm
  2. @Pterrafractyl–

    Cer­tain­ly tight­ens the already pro­found con­nec­tions between Eddie the Friend­ly Spook and Wik­iLeaks.

    How dis­gust­ing, though pre­dictable, to watch the press gush­ing all over a far right, Nazi-linked “op.”

    Glad I’ve got a strong stom­ach, as well as a high­ly-devel­oped sense of humor.

    Best,

    Dave

    Posted by Dave Emory | October 18, 2013, 4:46 pm
  3. A del­e­ga­tion of Wik­iLeaks Par­ty mem­bers met with Bashar al-Assad recent­ly. As one might expect, Aus­trali­a’s pun­di­toc­ra­cy was not pleased:

    The Syd­ney Morn­ing Her­ald

    Wik­iLeaks Par­ty defends its ‘cup of tea’ with Bashar al-Assad

    Jan­u­ary 1, 2014

    Lee­sha McKen­ny, David Wroe

    Julian Assange’s father has defend­ed the Wik­iLeaks Par­ty’s con­tro­ver­sial vis­it to Syr­ia, say­ing it was ”just a mat­ter of good man­ners” to meet with accused war crim­i­nal Pres­i­dent Bashar al-Assad.

    As a storm of con­tro­ver­sy erupt­ed around the vis­it by the Aus­tralian group, Mr Assange’s father, John Ship­ton, admit­ted the vis­it was being used for pro­pa­gan­da pur­pos­es by the Assad regime, but said the del­e­ga­tion was try­ing to resolve the con­flict, not side with the gov­ern­ment.

    Mr Ship­ton, who is chair­man of the Wik­iLeaks Par­ty, and oth­er par­ty mem­bers met with Dr Assad and oth­er senior mem­bers of the Syr­i­an regime last week. Syd­ney Uni­ver­si­ty aca­d­e­m­ic Tim Ander­son — who was acquit­ted of the 1978 bomb­ing of the Syd­ney Hilton hotel — and activist Gail Mal­one were among the del­e­ga­tion.

    Wik­iLeaks dis­tanced itself from the vis­it by its Aus­tralian polit­i­cal off­shoot, say­ing via its offi­cial Twit­ter account on Tues­day: ”Peace bro­ker­ing a good idea, but [it was] obvi­ous [the] meet­ing would be spun with­out care. Did not know or approve.”

    The Aus­tralian gov­ern­ment also expressed anger, with For­eign Affairs Min­is­ter Julie Bish­op brand­ing the vis­it ”exceed­ing­ly coun­ter­pro­duc­tive” and ”reck­less”.

    Mr Ship­ton said the del­e­ga­tion made the vis­it because resolv­ing the civ­il war in Syr­ia — in which an esti­mat­ed 126,000 peo­ple have been killed — was cen­tral to world peace and sta­bil­i­ty.

    But he dis­tanced him­self from the Assad regime, which among oth­er alleged atroc­i­ties is accused of using chem­i­cal weapons against its own peo­ple. ”He invit­ed us to call in and have a cup of tea, and it was dif­fi­cult to snub him,” Mr Ship­ton said from Lon­don.

    ”We just went along, said hel­lo, did­n’t say any­thing much actu­al­ly … If some­thing is cen­tral to the pros­per­i­ty of the West and the world and could lead to a world war, then you’ve got to look at it what­ev­er way you can. Our com­mit­ment is to peace and the unfold­ing of the facts and the Syr­i­an peo­ple, not to a par­tic­u­lar gov­ern­ment.”

    ...

    Ms Bish­op said it was obvi­ous the vis­it would be used for pro­pa­gan­da pur­pos­es.

    ”Assad has been accused of war crimes … and it’s extra­or­di­nary to think that [the Wik­iLeaks Par­ty] would just insert them­selves into this dread­ful sit­u­a­tion,” she said.

    ”It was exceed­ing­ly coun­ter­pro­duc­tive of an Aus­tralian polit­i­cal par­ty to meet the Syr­i­an leader giv­en the volatile con­flict that is under way … This was a reck­less action to the take.”

    One of the ways the Assad regime appears to be using the meet­ing with the Wik­iLeaks del­e­ga­tion is to reassert the charges that a promi­nent Syd­ney-based Imam with ties to the Syr­i­an oppo­si­tion is also a war crim­i­nal that was involved with the kid­nap­ping of 106 Syr­i­an women and chil­dren last year. This did­n’t go over well in Aus­trali­a’s polit­i­cal class:

    Wik­iLeaks activists slammed for Bashar al-Assad meet­ing

    JARED OWENS and RICK MORTON
    The Aus­tralian
    Jan­u­ary 01, 2014 12:00AM

    FOREIGN Min­is­ter Julie Bish­op has con­demned the Wik­iLeaks Par­ty’s “extreme­ly reck­less” meet­ing with Syr­i­an dic­ta­tor Bashar al-Assad, warn­ing the for­ay is “deeply coun­ter­pro­duc­tive” and under­mines sanc­tions placed on the pari­ah regime.

    But John Ship­ton, who is Julian Assange’s father and chief exec­u­tive of the Wik­iLeaks Par­ty, defend­ed his deci­sion to meet Assad, say­ing it was bet­ter than sid­ing with “the liv­er-eaters and the head-chop­pers” of the rebel oppo­si­tion.

    Some of Wik­iLeaks’ most stead­fast sup­port­ers, how­ev­er, joined the gov­ern­ment and oppo­si­tion in con­demn­ing the “sol­i­dar­i­ty mis­sion” to Syr­ia that toured Dam­as­cus and was shown in state-run media vis­it­ing senior mem­bers of the regime.

    Police also dis­put­ed the regime’s claims to the del­e­ga­tion that Can­ber­ra had “turned a blind eye” to a promi­nent Syd­ney imam who was alleged­ly “respon­si­ble for” the kid­nap­ping of 106 women and chil­dren dur­ing a mas­sacre of civil­ians by jiha­di rebels on August 4.

    The For­eign Min­is­ter warned that the Wik­iLeaks mis­sion, which claimed to rep­re­sent Aus­tralia, “could be inter­pret­ed as a show of sup­port for Pres­i­dent Assad’s behav­iour”.

    “I find it extra­or­di­nar­i­ly reck­less that an organ­i­sa­tion reg­is­tered as a polit­i­cal par­ty in Aus­tralia would seek to insert itself into the con­flict in Syr­ia and engage with a leader accused of war crimes and crimes against human­i­ty, includ­ing using chem­i­cal weapons against his own peo­ple,” Ms Bish­op told The Aus­tralian.

    “Their actions could be inter­pret­ed as a show of sup­port for Pres­i­dent Assad’s behav­iour. Fur­ther, the Syr­i­an regime is sub­ject to wide-rang­ing sanc­tions and Wik­iLeaks’ actions are deeply coun­ter­pro­duc­tive.

    “Aus­tralia, as a mem­ber of the UN Secu­ri­ty Coun­cil, is active­ly pur­su­ing human­i­tar­i­an efforts in Syr­ia. It is not a place for polit­i­cal par­ties to pur­sue their polit­i­cal ends.”

    Mr Ship­ton insist­ed his par­ty’s ene­mies would attempt to smear the “fact-find­ing” mis­sion to Syr­ia.

    He claimed the mis­sion mir­rored inter­na­tion­al efforts to find a peace­ful solu­tion to the con­flict after almost three years of blood­shed and more than 125,000 deaths.

    “We’re clear­ly on the right side of his­to­ry here, and who would want to be on the side of the liv­er-eaters and the head-chop­pers that plague the poor peo­ple of Syr­ia?” Mr Ship­ton said.

    “I have no inter­est in sup­port­ing the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment at all, or the oppo­si­tion. That’s their thing they fight about.

    “I’m inter­est­ed in the effect on the peo­ple of Syr­ia and the strate­gies the con­tend­ing (region­al and world) pow­ers are putting into place there.

    “In Dam­as­cus they’ve got four hours of elec­tric­i­ty a day and ran­dom mor­tar fire at night ... You could smell the after­math of gun­fire in the air.”

    Mr Ship­ton was spend­ing New Year’s Eve with Mr Assange, who is being har­boured in the Ecuado­ri­an embassy in Lon­don.

    Ecuador sup­ports the Syr­i­an gov­ern­ment and has offered asy­lum to Assad and his inner cir­cle if they ask for it.

    Author Antony Loewen­stein, a sup­port­er of Wik­iLeaks, backed “peace­ful dia­logue” with Assad but insist­ed the Wik­iLeaks Par­ty’s sol­i­dar­i­ty mis­sion “white­wash­es the crimes of the regime”.

    “It’s sad to see the Wik­iLeaks Par­ty vis­it Syr­ia and show ‘sol­i­dar­i­ty’ with Assad, a bru­tal dic­ta­tor who is respon­si­ble for the death of count­less civil­ians. The Sau­di and West­ern-backed ‘rebels’ are equal­ly com­plic­it in war crimes,” Mr Loewen­stein said. The head of the Islam­ic Friend­ship Asso­ci­a­tion, Keysar Trad, accused the Wik­iLeaks Par­ty of bla­tant hypocrisy for giv­ing Assad the pub­lic­i­ty coup of being vis­it­ed by an Aus­tralian del­e­ga­tion.

    “It’s very dis­ap­point­ing to see Wik­iLeaks, which sup­ports open­ness and human rights, to be meet­ing with one of the biggest human rights abusers of our time,” Mr Trad said.

    “It’s dis­re­spect­ful to all the fam­i­lies who have been vic­tims of the Assad regime.”

    Mr Trad defend­ed the promi­nent Syd­ney imam whom Syr­i­an offi­cials claimed was involved in the kid­nap­ping of 106 women and chil­dren dur­ing a mas­sacre of civil­ians by rebels in the province of Latakia on August 4.

    These claims were made to the Wik­iLeaks del­e­ga­tion.

    Mr Trad said he per­son­al­ly knew the imam, describ­ing him as an emi­nent schol­ar and respect­ed mem­ber of the Aus­tralian com­mu­ni­ty.

    It was implau­si­ble that the sheik would have been involved in any form of vio­lent activ­i­ty in Syr­ia, he said.

    ...

    But three oth­er senior Wik­iLeaks par­ty fig­ures — for­mer Sen­ate can­di­dates Ali­son Broinows­ki, Ger­ry Geor­gatos and deputy chair­man Omar Todd — backed the del­e­ga­tion’s motives.

    Mr Geor­gatos likened it to the first olive branch­es offered to South African lead­ers that ulti­mate­ly dis­man­tled apartheid.

    The Greens declined an oppor­tu­ni­ty to com­ment.

    ...

    Their trans­la­tor, west­ern Syd­ney-based Mr Daoud, is a well-known oppo­nent of the anti-Assad insur­gency.

    Mr Ship­ton said there were no for­mal links between the Wik­iLeaks Par­ty and Dr Ander­son, a for­mer mem­ber of the Anan­da Mar­ga reli­gious sect who was jailed and lat­er acquit­ted of the ter­ror­ist bomb­ing of the Syd­ney Hilton that killed two coun­cil work­ers and a police offi­cer in 1978.

    At this point it seems that “expect the unex­pect­ed” is becom­ing the offi­cial theme of the fledg­ling Wik­iLeaks Par­ty. For instance, few prob­a­bly expect­ed this sur­prise trip to Syr­ia and even few­er prob­a­bly expect­ed John Ship­ton to respond to the crit­i­cism over the Syr­i­an del­e­ga­tion by suing Aus­tralian Prime Min­is­ter Tony Abbott and his For­eign Min­is­ter Julie Bish­op over their con­dem­na­tion of their trip. And yet that’s exact­ly what he’s doing.

    On a his­tor­i­cal note, it’s also worth point­ing out that del­e­ga­tion-mem­ber Tim Ander­son — who was acquit­ted of the 1978 bomb­ing of the Syd­ney Hilton — has a real­ly odd per­son­al sto­ry. Ander­son was a mem­ber of the Anan­da Mar­ga cult, a group that was charged with a num­ber of vio­lent attacks around the world, espe­cial­ly in Aus­tralia, fol­low­ing the jail­ing of its its leader. That’s pret­ty spooky in and of itself.

    But when you read the sum­ma­ry of the entire affair, charges of Ander­son­’s guilt become unten­u­ous as a result of the erod­ed cred­i­bil­i­ty of Ander­son­’s accusers. No one knows who did the bomb­ing to this day but evi­dence con­tin­ues to point towards some sort of Anan­da Mar­ga involve­ment or a police/intelligence agency cov­er up or both. Ander­son and two oth­er cult mem­bers where charged with con­spir­ing to kill an Aus­tralian neo-nazi leader four months after the bomb­ing. And it was dur­ing that inves­ti­ga­tion that a police infor­mant was uncov­ered that impli­cat­ed Ander­son in the bomb­ing. But there was also evi­dence sug­gest­ing that the entire affair was actu­al­ly a staged bomb­ing attempt that was sup­posed to be thwart­ed by the police and went hor­ri­bly awry. So Ander­son was acquit­ted from those charges, but then recharged in 1989 after anoth­er cult mem­ber admit­ted guilt in the bomb­ing and said Ander­son sup­plied to the mate­r­i­al. Ander­son was even­tu­al­ly acquit­ted of those charges too. So who knows what, if any, involve­ment Ander­son had with the bomb­ing. But that larg­er sto­ry of Anan­da Mar­ga and 1978 bomb­ing of the Syd­ney Hilton is — all things con­sid­eredpret­ty damn spooky:

    Aus­tralian ter­ror­ism born in the Syd­ney Hilton bomb­ing

    Julia Rabar
    Her­ald Sun
    Decem­ber 21, 2012 12:00AM

    IT was Aus­trali­a’s first ter­ror­ist attack, but amid a string of plot twists many believe that more than three decades lat­er, there are still many unan­swered ques­tions.

    The ter­ror that struck in the heart of Syd­ney began on a warm sum­mer night in Feb­ru­ary, 1978.

    Aus­tralian Prime Min­is­ter Mal­colm Fras­er and the lead­ers of 11 heads of state were stay­ing at the Syd­ney Hilton Hotel the night before the Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing (CHOGM).

    Just after mid­night, a garbage truck pulled up out­side the front of the hotel to emp­ty a bin over­flow­ing with rub­bish.

    As the truck­’s hydraulic ram dropped to com­press the rub­bish, it det­o­nat­ed a 6.5kg bomb that had been in the bin in a blast that tore through the ear­ly-morn­ing seren­i­ty of the CBD.

    ...

    It was also report­ed a warn­ing phone call was made to police min­utes before the explo­sion, in the first hint that there was more to the sto­ry.

    And so began the con­tro­ver­sy.

    Overnight, Syd­ney went into lock­down amid the biggest man­hunt in Aus­trali­a’s his­to­ry.

    Mr Fras­er and the NSW Pre­mier Neville Wran demand­ed sup­port from the armed forces, and almost 2000 troops descend­ed on the city for pro­tec­tion.

    CHOGM pro­gressed with armed forces and even a decoy train employed to pro­tect heads of gov­ern­ment on their way to a pret­ty NSW town, Bowral.

    Mr Coster recalls Bowral was “trans­formed into a war zone” with heli­copters fly­ing over­head through the night and armoured per­son­nel car­ri­ers along the road into town.

    Police were now hunt­ing three men “swarthy in appear­ance and in their ear­ly 30s”.

    With­in hours, sus­pi­cions emerged that a pre­vi­ous­ly ignored reli­gious sect known as Anan­da Mar­ga appeared to have played a role in the bomb­ing.

    Mar­gis ‑as the sec­t’s mem­bers were known- had already been involved in world­wide protests for some years, demand­ing the Indi­an gov­ern­ment release their spir­i­tu­al leader Pab­hat Ran­ian Sarkar who was serv­ing a life sen­tence for mur­der.

    But the break­through came after the three main sus­pects were charged in anoth­er polit­i­cal con­spir­a­cy four months lat­er.

    On June 15, Ross Dunn, 24, Paul Alis­ter, 22, and Tim­o­thy Ander­son, 26, were charged with con­spir­ing to mur­der the NSW leader of the Nation­al Front – a pro­fessed Nazi – Robert Cameron.

    All were mem­bers of Anan­da Mar­ga’s Aus­tralian branch.

    The trio were sen­tenced to 16 years’ jail with­out parole.

    But the tri­als also unearthed police informer, Richard Seary, 26, who impli­cat­ed them in the Hilton bomb­ing.

    Mr Seary, a reformed hero­in addict, revealed he had joined Anan­da Mar­ga as a paid police informer in March 1978 to dis­cov­er any links between the sect and the bomb­ing.

    The men told him they had “fixed” the Hilton bomb­ing, and Ander­son had also declared: “You’ve got to be will­ing to die for your ide­ol­o­gy.”

    An arrest­ing detec­tive said Dunn had also told him: “We will nev­er be stopped. Anan­da Mar­ga will cleanse the world.”

    But despite a $100,000 reward and a team of 100 full-time detec­tives, no charges had been laid for the Hilton bomb­ing a year after the blast.

    Three ear­ly leads had been dis­count­ed, includ­ing a the­o­ry that a woman was sus­pect­ed of try­ing to harm the New Zealand prime min­is­ter because she opposed the abor­tion laws.

    Three years after the bomb­ing, new evi­dence sug­gest­ed a cov­er-up.

    On March 30, 1981, news­pa­pers report­ed that the NSW Attor­ney-Gen­er­al had received fresh infor­ma­tion.

    Among the new claims was that an army bomb dis­pos­al squad had been on its way to the Hilton when the bomb explod­ed. Anoth­er alle­ga­tion was that the police had­n’t searched the garbage bins the night before the blast, in an oth­er­wise com­pre­hen­sive search.

    Enter the Hilton bomb­ing’s most vocal con­spir­a­cy the­o­rist.

    Retired senior con­sta­ble Ter­ry Grif­fiths had been just six metres from the blast and suf­fered exten­sive injuries.

    The father of two, who had been bat­tling for work­er’s com­pen­sa­tion for over two years, believed he was the vic­tim of a cov­er-up involv­ing Aus­tralian secu­ri­ty forces.

    Mr Grif­fiths said the NSW Gov­ern­ment had delib­er­ate­ly blocked his efforts to seek com­pen­sa­tion.

    “I’m sug­gest­ing there is enough evi­dence for any per­son who wish­es to go into the mat­ter hon­est­ly to believe that there may well be a cov­er-up in this mat­ter.”

    Some evi­dence appeared to sup­port his the­o­ry.

    It emerged that three garbage trucks were divert­ed from the bin by police offi­cers, despite the fact that it was over­flow­ing with rub­bish.

    Mr Grif­fiths even claimed the explo­sion was the inad­ver­tent result of a media stunt fab­ri­cat­ed by ASIO, the mil­i­tary and the NSW Police Spe­cial Branch.

    His the­o­ry was that the organ­i­sa­tions had plant­ed the bomb which they then intend­ed to “dis­cov­er” to make them look good – and jus­ti­fy broad­er pow­ers, he told Syd­ney’s The Sun-Her­ald.

    It was only when the ill-fat­ed fourth truck slipped through and final­ly emp­tied the bin that the “plan” went bad­ly awry.

    Mr Grif­fiths sug­gest­ed that the phone call police received just min­utes before the blast was in fact a per­son involved who saw the truck approach the bin, and pan­icked.

    Mr Grif­fiths said ASIO had ben­e­fit­ed from the blast, gain­ing “unlim­it­ed pow­ers” from leg­is­la­tion intro­duced in the wake of the blast.

    Some politi­cians gob­bled up Mr Grif­fiths’ alle­ga­tions of con­spir­a­cy, includ­ing then-Sen­a­tor and fed­er­al shad­ow Attor­ney-Gen­er­al Gareth Evans.

    With­in a month there were calls for fresh inves­ti­ga­tions into the Hilton bomb­ing and the reward raised to $250,000.

    Then, in 1982, a coro­nial inquest was announced.

    The Syd­ney Hilton’s night recep­tion­ist at the time of the blast, Man­fred von Gries told the inquiry he saw three men speak­ing to police just before the explo­sion.

    With­in days, he was approached by a man who threat­ened to kid­nap his son if he spoke to police about what he saw, he claimed.

    He lat­er iden­ti­fied the man as Jason Alexan­der, Anan­da Mar­ga’s Aus­tralian leader, but there were doubts about his evi­dence.

    Mr Grif­fiths added to his claims, sug­gest­ing a bomb dis­pos­al truck was sta­tioned around the cor­ner before the blast, and that sev­er­al Spe­cial Branch offi­cers were watch­ing the police from a vehi­cle across the road.

    He also said he’d been informed that a war­rant offi­cer with the armed forces had plant­ed the bomb sev­er­al days before the blast.

    Mr Grif­fiths also said that Sgt Robert Jack­son, his friend and fel­low offi­cer who had assist­ed with the ini­tial mur­der inves­ti­ga­tion, had told him that the warn­ing call was made to police 10 min­utes before the blast.

    With­in days, Sgt Jack­son denied the con­ver­sa­tion.

    Sgt Arthur Hawkin, on duty on the night of the blast, appeared to back the the­o­ry.

    Mr Hawkin said when he arrived for his shift 90 min­utes before the explo­sion he was told to expect trou­ble and “some­thing about a bomb”.

    The inquiry also heard a sergeant before the blast saw Tim­o­thy Ander­son near the rub­bish bin that lat­er explod­ed, dur­ing a demon­stra­tion against the New Zealand prime min­is­ter.

    And anoth­er wit­ness claimed Ander­son, a reg­u­lar cus­tomer, had picked up a news­pa­per in her shop the morn­ing after the blast and had said to anoth­er man: “We only got three.”

    Then the police infor­mant Richard Seary dropped pow­er­ful new claims, say­ing Ross Dunn had told him he’d plant­ed the bomb in the bin an hour before the Indi­an Prime Min­is­ter’s arrival.

    Why had­n’t Mr Seary shared this evi­dence with police ear­li­er?

    Ini­tial­ly, he said it was because he was upset with the way police had treat­ed him. Lat­er, he said it was due to con­cerns that Dunn had lied, con­fess­ing out of brava­do.

    He said on account of his doubts, he had drip-fed his evi­dence to police instead.

    With the lat­est claims, coro­ner Nor­man Walsh decid­ed there was enough evi­dence to charge Dunn and Alis­ter of three counts of mur­der, and Ander­son with con­spir­a­cy to mur­der.

    The court erupt­ed in shock and fury, and even the jury, which gave no offi­cial ver­dict raised lin­ger­ing ques­tions.

    In 1984, the NSW Attor­ney-Gen­er­al Paul Lan­da on Crown law advice decid­ed the three men would not be pros­e­cut­ed.

    Instead, a judi­cial inquiry was announced to inves­ti­gate the Cameron charges.

    This inquiry found Richard Seary to be an unre­li­able wit­ness, and a psy­chi­a­trist diag­nosed him as hav­ing a per­son­al­i­ty dis­or­der.

    Adding to his fall from grace, the Mar­gis’ lawyer went so far as to accuse Mr Seary of bomb­ing the hotel him­self.

    In 1985, after sev­en years in jail, the judi­cial inquiry quashed the tri­o’s con­vic­tions.

    The three men were released in May, par­doned by the NSW gov­ern­ment, and award­ed $100,000 each in com­pen­sa­tion.

    Alis­ter and Dunn moved to an Anan­da Mar­ga com­mu­ni­ty in Queens­land, and Mr Ander­son was left to pur­sue a PhD on Aus­tralian for­eign debt.

    But on May 30, 1989, Ander­son was again arrest­ed and charged for the bomb­ing amid new evi­dence.

    Evan Dun­stan Ped­er­ick, a 33-year-old Bris­bane pub­lic ser­vant Anan­da Mar­ga mem­ber admit­ted he had tried to remote­ly det­o­nate the bomb when the Indi­an Prime Min­is­ter arrived at the hotel.

    He said he was act­ing as a front man for Mr Ander­son, who pro­vid­ed the explo­sives.

    When the bomb failed to det­o­nate, Ped­er­ick pan­icked and ran. He plead­ed guilty to con­spir­ing to mur­der the Prime Min­is­ter – but not guilty to caus­ing the three sub­se­quent deaths.

    Nev­er­the­less, Ped­er­ick was found guilty of three counts of mur­der, and sen­tenced to 20 years’ jail. The jury deter­mined he had act­ed with reck­less indif­fer­ence by leav­ing the bomb in the bin.

    Anoth­er pris­on­er who had met Mr Ander­son while he was serv­ing the Cameron sen­tence revealed Ander­son had con­fessed his role in the Hilton bomb­ing.
    ‚.b,m,
    In 1990, Ander­son was sen­tenced to 14 years’ jail. Supreme Court jus­tice Michael Grove said Mr Ander­son had been “brain­washed” by the Anan­da Mar­ga cult when he insti­gat­ed the bomb­ing.

    Sev­en months lat­er Mr Ander­son was acquit­ted.

    But the saga was far from over.

    In May 1995, Ped­er­ick did a U‑turn. After six years in jail for a crime he con­fessed to, it sud­den­ly occurred to Ped­er­ick that he might be inno­cent.

    ...

    In 1997, the NSW Court of Crim­i­nal Appeal dis­missed Ped­er­ick­’s new claims, but six months lat­er he was released on parole.

    ...

    More than three decades on, the ques­tion mark remains: Who bombed the Syd­ney Hilton?

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 13, 2014, 3:04 pm
  4. Here’s an inter­est­ing twist to the Jack Hunter con­tro­ver­sy: it was­n’t polit­i­cal poi­son for Rand and Ron Paul’s polit­i­cal ambi­tions. It was also a wedge issue, a wedge between father and son:

    The Wash­ing­ton Free Bea­con
    Book: Rand Paul Knew About Aide’s Neo-Con­fed­er­ate Views for Years
    The ‘South­ern Avenger’s’ views were well known by Paul camp, accord­ing to new book

    BY: Alana Good­man
    Decem­ber 11, 2015 5:00 am

    Sen. Rand Paul (R., Ky.) knew that one of his clos­est aides had worked for years as a neo-Con­fed­er­ate radio host known as the “South­ern Avenger” and hired him any­way, accord­ing to a new book about the Repub­li­can pres­i­den­tial con­tenders.

    Paul also fought to keep the aide, Jack Hunter, on his staff for two weeks after the Wash­ing­ton Free Bea­con first report­ed that Hunter had spent over a decade work­ing as a pro-seces­sion­ist shock jock in South Car­oli­na.

    The July 2013 report set off a media firestorm over Hunter’s radio com­men­tary, which includ­ed crit­i­cism of Mex­i­cans, sup­port for the Con­fed­er­a­cy, and praise for the assas­si­na­tion of Abra­ham Lin­coln.

    How­ev­er, behind the scenes Paul fought against advis­ers who coun­seled him to cut Hunter loose, accord­ing to McK­ay Coppins’s The Wilder­ness: Deep Inside the Repub­li­can Party’s Com­bat­ive, Con­tentious, Chaot­ic Quest to Take Back the White House.

    Hunter, who renounced most of his radio com­men­tary in a July 2013 inter­view with the Free Bea­con, resigned near­ly two weeks after the sto­ry broke.

    “L’affaire Hunter left many in the polit­i­cal world per­plexed by why it had tak­en Rand so long to do what obvi­ous­ly need­ed to be done, and why he seemed to be tak­ing it all so per­son­al­ly,” report­ed Cop­pins. “But inside Rand World, the rea­son was obvi­ous. Hunter wasn’t just any run-of-the-mill seces­sion­ist polit­i­cal aide: he was a friend of the fam­i­ly.”

    “The truth was that Rand had known all about Hunter’s South­ern Avenger alter ego,” wrote Cop­pins. “[I]t had just nev­er occurred to him that a rad­i­cal resume should pre­clude a tal­ent­ed oper­a­tive from join­ing his team.”

    Paul also didn’t want to “give the neo­cons the sat­is­fac­tion of a scalp” by cut­ting ties with the aide, accord­ing to Cop­pins. But his ini­tial deci­sion to stand by Hunter alarmed advis­ers, includ­ing polit­i­cal con­sul­tant Trygve Olson.

    “Olson called up [Paul’s chief of staff] Doug Stafford in Rand’s office and told him what every polit­i­cal oper­a­tive in Wash­ing­ton already knew: You guys have to fire Hunter,” wrote Cop­pins.

    “Stafford replied that it wasn’t going to hap­pen. Rand had made up his mind; he thought the Free Bea­con sto­ry was a cheap shot, and he didn’t want to give the neo­cons the sat­is­fac­tion of a scalp. Besides, he didn’t think it was ulti­mate­ly that big of a deal.”

    Only after Olson met with Paul and made the case that Hunter would be dam­ag­ing to Paul’s pres­i­den­tial aspi­ra­tions did the sen­a­tor relent.

    “Yeah he prob­a­bly has to move on,” Paul told Olson, accord­ing to the book. “But I don’t want to fire him.”

    “Olson assured Rand that he wouldn’t have to, that they would per­suade Hunter to qui­et­ly slink away on his own,” wrote Cop­pins. “Rand signed off on the deci­sion, and final­ly, almost two weeks after the Free Bea­con sto­ry went live, Hunter resigned.”

    Hunter had a close rela­tion­ship with the Paul fam­i­ly, as the Free Bea­con report­ed in 2013. He had pre­vi­ous­ly worked for Rand Paul’s father, for­mer con­gress­man Ron Paul, as a cam­paign blog­ger. Hunter also co-wrote Rand Paul’s 2011 book, The Tea Par­ty Goes to Wash­ing­ton

    Accord­ing to Cop­pins, the South­ern Avenger con­tro­ver­sy con­tributed to a grow­ing rift between Rand Paul and his father: a feud that would even­tu­al­ly “derail” the younger Paul’s polit­i­cal ambi­tions.

    “Hunter had come under attack at a time when the rela­tion­ship between Rand and his dad was grow­ing more fraught with ten­sion and resent­ment by the day,” wrote Cop­pins.

    “And while both Pauls pub­licly slapped down even the faintest sug­ges­tion of acri­mo­ny, the truth was that their father-son rival­ry had been sim­mer­ing for years.”

    ...

    “Accord­ing to Cop­pins, the South­ern Avenger con­tro­ver­sy con­tributed to a grow­ing rift between Rand Paul and his father: a feud that would even­tu­al­ly “derail” the younger Paul’s polit­i­cal ambi­tions.”
    Hope­ful­ly they’ll patch things up now that those ambi­tions have been ren­dered a bit moot.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | December 13, 2015, 7:01 pm
  5. Here’s a twist on Julian Assange’s plans that hit the news a day before US Attor­ney Gen­er­al Jeff Ses­sions declared that the US was going to be legal­ly pur­su­ing Assange: Julian Assange is appar­ent­ly seri­ous­ly con­sid­er­ing run­ning for Par­lia­ment. Again. But it’s not Aus­trali­a’s par­lia­ment like his last bid. It’s the UK par­lia­ment, and he would run­ning in the snap elec­tions this June:

    The Syd­ney Morn­ing Her­ald

    Wik­iLeaks founder Julian Assange hints at run­ning for UK par­lia­ment at elec­tion

    Nick Miller
    April 20 2017

    Lon­don: Wik­iLeaks founder Julian Assange says he is seri­ous­ly con­sid­er­ing run­ning for the the UK par­lia­ment in June’s snap elec­tion.

    How­ev­er his time in par­lia­ment could be short­lived if Swedish pros­e­cu­tors decide to press charges against him on a rape alle­ga­tion.

    On Twit­ter on Wednes­day he asked his fol­low­ers what they thought of the idea of his run­ning, adding “the gov­ern­ment has detained me with­out charge for sev­en years”.

    His fol­low­ers strong­ly approved.

    Should I run in the UK gen­er­al elec­tion? The gov­ern­ment has detained me with­out charge for sev­en years:https://t.co/0VmWWBCxfC— Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) April 19, 2017

    Asked by Fair­fax whether it was just a throw­away Twit­ter line, Assange con­firmed he was gen­uine­ly dis­cussing the idea.

    “(I’m) seri­ous­ly con­sid­er­ing how much fun it might be to slap the pow­der off their stuck-up, class-bound noses,” he said.

    British MPs are not oblig­ed to attend par­lia­ment in per­son. How­ev­er if elect­ed, Assange would be unable to cast a vote unless he could some­how make it to West­min­ster with­out being arrest­ed.

    Assange is holed up in Lon­don’s Ecuado­ri­an embassy, where he sought asy­lum in June 2012 short­ly after los­ing a legal fight against an arrest war­rant over rape alle­ga­tions in Swe­den.

    Assange told Fair­fax it was wrong to assume he sought asy­lum to avoid extra­di­tion to Swe­den to face the rape alle­ga­tions. He said he was grant­ed asy­lum and refugee sta­tus in rela­tion to a US pros­e­cu­tion over his work with Wik­iLeaks.

    “I did not seek to avoid extra­di­tion (to) Swe­den, I sought to avoid extra­di­tion to the US from UK or Swe­den,” he said.

    By seek­ing asy­lum he breached one of his bail con­di­tions and is sub­ject to arrest under the UK’s Bail Act, British police have said.

    The fine print of the UK’s elec­toral laws does not imme­di­ate­ly dis­qual­i­fy Assange from stand­ing for elec­tion, despite his cur­rent life in legal lim­bo.

    As a cit­i­zen of a Com­mon­wealth coun­try – Aus­tralia – Assange is eli­gi­ble.

    He would have to pay a £500 ($850) deposit, refund­able if he wins 5 per cent of the vote, and get the sig­na­tures of 10 peo­ple in his elec­torate.

    The UK’s 1981 Rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Peo­ple Act dis­qual­i­fies any­one from being a mem­ber of the House of Com­mons if they are ordered to be impris­oned or detained for more than a year after being found guilty of an offence (in any coun­try) – or if they are “unlaw­ful­ly at large” when they would oth­er­wise be so detained.

    Last year a Unit­ed Nations pan­el ruled Assange was in “arbi­trary deten­tion” against inter­na­tion­al law – a deci­sion that the British and Swedish gov­ern­ments reject­ed.

    The UN Work­ing Group on Arbi­trary Deten­tion said its deci­sion was “legal­ly-bind­ing to the extent that (it is) based on bind­ing inter­na­tion­al human rights law” — how­ev­er it is not auto­mat­i­cal­ly enforce­able in either the UK or Swe­den.

    Assange has not been con­vict­ed of any offence, though there is an out­stand­ing Euro­pean arrest war­rant against him.

    A Swedish court has ordered his deten­tion in absen­tia, judg­ing he was sus­pect­ed on prob­a­ble cause of rape, and there was a con­tin­u­ing risk he would flee or evade a tri­al.

    Pros­e­cu­tors last year inter­viewed Assange at the embassy, and are now con­sid­er­ing his answers before decid­ing whether to push for­ward with their case.

    Accord­ing to Fair Tri­als Inter­na­tion­al, Swedish law requires Assange to be phys­i­cal­ly present on Swedish ter­ri­to­ry before charges can be laid.

    How­ev­er, chap­ter 45 of Swe­den’s judi­cial code sets out how a tri­al might take place with­out Assange if “after ser­vice of the sum­mons upon the defen­dant, he has fled or remains in hid­ing in such a man­ner that he can­not be brought to the main hear­ing” and if “the mat­ter can be sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly inves­ti­gat­ed”.

    Assange also claims the Unit­ed States intends to charge him with espi­onage or oth­er seri­ous crimes over his role in the Chelsea Man­ning leak of clas­si­fied files to Wik­iLeaks.

    Assange ran for elec­tion to the Aus­tralian Sen­ate in 2013, as a can­di­date for the Wik­iLeaks Par­ty in Vic­to­ria.

    ...

    “The fine print of the UK’s elec­toral laws does not imme­di­ate­ly dis­qual­i­fy Assange from stand­ing for elec­tion, despite his cur­rent life in legal lim­bo.”

    It sounds like this could maybe hap­pen. At least his run­ning might hap­pen. Get­ting elect­ed in anoth­er thing. Espe­cial­ly since he would­n’t be able to actu­al­ly vote:

    ...
    British MPs are not oblig­ed to attend par­lia­ment in per­son. How­ev­er if elect­ed, Assange would be unable to cast a vote unless he could some­how make it to West­min­ster with­out being arrest­ed.
    ...

    That will cer­tain­ly help solid­i­fy his ‘protest can­di­date’ cre­den­tials. Vote for Assange if you are so upset with pol­i­tics that you’re fine with a rep­re­sen­ta­tive who lit­er­al­ly can’t vote...but can leak a lot of dirt.

    Assum­ing he does real­ly go through with this it rais­es a num­ber of ques­tions. One obvi­ous ques­tion is whether or not he going revive the now-defunct Wik­ileaks Par­ty or start some­thing new? And giv­en the pro-Trump spoil­er role Wik­ileaks played in the 2016 US elec­tions, is Wik­ileaks going to be strate­gi­cal­ly leak­ing to give Assange an elec­toral edge? That would cer­tain­ly be an effec­tive way to get free adver­tis­ing.

    But per­haps the most intrigu­ing ques­tion at this point — espe­cial­ly after Team Trump appeared to total­ly betray him after every­thing Wik­ileaks did for Trump — is which far-right par­ty is Assange going to team up with this time? Will it be a bunch of obscure tiny far-right par­ties like the ones Assange direct­ed his Wik­ileaks par­ty to sup­port in Aus­tralia? How about UKIP? That seems fea­si­ble? We’ll find out, but if this run real­ly hap­pens it will be quite a twist in the strange Ecuado­ri­an Embassy Adven­tures of Julian Assange.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | April 26, 2017, 3:23 pm

Post a comment