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

News & Supplemental  

Bin Laden Death: Did WikiLeaks Almost Blow the Operation?; “Moderate” Muslim Brotherhood Condemns Raid

COMMENT: First off, speak­ing strict­ly for myself, I’m glad they got him. Good rid­dance to bad rub­bish!

There is a pos­si­bil­i­ty that good ol’ Wik­iLeaks may have com­pro­mised the effort to neu­tral­ize Bin Laden. As dis­cussed by Wik­iLeaks’ res­i­dent Holo­caust denier Joran Jer­mas (aka “Israel Shamir”), the Guan­tanamo files released by Man­ning to Wik­iLeaks indi­cate that the U.S. had locat­ed Bin Laden’s hideop­ut in Abot­tabad.

Did this com­pro­mis­ing of crit­i­cal intel­li­gence influ­ence the tim­ing of the raid that killed him? Was it feared that Bin Laden would learn that he had been locat­ed and flee?

Apol­o­gists for Wik­iLeaks, a far-right, Nazi-linked intel­li­gence net­work, would do well to re-con­sid­er their atti­tude. An excel­lent blog has laid out the para­maters of Bradley Man­ning’s activ­i­ties on behalf of Wik­iLeaks, not­ing the com­pro­mis­ing of the Bin Laden intel­li­gence and nail­ing down exact­ly why Bradley Man­ning is nei­ther a “hero” nor a “whistle­blow­er.” Please read the entire post–it is excel­lent!

“Did Bradley Man­ning Almost Blow the Oper­a­tion to Capture/Kill Bin Laden?”; Extreme Lib­er­al’s Blog; 5/7/2011.

EXCERPT: . . . Bradley Man­ning and The Leaks

Now, how can Bradley Man­ning be con­nect­ed to the release of the Git­mo papers? Well, let’s look at his own words as he laid bare his actions to Adri­an Lamo, cour­tesy of Wired.com…(emphasis mine)

(04:32:05 PM) Man­ning: oh, the JTF GTMO papers… Assange has those too
(04:32:16 PM) Lamo: Read it.
(04:33:21 PM) Lamo: Any­thing else inter­est­ing on his table, as a for­mer col­lec­tor of inter­est­ing .com info?
(04:33:44 PM) Man­ning: idk… i only know what i pro­vide him xD
(04:34:14 PM) Lamo: what do you con­sid­er the high­lights?
(04:35:31 PM) Man­ning: The Gha­rani airstrike videos and full report, Iraq war event log, the “Git­mo Papers”, and State Depart­ment cable data­base
(04:35:50 PM) Lamo: Not too shab­by.
(04:36:03 PM) Man­ning: thats just me….
(04:36:26 PM) Man­ning: idk about the rest… he *hope­ful­ly* has more . . .

None of the oth­er Wikileak’s releas­es have named Bradley Man­ning as the source of the clas­si­fied intel, since by doing so, Wik­ileaks would be pro­vid­ing evi­dence that Man­ning was the source of the mate­r­i­al and thus would be act­ing as a wit­ness against him in his upcom­ing tri­al. He is charged with vio­lat­ing the Espi­onage Act among oth­er seri­ous charges.

It isn’t just me who thinks it’s pret­ty obvi­ous that those doc­u­ments came through Man­ning. Andy Green­berg at Forbes says this…

“As with the last four major releas­es from Wik­iLeaks, impris­oned Army pri­vate Bradley Man­ning remains the sus­pect­ed source of the leak. In a chat with con­fi­dant Adri­an Lamo pub­lished by Wired.com last year, Lamo asks which of the doc­u­ments he’s leaked Man­ning deems most impor­tant. He lists: “The Gha­rani airstrike videos and full report, Iraq war event log, the “Git­mo Papers”, and State Depart­ment cable data­base.” All of those files oth­er than the Gha­rani airstrike video–a clip that pur­port­ed­ly shows more than a hun­dred civil­ians being killed in Afghanistan by Amer­i­can forces–have now been released.”

The Git­mo files, which Wik­ileaks began releas­ing dai­ly on April 24th, 2011, came direct­ly from DoD Clas­si­fied Intel­li­gence data­bas­es and are of the same clas­si­fied cat­e­gor­i­cal des­ig­na­tions as oth­er DoD and State Dept intel­li­gence cables pre­vi­ous­ly released by Wik­ileaks. The above cit­ed Git­mo File was specif­i­cal­ly clas­si­fied as “SECRET// NOFORN.” The clas­si­fied cat­e­go­ry of “SECRET// NOFORN” means that any intel labeled as such should not ever be seen by any for­eign gov­ern­ment per­son­nel or cit­i­zens. There was a rea­son this intel was clas­si­fied. Releas­ing any of this intel­li­gence would like­ly com­pro­mise Top Secret oper­a­tions in the plan­ning stage or those on the verge of being exe­cut­ed.

This is all back­ground for what comes next. The Osama bin Laden oper­a­tion and the con­nec­tion to the release of the Git­mo files. My first vis­it to Osborne Ink was when I clicked on a link in a Bradley Man­ning sto­ry. I’ve been a reg­u­lar since then. A few days ago, Matt put a post up that asked a great ques­tion to the defend­ers of Bradley Man­ning, the “Hamwal­dians” as he calls them. From Osborne Ink…

“If Bradley Man­ning had blown the bin Laden Oper­a­tion, would the HamWal­dians still be advo­cat­ing his release? It’s a fair ques­tion, because when Man­ning (alleged­ly) put those hun­dred thou­sand-plus cables on his thumb dri­ve, he cer­tain­ly had not read them all. In fact, it’s pret­ty cer­tain Man­ning had no idea what was in them — and no clue how many poten­tial OPs might get blown by their release.

If he had blown the OP and allowed bin Laden to get away, would he still be a hero?

My opin­ion of the Bradley Man­ning’s mas­sive data dump has always been that it isn’t whistle­blow­ing, how could releas­ing doc­u­ments that you haven’t even read be whistle­blow­ing? It can’t be. The act that pro­tects whistle­blow­ers is pret­ty spe­cif­ic. From Wikipedia…(emphasis mine)

“The alleged mis­con­duct may be clas­si­fied in many ways; for exam­ple, a vio­la­tion of a law, rule, reg­u­la­tion and/or a direct threat to pub­lic inter­est, such as fraud, health/safety vio­la­tions, and cor­rup­tion. Whistle­blow­ers may make their alle­ga­tions inter­nal­ly (for exam­ple, to oth­er peo­ple with­in the accused orga­ni­za­tion) or exter­nal­ly (to reg­u­la­tors, law enforce­ment agen­cies, to the media or to groups con­cerned with the issues).”

What Man­ning did was expose to the entire world, friends and foes, infor­ma­tion that over­whelm­ing­ly was not any vio­la­tion of law, reg­u­la­tion etc.. He leaked diplo­mat­ic and Top Secret, sen­si­tive infor­ma­tion as well as friv­o­lous, stu­pid stuff. And his defend­ers, Glenn Green­wald, Jane Hamsh­er and Greg Mitchell think he is an inno­cent man, going so far as to say he is a hero and should be released. Wow, the extent that these peo­ple will go to try to hurt the Pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed State’s rep­u­ta­tion, accus­ing him of tor­tur­ing Man­ning because he was in soli­tary con­fine­ment, is unbe­liev­able.  Is it that hard to under­stand that the defense depart­ment might want to put a man who bragged about how many files he was copy­ing, with no con­cern for what impact it might have on his country’s secu­ri­ty and defense, in soli­tary con­fine­ment? From the government’s per­spec­tive, I imag­ine this kid is the worst spy they’ve ever seen. By they way, every­one in max secu­ri­ty at Quan­ti­co is housed by them­selves in their own cell. I’ve post­ed about his con­di­tions in the past, go here to get caught up on that, if need­ed. In your mind, was this kid a hero?

The Con­nec­tion

So the oth­er night, I’m on Twit­ter and one of my fel­low blog­gers, who prefers to remain name­less, put up a cou­ple of links in a post. I duti­ful­ly clicked on them and saw this short arti­cle on The Guardian’s web­site detail­ing infor­ma­tion from one of the lat­est Wik­ileaks of Git­mo files, here is the para­graph and sen­tence that caught my eye…

Accord­ing to the doc­u­ment, Libi fled to Peshawar in Pak­istan and was liv­ing there in 2003 when he was asked to become one of Bin Laden’s mes­sen­gers. The doc­u­ment says: “In July 2003, detainee received a let­ter from [Bin Laden’s] des­ig­nat­ed couri­er, Maulawi Abd al-Khaliq Jan, request­ing detainee take on the respon­si­bil­i­ty of col­lect­ing dona­tions, organ­is­ing trav­el and dis­trib­ut­ing funds for fam­i­lies in Pak­istan. [Bin Laden] stat­ed detainee would be the offi­cial mes­sen­ger between [Bin Laden] and oth­ers in Pak­istan. In mid-2003, detainee moved his fam­i­ly to Abbot­tabad (Pak­istan) and worked between Abbot­tabad and Peshawar.” . . .

Wik­iLeaks released the report last week, prompt­ing spec­u­la­tion that the US, afraid that its planned raid might be pre­empt­ed, brought for­ward its attack. . . .

COMMENT: It should be not­ed that the “mod­er­ate” Egypt­ian Mus­lim Broth­er­hood con­demned Bin Laden’s killing. Now that’s mod­er­a­tion, isn’t it? The Broth­er­hood has been an appar­ent focal point of the Pig­gy-Back Coups.

“Egypt Mus­lim Broth­er­hood Con­demns Bin Laden Death” [AP]; Yahoo News; 5/2/2011.

EXCERPT: Egyp­t’s Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, a con­ser­v­a­tive orga­ni­za­tion with links around the Islam­ic world, has con­demned the killing of al-Qai­da leader Osama bin Laden by U.S. forces as an “assas­si­na­tion.”

The Broth­er­hood, which seeks the estab­lish­ment of a state run accord­ing to Islam­ic prin­ci­ples through peace­ful means, is Egyp­t’s most pow­er­ful and orga­nized polit­i­cal move­ment. . . .

 

 

Discussion

6 comments for “Bin Laden Death: Did WikiLeaks Almost Blow the Operation?; “Moderate” Muslim Brotherhood Condemns Raid”

  1. Being that bin laden was thrown into the sea rais­es red flags as to the valid­i­ty of his so called death.
    Islam­ic schol­ars have gone on record say­ing this vio­lates sharia law despite what the mil­i­tary claimed.
    If sad­dam could be brought to tri­al why was bin laden ordered dead and not alive?
    Per­haps because he already died of kid­ney fail­ure many years ago(according to CIA men, two for­mer admin­is­tra­tion offi­cials, ex-prez of pak­istan and a host of oth­er well knowl­edgable indi­vid­u­als.) Now when sup­port of impe­ri­al­ism is at a low ebb, this oper­a­tion is cooked up to ral­ly for the war on ter­ror and sup­port for the upcom­ing oper­a­tions.

    Posted by JB | May 15, 2011, 10:02 am
  2. Well, Dave........I’ll have be hon­est with you here. I was once a sup­port­er of, and sym­pa­thet­ic towards, Brad Man­ning at one point. How­ev­er, though, hav­ing had this rev­e­la­tion thrust upon me, I have had to recon­sid­er my opin­ion; if this guy real­ly is a use­ful idiot for the world crim­i­nal net­work, then I guess all that was in vain.

    Some­times, find­ing out the truth is some­what painful but in this case, it was well need­ed. Thanks for post­ing this Dave. =)

    Posted by Steven | May 15, 2011, 4:06 pm
  3. I must also admit that I had once believed that Bin Laden had per­haps died back in 2001-02. How­ev­er, though, this too, has been ques­tioned by myself, espe­cial­ly giv­en the state­ment by the Mus­lim Broth­er­hood, who is, as we both know, is one of the key play­ers in the mod­ern world crime net­work.

    Posted by Steven | May 15, 2011, 4:10 pm
  4. This is a ter­rif­ic find­ing that you have made there, Dave. It cer­tain­ly puts into con­text the tim­ing of the oper­a­tion. I agree with you, Steven, when you express aston­ish­ment regard­ing Bradley Man­ning. To turn over a file con­tain­ing thou­sands of doc­u­ments that you don’t know the con­tent of is either fool­ish, imma­ture, irre­spon­si­ble or just crazy. He might be a use­ful idiot, some­body who has been promissed a chunk of cash when he gets out of prison, or even a mind-con­trol job. It’s hard to make a call. It was obvi­ous that he would get to jail for that. So why did he do it?

    And JB, I also heard around me that bin Laden need­ed dial­y­sis reg­u­lar­ly. He may have died from it sev­er­al years ago, but I nev­er came across any­thing to con­firm it. Thanks for men­tion­ning that.

    Have a great day to all of you.

    Posted by Claude | May 15, 2011, 9:20 pm
  5. [...] researcher and anti-fas­cist resis­tant Dave Emory pre­sent­ed part of a blog post pub­lished on Extreme Liberal’s blog. The post con­tains an [...]

    Posted by New development on Osama bin Laden execution: Bradley Manning might have blown the operation | lys-dor.com | May 17, 2011, 8:14 am
  6. I was just read­ing in the Wash­ing­ton Post, the head of CIA Counter Ter­ror­ism is an Islam­ic con­vert.

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/at-cia-a-convert-to-islam-leads-the-terrorism-hunt/2012/03/23/gIQA2mSqYS_print.html

    Posted by Vanfield | March 28, 2012, 1:37 pm

Post a comment