Wikileaks

Internationally famous leaks site that has published millions of classified and other documents.

File:WL Hour Glass.png

The logo of WikiLeaks, an hourglass with one globe leaking to the second

 http://www.Wikileaks.org link Campfire Wiki Sourcewatch Wikiquote
"We open governments."
Started: 4 October 2006
Founder: Julian Assange

Owner: Sunshine Press
In its own words:
"WikiLeaks is a multi-jurisdictional public service designed to protect whistleblowers, journalists and activists who have sensitive materials to communicate to the public. Since July 2007, we have worked across the globe to obtain, publish and defend such materials, and, also, to fight in the legal and political spheres for the broader principles on which our work is based: the integrity of our common historical record and the rights of all peoples to create new history."
Constitutes: Leak website, Limited Hangout?

Main focus: whistleblowers

Wikileaks is a leak website, better known than the older Cryptome. WikiLeaks has released millions of secret documents from countries around the world. Most are easily available on the Wikileaks site and make it a gold-mine of information for journalists working on stories that are crying out for public scrutiny. The media response to Wikileaks has been variable over the years. William Engdahl termed it in 2010 "a Big Dangerous US Government Con Jobwhich will likely be used to police the Internet".

By the end of 2022, several archives on the Wikileaks-website have become unaccessible.

History

Julian Assange, stated in 2006 that Wikileaks had already "received over one million documents from 13 countries". In 2010, the New Yorker and then Wired claimed that these documents were not knowingly leaked, but had been captured by Assange's running a modified Tor exit node. Asked to clarify whether this claim was true by The Register, Assange denied it, stating that "The imputation is incorrect. The facts concern a 2006 investigation into Chinese espionage one of our contacts were involved in. Somewhere between none and handful of those documents were ever released on WikiLeaks. Non-government targets of the Chinese espionage, such as Tibetan associations were informed (by us)."

High-profile leaks

Full article: Wikileaks/Leaks

Some leaks released by Wikileaks have garnered worldwide attention. Noticeable examples include:

• CIA project to bolster European support for the Afghan War
• The "Collateral Murder" video
• The "Afghan War Diary" reports
• Vault 7

By October 2017 a US Senate was debated that contains a section that if passed would designate WikiLeaks and Julian Assange as a “non-state hostile intelligence service.”

September 11th, 2001

In November 2009, Wikileaks published around 500,000 pager messages - 29 hours worth, from 5 hours before the first 9-11 attacks to 24 hours after. Little significant evidence was found among them to contradict the US government's official narrative. In July 2010, Assange commented about 9-11 that "I'm constantly annoyed that people are distracted by false conspiracies such as 9/11, when all around we provide evidence of real conspiracies, for war or mass financial fraud." Unwelcome Guests has cited this quotation as evidence that Wikileaks is a modified limited hangout, Webster Tarpley has voiced similar criticism.

Dead Wikileaks activists and whistle blowers

Watch on YouTube

Julian Assange on Seth Rich - Nieuwsuur Aug 9, 2016

• John Jones, a lawyer for Wikileaks, was struck and killed by a train in April 2016.
• Arjen Kamphuis disappeared in mysterious circumstances in the Norwegian Fjords in 2018 and his body has never been found. A police investigation concluded that he most likely died in an accident and his remains are lost at sea.

Seth Rich

Full article: Seth Rich

Wikileaks has offered $20,000 for anyone providing information which leads to a conviction in the case of murder victim Seth Rich. When Julian Assange was interviewed on the Dutch television program Nieuwsuur his Dutch host commented about the murder of Seth Rich, "That was just a robbery, I believe. Wasn’t it?" Julian Assange replied: "No. There’s no finding. So... I’m suggesting that our sources take risks." He continued to hint that Seth Rich might have been a source for Wikileaks.

Wikispooks Acknowledgement

WikiLeaks was a major source of content and inspiration when setting up Wikispooks. It remains a recommended site when researching Wikispooks articles, although the following caveat should be born in mind:

ANY web site seen as potentially subversive to established authority and the official narrative, will quickly attract the attention of the SIS's once its readership and apparent influence reaches a certain threshold. Such attention can take many forms but will likely start with simple monitoring, before progressing through attempts at infiltration and/or co-option and the planting of information, to other less subtle forms of the spy's tradecraft, should they become necessary in pursuit of Establishment hidden agendas.

Commentary about Wikileaks

In the 2010 period, after the release of the Afghan War Diaries, several commentators started to voice their opinion about the leaks and Wikileaks as an organisation. The commentary ranged from broadly supportive to accusations of being an intelligence outfit for misdirection. Daniel Estulin wrote the book "Deconstructing Wikileaks" in 2012, which cites largely from Globalresearch articles in the 2010 period. Some of this commentary can also be found in the Document section below and here:

Full article: Wikileaks/Leaks/2010_commentary

Wikileaks resources

• Wikileaks torrents - Wikispooks' backup copy
• Afghan War Diary
• WL Central - A blog that was established by the Wikileaks organisation.

Background Information on Wikileaks

• This is an Ecosia search of the Cryptome site. Cryptome has the most detailed and insightful inside track on Wikileaks of pretty well any other source. John Young, its operator, was the original registrant of the Wikileaks domain name. He resigned from further involvement with Wikileaks over its fund-raising ambitions and the full story of those early days is available from the links produced by this search.

• Richard D. Hall's RichPlanet TV produced a deep-dive 4-part critical analysis, "Wikileaks : Made by the N.S.A.", exploring the background, history, development, and psyop that is Julian Assange.
  • RichPlanet.net: Wikileaks : Made by the N.S.A. - Part 1 of 4
  • RichPlanet.net: Wikileaks : Made by the N.S.A. - Part 2 of 4
  • RichPlanet.net: Wikileaks : Made by the N.S.A. - Part 3 of 4
  • RichPlanet.net: Wikileaks : Made by the N.S.A. - Part 4 of 4

External links

• 'The Master Timeline' by Alexa O'Brien (archive / Google docs file)