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"It is time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is – a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia. In January of this

"It is time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is – a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia. In January of this year, our Intelligence Community determined that Russian military intelligence—the GRU—had used WikiLeaks to release data of US victims that the GRU had obtained through cyber operations against the Democratic National Committee. And the report also found that Russia’s primary propaganda outlet, RT, has actively collaborated with WikiLeaks." - Mike Pompeo, current CIA director and nominee for Secretary of State I'm all for skepticism of what people say, especially people in positions like CIA Director, but when a Republican CIA director agrees with the DNC about what happened, it seems not entirely unreasonable to give it some credence. He is in the absolutely perfect position to say otherwise, if he believed otherwise, and is in the perfect position to reevaluate the previous intelligence report. He's the director of the CIA! If he thinks there's evidence backing another narrative, he can just come out and say so.

fareesh 9y ago
Even if Satan himself proved he was real and aided Wikileaks by publishing true information, I'd be all for it. What's being suggested is that they selectively publish true information by not publishing certain things that don't suit a particular agenda. This accusation is being asserted without evidence, and can therefore be dismissed without evidence.
- jamespo 9y ago
  Indeed, just a coincidence since http://foreignpolicy.com/2010/11/01/russias-fsb-to-wikileaks-we-could-destroy-you/ http://foreignpolicy.com/2010/11/01/russias-fsb-to-wikileaks... wikileaks hasn't posted anything meaningful about Russia
  - IncRnd 9y ago
    Pretty sure that wikileaks has disclosed information on Russia. Your link was from 2010, eight years ago. https://wikileaks.org/spyfiles/russia/ https://wikileaks.org/spyfiles/russia/
- darawk 9y ago
  > This accusation is being asserted without evidence, and can therefore be dismissed without evidence. What? There's plenty of evidence. Wikileaks consistently published information damaging to Hillary Clinton in the run-up to the election, and published zero information damaging to Trump.
  - jarfil 9y ago
    Unless you can prove that WikiLeaks received some information damaging to Trump and then REFUSED to publish it, all you're saying is that nobody sent them such information.
  - belorn 9y ago
    Assange intention has been rather clear after the statement Hillary gave as the Secretary of State during cablegate and the involvement of US diplomats in the Swedish investigation. I don't get it why people think that he is supposed to be unbiased in his view of her and trump. What is a normal reaction to be publicly declared a murderer and enemy combatant (with an implied statement to be droned) for publishing documents from people involved in the US military that wanted to give the public information? In the context of what he perceive she has done against him, what is the likeliest outcome if he comes into contact with damaging information and a request to publish it? "No thank you, only if you provide equally damaging information on her opponent or else it will look bad?".
  - culot 9y ago
    Obviously they should have withheld their timely and important trove of Clinton's wrongdoing until they had roughly an equal amount of material on her primary political opponent. That seems totally reasonable.
  - fareesh 9y ago
    That is not evidence that they knowingly selectively leaked anything.
- Y_Y 9y ago
  "If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons." - Churchill
  - fareesh 9y ago
    Satan was an appropriate analogy for someone who tells you the truth about the world because of his alleged role in the famous Garden of Eden story.
- roywiggins 9y ago
  So the intelligence community's conclusion that the GRU hacked the RNC, and the Republican administration CIA director's endorsement of that report doesn't hold any weight whatsoever? When the civil servants and the political appointees of two administrations from different parties all three agree that the DNC and RNC were both hacked and exactly one set of data was leaked, does that carry no weight at all? If it wasn't true, why isn't the RNC chair out there insisting they weren't hacked?
  - fareesh 9y ago
    It has nothing to do with Wikileaks
- philangist 9y ago
  It's also a ridiculous argument since Wikileaks does not have a monopoly on leaking secrets. Any whistleblowers who were censored by Wikileaks can not only find another channel to release their original documents, but also have another piece of important news about a provable systematic bias in Wikileaks'publishing patterns.
  - roywiggins 9y ago
    Supposing that the GRU hacked the DNC and RNC, but only gave WikiLeaks the DNC stuff, the RNC stuff would not see the light of day. Now maybe that exculpates Wikileaks, since they didn't have the RNC stuff to leak. Maybe it implicates them- if they knew the info was from Russia, and knew that Russia was trying to damage Clinton, and coordinated with the GRU to maximally damage her. Both things could be true. On the third hand, Assange spent time suggesting that the information definitely didn't come from Russia, and suggesting it might have been Seth Rich. But information came out the shows that he was talking with Guccifer 2.0, who was widely suspected (at the time!) to be GRU and if he wasn't, was meant to be a Romanian hacker, not a DNC whistleblower. So there's at least tenuous evidence that Assange was willing to both work with Russian intelligence and rope in an entirely unrelated death to muddy the waters on where the info came from.
    - fareesh 9y ago
      > Maybe it implicates them- if they knew the info was from Russia, and knew that Russia was trying to damage Clinton, and coordinated with the GRU to maximally damage her. Both things could be true. Going by my earlier comment - I would coordinate with the Satan to release true information, the source of the information does not necessarily contaminate its truthiness. Publishing true information, as a hypothetical whistleblower organization, is my hypothetical raison d'etre. This only ever becomes suspect if I am selectively publishing, or if I am aware that I am selectively publishing. In this case there needs to be evidence of either. Conversations with biased parties are not evidence unless they clearly state that the selective publishing is known. It's also extremely important to realize what exactly the voters learned from the emails. CAP President Neera Tanden, and a prominent figure in HRC's campaign, expressed sharp criticisms for her favored candidate's judgment. DNC Chair Donna Brazille emailed privately about how the statistical job growth under President Obama was essentially a "technical" win, but had very little impact on people's lives. She also went on to leak debate questions to her favored candidate, exposing one of hundreds of different instances of a party-wide effort to sabotage the primary process. Contrast this with the RNC primary. Virtually the entire party leadership loathed then-candidate Trump. As opposed to rallying around him, they actively rallied against him. In October there were discussions of replacing him on the ticket. Even at the convention, Ted Cruz reportedly went off-script and asked attendees to vote their conscience, as opposed to voting for candidate Trump. The divisions in the GOP were laid bare for the world to see. The divisions in the DNC stayed hidden from voters. Voters only learned much after the election that Donna Brazille contemplated replacing Hillary Clinton with another candidate after she fainted on 9/11, an event that ironically followed weeks of mainstream media outrage against "right wing conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton's Health", which also included a pickle-jar opening gag on a late night talk show. What truths would Wikileaks have exposed about the RNC that weren't already publicly known? Is this an empty box containing any convenient allegation? One of the USA's major political parties sabotaged the primary process, engaged in debate cheating, media manipulation and bird-dogging, all for a candidate whom many of the party's own leadership found wanting in terms of judgment. After all this - the outrage seems fixated on the messenger, Wikileaks, as if their alleged selective leaking somehow absolves the Democrats of these monumentally disgusting actions. If you look at the election from the perspective of damage done to candidates - the sheer volume of substantiated negative press received by candidate Trump makes it really difficult to argue that voters could have somehow heard something else from the RNC's emails that would changed their minds about him.
- wybiral 9y ago
  But it's still important to be aware of the bias in a source. Supposed I'm biased against you and I report that you hacked into Bob's computer and I have evidence to prove it. I paint that to make you look like some kind of cyber villain and neglect to report the important fact that Bob asked you to do it. If the reader knows about my bias towards you then they know to take my reporting with a grain of salt because even if it is true, it might not be the whole story.
  - belorn 9y ago
    you mean like this map (http://wilkins.law.harvard.edu/projects/2017-08_mediacloud/Graphics/Fig7_11.pdf http://wilkins.law.harvard.edu/projects/2017-08_mediacloud/G...) created by a harvard study? You are right of course, it is important to know the bias of sources which is why so many fact checking sites popped up after 2016. Before then I would always go wikipedia for unbiased information. Sadly we live in a time where the majority of news papers has a clear and sometimes publicly stated political leaning and bias. Often this can be traced through ownership since many are now owned by the same entity. If the emails and documents was leaked today then hopefully fact checking sites would be all over it and pulling it apart regardless who originally published them. I do recall a few people were looking at checksum and correlate statements to previously public information, but nothing news worthy came out of that.
    - wybiral 9y ago
      It's impossible to eliminate bias. Even if it's not political bias some people just naturally agree more with one side of an issue or are more interested in certain subjects. But that doesn't mean that bias is irrelevant. In my opinion, having followed WikiLeaks over the years, I think it's safe to say that they have an anti-western intelligence/military bias. That doesn't mean that what they publish is untrue. It just means that I'm skeptical about their motives and sources when they release something and I make it a point to try and find a good counter-balance to their take on the issue. Because they probably only presented a tiny portion of the truth that fit their agenda.
      - 9y ago
sneak 9y ago
“hostile intelligence service” here being used as a euphemism for “a journalist publishing secrets we don’t want published”.
- acdha 9y ago
  Wikileaks are not journalists and they do not follow e.g. journalistic ethics. They've done unprofessional things like posting anti-semitic statements[1] and bizarre things like doxing most of the women in Turkey[2] or posting sensitive information about people who've been victims of rape, suffer from mental illnesses, or are gay in countries where that's a big risk. That's all politically neutral and completely outside of what real journalists would sanction. They may not be officially part of the Russian intelligence apparatus but they definitely don't seem to act contrary to Russian interests, they actively ignored leaks about the Russian government[4], and their public tweets about the Panama Papers were a lot more consistent with protecting Russian interests rather than the purported belief in exposing secrets[5]. They also didn't ask whether they were being used by sources like Guccifer 2 which was later revealed to be a Russian front. Other governments have come to the same conclusion – e.g. here's a German report which alleges British and French agreement: http://www.focus.de/politik/ausland/merkel-vorgefuehrt-russischer-geheimdienst-nutzt-wikileaks-fuer-kampagnen_id_5977879.html http://www.focus.de/politik/ausland/merkel-vorgefuehrt-russi... 1. http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/07/25/what_wikileaks_might_have_meant_by_that_anti_semitic_tweet.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/07/25/what_wikil... 2. http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/07/why-did-wikileaks-help-dox-most-of-turkeys-adult-female-population.html http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/07/why-did-wikileaks-help-do... 3. https://apnews.com/b70da83fd111496dbdf015acbb7987fb/private-lives-are-exposed-wikileaks-spills-its-secrets https://apnews.com/b70da83fd111496dbdf015acbb7987fb/private-... 4. http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-leaks-on-russian-government-during-u-s-presidential-campaign/ http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-le... 5. https://mobile.twitter.com/wikileaks/status/717458064324964352 https://mobile.twitter.com/wikileaks/status/7174580643249643... and https://mobile.twitter.com/wikileaks/status/717670056650530816 https://mobile.twitter.com/wikileaks/status/7176700566505308...
  - sneak 9y ago
belorn 9y ago
Lets imagine we had a list over every official leaked story that an intelligence service has given to any of the global large news papers. NYT, guardian, CNN, fox news and so on. Can we assume that that list is not empty? Is it not likely that a few stories that the guardian has posted is from US intelligence service, knowingly or unknowing. If so, should we label them also non-state hostile intelligence service? I would bet that this is how other nations would justify blocking unwanted news papers in national firewalls. They are after all not blocking the free press but rather the (non-)state hostile intelligence service. What would a reasonable definition be of a hostile intelligence service.
IncRnd 9y ago
Do you recall what precipitated the invasion of Iraq?
- roywiggins 9y ago
  There was no report signed off by the CIA, DNI, and DHS that concluded with high confidence that the Iraq government had WMDs. The WMD intelligence, such as it was, came from raw reports pulled directly from the lower levels of the CIA bypassing the ordinary processes. The report on Russian hacking pulled from conclusions drawn by the entire US intelligence community. Also, did you read the Mueller indictment of a dozen Russian hackers? It goes into some detail on the kinds of information that the IC has about it. The thing is- the IC makes mistakes. But a single disaster of a conclusion like the WMD debacle cannot be used to discredit every single subsequent conclusion, otherwise we could never prosecute anyone on terror charges ever again. Pointing at the WMD fuckup and using that to disprove every conclusion you don't like means you aren't actually engaging in the substance. If tomorrow they conclude something you agree with and I don't, will you take me seriously when I say "but Iraq tho"? Probably not.
  - IncRnd 9y ago
    I wasn't saying, "but Iraq" to discredit every subsequent conclusion. You will be hard pressed to find that in my comment. I mentioned that to help temper the people who are apparently engaging in confirmation bias, accepting statements without evidence when it seems to align with their beliefs.
  - IncRnd 9y ago
    You also make another interesting point, even if it wasn't your intent. Mueller's indictment of hackers was in a legal system that would throw out the indictment if it were not logically and legally sound. The followup to that is, why wasn't there a presentation of the actual data that formed the conclusions of the IC the in the other cases that you mention? If you look at them, carefully, they have also been discredited since their presentations. The conclusions should be: 1) people are people with their own agendas and designs, and 2) appealing to authority isn't critical or independent thinking.
jancsika 9y ago
> He is in the absolutely perfect position to say otherwise Let's explore that claim: Mike Pompeo had three general options, regardless of the truth: 1) State that he has no such evidence. In this case he'd draw the ire of the dems, probably the ire of various dem/republican pundits, and certainly the ire of members of the intelligence community who had already stated a clear link exists. 2) Say nothing. This is a decent short term tactic but would open him up to being vulnerable in future hearings since he has no stated position. 3) Claim that evidence exists. This puts him safely in the company of republican/dem pundits, rest of intelligence community, etc. We don't know the truth because we don't have the evidence. But I don't think we can say with certainty that Mike Pompeo was in the "perfect position" to reveal the truth. It's equally likely he was in the perfect position to go along with a narrative that was both popular and unsupported by factual evidence.
- roywiggins 9y ago
  Literally nobody else in the Trump administration minds drawing Democratic ire. If he was afraid of Democratic anger, he would be the only guy in the administration who does. Pompeo cheerleaded the Benghazi inquest when he was in Congress! "Triggering the libs" is approximately 30% of the Trump administration's modus operandi. I don't see much evidence that Pompeo is an exception. If he is, then Trump's goal of draining the swamp has been thwarted by his own appointee. So... why did Trump appoint him to be Secretary of State? He's obviously been coopted by the Dems, blinded to the truth, and willing to go along with Deep State shenanigans. But Trump trusts him to talk to Kim Jong Un. That seems like terrible judgment. The only resolution to this is that Trump himself has been compromised by the Deep State, or is too stupid to realize that his own guys are. Either that or he's telling the truth as he understands it.

fareesh 9y ago

Even if Satan himself proved he was real and aided Wikileaks by publishing true information, I'd be all for it. What's being suggested is that they selectively publish true information by not publishing certain things that don't suit a particular agenda. This accusation is being asserted without evidence, and can therefore be dismissed without evidence.

jamespo 9y ago
Indeed, just a coincidence since http://foreignpolicy.com/2010/11/01/russias-fsb-to-wikileaks-we-could-destroy-you/ http://foreignpolicy.com/2010/11/01/russias-fsb-to-wikileaks... wikileaks hasn't posted anything meaningful about Russia
- IncRnd 9y ago
  Pretty sure that wikileaks has disclosed information on Russia. Your link was from 2010, eight years ago. https://wikileaks.org/spyfiles/russia/ https://wikileaks.org/spyfiles/russia/
darawk 9y ago
> This accusation is being asserted without evidence, and can therefore be dismissed without evidence. What? There's plenty of evidence. Wikileaks consistently published information damaging to Hillary Clinton in the run-up to the election, and published zero information damaging to Trump.
- jarfil 9y ago
  Unless you can prove that WikiLeaks received some information damaging to Trump and then REFUSED to publish it, all you're saying is that nobody sent them such information.
- belorn 9y ago
  Assange intention has been rather clear after the statement Hillary gave as the Secretary of State during cablegate and the involvement of US diplomats in the Swedish investigation. I don't get it why people think that he is supposed to be unbiased in his view of her and trump. What is a normal reaction to be publicly declared a murderer and enemy combatant (with an implied statement to be droned) for publishing documents from people involved in the US military that wanted to give the public information? In the context of what he perceive she has done against him, what is the likeliest outcome if he comes into contact with damaging information and a request to publish it? "No thank you, only if you provide equally damaging information on her opponent or else it will look bad?".
- culot 9y ago
  Obviously they should have withheld their timely and important trove of Clinton's wrongdoing until they had roughly an equal amount of material on her primary political opponent. That seems totally reasonable.
- fareesh 9y ago
  That is not evidence that they knowingly selectively leaked anything.
Y_Y 9y ago
"If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference to the devil in the House of Commons." - Churchill
- fareesh 9y ago
  Satan was an appropriate analogy for someone who tells you the truth about the world because of his alleged role in the famous Garden of Eden story.
roywiggins 9y ago
So the intelligence community's conclusion that the GRU hacked the RNC, and the Republican administration CIA director's endorsement of that report doesn't hold any weight whatsoever? When the civil servants and the political appointees of two administrations from different parties all three agree that the DNC and RNC were both hacked and exactly one set of data was leaked, does that carry no weight at all? If it wasn't true, why isn't the RNC chair out there insisting they weren't hacked?
- fareesh 9y ago
  It has nothing to do with Wikileaks
philangist 9y ago
It's also a ridiculous argument since Wikileaks does not have a monopoly on leaking secrets. Any whistleblowers who were censored by Wikileaks can not only find another channel to release their original documents, but also have another piece of important news about a provable systematic bias in Wikileaks'publishing patterns.
- roywiggins 9y ago
  Supposing that the GRU hacked the DNC and RNC, but only gave WikiLeaks the DNC stuff, the RNC stuff would not see the light of day. Now maybe that exculpates Wikileaks, since they didn't have the RNC stuff to leak. Maybe it implicates them- if they knew the info was from Russia, and knew that Russia was trying to damage Clinton, and coordinated with the GRU to maximally damage her. Both things could be true. On the third hand, Assange spent time suggesting that the information definitely didn't come from Russia, and suggesting it might have been Seth Rich. But information came out the shows that he was talking with Guccifer 2.0, who was widely suspected (at the time!) to be GRU and if he wasn't, was meant to be a Romanian hacker, not a DNC whistleblower. So there's at least tenuous evidence that Assange was willing to both work with Russian intelligence and rope in an entirely unrelated death to muddy the waters on where the info came from.
  - fareesh 9y ago
    > Maybe it implicates them- if they knew the info was from Russia, and knew that Russia was trying to damage Clinton, and coordinated with the GRU to maximally damage her. Both things could be true. Going by my earlier comment - I would coordinate with the Satan to release true information, the source of the information does not necessarily contaminate its truthiness. Publishing true information, as a hypothetical whistleblower organization, is my hypothetical raison d'etre. This only ever becomes suspect if I am selectively publishing, or if I am aware that I am selectively publishing. In this case there needs to be evidence of either. Conversations with biased parties are not evidence unless they clearly state that the selective publishing is known. It's also extremely important to realize what exactly the voters learned from the emails. CAP President Neera Tanden, and a prominent figure in HRC's campaign, expressed sharp criticisms for her favored candidate's judgment. DNC Chair Donna Brazille emailed privately about how the statistical job growth under President Obama was essentially a "technical" win, but had very little impact on people's lives. She also went on to leak debate questions to her favored candidate, exposing one of hundreds of different instances of a party-wide effort to sabotage the primary process. Contrast this with the RNC primary. Virtually the entire party leadership loathed then-candidate Trump. As opposed to rallying around him, they actively rallied against him. In October there were discussions of replacing him on the ticket. Even at the convention, Ted Cruz reportedly went off-script and asked attendees to vote their conscience, as opposed to voting for candidate Trump. The divisions in the GOP were laid bare for the world to see. The divisions in the DNC stayed hidden from voters. Voters only learned much after the election that Donna Brazille contemplated replacing Hillary Clinton with another candidate after she fainted on 9/11, an event that ironically followed weeks of mainstream media outrage against "right wing conspiracy theories about Hillary Clinton's Health", which also included a pickle-jar opening gag on a late night talk show. What truths would Wikileaks have exposed about the RNC that weren't already publicly known? Is this an empty box containing any convenient allegation? One of the USA's major political parties sabotaged the primary process, engaged in debate cheating, media manipulation and bird-dogging, all for a candidate whom many of the party's own leadership found wanting in terms of judgment. After all this - the outrage seems fixated on the messenger, Wikileaks, as if their alleged selective leaking somehow absolves the Democrats of these monumentally disgusting actions. If you look at the election from the perspective of damage done to candidates - the sheer volume of substantiated negative press received by candidate Trump makes it really difficult to argue that voters could have somehow heard something else from the RNC's emails that would changed their minds about him.
wybiral 9y ago
But it's still important to be aware of the bias in a source. Supposed I'm biased against you and I report that you hacked into Bob's computer and I have evidence to prove it. I paint that to make you look like some kind of cyber villain and neglect to report the important fact that Bob asked you to do it. If the reader knows about my bias towards you then they know to take my reporting with a grain of salt because even if it is true, it might not be the whole story.
- belorn 9y ago
  you mean like this map (http://wilkins.law.harvard.edu/projects/2017-08_mediacloud/Graphics/Fig7_11.pdf http://wilkins.law.harvard.edu/projects/2017-08_mediacloud/G...) created by a harvard study? You are right of course, it is important to know the bias of sources which is why so many fact checking sites popped up after 2016. Before then I would always go wikipedia for unbiased information. Sadly we live in a time where the majority of news papers has a clear and sometimes publicly stated political leaning and bias. Often this can be traced through ownership since many are now owned by the same entity. If the emails and documents was leaked today then hopefully fact checking sites would be all over it and pulling it apart regardless who originally published them. I do recall a few people were looking at checksum and correlate statements to previously public information, but nothing news worthy came out of that.
  - wybiral 9y ago
    It's impossible to eliminate bias. Even if it's not political bias some people just naturally agree more with one side of an issue or are more interested in certain subjects. But that doesn't mean that bias is irrelevant. In my opinion, having followed WikiLeaks over the years, I think it's safe to say that they have an anti-western intelligence/military bias. That doesn't mean that what they publish is untrue. It just means that I'm skeptical about their motives and sources when they release something and I make it a point to try and find a good counter-balance to their take on the issue. Because they probably only presented a tiny portion of the truth that fit their agenda.
    - 9y ago

sneak 9y ago

“hostile intelligence service” here being used as a euphemism for “a journalist publishing secrets we don’t want published”.

acdha 9y ago
Wikileaks are not journalists and they do not follow e.g. journalistic ethics. They've done unprofessional things like posting anti-semitic statements[1] and bizarre things like doxing most of the women in Turkey[2] or posting sensitive information about people who've been victims of rape, suffer from mental illnesses, or are gay in countries where that's a big risk. That's all politically neutral and completely outside of what real journalists would sanction. They may not be officially part of the Russian intelligence apparatus but they definitely don't seem to act contrary to Russian interests, they actively ignored leaks about the Russian government[4], and their public tweets about the Panama Papers were a lot more consistent with protecting Russian interests rather than the purported belief in exposing secrets[5]. They also didn't ask whether they were being used by sources like Guccifer 2 which was later revealed to be a Russian front. Other governments have come to the same conclusion – e.g. here's a German report which alleges British and French agreement: http://www.focus.de/politik/ausland/merkel-vorgefuehrt-russischer-geheimdienst-nutzt-wikileaks-fuer-kampagnen_id_5977879.html http://www.focus.de/politik/ausland/merkel-vorgefuehrt-russi... 1. http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/07/25/what_wikileaks_might_have_meant_by_that_anti_semitic_tweet.html http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/07/25/what_wikil... 2. http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/07/why-did-wikileaks-help-dox-most-of-turkeys-adult-female-population.html http://nymag.com/selectall/2016/07/why-did-wikileaks-help-do... 3. https://apnews.com/b70da83fd111496dbdf015acbb7987fb/private-lives-are-exposed-wikileaks-spills-its-secrets https://apnews.com/b70da83fd111496dbdf015acbb7987fb/private-... 4. http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-leaks-on-russian-government-during-u-s-presidential-campaign/ http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/17/wikileaks-turned-down-le... 5. https://mobile.twitter.com/wikileaks/status/717458064324964352 https://mobile.twitter.com/wikileaks/status/7174580643249643... and https://mobile.twitter.com/wikileaks/status/717670056650530816 https://mobile.twitter.com/wikileaks/status/7176700566505308...
- sneak 9y ago

belorn 9y ago

Lets imagine we had a list over every official leaked story that an intelligence service has given to any of the global large news papers. NYT, guardian, CNN, fox news and so on. Can we assume that that list is not empty? Is it not likely that a few stories that the guardian has posted is from US intelligence service, knowingly or unknowing. If so, should we label them also non-state hostile intelligence service? I would bet that this is how other nations would justify blocking unwanted news papers in national firewalls. They are after all not blocking the free press but rather the (non-)state hostile intelligence service. What would a reasonable definition be of a hostile intelligence service.

IncRnd 9y ago

Do you recall what precipitated the invasion of Iraq?

roywiggins 9y ago
There was no report signed off by the CIA, DNI, and DHS that concluded with high confidence that the Iraq government had WMDs. The WMD intelligence, such as it was, came from raw reports pulled directly from the lower levels of the CIA bypassing the ordinary processes. The report on Russian hacking pulled from conclusions drawn by the entire US intelligence community. Also, did you read the Mueller indictment of a dozen Russian hackers? It goes into some detail on the kinds of information that the IC has about it. The thing is- the IC makes mistakes. But a single disaster of a conclusion like the WMD debacle cannot be used to discredit every single subsequent conclusion, otherwise we could never prosecute anyone on terror charges ever again. Pointing at the WMD fuckup and using that to disprove every conclusion you don't like means you aren't actually engaging in the substance. If tomorrow they conclude something you agree with and I don't, will you take me seriously when I say "but Iraq tho"? Probably not.
- IncRnd 9y ago
  I wasn't saying, "but Iraq" to discredit every subsequent conclusion. You will be hard pressed to find that in my comment. I mentioned that to help temper the people who are apparently engaging in confirmation bias, accepting statements without evidence when it seems to align with their beliefs.
- IncRnd 9y ago
  You also make another interesting point, even if it wasn't your intent. Mueller's indictment of hackers was in a legal system that would throw out the indictment if it were not logically and legally sound. The followup to that is, why wasn't there a presentation of the actual data that formed the conclusions of the IC the in the other cases that you mention? If you look at them, carefully, they have also been discredited since their presentations. The conclusions should be: 1) people are people with their own agendas and designs, and 2) appealing to authority isn't critical or independent thinking.

jancsika 9y ago

> He is in the absolutely perfect position to say otherwise Let's explore that claim: Mike Pompeo had three general options, regardless of the truth: 1) State that he has no such evidence. In this case he'd draw the ire of the dems, probably the ire of various dem/republican pundits, and certainly the ire of members of the intelligence community who had already stated a clear link exists. 2) Say nothing. This is a decent short term tactic but would open him up to being vulnerable in future hearings since he has no stated position. 3) Claim that evidence exists. This puts him safely in the company of republican/dem pundits, rest of intelligence community, etc. We don't know the truth because we don't have the evidence. But I don't think we can say with certainty that Mike Pompeo was in the "perfect position" to reveal the truth. It's equally likely he was in the perfect position to go along with a narrative that was both popular and unsupported by factual evidence.

roywiggins 9y ago
Literally nobody else in the Trump administration minds drawing Democratic ire. If he was afraid of Democratic anger, he would be the only guy in the administration who does. Pompeo cheerleaded the Benghazi inquest when he was in Congress! "Triggering the libs" is approximately 30% of the Trump administration's modus operandi. I don't see much evidence that Pompeo is an exception. If he is, then Trump's goal of draining the swamp has been thwarted by his own appointee. So... why did Trump appoint him to be Secretary of State? He's obviously been coopted by the Dems, blinded to the truth, and willing to go along with Deep State shenanigans. But Trump trusts him to talk to Kim Jong Un. That seems like terrible judgment. The only resolution to this is that Trump himself has been compromised by the Deep State, or is too stupid to realize that his own guys are. Either that or he's telling the truth as he understands it.