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Former U.S. officials describe details of the CIA’s proposals to abduct Assange

401 points by greatgib 5y ago

h2odragon 5y ago
Wasn't Wikileaks supposed to have been the means by which Russia took the election from Clinton? Why would the Trump administration be so unhappy with them? Were they perhaps continuing the previous administrations' "sweetness and light" approach?
- phpnode 5y ago
  Why would they have any loyalty towards wikileaks? What is a useful idiot that has outlived it's usefulness?
- michaelt 5y ago
  Even if Trump had warm feelings towards Wikileaks, the directors of the CIA, NSA etc clearly didn't. So it depends on how inclined they were to lock antlers with each other. And from Trump's perspective, he may like seeing his rival taking a bullet - but that doesn't imply he'd feel protective of the spent shell casings on the ground.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  By killing him you close the loop? In reality hawks in the miliary have wanted him since the video release showing that bombing at the wedding. He made enemies of both sides. If you think about it both sides play for the same team. Any powerful voice uncontrolled needs silencing. Hence why he is inprison and why laws were broken to get him in jail.
- thinkingemote 5y ago
  Seems like the article answered this question somewhat. Basically it's that the president wasn't consulted in some questions as there was a loophole and that the Intelligence services do not change at all when a president changes and they have long memories and wanted revenge.
- krona 5y ago
  Wikileaks owes no loyalty to Trump. Trump had nothing to gain from defending him, strategically. Basic Realpolitik.
- dehrmann 5y ago
  > Russia took the election from Clinton? Clinton's sense of entitlement and both parties' history of not supporting the working class lost her the election.
  - michaelmrose 5y ago
    She lost because she was a woman and because she rightly declared a large chunk of America is deplorable at the same time as Trump was speaking so effectively both to those deplorables and to many who felt left behind in our current America.
hktntbvuvu 5y ago
While we are at it, is Biden going to pardon Snowden?
- phpnode 5y ago
  What possible advantage would there be in doing so? Biden would gain nothing but criticism, be accused of supporting a traitor and so on. Doing the right thing is rarely politically sensible.
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    Biden seems to be clearing up older issues. Reminds me of someone closing out bugs in jira without looking to see if the work has been done. I could see him closing another chapter of history.
  - willcipriano 5y ago
    Honorable people do the right thing even when they personally do not benefit.
    - christophilus 5y ago
      Then the answer is no. It’s almost a tautology that career politicians are not honorable.
      - okamiueru 5y ago
        I know of a couple of very good examples in us politics.
    - beebeepka 5y ago
      Honourable? This guy sent helicopters full of swat teams to arrest a single guy - Kim Dotcom. The whole thing was super illegal and almost hilariously over the top. "Almost" because there was nothing amusing about the whole thing. It was ugly
vorpalhex 5y ago
It would be almost negligent to not draft and forecast the scenario. Intelligence work has to operate from worst case assumptions. Obviously the plan was never executed. I am sure that was a choice based on risk factors and not just professional ethics.
- throwawayay02 5y ago
  What is the worst case scenario of Assange being a free man, exactly?
  - jeroenhd 5y ago
    Signalling that you can get away leaking embarrassing secrets to the outside world, mostly. I'd reckon there'd be a lot more Snowdens, Assanges and Mannings out there if the American government didn't grossly abuse its power to make their lives a living hell.
    - codedokode 5y ago
      But if you don't do anything illegal and don't kill innocent civilians then there will not be any embarrassing secrets to leak.
  - vorpalhex 5y ago
    That Assange is indeed compromised by foreign intelligence but is still able to receive exfiltrated American intelligence.
    - sonotathrowaway 5y ago
      You’re unfortunately being downvoted because you are not toeing the HN crowd line that Assange is a hero. But the plain truth is he took a TV deal (bribe) from Russian state media[0] in exchange for suppressing whistleblowers leaking Russian involvement in Syria[1], and doesn’t even bother to deny that he’s been coopted by Putin[2] when confronted. He is very motivated to leak as much damaging information he can on America, but will censor and threaten those who want to bring his radical transparency on Russian oligarchs. [0] https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSTRE80P0TV20120126 https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/... [1] https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikileaks-syria-files-syria-russia-bank-2-billion/ https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikileaks-syria-files-syria-r... [2] https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/303172-pussy-riot-member-assange-openly-works-with-russia%3famp https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/i...
codedokode 5y ago
> Some senior officials inside the CIA and the Trump administration even discussed killing Assange, going so far as to request “sketches” or “options” for how to assassinate him. > One of those officials said he was briefed on a spring 2017 meeting in which the president asked whether the CIA could assassinate Assange and provide him “options” for how to do so. I don't understand how this can be legal. Cannot such a request be considered a conspiracy to commit a murder? Or some people are "more equal" and the law doesn't apply to them?
- roenxi 5y ago
  Part of the government's job is to have a plan to kill every/anyone. Or if there are too many people to kill efficiently, starve them in to compliance (which is the plan with a heavy sanctions regime). They are not nice people, but it isn't illegal.
  - ben_w 5y ago
    I’m a long way from understanding international law, but I thought one of the principles of Westphalian sovereignty was that the highest power of a nation was its own government and never a different government? It might not be illegal under US law, but London isn’t in the USA.
    - bserge 5y ago
      Say it's illegal. "What are you gonna do about it?"
      - nivenkos 5y ago
        The Mossad approach.
      - ben_w 5y ago
        Well indeed, but that’s not what I was responding to.
- deleted 5y ago
croes 5y ago
>Discussions over kidnapping or killing Assange occurred “at the highest levels” of the Trump administration, said a former senior counterintelligence official. “There seemed to be no boundaries.” No idea why Assange feared to be extradited from Sweden to the USA./s
- ben_w 5y ago
  The “to the USA” part is separate from the “from Sweden” part. He’s currently fighting an attempt to go to the USA from the UK, so it’s not like the country of origin is making much difference IMO.
  - blitzar 5y ago
    I remember the Assange fangirls back in the day claiming that he couldnt be extradited from the UK to the US which is why he had to fight so hard ... a little inconvenient that the UK loves to extradite people to the US like the good little lapdogs they are.
- slim 5y ago
  My "holy shit" moment was this : received “sketches” of plans for killing Assange and other Europe-based WikiLeaks members CIA planned to kill some of my friends
  - capableweb 5y ago
    I think at this point, if you haven't had any US government entity trying to come up with plans to hurt you, you've probably done something bad (beneficial to the US government). They seem to frequently want to be on the wrong side of history, so if you're on their list/been on their list, you're doing something right.
  - 8note 5y ago
    They likely keep the plans up to date, and have one for you too, if they're your friends.
sydthrowaway 5y ago
Assange needs to keep going. The Mandela moment is only a couple of political cycles away.
- throwawaybutwhy 5y ago
  Nah. He has no uMkhonto we Sizwe behind him, nor a nation state financing, training, and arming his comrades, nor a wave of public opinion nor a wide international boycott of his enemies. Just a lonely guy rotting in prison.
  - baybal2 5y ago
    > Nah. He has no uMkhonto we Sizwe behind him, You can change that
  - gatvol 5y ago
    MK was spectacularly ineffective
- 1cvmask 5y ago
  It depends what you mean by a couple of political cycles away. The Democrats and Bill Clinton considered Mandela a terrorist. It was George W Bush who in 2008 lifted Mandela from the terrorist watch list - although he waited till the end of his second term and for Mandela to approach the age of 90. https://www.france24.com/en/20080702-us-drops-mandela-terrorist-list-south-africa-usa https://www.france24.com/en/20080702-us-drops-mandela-terror...
  - chrischen 5y ago
    > The Democrats and Bill Clinton considered Mandela a terrorist. > He explained that the original purpose of the law, introduced during the 1980s while Ronald Reagan was president, was to fight terrorism. "So we're pleased that we could make this correction to what is otherwise a good and important piece of legislation," he said. >> Their original placement on the list occurred during the Reagan admininstration. ?
slim 5y ago
Sowing discord within the group seemed an easier route to success 2017 fits the period in which one hacker of the group was publicly accused of sexual harrassement by a female employee of the Tor project
- nyolfen 5y ago
  i went back and checked and it looks like this took place in 2016; appelbaum had two accusers, one of whom later accused a bitcoin core dev of sexual assault and was sued, which i believe settled out of court for an apology. afaict appelbaum has completely dropped off the net in the years since
- nullc 5y ago
  This is the definitive reporting on the subject: https://github.com/Enegnei/JacobAppelbaumLeavesTor/blob/master/JacobAppelbaumLeavesTor.md https://github.com/Enegnei/JacobAppelbaumLeavesTor/blob/mast...
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  Weren't two guys removed from Linux kernel development that uncovered the NSA trying to put a backdoor in it multiple time? That is why you need some fervent believers in some arbitrary COC. Worked for the church, why shouldn't it work for intelligence agencies. Just get some crazy something to stick it to the patriarchy. You always find tools like that.
CodeGlitch 5y ago
Couldn't read the article as Yahoo news is such a cluster-f*k of mess on-screen. Too many distractions, bad layout, autoplaying videos. ...and this is with heavy ad blocking. As it was my first visit to Yahoo news, it gave me the options on which kind of cookies/tracking I want to accept. Obviously I select "none". I shudder to think what would happen if I had selected "accept-all". Sorry for the rant - but I can see why Yahoo is in decline if this is what they offer. No idea if the article's content is actually any good - I feel bad for the people who wrote it.
- dehrmann 5y ago
  Looks good in reader mode.
  - CodeGlitch 5y ago
    Nice - I had to install an extension to add a reader mode in Brave: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reader-view/ecabifbgmdmgdllomnfinbmaellmclnh https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reader-view/ecabif... This extension apparently uses Mozilla's open-source Readability implantation.
photochemsyn 5y ago
The real reason they were so pissed off at Assange seems to be in two parts: 1) The Chelsea Manning State Department cables. The video was all the hype, but just dig through the 'SECRET' cables on Iraq, Saudi Arabia, etc. Zero interest in 'human rights and democracy', lots of interests in oilfields, pipelines, military sales contracts, etc. 2) Those Vault7 CIA leaks are incredibly embarrassing, it's like so closet criminal organization - and with a program to run cyberwarfare attacks using Russian/Chinese signatures in the code to hide atttribution? That's kind of insanely deceptive and criminal I think. All told, those revelations make the State Dept. and the CIA look more like some kind of organized white-collar mafia outfit in the service of Wall Street shareholders than anything else. That kind of raw exposure makes the corrupt insiders in the US government very sad. I'd guess they've got a lot more to hide, and are most worried about further eruptions of embarrassment.
- marcinzm 5y ago
  > That's kind of insanely deceptive and criminal I think. That just seems like standard for spy agencies along with a pretty mild black propaganda angle. Even books about WW2 propaganda cover the topic. I think people just underestimate what spy agencies actually do and how dirty it’s always been.
  - hutzlibu 5y ago
    "I think people just underestimate what spy agencies actually do and how dirty it’s always been. " They do. But maybe they do, because of being told by the governments and in schools, that the CIA and co only fight terrorist and evil empires. Those leaks showed the general public more of the real picture, not the fake official one. And sure, they do not like that.
    - adventured 5y ago
      > because of being told by the governments and in schools, that the CIA and co only fight terrorist and evil empires. That's not their image in the US at all and that's not how formal education about the CIA works in schools in the US. The opposite is closer to the truth. You're maybe aware of the common American conspiracy theory that JFK was murdered by the CIA? As retribution for the Bay of Pigs, among other things. Every other Hollywood movie in which they make an appearance has portrayed the CIA as up to no good for decades now, especially when it comes to topics like the war on drugs and terrorism. They're frequently portrayed as duplicitous and incompetent. That's because that's how the culture views them at this point. They do not have a good reputation with the American public. See: American Made (2017), Kill the Messenger (2014), Syriana (2005), The Siege (1998), The Jason Bourne movies, among many others
atok1 5y ago
At this point, if you can't see how fucked up the US legal system is, I am sorry. Federal court has in the 90 percent conviction rate. Is it because they have such air tight cases and evidence to follow? No, it's a purely political kangaroo court. Someone would do well do wipe this cancerous 'judicial' system off grid.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- tkojames 5y ago
  Eh how is it purely political kangaroo court with jury convinctions? And for sure they only bring cases they think they can win they admit to this.. for sure having money helps get you better defense. But a purely political kangaroo is a pretty big stretch. Unless you are talking about the secret FISA courts sure. What is way more scary is the whole killing USA citizen via drone strikes in foreign countries no court cases at all.
  - washadjeffmad 5y ago
    Peremptory challenges?
motohagiography 5y ago
The interesting bit I didn't know was the article says that Wikileaks did not publish the complete contents of the Vault 7 materials they had. Not sure whether they just published shasums of the bits they didn't, or if they proved some other way they had parts they were holding back as leverage. It's odd to read what was really at stake. Pompeo's team was ready to assasinate Assange in London, and the only thing stopping them was the justice dept and only nominally the office of the President. What WL (and Snowden) did was show to the public the intelligence community, who was ostensibly accountable to them, for what they truthfully were. The news media took a bigger credibility hit for their history of spiking these stories and delivering hit pieces than the spies ever did. Most people saw how the sausage was made and decided they still liked sausage. Not only do we tolerate what these services do, but now that we know about it and have done nothing to change it, we have acknowledged it and rewarded them for it all. Snowden's story practically created the ability for retired generals to accept pulpits from tv news where they can armchair QB the issues of the day, and they should thank him for the minor television celebrity and speaker circuit fêting they now enjoy. Whether that undermines the credibility of their institutions is still to be seen, but all that plotting to kill Assange just to sustain some lame narrative about a bureaucracy seems like it was just a fatal distraction from the real unseating of western power that we are clearly into the endgame of today.
- GordonS 5y ago
  > Most people saw how the sausage was made and decided they still liked sausage. I'm not sure that's really true. All of the stuff Snowden and Assange leaked was very much down-played by the popular media - it felt like it was very under-reported and even then with a fair bit of bias. If you ask some people about how they feel now, they'll say that it wouldn't affect them "because they haven't done anything wrong", or "but Assange is a rapist!", or even "that's just movie stuff, conspiracy bullshit". I really believe that the population at large either don't believe what the CIA are doing, are in denial about it, or just don't care because it largely affects brown people in far off lands.
  - smolder 5y ago
    The population at large has been trained not to think about things like what their government does on their behalf; them's terrorist thoughts. Support da troops. One must give the appearance of being a team player by timidly ignoring Uncle Sam's glaring failures to operate within its claimed principles.
FDSGSG 5y ago
Very interesting to see how this will end up impacting the Assange extradition trial. Who's gonna agree to extradite him knowing that Trump was planning to assassinate him? Seems like a hard sell. E: Turns out that this isn't even news https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8041597/US-plotted-kill-Julian-Assange-make-look-like-accident.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8041597/US-plotted-...
- boomboomsubban 5y ago
  These are separate US based discussions about kidnapping or murdering Assange, the UC Global's actions were another one of the intelligence agencies schemes but these were separate actions. And the article makes it sound lime the British were kept in the loop for most of it, the previous assassination allegations didn't stop extradition so I doubt these ones will.
dehrmann 5y ago
> As an American citizen, I find it absolutely outrageous that our government would be contemplating kidnapping or assassinating somebody without any judicial process... I clipped it at an unfair point, but remember Anwar al-Awlaki? Obama ordered the execution of a US citizen in a foreign country without trial.
- viktorcode 5y ago
  If I'm not mistaken this is allowed by the US law.
  - chiefalchemist 5y ago
    Allowed probably isn't the best-fit word. Based on what I've read, the then HW legal team found a legal loop hole (or sorts) and shoved the action through. Given the general nature of the situation it's unlikely anyone was going to step forward and make a legal challenge otherwise. And the media naturally sided with the WH.
  - monocasa 5y ago
    Eh, only sort of. The Supreme Court only ruled that no one had standing to sue, either before or after it happened.
  - michaelmrose 5y ago
    It's illegal and was probably on its face grounds for convicting Obama along with a laundry list of former executives except nobody has the political will to do it.
    - adventured 5y ago
      Well, Biden just murdered an innocent family in Afghanistan with a drone strike on a car to score cheap political points, to be shown doing something in response to the bombing at the Afghanistan airport that killed US soldiers during the evacuation. It's hard to figure out if any lines exist at this point, legally, for the President when it comes to commiting war crimes (and obviously George W Bush and numerous of the people in his administration should be in prison). After Biden was done murdering innocent people in Afghanistan, then he stabbed our oldest ally - France - in the back to such a degree they pulled their ambassador in anger. Good thing we got rid of Trump, he was super damaging to the US reputation and relationships in Europe and around the world.
boomboomsubban 5y ago
I don't see how anybody could read this and then pretend that Assange has any chance of a fair trial in America. Not only were his communication constantly monitored for years, already a breach of client attorney privilege, the US considered flagrant assassination as a potential way to handle him. I've heard many people say that Assange committed actual crimes and it's time for him to face the consequences of those actions. While I personally disagree about whether he's done anything illegal, even if he has it impossible for him to get a fair trial and justice to be served. Everything being done to him is an effort to get revenge on the person who embarrassed the military and intelligence communities.
- TheTester 5y ago
  Honestly those people are wrong and are usually boomers that lack any self awareness of the crimes of their country, or uniting ally evil people that have given up on the facade of humanity that the richest and most powerful in America used to have. Through the years quite honestly the actual issues that people have with Asante have become more and more clear… he showed the real face of how the hegemony gets power and resources, this made a lot of people that profit from this as well as their luckiest very mad. They can chimp out and or actually try to seem reasonable and say muhhh Hillary or “He helped Trump” or whatever excuse they want to find to accuse him of any sort of crime , but the truth is exposing the reality of the crimes and the murders and the borderline genocides of the rich and powerful, shouldn’t be a crime but the duty of any decent person.
- laurent92 5y ago
  Well, now that he’s been capture by the USA, we’ll soon know whether he committed anything thanks to his trial, right? Wait, has it been more than a year without trial already?
  - avianlyric 5y ago
    Erm, last I checked the U.K. justice system wasn’t the “USA”. The U.K. just denied the US extradition request, so the US isn’t even close to “capturing” Assange.
michaelmrose 5y ago
The CIA out to be fully disbanded with anyone who participated in illegal actions like assassinations or torture prosecuted. You can't fix an agency that believes in its institutional guts its above moral and criminal law. I don't know how you possibly get from here to a government we can actually be proud of instead of ashamed.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  It would already be nice to know whom they serve. It doesn't seem to be the executive part of the United States government. That would mean they completely lack legitimacy for their actions.
sneak 5y ago
It's amazing to me how willing the UK is to be totally complicit and offer assistance to the US in this ongoing effort to deny Assange his human rights. He's been imprisoned for nearly a decade without trial now.
giardini 5y ago
Did anything useful come out of the "Vault" revelations? I mean for examples improvements in the WWW, PC hardware/software, browsers, etc.
- blitzar 5y ago
  I dont think so, certainly nothing on the scale of the original Snowden stuff which by all accounts shook up google et al.
- mikem170 5y ago
  The wikipedia page on the vault 7 mentioned a number of specific vendors that patched their software, cisco for example [0]: > Cisco quickly reassigned staff from other projects to turn their focus solely on analyzing the attack and to figure out how the CIA hacking worked, so they could help customers patch their systems and prevent criminal hackers or spies from using similar methods. > On 20 March, Cisco researchers confirmed that their study of the Vault 7 documents showed the CIA had developed malware which could exploit a flaw found in 318 of Cisco's switch models and alter or take control of the network. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vault_7#Cisco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vault_7#Cisco
neonate 5y ago
http://web.archive.org/web/20210926170157/https://news.yahoo.com/kidnapping-assassination-and-a-london-shoot-out-inside-the-ci-as-secret-war-plans-against-wiki-leaks-090057786.html http://web.archive.org/web/20210926170157/https://news.yahoo... https://archive.is/GKrLA https://archive.is/GKrLA
huntermeyer 5y ago
With this, the idea that Epstein was suicided is not so far fetched.
- newbamboo 5y ago
  Lol. Literally nobody thinks he actually committed suicide. It’s just that nobody knows for certain who did it. You can rule out certain nations but was it Clinton, Gates Dershowitz? We’ll never know.
  - cbHXBY1D 5y ago
    I doubt the people you listed would have the ability to pull it off. Intelligence agencies like the CIA or Mossad could though. I think the secret to understanding Epstein is staring us in the face: Epstein was an intelligence asset. He himself bragged for years to be in intelligence [1], Alex Acosta was told to give him a lenient plea deal because he was "owned by intelligence" [2], his partner's (Ghislaine Maxwell) father was a Mossad spy [3]. US and Israeli intelligence works together on a lot of things, I wouldn't be surprised if both were his "clients". [1] https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/jeffrey-epstein-steven-hoffenberg-intelligence-agencies-spy-1197708/ https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/jeffre... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Acosta#Non-prosecution_agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Acosta#Non-prosecuti... [3] https://www.amazon.com/Robert-Maxwell-Israels-Superspy-Gordon/dp/0786712953 https://www.amazon.com/Robert-Maxwell-Israels-Superspy-Gordo...
    - raxxorrax 5y ago
      Compromising people through their sexuality is pretty solid lever for influence. Always has been, always will be. I think Epstein was more or less a high society pimp that got caught, which is rare because in such a position there are many that protect you. Maybe victims were coerced and groomed instead of directly being forced.
  - asdff 5y ago
    Oh come on. The guy was going from living in his own personal hedonism for most of his life to a slow death behind bars, and he was already no spring chicken at that point. When faced with a hand like that, I'm surprised more people aren't killing themselves in jail to be honest.
Ms-J 5y ago
At this point, what is the difference between a hardcore criminal and the intel agencies? I would trust an everyday criminal before one of these organizations, and I'm being totally serious. The ordinary criminal does not harm me. What value, other than terrible things like deception, do we get out of these agencies in a free society?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
roody15 5y ago
One major issue with Assange is prosecuting him. Honesty most of the 17 charges are quite week and it remains to be seen how they even apply to a foreign national. Assange received classified material and published it. This has been done countless times by journalist and it’s a pretty far stretch to somehow apply criminal charges just because he published it. Honestly from the CIA perspective it would probably have been better to assassinate him. This sends a message to other journalists on what the US will do to protect its interest. A trial just further embarrasses the US since everyone knows the outcome and that it is largely a farce
- tunesmith 5y ago
  If a journalist receives classified material, is that different than if the journalist coordinates the acquisition of that classified material, or offers resources to aid in the acquisition of that classified material, or participates in the placement of resources to gain access to those classified materials...? I think that's the difficult part of this, right? It's a spectrum with many levels of gradation, that each imply different levels of legality and illegality.
- giantrobot 5y ago
  > Assange received classified material and published it. This gets repeated a lot but is not what Assange is charged with. He didn't just "receive" classified information. He's alleged to have not only communicated with Manning to direct her to grab specific information and tried to help her break into systems. He'd have a much better case if he had just been a passive publisher of information. You can't be involved in a crime and then claim journalistic protections after the fact. Assange is not a journalist. He's a wannabe spymaster and muckraker. Zero percent of his case has anything to do with real journalists as none of them would have participated in the exfiltration of classified documents.
  - roody15 5y ago
    I disagree. Chelsea Manning bears the overwhelming fault from a US Legal perspective. He was a member of the armed forces under oath and knowingly shared classified information. Assange has no oath to the US and despite his interest in the material it is quite a stretch to somehow suggest he “made” Chelsea share this info.
hetspookjee 5y ago
I wonder if the UK would trade Anna Sacoolas for Julian Assange.
- raxxorrax 5y ago
  Difference here that she is guilty while he is not.
JoeAltmaier 5y ago
I would be surprised if the CIA didn't have all the options studied and planned out, ready to present should that option be selected by 'management'. It's what they do, and not a surprise that they did it in this case.
throw_this_one 5y ago
Assange, Wikileaks, and Snowden. If these people did the same thing to Russia/Putin or the CCP, they would be gone without a trace right now. It's really sad, these false equivalencies gone wild. Doing something bad or making a mistake doesn't make the actor bad. That's just an un-nuanced world view.
theknocker 5y ago
If you work for the CIA, feel free to grow a backbone and quit.

401 points by greatgib 5y ago

Wasn't Wikileaks supposed to have been the means by which Russia took the election from Clinton? Why would the Trump administration be so unhappy with them? Were they perhaps continuing the previous administrations' "sweetness and light" approach?

phpnode 5y ago
Why would they have any loyalty towards wikileaks? What is a useful idiot that has outlived it's usefulness?
michaelt 5y ago
Even if Trump had warm feelings towards Wikileaks, the directors of the CIA, NSA etc clearly didn't. So it depends on how inclined they were to lock antlers with each other. And from Trump's perspective, he may like seeing his rival taking a bullet - but that doesn't imply he'd feel protective of the spent shell casings on the ground.
ipaddr 5y ago
By killing him you close the loop? In reality hawks in the miliary have wanted him since the video release showing that bombing at the wedding. He made enemies of both sides. If you think about it both sides play for the same team. Any powerful voice uncontrolled needs silencing. Hence why he is inprison and why laws were broken to get him in jail.
thinkingemote 5y ago
Seems like the article answered this question somewhat. Basically it's that the president wasn't consulted in some questions as there was a loophole and that the Intelligence services do not change at all when a president changes and they have long memories and wanted revenge.
krona 5y ago
Wikileaks owes no loyalty to Trump. Trump had nothing to gain from defending him, strategically. Basic Realpolitik.
dehrmann 5y ago
> Russia took the election from Clinton? Clinton's sense of entitlement and both parties' history of not supporting the working class lost her the election.
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  She lost because she was a woman and because she rightly declared a large chunk of America is deplorable at the same time as Trump was speaking so effectively both to those deplorables and to many who felt left behind in our current America.

hktntbvuvu 5y ago

While we are at it, is Biden going to pardon Snowden?

phpnode 5y ago
What possible advantage would there be in doing so? Biden would gain nothing but criticism, be accused of supporting a traitor and so on. Doing the right thing is rarely politically sensible.
- ipaddr 5y ago
  Biden seems to be clearing up older issues. Reminds me of someone closing out bugs in jira without looking to see if the work has been done. I could see him closing another chapter of history.
- willcipriano 5y ago
  Honorable people do the right thing even when they personally do not benefit.
  - christophilus 5y ago
    Then the answer is no. It’s almost a tautology that career politicians are not honorable.
    - okamiueru 5y ago
      I know of a couple of very good examples in us politics.
  - beebeepka 5y ago
    Honourable? This guy sent helicopters full of swat teams to arrest a single guy - Kim Dotcom. The whole thing was super illegal and almost hilariously over the top. "Almost" because there was nothing amusing about the whole thing. It was ugly

vorpalhex 5y ago

It would be almost negligent to not draft and forecast the scenario. Intelligence work has to operate from worst case assumptions. Obviously the plan was never executed. I am sure that was a choice based on risk factors and not just professional ethics.

throwawayay02 5y ago
What is the worst case scenario of Assange being a free man, exactly?
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  Signalling that you can get away leaking embarrassing secrets to the outside world, mostly. I'd reckon there'd be a lot more Snowdens, Assanges and Mannings out there if the American government didn't grossly abuse its power to make their lives a living hell.
  - codedokode 5y ago
    But if you don't do anything illegal and don't kill innocent civilians then there will not be any embarrassing secrets to leak.
- vorpalhex 5y ago
  That Assange is indeed compromised by foreign intelligence but is still able to receive exfiltrated American intelligence.
  - sonotathrowaway 5y ago
    You’re unfortunately being downvoted because you are not toeing the HN crowd line that Assange is a hero. But the plain truth is he took a TV deal (bribe) from Russian state media[0] in exchange for suppressing whistleblowers leaking Russian involvement in Syria[1], and doesn’t even bother to deny that he’s been coopted by Putin[2] when confronted. He is very motivated to leak as much damaging information he can on America, but will censor and threaten those who want to bring his radical transparency on Russian oligarchs. [0] https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSTRE80P0TV20120126 https://www.google.com/amp/s/mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/... [1] https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikileaks-syria-files-syria-russia-bank-2-billion/ https://www.dailydot.com/debug/wikileaks-syria-files-syria-r... [2] https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/303172-pussy-riot-member-assange-openly-works-with-russia%3famp https://www.google.com/amp/s/thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/i...

codedokode 5y ago

> Some senior officials inside the CIA and the Trump administration even discussed killing Assange, going so far as to request “sketches” or “options” for how to assassinate him. > One of those officials said he was briefed on a spring 2017 meeting in which the president asked whether the CIA could assassinate Assange and provide him “options” for how to do so. I don't understand how this can be legal. Cannot such a request be considered a conspiracy to commit a murder? Or some people are "more equal" and the law doesn't apply to them?

roenxi 5y ago
Part of the government's job is to have a plan to kill every/anyone. Or if there are too many people to kill efficiently, starve them in to compliance (which is the plan with a heavy sanctions regime). They are not nice people, but it isn't illegal.
- ben_w 5y ago
  I’m a long way from understanding international law, but I thought one of the principles of Westphalian sovereignty was that the highest power of a nation was its own government and never a different government? It might not be illegal under US law, but London isn’t in the USA.
  - bserge 5y ago
    Say it's illegal. "What are you gonna do about it?"
    - nivenkos 5y ago
      The Mossad approach.
    - ben_w 5y ago
      Well indeed, but that’s not what I was responding to.
deleted 5y ago

croes 5y ago

>Discussions over kidnapping or killing Assange occurred “at the highest levels” of the Trump administration, said a former senior counterintelligence official. “There seemed to be no boundaries.” No idea why Assange feared to be extradited from Sweden to the USA./s

ben_w 5y ago
The “to the USA” part is separate from the “from Sweden” part. He’s currently fighting an attempt to go to the USA from the UK, so it’s not like the country of origin is making much difference IMO.
- blitzar 5y ago
  I remember the Assange fangirls back in the day claiming that he couldnt be extradited from the UK to the US which is why he had to fight so hard ... a little inconvenient that the UK loves to extradite people to the US like the good little lapdogs they are.
slim 5y ago
My "holy shit" moment was this : received “sketches” of plans for killing Assange and other Europe-based WikiLeaks members CIA planned to kill some of my friends
- capableweb 5y ago
  I think at this point, if you haven't had any US government entity trying to come up with plans to hurt you, you've probably done something bad (beneficial to the US government). They seem to frequently want to be on the wrong side of history, so if you're on their list/been on their list, you're doing something right.
- 8note 5y ago
  They likely keep the plans up to date, and have one for you too, if they're your friends.

sydthrowaway 5y ago

Assange needs to keep going. The Mandela moment is only a couple of political cycles away.

throwawaybutwhy 5y ago
Nah. He has no uMkhonto we Sizwe behind him, nor a nation state financing, training, and arming his comrades, nor a wave of public opinion nor a wide international boycott of his enemies. Just a lonely guy rotting in prison.
- baybal2 5y ago
  > Nah. He has no uMkhonto we Sizwe behind him, You can change that
- gatvol 5y ago
  MK was spectacularly ineffective
1cvmask 5y ago
It depends what you mean by a couple of political cycles away. The Democrats and Bill Clinton considered Mandela a terrorist. It was George W Bush who in 2008 lifted Mandela from the terrorist watch list - although he waited till the end of his second term and for Mandela to approach the age of 90. https://www.france24.com/en/20080702-us-drops-mandela-terrorist-list-south-africa-usa https://www.france24.com/en/20080702-us-drops-mandela-terror...
- chrischen 5y ago
  > The Democrats and Bill Clinton considered Mandela a terrorist. > He explained that the original purpose of the law, introduced during the 1980s while Ronald Reagan was president, was to fight terrorism. "So we're pleased that we could make this correction to what is otherwise a good and important piece of legislation," he said. >> Their original placement on the list occurred during the Reagan admininstration. ?

slim 5y ago

Sowing discord within the group seemed an easier route to success 2017 fits the period in which one hacker of the group was publicly accused of sexual harrassement by a female employee of the Tor project

nyolfen 5y ago
i went back and checked and it looks like this took place in 2016; appelbaum had two accusers, one of whom later accused a bitcoin core dev of sexual assault and was sued, which i believe settled out of court for an apology. afaict appelbaum has completely dropped off the net in the years since
nullc 5y ago
This is the definitive reporting on the subject: https://github.com/Enegnei/JacobAppelbaumLeavesTor/blob/master/JacobAppelbaumLeavesTor.md https://github.com/Enegnei/JacobAppelbaumLeavesTor/blob/mast...
raxxorrax 5y ago
Weren't two guys removed from Linux kernel development that uncovered the NSA trying to put a backdoor in it multiple time? That is why you need some fervent believers in some arbitrary COC. Worked for the church, why shouldn't it work for intelligence agencies. Just get some crazy something to stick it to the patriarchy. You always find tools like that.

CodeGlitch 5y ago

Couldn't read the article as Yahoo news is such a cluster-f*k of mess on-screen. Too many distractions, bad layout, autoplaying videos. ...and this is with heavy ad blocking. As it was my first visit to Yahoo news, it gave me the options on which kind of cookies/tracking I want to accept. Obviously I select "none". I shudder to think what would happen if I had selected "accept-all". Sorry for the rant - but I can see why Yahoo is in decline if this is what they offer. No idea if the article's content is actually any good - I feel bad for the people who wrote it.

dehrmann 5y ago
Looks good in reader mode.
- CodeGlitch 5y ago
  Nice - I had to install an extension to add a reader mode in Brave: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reader-view/ecabifbgmdmgdllomnfinbmaellmclnh https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/reader-view/ecabif... This extension apparently uses Mozilla's open-source Readability implantation.

photochemsyn 5y ago

The real reason they were so pissed off at Assange seems to be in two parts: 1) The Chelsea Manning State Department cables. The video was all the hype, but just dig through the 'SECRET' cables on Iraq, Saudi Arabia, etc. Zero interest in 'human rights and democracy', lots of interests in oilfields, pipelines, military sales contracts, etc. 2) Those Vault7 CIA leaks are incredibly embarrassing, it's like so closet criminal organization - and with a program to run cyberwarfare attacks using Russian/Chinese signatures in the code to hide atttribution? That's kind of insanely deceptive and criminal I think. All told, those revelations make the State Dept. and the CIA look more like some kind of organized white-collar mafia outfit in the service of Wall Street shareholders than anything else. That kind of raw exposure makes the corrupt insiders in the US government very sad. I'd guess they've got a lot more to hide, and are most worried about further eruptions of embarrassment.

marcinzm 5y ago
> That's kind of insanely deceptive and criminal I think. That just seems like standard for spy agencies along with a pretty mild black propaganda angle. Even books about WW2 propaganda cover the topic. I think people just underestimate what spy agencies actually do and how dirty it’s always been.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  "I think people just underestimate what spy agencies actually do and how dirty it’s always been. " They do. But maybe they do, because of being told by the governments and in schools, that the CIA and co only fight terrorist and evil empires. Those leaks showed the general public more of the real picture, not the fake official one. And sure, they do not like that.
  - adventured 5y ago
    > because of being told by the governments and in schools, that the CIA and co only fight terrorist and evil empires. That's not their image in the US at all and that's not how formal education about the CIA works in schools in the US. The opposite is closer to the truth. You're maybe aware of the common American conspiracy theory that JFK was murdered by the CIA? As retribution for the Bay of Pigs, among other things. Every other Hollywood movie in which they make an appearance has portrayed the CIA as up to no good for decades now, especially when it comes to topics like the war on drugs and terrorism. They're frequently portrayed as duplicitous and incompetent. That's because that's how the culture views them at this point. They do not have a good reputation with the American public. See: American Made (2017), Kill the Messenger (2014), Syriana (2005), The Siege (1998), The Jason Bourne movies, among many others

atok1 5y ago

At this point, if you can't see how fucked up the US legal system is, I am sorry. Federal court has in the 90 percent conviction rate. Is it because they have such air tight cases and evidence to follow? No, it's a purely political kangaroo court. Someone would do well do wipe this cancerous 'judicial' system off grid.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
tkojames 5y ago
Eh how is it purely political kangaroo court with jury convinctions? And for sure they only bring cases they think they can win they admit to this.. for sure having money helps get you better defense. But a purely political kangaroo is a pretty big stretch. Unless you are talking about the secret FISA courts sure. What is way more scary is the whole killing USA citizen via drone strikes in foreign countries no court cases at all.
- washadjeffmad 5y ago
  Peremptory challenges?

motohagiography 5y ago

The interesting bit I didn't know was the article says that Wikileaks did not publish the complete contents of the Vault 7 materials they had. Not sure whether they just published shasums of the bits they didn't, or if they proved some other way they had parts they were holding back as leverage. It's odd to read what was really at stake. Pompeo's team was ready to assasinate Assange in London, and the only thing stopping them was the justice dept and only nominally the office of the President. What WL (and Snowden) did was show to the public the intelligence community, who was ostensibly accountable to them, for what they truthfully were. The news media took a bigger credibility hit for their history of spiking these stories and delivering hit pieces than the spies ever did. Most people saw how the sausage was made and decided they still liked sausage. Not only do we tolerate what these services do, but now that we know about it and have done nothing to change it, we have acknowledged it and rewarded them for it all. Snowden's story practically created the ability for retired generals to accept pulpits from tv news where they can armchair QB the issues of the day, and they should thank him for the minor television celebrity and speaker circuit fêting they now enjoy. Whether that undermines the credibility of their institutions is still to be seen, but all that plotting to kill Assange just to sustain some lame narrative about a bureaucracy seems like it was just a fatal distraction from the real unseating of western power that we are clearly into the endgame of today.

GordonS 5y ago
> Most people saw how the sausage was made and decided they still liked sausage. I'm not sure that's really true. All of the stuff Snowden and Assange leaked was very much down-played by the popular media - it felt like it was very under-reported and even then with a fair bit of bias. If you ask some people about how they feel now, they'll say that it wouldn't affect them "because they haven't done anything wrong", or "but Assange is a rapist!", or even "that's just movie stuff, conspiracy bullshit". I really believe that the population at large either don't believe what the CIA are doing, are in denial about it, or just don't care because it largely affects brown people in far off lands.
- smolder 5y ago
  The population at large has been trained not to think about things like what their government does on their behalf; them's terrorist thoughts. Support da troops. One must give the appearance of being a team player by timidly ignoring Uncle Sam's glaring failures to operate within its claimed principles.

FDSGSG 5y ago

Very interesting to see how this will end up impacting the Assange extradition trial. Who's gonna agree to extradite him knowing that Trump was planning to assassinate him? Seems like a hard sell. E: Turns out that this isn't even news https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8041597/US-plotted-kill-Julian-Assange-make-look-like-accident.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8041597/US-plotted-...

boomboomsubban 5y ago
These are separate US based discussions about kidnapping or murdering Assange, the UC Global's actions were another one of the intelligence agencies schemes but these were separate actions. And the article makes it sound lime the British were kept in the loop for most of it, the previous assassination allegations didn't stop extradition so I doubt these ones will.

dehrmann 5y ago

> As an American citizen, I find it absolutely outrageous that our government would be contemplating kidnapping or assassinating somebody without any judicial process... I clipped it at an unfair point, but remember Anwar al-Awlaki? Obama ordered the execution of a US citizen in a foreign country without trial.

viktorcode 5y ago
If I'm not mistaken this is allowed by the US law.
- chiefalchemist 5y ago
  Allowed probably isn't the best-fit word. Based on what I've read, the then HW legal team found a legal loop hole (or sorts) and shoved the action through. Given the general nature of the situation it's unlikely anyone was going to step forward and make a legal challenge otherwise. And the media naturally sided with the WH.
- monocasa 5y ago
  Eh, only sort of. The Supreme Court only ruled that no one had standing to sue, either before or after it happened.
- michaelmrose 5y ago
  It's illegal and was probably on its face grounds for convicting Obama along with a laundry list of former executives except nobody has the political will to do it.
  - adventured 5y ago
    Well, Biden just murdered an innocent family in Afghanistan with a drone strike on a car to score cheap political points, to be shown doing something in response to the bombing at the Afghanistan airport that killed US soldiers during the evacuation. It's hard to figure out if any lines exist at this point, legally, for the President when it comes to commiting war crimes (and obviously George W Bush and numerous of the people in his administration should be in prison). After Biden was done murdering innocent people in Afghanistan, then he stabbed our oldest ally - France - in the back to such a degree they pulled their ambassador in anger. Good thing we got rid of Trump, he was super damaging to the US reputation and relationships in Europe and around the world.

boomboomsubban 5y ago

I don't see how anybody could read this and then pretend that Assange has any chance of a fair trial in America. Not only were his communication constantly monitored for years, already a breach of client attorney privilege, the US considered flagrant assassination as a potential way to handle him. I've heard many people say that Assange committed actual crimes and it's time for him to face the consequences of those actions. While I personally disagree about whether he's done anything illegal, even if he has it impossible for him to get a fair trial and justice to be served. Everything being done to him is an effort to get revenge on the person who embarrassed the military and intelligence communities.

TheTester 5y ago
Honestly those people are wrong and are usually boomers that lack any self awareness of the crimes of their country, or uniting ally evil people that have given up on the facade of humanity that the richest and most powerful in America used to have. Through the years quite honestly the actual issues that people have with Asante have become more and more clear… he showed the real face of how the hegemony gets power and resources, this made a lot of people that profit from this as well as their luckiest very mad. They can chimp out and or actually try to seem reasonable and say muhhh Hillary or “He helped Trump” or whatever excuse they want to find to accuse him of any sort of crime , but the truth is exposing the reality of the crimes and the murders and the borderline genocides of the rich and powerful, shouldn’t be a crime but the duty of any decent person.
laurent92 5y ago
Well, now that he’s been capture by the USA, we’ll soon know whether he committed anything thanks to his trial, right? Wait, has it been more than a year without trial already?
- avianlyric 5y ago
  Erm, last I checked the U.K. justice system wasn’t the “USA”. The U.K. just denied the US extradition request, so the US isn’t even close to “capturing” Assange.

michaelmrose 5y ago

The CIA out to be fully disbanded with anyone who participated in illegal actions like assassinations or torture prosecuted. You can't fix an agency that believes in its institutional guts its above moral and criminal law. I don't know how you possibly get from here to a government we can actually be proud of instead of ashamed.

raxxorrax 5y ago
It would already be nice to know whom they serve. It doesn't seem to be the executive part of the United States government. That would mean they completely lack legitimacy for their actions.

sneak 5y ago

It's amazing to me how willing the UK is to be totally complicit and offer assistance to the US in this ongoing effort to deny Assange his human rights. He's been imprisoned for nearly a decade without trial now.

giardini 5y ago

Did anything useful come out of the "Vault" revelations? I mean for examples improvements in the WWW, PC hardware/software, browsers, etc.

blitzar 5y ago
I dont think so, certainly nothing on the scale of the original Snowden stuff which by all accounts shook up google et al.
mikem170 5y ago
The wikipedia page on the vault 7 mentioned a number of specific vendors that patched their software, cisco for example [0]: > Cisco quickly reassigned staff from other projects to turn their focus solely on analyzing the attack and to figure out how the CIA hacking worked, so they could help customers patch their systems and prevent criminal hackers or spies from using similar methods. > On 20 March, Cisco researchers confirmed that their study of the Vault 7 documents showed the CIA had developed malware which could exploit a flaw found in 318 of Cisco's switch models and alter or take control of the network. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vault_7#Cisco https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vault_7#Cisco

neonate 5y ago

http://web.archive.org/web/20210926170157/https://news.yahoo.com/kidnapping-assassination-and-a-london-shoot-out-inside-the-ci-as-secret-war-plans-against-wiki-leaks-090057786.html http://web.archive.org/web/20210926170157/https://news.yahoo... https://archive.is/GKrLA https://archive.is/GKrLA

huntermeyer 5y ago

With this, the idea that Epstein was suicided is not so far fetched.

newbamboo 5y ago
Lol. Literally nobody thinks he actually committed suicide. It’s just that nobody knows for certain who did it. You can rule out certain nations but was it Clinton, Gates Dershowitz? We’ll never know.
- cbHXBY1D 5y ago
  I doubt the people you listed would have the ability to pull it off. Intelligence agencies like the CIA or Mossad could though. I think the secret to understanding Epstein is staring us in the face: Epstein was an intelligence asset. He himself bragged for years to be in intelligence [1], Alex Acosta was told to give him a lenient plea deal because he was "owned by intelligence" [2], his partner's (Ghislaine Maxwell) father was a Mossad spy [3]. US and Israeli intelligence works together on a lot of things, I wouldn't be surprised if both were his "clients". [1] https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/jeffrey-epstein-steven-hoffenberg-intelligence-agencies-spy-1197708/ https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/jeffre... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Acosta#Non-prosecution_agreement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Acosta#Non-prosecuti... [3] https://www.amazon.com/Robert-Maxwell-Israels-Superspy-Gordon/dp/0786712953 https://www.amazon.com/Robert-Maxwell-Israels-Superspy-Gordo...
  - raxxorrax 5y ago
    Compromising people through their sexuality is pretty solid lever for influence. Always has been, always will be. I think Epstein was more or less a high society pimp that got caught, which is rare because in such a position there are many that protect you. Maybe victims were coerced and groomed instead of directly being forced.
- asdff 5y ago
  Oh come on. The guy was going from living in his own personal hedonism for most of his life to a slow death behind bars, and he was already no spring chicken at that point. When faced with a hand like that, I'm surprised more people aren't killing themselves in jail to be honest.

Ms-J 5y ago

At this point, what is the difference between a hardcore criminal and the intel agencies? I would trust an everyday criminal before one of these organizations, and I'm being totally serious. The ordinary criminal does not harm me. What value, other than terrible things like deception, do we get out of these agencies in a free society?

deleted 5y ago
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roody15 5y ago

One major issue with Assange is prosecuting him. Honesty most of the 17 charges are quite week and it remains to be seen how they even apply to a foreign national. Assange received classified material and published it. This has been done countless times by journalist and it’s a pretty far stretch to somehow apply criminal charges just because he published it. Honestly from the CIA perspective it would probably have been better to assassinate him. This sends a message to other journalists on what the US will do to protect its interest. A trial just further embarrasses the US since everyone knows the outcome and that it is largely a farce

tunesmith 5y ago
If a journalist receives classified material, is that different than if the journalist coordinates the acquisition of that classified material, or offers resources to aid in the acquisition of that classified material, or participates in the placement of resources to gain access to those classified materials...? I think that's the difficult part of this, right? It's a spectrum with many levels of gradation, that each imply different levels of legality and illegality.
giantrobot 5y ago
> Assange received classified material and published it. This gets repeated a lot but is not what Assange is charged with. He didn't just "receive" classified information. He's alleged to have not only communicated with Manning to direct her to grab specific information and tried to help her break into systems. He'd have a much better case if he had just been a passive publisher of information. You can't be involved in a crime and then claim journalistic protections after the fact. Assange is not a journalist. He's a wannabe spymaster and muckraker. Zero percent of his case has anything to do with real journalists as none of them would have participated in the exfiltration of classified documents.
- roody15 5y ago
  I disagree. Chelsea Manning bears the overwhelming fault from a US Legal perspective. He was a member of the armed forces under oath and knowingly shared classified information. Assange has no oath to the US and despite his interest in the material it is quite a stretch to somehow suggest he “made” Chelsea share this info.

hetspookjee 5y ago

I wonder if the UK would trade Anna Sacoolas for Julian Assange.

raxxorrax 5y ago
Difference here that she is guilty while he is not.

JoeAltmaier 5y ago

I would be surprised if the CIA didn't have all the options studied and planned out, ready to present should that option be selected by 'management'. It's what they do, and not a surprise that they did it in this case.

throw_this_one 5y ago

Assange, Wikileaks, and Snowden. If these people did the same thing to Russia/Putin or the CCP, they would be gone without a trace right now. It's really sad, these false equivalencies gone wild. Doing something bad or making a mistake doesn't make the actor bad. That's just an un-nuanced world view.

theknocker 5y ago

If you work for the CIA, feel free to grow a backbone and quit.