Total, and absolute, vindication 
I'm owed an apology...
How Russia Often
Benefits When Julian
Assange Reveals
the West’s Secrets
American officials say Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks probably
have no direct ties to Russian intelligence services. But the
agendas of WikiLeaks and the Kremlin have often dovetailed.
By JO BECKER, STEVEN ERLANGER and ERIC SCHMITTAUG. 31, 2016
Julian Assange was in classic didactic form, holding forth on the topic that consumes him — the perfidy of big government and especially of the United States.
Mr. Assange, the editor of WikiLeaks, rose to global fame in 2010 for releasing huge caches of highly classified American government communications that exposed the underbelly of its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and its sometimes cynical diplomatic maneuvering around the world. But in a televised interview last September, it was clear that he still had plenty to say about “The World According to US Empire,” the subtitle of his latest book, “The WikiLeaks Files.”
From the cramped confines of the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where he was granted asylum four years ago amid a legal imbroglio, Mr. Assange proffered a vision of America as superbully: a nation that has achieved imperial power by proclaiming allegiance to principles of human rights while deploying its military-intelligence apparatus in “pincer” formation to “push” countries into doing its bidding, and punishing people like him who dare to speak the truth.
Notably absent from Mr. Assange’s analysis, however, was criticism of another world power, Russia, or its president, Vladimir V. Putin, who has hardly lived up to WikiLeaks’ ideal of transparency. Mr. Putin’s government has cracked down hard on dissent — spying on, jailing, and, critics charge, sometimes assassinating opponents while consolidating control over the news media and internet. If Mr. Assange appreciated the irony of the moment — denouncing censorship in an interview on Russia Today, the Kremlin-controlled English-language propaganda channel — it was not readily apparent.
Now, Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks are back in the spotlight, roiling the geopolitical landscape with new disclosures and a promise of more to come.
In July, the organization released nearly 20,000 Democratic National Committee emails suggesting that the party had conspired with Hillary Clinton’s campaign to undermine her primary opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders. Mr. Assange — who has been openly critical of Mrs. Clinton — has promised further disclosures that could upend her campaign against the Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump. Separately, WikiLeaks announced that it would soon release some of the crown jewels of American intelligence: a “pristine” set of cyberspying codes.
Trying to Smoke Out the Players in the Hacking of the D.N.C.
A tangle of questions about what might connect Guccifer, the Russians, WikiLeaks and the Democratic National Committee.
United States officials say they believe with a high degree of confidence that the Democratic Party material was hacked by the Russian government, and suspect that the codes may have been stolen by the Russians as well. That raises a question: Has WikiLeaks become a laundering machine for compromising material gathered by Russian spies? And more broadly, what precisely is the relationship between Mr. Assange and Mr. Putin’s Kremlin?
Those questions are made all the more pointed by Russia’s prominent place in the American presidential election campaign. Mr. Putin, who clashed repeatedly with Mrs. Clinton when she was secretary of state, has publicly praised Mr. Trump, who has returned the compliment, calling for closer ties to Russia and speaking favorably of Mr. Putin’s annexation of Crimea.
From the outset of WikiLeaks, Mr. Assange said he was motivated by a desire to use “cryptography to protect human rights,” and would focus on authoritarian governments like Russia’s.
But a New York Times examination of WikiLeaks’ activities during Mr. Assange’s years in exile found a different pattern: Whether by conviction, convenience or coincidence, WikiLeaks’ document releases, along with many of Mr. Assange’s statements, have often benefited Russia, at the expense of the West.
Among United States officials, the emerging consensus is that Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks probably have no direct ties to Russian intelligence services. But they say that, at least in the case of the Democrats’ emails, Moscow knew it had a sympathetic outlet in WikiLeaks, where intermediaries could drop pilfered documents in the group’s anonymized digital inbox.
In an interview on Wednesday with The Times, Mr. Assange said Mrs. Clinton and the Democrats were “whipping up a neo-McCarthyist hysteria about Russia.” There is “no concrete evidence” that what WikiLeaks publishes comes from intelligence agencies, he said, even as he indicated that he would happily accept such material.
WikiLeaks neither targets not spares any particular nation, he added, but rather works to verify whatever material it is given in service of the public, which “loves it when they get a glimpse into the corrupt machinery that is attempting to rule them.”
But given WikiLeaks’ limited resources and the hurdles of translation, Mr. Assange said, why focus on Russia, which he described as a “bit player on the world stage,” compared with countries like China and the United States? In any event, he said, Kremlin corruption is an old story. “Every man and his dog is criticizing Russia,” he said. “It’s a bit boring, isn’t it?”
“Every man and his
dog is criticizing Russia.
It’s a bit boring, isn’t it?”
JULIAN ASSANGE
Since its inception, WikiLeaks has succeeded spectacularly on some fronts, uncovering indiscriminate killing, hypocrisy and corruption, and helping spark the Arab Spring.
To Gavin MacFadyen, a WikiLeaks supporter who runs the Center for Investigative Journalism at the University of London, the question for Mr. Assange is not where the material comes from, but whether it is true and in the public interest. He noted that intelligence services had a long history of using news organizations to plant stories, and that Western news outlets often published “material that comes from the C.I.A. uncritically.”
Recent events, though, have left some transparency advocates wondering if WikiLeaks has lost its way. There is a big difference between publishing materials from a whistle-blower like Chelsea Manning — the soldier who gave WikiLeaks its war log and diplomatic cable scoops — and accepting information, even indirectly, from a foreign intelligence service seeking to advance its own powerful interests, said John Wonderlich, the executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, a group devoted to government transparency.
“They’re just aligning themselves with whoever gives them information to get attention or revenge against their enemies,” Mr. Wonderlich said. “They’re welcoming governments to hack into each other and disrupt each other’s democratic processes, all on a pretty weak case for the public interest.”
Photo
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in March. Mr. Assange initially said that WikiLeaks’ targets would be “highly oppressive regimes in China, Russia and Central Eurasia.” CreditPool photo by Alexei Nikolsky
Support From Moscow
WikiLeaks was just getting started in 2006 when Mr. Assange, an Australian national, sent a mission statement to potential collaborators. One of his goals, he said, was to help expose “illegal or immoral” behavior by governments in the West.
Mr. Assange made clear, though, that his main focus lay elsewhere. “Our primary targets are those highly oppressive regimes in China, Russia and Central Eurasia,” he wrote.
Shortly after releasing the war logs in 2010, Mr. Assange threatened to make good on that promise. WikiLeaks, he told a Moscow newspaper, had obtained compromising materials “about Russia, about your government and your businessmen.”
But Mr. Assange’s life was soon upended. On Nov. 20 of that year, an international warrant was issued for his arrest in connection with allegations of sexual assault in Sweden, which he denies. Eight days later, WikiLeaks’ release of a cache of State Department cables cast unvarnished — and unwelcome — light on the United States’ diplomatic relationships.
“What is he persecuted
for? For sexual crimes?
Nobody believes that,
you do not believe
that either. He is
being persecuted for
spreading the
information he received
from U.S. military
regarding the actions
of the U.S.A. in the Middle
East, including Iraq.”
VLADIMIR V. PUTIN
As Mr. Assange pointed out in the interview with The Times, many of the cables involved blunt judgments on Russia; one called it a “mafia state.” But the documents proved far more damaging to the United States’ interests than to Russia’s, and officials in Moscow seemed unperturbed. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, dismissed Mr. Assange as a “petty thief running around on the internet.”
Mr. Assange, asked soon after by Time magazine whether he still planned to expose the secret dealings of the Kremlin, reiterated his earlier vow. “Yes indeed,” he said.
But that promised assault would not materialize. Instead, with Mr. Assange’s legal troubles mounting, Mr. Putin would come to his defense.
In late November 2010, United States officials announced an investigation of WikiLeaks; Mrs. Clinton, whose State Department was scrambled by what became known as “Cablegate,” vowed to take “aggressive” steps to hold those responsible to account.
The next month, Mr. Assange was arrested by the London police to face questioning by the Swedes, who he feared would turn him over to the Americans. Out on bail, he holed up and fought extradition at a Georgian country house owned by a supporter, Vaughan Smith, who said in an interview that he believed Mr. Assange to be the victim of an “intense online bullying and disinformation” campaign.
One day after Mr. Assange’s arrest, the Russian president appeared at a news conference with the French prime minister. Brushing off a questioner who suggested that the diplomatic cables portrayed Russia as undemocratic, Mr. Putin used the opportunity to bash the West.
“As far as democracy goes, it should be a complete democracy. Why then did they put Mr. Assange behind bars?” he asked. “There’s an American saying: He who lives in a glass house shouldn’t throw stones.”
I'm owed an apology...
How Russia Often
Benefits When Julian
Assange Reveals
the West’s Secrets
American officials say Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks probably
have no direct ties to Russian intelligence services. But the
agendas of WikiLeaks and the Kremlin have often dovetailed.
By JO BECKER, STEVEN ERLANGER and ERIC SCHMITTAUG. 31, 2016
Julian Assange was in classic didactic form, holding forth on the topic that consumes him — the perfidy of big government and especially of the United States.
Mr. Assange, the editor of WikiLeaks, rose to global fame in 2010 for releasing huge caches of highly classified American government communications that exposed the underbelly of its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and its sometimes cynical diplomatic maneuvering around the world. But in a televised interview last September, it was clear that he still had plenty to say about “The World According to US Empire,” the subtitle of his latest book, “The WikiLeaks Files.”
From the cramped confines of the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where he was granted asylum four years ago amid a legal imbroglio, Mr. Assange proffered a vision of America as superbully: a nation that has achieved imperial power by proclaiming allegiance to principles of human rights while deploying its military-intelligence apparatus in “pincer” formation to “push” countries into doing its bidding, and punishing people like him who dare to speak the truth.
Notably absent from Mr. Assange’s analysis, however, was criticism of another world power, Russia, or its president, Vladimir V. Putin, who has hardly lived up to WikiLeaks’ ideal of transparency. Mr. Putin’s government has cracked down hard on dissent — spying on, jailing, and, critics charge, sometimes assassinating opponents while consolidating control over the news media and internet. If Mr. Assange appreciated the irony of the moment — denouncing censorship in an interview on Russia Today, the Kremlin-controlled English-language propaganda channel — it was not readily apparent.
Now, Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks are back in the spotlight, roiling the geopolitical landscape with new disclosures and a promise of more to come.
In July, the organization released nearly 20,000 Democratic National Committee emails suggesting that the party had conspired with Hillary Clinton’s campaign to undermine her primary opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders. Mr. Assange — who has been openly critical of Mrs. Clinton — has promised further disclosures that could upend her campaign against the Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump. Separately, WikiLeaks announced that it would soon release some of the crown jewels of American intelligence: a “pristine” set of cyberspying codes.
Trying to Smoke Out the Players in the Hacking of the D.N.C.
A tangle of questions about what might connect Guccifer, the Russians, WikiLeaks and the Democratic National Committee.
United States officials say they believe with a high degree of confidence that the Democratic Party material was hacked by the Russian government, and suspect that the codes may have been stolen by the Russians as well. That raises a question: Has WikiLeaks become a laundering machine for compromising material gathered by Russian spies? And more broadly, what precisely is the relationship between Mr. Assange and Mr. Putin’s Kremlin?
Those questions are made all the more pointed by Russia’s prominent place in the American presidential election campaign. Mr. Putin, who clashed repeatedly with Mrs. Clinton when she was secretary of state, has publicly praised Mr. Trump, who has returned the compliment, calling for closer ties to Russia and speaking favorably of Mr. Putin’s annexation of Crimea.
From the outset of WikiLeaks, Mr. Assange said he was motivated by a desire to use “cryptography to protect human rights,” and would focus on authoritarian governments like Russia’s.
But a New York Times examination of WikiLeaks’ activities during Mr. Assange’s years in exile found a different pattern: Whether by conviction, convenience or coincidence, WikiLeaks’ document releases, along with many of Mr. Assange’s statements, have often benefited Russia, at the expense of the West.
Among United States officials, the emerging consensus is that Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks probably have no direct ties to Russian intelligence services. But they say that, at least in the case of the Democrats’ emails, Moscow knew it had a sympathetic outlet in WikiLeaks, where intermediaries could drop pilfered documents in the group’s anonymized digital inbox.
In an interview on Wednesday with The Times, Mr. Assange said Mrs. Clinton and the Democrats were “whipping up a neo-McCarthyist hysteria about Russia.” There is “no concrete evidence” that what WikiLeaks publishes comes from intelligence agencies, he said, even as he indicated that he would happily accept such material.
WikiLeaks neither targets not spares any particular nation, he added, but rather works to verify whatever material it is given in service of the public, which “loves it when they get a glimpse into the corrupt machinery that is attempting to rule them.”
But given WikiLeaks’ limited resources and the hurdles of translation, Mr. Assange said, why focus on Russia, which he described as a “bit player on the world stage,” compared with countries like China and the United States? In any event, he said, Kremlin corruption is an old story. “Every man and his dog is criticizing Russia,” he said. “It’s a bit boring, isn’t it?”
“Every man and his
dog is criticizing Russia.
It’s a bit boring, isn’t it?”
JULIAN ASSANGE
Since its inception, WikiLeaks has succeeded spectacularly on some fronts, uncovering indiscriminate killing, hypocrisy and corruption, and helping spark the Arab Spring.
To Gavin MacFadyen, a WikiLeaks supporter who runs the Center for Investigative Journalism at the University of London, the question for Mr. Assange is not where the material comes from, but whether it is true and in the public interest. He noted that intelligence services had a long history of using news organizations to plant stories, and that Western news outlets often published “material that comes from the C.I.A. uncritically.”
Recent events, though, have left some transparency advocates wondering if WikiLeaks has lost its way. There is a big difference between publishing materials from a whistle-blower like Chelsea Manning — the soldier who gave WikiLeaks its war log and diplomatic cable scoops — and accepting information, even indirectly, from a foreign intelligence service seeking to advance its own powerful interests, said John Wonderlich, the executive director of the Sunlight Foundation, a group devoted to government transparency.
“They’re just aligning themselves with whoever gives them information to get attention or revenge against their enemies,” Mr. Wonderlich said. “They’re welcoming governments to hack into each other and disrupt each other’s democratic processes, all on a pretty weak case for the public interest.”
Photo
President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in March. Mr. Assange initially said that WikiLeaks’ targets would be “highly oppressive regimes in China, Russia and Central Eurasia.” CreditPool photo by Alexei Nikolsky
Support From Moscow
WikiLeaks was just getting started in 2006 when Mr. Assange, an Australian national, sent a mission statement to potential collaborators. One of his goals, he said, was to help expose “illegal or immoral” behavior by governments in the West.
Mr. Assange made clear, though, that his main focus lay elsewhere. “Our primary targets are those highly oppressive regimes in China, Russia and Central Eurasia,” he wrote.
Shortly after releasing the war logs in 2010, Mr. Assange threatened to make good on that promise. WikiLeaks, he told a Moscow newspaper, had obtained compromising materials “about Russia, about your government and your businessmen.”
But Mr. Assange’s life was soon upended. On Nov. 20 of that year, an international warrant was issued for his arrest in connection with allegations of sexual assault in Sweden, which he denies. Eight days later, WikiLeaks’ release of a cache of State Department cables cast unvarnished — and unwelcome — light on the United States’ diplomatic relationships.
“What is he persecuted
for? For sexual crimes?
Nobody believes that,
you do not believe
that either. He is
being persecuted for
spreading the
information he received
from U.S. military
regarding the actions
of the U.S.A. in the Middle
East, including Iraq.”
VLADIMIR V. PUTIN
As Mr. Assange pointed out in the interview with The Times, many of the cables involved blunt judgments on Russia; one called it a “mafia state.” But the documents proved far more damaging to the United States’ interests than to Russia’s, and officials in Moscow seemed unperturbed. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey V. Lavrov, dismissed Mr. Assange as a “petty thief running around on the internet.”
Mr. Assange, asked soon after by Time magazine whether he still planned to expose the secret dealings of the Kremlin, reiterated his earlier vow. “Yes indeed,” he said.
But that promised assault would not materialize. Instead, with Mr. Assange’s legal troubles mounting, Mr. Putin would come to his defense.
In late November 2010, United States officials announced an investigation of WikiLeaks; Mrs. Clinton, whose State Department was scrambled by what became known as “Cablegate,” vowed to take “aggressive” steps to hold those responsible to account.
The next month, Mr. Assange was arrested by the London police to face questioning by the Swedes, who he feared would turn him over to the Americans. Out on bail, he holed up and fought extradition at a Georgian country house owned by a supporter, Vaughan Smith, who said in an interview that he believed Mr. Assange to be the victim of an “intense online bullying and disinformation” campaign.
One day after Mr. Assange’s arrest, the Russian president appeared at a news conference with the French prime minister. Brushing off a questioner who suggested that the diplomatic cables portrayed Russia as undemocratic, Mr. Putin used the opportunity to bash the West.
“As far as democracy goes, it should be a complete democracy. Why then did they put Mr. Assange behind bars?” he asked. “There’s an American saying: He who lives in a glass house shouldn’t throw stones.”
).
...I know the story like second nature 
)
