News you may have missed #404 (Wikileaks Afghan War Diary edition II)
August 2, 2010 Leave a comment
- Wikileaks posts mysterious ‘insurance’ file. WikiLeaks, the whistleblower website that recently published hundreds of thousands of classified Afghan War documents, has posted a mysterious encrypted file labeled “insurance”, whose size dwarfs the size of all the other files on the page combined. Cryptome, a separate anti-secrecy site, speculates that the file may be insurance in case something happens to the WikiLeaks website or to its founder, Julian Assange. In either scenario, WikiLeaks volunteers, under a prearranged agreement with Assange, could send out a password to allow anyone who has downloaded the file to open it.
- Ex-CIA officer Baer comments on Wikileaks files. Robert Baer, the retired CIA field officer whose bestselling memoir, See No Evil, formed the basis of the 2005 motion picture Syriana, has called the quality of intelligence revealed in the Wikileaks Afghan War files “just awful. Basically, we don’t know who the enemy is”, says Baer, adding that “much of the information looks to be the result of walk-in informers –intelligence peddlers looking for a cash payment or some other reward for passing on gossip”.
- Wikileaks informant suspect had help, says informer. Hacker-turned government informant Adrian Lamo, who is assisting the US government investigate thousands of leaked secret war records to Wikileaks, says Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning, who is the suspected culprit of the leak, had civilian help.
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WikiLeaks document to expose Swedish Foreign Minister as US spy
February 23, 2012 by Joseph Fitsanakis 4 Comments
International whistleblower website WikiLeaks says it intends to publish a classified document that allegedly exposes Sweden’s current Foreign Minister as a spy for the United States. According to Swedish newspaper Expressen, which says it has seen the document in question, Carl Bildt, Sweden’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, is shown to have operated as an informant for the United States since the mid-1970s. The revelation, which is allegedly included in a classified diplomatic cable sent from the American embassy in Stockholm to the US Department of State, is likely to cause a major political crisis in Sweden and end the career of Carl Bildt, a popular politician who served as Sweden’s Prime Minister between 1991 and 1994. In an article published on Wednesday, Expressen cites an anonymous WikiLeaks source that claims Bildt “cooperated with the American government in a manner that is in direct violation of Swedish law”. The paper also states that, according to the incriminating document, Bildt was initially recruited by US intelligence through Republican political strategist Karl Rove, who is known to have been “an old personal friend” of the Swedish politician. According to the Expressen report, WikiLeaks has decided to publicize the leaked diplomatic cable as a warning against the Swedish government, which is said to be considering extraditing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to the United States. Read more of this post
Filed under Expert news and commentary on intelligence, espionage, spies and spying Tagged with Bradley Manning, Carl Bildt, espionage, informants, Julian Assange, Karl Rove, Kristinn Hrafnsson, News, Sweden, Wikileaks