UPDATED Assange arrested for revealing CIA Vault 7 tools to hack
computers & phones. IMF loan for Ecuador
CIA Vault 7 can make its hacks look
"Russian" or "Iranian" by inserting foreign language strings into their source code. In other words, it can frame
other countries via False Flag cyber attacks.
This newsletter is at http://mailstar.net/Assange-CIA-Vault7.doc
Newsletter published on April 15, 2019
(1)
Assange exposed US war crime in Baghdad
(2)
WikiLeaks released video of Apache helicopter slaying of civilians in Baghdad
(3)
Assange is accused of conspiracy with Manning over video of US soldiers War
Crime
(4)
Roberts: As soon as corrections are made to Wikipedia page, they are erased and
the smears reinstalled
(5)
IMF approves $4.2bn loan for Ecuador - in return for kicking Assange out of
London embassy
(6)
Assange arrested for revealing CIA Vault 7 tools to hack computers &
phones
(7)
Assange arrest for revealing CIA 'Vault 7' hacking tools - William M.
Arkin
(8)
On Julian Assange’s Arrest, by William M. Arkin
(9)
CIA Vault 7 Whistleblower Joshua Schulte passed info to Assange
(10)
CIA Vault 7 hacking tools
(1)
Assange exposed US war crime in Baghdad
10 Reasons Assange Should Walk
Free
By David Swanson | Apr 12, 2019
10 Reasons Assange Should Walk
Free
Exposing war crimes is not a crime, and
other reasons why Julian Assange should be freed.
1. Governments’ (monstrous and criminal)
behavior should not be secret. People should know what their government is
doing, and what a powerful foreign government is doing to their own countries.
The actual results of the work of WikiLeaks have been hugely
beneficial.
2. If U.S. courts were to get busy
prosecuting the crimes exposed by WikiLeaks, rather than trying to turn the act
of revealing them into some sort of crime, they would simply not have time for
the latter.
3. Prosecutions should not be arbitrary
political choices. A Justice Department wrongly under the thumb of Obama decided
against prosecuting Assange. A Justice Department wrongly under the thumb of
Trump decided to prosecute, based on exactly the same information but different
politics. When Trump was celebrating WikiLeaks three years ago it was for acts
of journalism he is not prosecuting; instead he is prosecuting just the
journalism that he opposes.
4. The choice to prosecute these particular
acts is driven by the military industrial complex, but also by Russiagate. The
U.S. media and top politicians have long sought to depict Julian Assange as
something other than a journalist on the fictional grounds that he is in the
employ of or collaborating with an enemy government. If Assange had exposed the
peccadilloes of the peace movement, or if he had not figured in the Russiagate
myth, he would be free. They’d let him be. Breathing air like you and
me.
5. Nobody on either side of the debate right
now has knowledge of or is focused on the details of the allegation that Assange
did something unjournalistic by attempting unsuccessfully to hack into a
computer in order to protect a source. This trial by media is no more about that
than the Monica Lewinsky scandal was about lying under oath. And the trial by
jury is likely to resemble the trial by media, if previous trials, such as
Jeffrey Sterling’s, in the Virginia court of choice for patriotic railroaders
are any guide.
6. The details of that unjournalistic
allegation are likely very weak, because the indictment throws in various other
allegations that are purely journalistic: encouraging a source, protecting a
source. To an ignorant, all-white, militarized-community jury impressed by
important national figures saying the word “conspiracy” a lot, these other
allegations will loom large.
7. If the United States charges Assange with
violating horribly anti-democratic U.S. secrecy laws, and denounces him on TV as
a “traitor,” despite Assange not being a U.S. citizen, other countries may begin
to find the nerve to charge U.S. journalists with violating their secrecy laws.
The next Washington Post reporter hacked to death by Saudi Arabia may get a
trial first.
8. If Assange is brought to the United
States and not convicted, or is convicted and serves out a sentence, one can
expect the U.S. government, legally or otherwise, to further prosecute or simply
imprison him indefinitely. In the propaganda that surrounds this drama it is not
a legal proceeding, but a war. If Trump gets away with the numerous crimes and
outrages he has thus far gotten away with, he or his successor will have little
difficulty devising a way to further “protect” us from Assange.
9. If Assange is prosecuted, many U.S.
journalists will deliver a self-inflicted blow to their institution dwarfing
what the U.S. government delivers. They will declare it fit and proper for a
single head of a secretive government to sadistically punish disapproved of
journalists. They will pledge their loyalty not to truth or public knowledge,
but to the Empire.
10. This. https://collateralmurder.wikileaks.org
(2)
WikiLeaks released video of Apache helicopter slaying of civilians in Baghdad
{watch the videos of the killing, at above
link or https://youtu.be/5rXPrfnU3G0
}
5th April 2010 10:44 EST
WikiLeaks has released a classified US
military video depicting the indiscriminate slaying of over a dozen people in
the Iraqi suburb of New Baghdad -- including two Reuters news staff.
Reuters has been trying to obtain the video
through the Freedom of Information Act, without success since the time of the
attack. The video, shot from an Apache helicopter gun-sight, clearly shows the
unprovoked slaying of a wounded Reuters employee and his rescuers. Two young
children involved in the rescue were also seriously wounded.
The military did not reveal how the Reuters
staff were killed, and stated that they did not know how the children were
injured.
After demands by Reuters, the incident was
investigated and the U.S. military concluded that the actions of the soldiers
were in accordance with the law of armed conflict and its own "Rules of
Engagement".
Consequently, WikiLeaks has released the
classified Rules of Engagement for 2006, 2007 and 2008, revealing these rules
before, during, and after the killings.
WikiLeaks has released both the original 38
minutes video and a shorter version with an initial analysis. Subtitles have
been added to both versions from the radio transmissions.
WikiLeaks obtained this video as well as
supporting documents from a number of military whistleblowers. WikiLeaks goes to
great lengths to verify the authenticity of the information it receives. We have
analyzed the information about this incident from a variety of source material.
We have spoken to witnesses and journalists directly involved in the
incident.
WikiLeaks wants to ensure that all the
leaked information it receives gets the attention it deserves. In this
particular case, some of the people killed were journalists that were simply
doing their jobs: putting their lives at risk in order to report on war. Iraq is
a very dangerous place for journalists: from 2003- 2009, 139 journalists were
killed while doing their work.
(3)
Assange is accused of conspiracy with Manning over video of US soldiers War
Crime
The Age of Injustice
By Paul Craig Roberts | Apr 12,
2019
Julian Assange’s conviction will make it
impossible for media to report leaked information that is unfavorable to the
government.
[...] Assange is accused of being in a conspiracy
with Manning to obtain and publicize secret government data, such as the
film, which was already known to a Washington Post reporter who failed his
newspaper and his profession by remaining silent, of U.S. soldiers committing extraordinary
war crimes without remorse. As a U.S. soldier, it was actually Manning’s
duty to report the crimes and the failure of U.S. troops to disobey unlawful
orders. Manning was supposed to report the crimes to his superiors, not to the
public, but he knew the military had already covered up the massacre of
journalists and civilians and did not want another My Lai-type event on its
hands.
I don’t believe the charge against Assange.
If Wikileaks cracked the code for Manning, Wikileaks did not need
Manning.
The alleged Grand Jury that allegedly
produced the indictment was conducted in secret over many years as Washington
searched for something that might be pinned on Assange. If there actually was a
grand jury, the jurors were devoid of integrity, but how do we know there was a
grand jury? Why should we believe anything Washington says after “Saddam
Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction,” “Assad’s use of chemical weapons against
his own people,” “Iranian nukes,” “Russian invasion of Ukraine,” “Russiagate,”
and on and on ad infinitum. Why believe Washington is telling the truth this
time?
As the grand jury was secret because of
“national security,” will the trial also be secret and the evidence secret? Is
what we have here a Star Chamber proceeding in which a person is indicted in
secret and convicted in secret on secret evidence? This is the procedure used by
tyrannical governments who have no case against the person they intend to
destroy.
The governments in Washington, London, and
Quito are so shameless that they do not mind demonstrating to the entire world
their lawlessness and lack of integrity. [...]
(4)
Roberts: As soon as corrections are made to Wikipedia page, they are erased and
the smears reinstalled
The Problem with Wikipedia and the Digital
Revolution
By Paul Craig Roberts | Apr 12,
2019
In The Matrix in which we live,
truth-tellers are unwelcome to those who control the explanations in order to
advance their agendas.
On April 10, 2019, a reader alerted me to
the fact that I am being smeared on
Wikipedia as a “vocal supporter of the current Russian government and its
policies.” The reader also reports that an article in the Daily Beast calls me a
“Putin worshiper.” The reader says that he tried to edit the Wikipedia entry
without success, and he urged me to give it my attention.
I do not know whether the person who wrote
my Wikipedia entry intended to smear me or is merely uninformed. However,
dissenting voices do get smeared on Wikipedia. It is an ongoing problem for many
of us. For years readers and people who know me would make corrections to my
Wikipedia biography, but as soon as the
corrections were made, they would be erased and the smears reinstalled.
[...]
(5)
IMF approves $4.2bn loan for Ecuador - in return for kicking Assange out of
London embassy
IMF approves $4.2bn loan for
Ecuador
Tuesday 12 March 2019 - 11:05am
AFP
WASHINGTON - The International Monetary Fund
on Monday approved a $4.2-billion, three-year loan for Ecuador, part of a
broader aid package to help support the government's economic reform
program.
The Washington-based lender agreed to the
terms of the financing late last month, and the final approval of the IMF board
on Monday releases the first installment of $652-million.
IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said
the aid will support the government's efforts to shore up its finances,
including a wage "realignment," gradual lowering of fuel subsidies, and
reduction of public debt.
"The savings generated by these measures
will allow for an increase in social assistance spending over the course of the
program," Lagarde said in a statement, stressing that "Protecting the poor and
most vulnerable segments in society is a key objective" of the
program.
Quito is expected to receive another
$6-billion from the Development Bank of Latin America, the Inter-American
Development Bank, the World Bank and the Latin American Reserve Fund.
WATCH: IMF's Lagarde says state capture
inquiry good for SA
"The Ecuadoran authorities are implementing
a comprehensive reform program aimed at modernizing the economy and paving the
way for strong, sustained, and equitable growth," Lagarde said.
IMF performs periodic reviews of its loans
to ensure governments are following through on its policy pledge and then
releases funds in installments.
(6)
Assange arrested for revealing CIA Vault 7 tools to hack computers &
phones
CIA Vault 7 can make its hacks look
"Russian" or "Iranian" by inserting foreign language strings into their source code. In other words, it can frame
other countries via False Flag cyber attacks.
April 13, 2019
CIA's Vault 7 Files Launched New Case
Against Assange - Attack Intends To Prevent Further Leaks
After the arrest of Julian Assange by
British police and the unsealing of the U.S. indictment against him, the
question is why is the U.S. doing this and why now?
The
indictment alleges that Assange 'conspired' with Chelsea Manning by giving
support to her attempt to find a
password to an account that would have allowed her to conceal her pilfering
of U.S. documents. Glenn Greenwald argues that the case is quite thin and
clearly an attack on press freedom. That a reporter or editor has to help a
source to conceal its identity is part of the job description.
The Obama administration, not known for
reluctance to go after whistleblowers, had already weighted the 'conspired' case
and decided against prosecuting it.
It is thus likely that the case, as unsealed
now, is only a pretext to extradite Assange from Britain. The real case will
only get unsealed if and when Assange is in U.S. custody.
National security reporter William Arkin,
who left NBC News over its warmongering, is likely right when he writes that the issue behind this is
Wikileaks' publishing of the CIA's hacking tools known as Vault
7.
While the publishing of the Vault 7 files
received little coverage in the media, it seriously damaged to the CIA's
capabilities. Arkin wrote on April 11 about the Vault 7 connection. The Guardian and the Daily Beast were
offered the piece but declined to publish it:
The American case, which shifted completely
in March 2017, is based up WikiLeaks’
publications of the so-called “Vault 7” documents, an extensive set of cyber espionage secrets of the Central
Intelligence Agency. Vault 7 was little noticed in the emerging Russian
collusion scandal of the new Trump administration, but the nearly 10,000 CIA
documents that WikiLeaks started publishing that March constituted an
unprecedented breach, far more potentially damaging than anything the
anti-secrecy website had ever done, according to numerous U.S.
officials.
“There have been serious compromises –
Manning and Snowden included – but until 2017, no one had laid a glove on the
Agency in decades,” says a senior intelligence official who has been directly
involved in the damage assessments.
“Then came Vault 7, almost the entire
archive of the CIA’s own hacking group,” the official says. “The CIA went ballistic at the breach.”
The official is referring to a little known CIA organization called the Center for Cyber Intelligence, a then
unknown counterpart to the National Security Agency, and one that conducts and
oversees the covert hacking efforts of
the U.S. government.
Wikileaks acquired the Vault 7 files in late
2016 or early 2017. In January 2017 a lawyer for Julian Assange tried to make a
deal with the U.S. government. Assange would refrain from publishing some
critical content of the Vault 7 files in exchange for limited immunity and safe
passage to talk with U.S. officials. One issue to be talked about was the
sourcing of the DNC files which Wikileaks published. U.S. officials in the
anti-Trump camp claimed that Russia had hacked the DNC servers. Assange
consistently said that Russia was not the source of the published files. He
offered technical evidence to prove that.
On March 23 2017 Wikileaks published some
Vault 7 files of minor interest.
The Justice Department wanted a deal and
made on offer to Assange. But intervention from then FBI director Comey
sabotaged it:
Multiple sources tell me the FBI’s
counterintelligence team was aware and engaged in the Justice Department’s
strategy but could not explain what motivated Comey to send a different message
around the negotiations ...
With the deal seemingly in jeopardy
Wikileaks publish the CIA's Vault 7 files of "Marble Framework" and
"Grasshopper". These CIA tools systematically changed its sniffing tools to make
them look "Russian" or "Iranian" by inserting foreign language strings into
their source code. The publication proved that the attribution of the DNC
pilfering and other "hacks" to Russia was nonsense. The publishing of these
files ended all negotiations:
On April 7, 2017, Assange released documents
with the specifics of some of the CIA malware used for cyber attacks. It had
immediate impact: A furious U.S. government backed out of the negotiations, and
then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo slammed WikiLeaks as a “hostile intelligence
service.”
The alleged leaker of the Vault 7 files, one
Joshua Schulte, is in U.S. custody but still has not had his day in court. It is
likely that the U.S. wants to offer him a deal should he agree to testify
against Assange.
In another piece Arkin expands on his first
take by setting the case into a wider context:
[C]oming on the heels of massive leaks by
Edward Snowden and a group called the Shadow Brokers just months earlier, and
given the notoriety WikiLeaks had earned, Vault 7 was the straw that broke the
governmental back. Not only was it an unprecedented penetration of the
CIA, an organization that had evaded any breach of this type since the
1970’s, but it showed that all of the efforts of the U.S. government after
Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden had failed to either deter or catch
“millennial leakers.”
The targeting of Assange is not only for
revenge, though revenge is surely part of the motive. The wider aim is to shut
down on leaking:
The thinking of government officials –
current and former – that I’ve talked to is that shutting down WikiLeaks once
and for all – or at least separating it from the mainstream media to make it
less attractive as a recipient of U.S. government secrets, will at least be one
step towards greater internal security.
Assange will first be sentenced in Britain
for jumping bail. He will be convicted to some six month of jail. Only after
that time will the legal fight about the extradition to the States begin. It may
take up to three years.
Assange's greatest hope to escape an
extradition is a change of government in Britain:
Jeremy Corbyn @jeremycorbyn - 19:34 utc - 11
Apr 2019 The extradition of Julian Assange to the US for exposing evidence of
atrocities in Iraq and Afghanistan should be opposed by the British
government.
The time it will take for the extradition
case to move through British and EU courts is likely long enough for Labour to
win a general election. With Jeremy Corbyn in charge Assange would likely be
safe. It is one more reason for the transatlantic establishment to prevent a
Corbyn win by all means available to it.
Posted by b on April 13, 2019 at 02:19
PM
(7)
Assange arrest for revealing CIA 'Vault 7' hacking tools - William M.
Arkin
Behind the Assange Saga: Radicalized by
Frustration
William M. Arkin
Posted on April 12, 2019
Yesterday morning, with news of Julian
Assange’s arrest, I wrote the below piece {On Julian Assange’s Arrest - it's at item 8
below - Peter M.} for The Guardian (US), trying to explain that the real reason that the U.S. government was
moving on Assange NOW had nothing to do with the 10-year old case of Chelsea
Manning nor WikiLeaks’ role in the 2016 election. The news people at The
Guardian passed on the article, as did the Daily Beast. I didn’t really get a
reason from The Guardian, but the editor at the Daily Beast wrote: “We don’t
have the bandwidth tonight to sort through your sourcing, or to separate out the
parts of this that immediately make sense from the ones that seem, at least
here, offputting.” Some others offered to publish, and no disrespect to them,
but I decided to just publish the piece here because I wanted to add a little
explanation and analysis.
The core of my reporting – and my argument –
is that WikiLeaks’ publishing of the
so-called “Vault 7” trove of the CIA is what propelled the United States
government to feel like it needed to take action against the organization.
If you are not familiar with Vault 7, don’t feel bad. Most in the national
security field aren’t either.
Up until the Vault 7 leaks, which were published by WikiLeaks in March
2017, the national security lawyers within the U.S. government had been
hesitant to take on a journalistic entity, even one like WikiLeaks that looked
so very different than The New York Times or NBC News. But then with WikiLeaks
seeming cooperation (or at least servitude) to the Russian government in 2016,
that very American mainstream media became more hostile to its now separated
brethren, and the general view shifted within the intelligence community and the
Justice Department that the organization was more vulnerable.
With
Vault 7, WikiLeaks published almost 10,000 classified documents from the Center
for Cyber Intelligence of the CIA, the covert
hacking organization of the U.S. government. For a number of reasons – a new
president in office, WikiLeaks’ prominence in the ongoing Trump collusion
circus, and the obscureness of the very material WikiLeaks was publishing, Vault
7 received scant attention. But coming on the heels of massive leaks by Edward
Snowden and a group called the Shadow Brokers just months earlier, and given the
notoriety WikiLeaks had earned, Vault 7
was the straw that broke the governmental back. Not only was it an
unprecedented penetration of the CIA, an organization that had evaded any breach
of this type since the 1970’s, but it showed that all of the efforts of the U.S.
government after Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden had failed to either deter
or catch “millennial leakers.”
The thinking of government officials –
current and former – that I’ve talked to is that shutting down WikiLeaks once
and for all – or at least separating it from the mainstream media to make it
less attractive as a recipient of U.S. government secrets, will at least be one
step towards greater internal security. Sure there is the bigger question of
Russia weaponizing its intercepts and hacking material to do damage to the
United States and the West, but in terms of what the U.S. government can do to
clean up its own house, or at least to bolt the doors better, was to shut up
Assange and fracture WikiLeaks. Whatever WikiLeaks has done to itself, and
whatever the United States (and its allies) have done covertly, that seems to be
progressing apace.
Maybe the rejected article below isn’t
worthy of publication, but my experience in closely watching the WikiLeaks story
– in both its vilification and in its lionization – has made me think about this
current era of homogenized news reporting. “Don’t have the bandwidth”, what the
Daily Beast said, is code for both don’t have the editorial people and don’t
have the headspace to entertain a contrarian thought, particularly in a big news
day. By last night, both The Washington Post and The New York Times were both
mentioning Vault 7 but no one has yet tied together all of these pieces of why
the United States, the U.K., Ecuador, and even Sweden might have common cause in
exerting more control, not just against WikiLeaks but also against those who
would independently assault their systems.
The thread that ties everyone from Manning
to the Vault 7 leaker to Julian Assange together is that they have all in some
ways been radicalized by their frustration. Frustration with this very system,
with its exclusiveness, with its lies, with its immunity to any accountability.
For Manning, radicalization started as the WMD debacle in Iraq became clear and
as the war dragged on, the young twenty-something (with a Top Secret clearance
conferred by the system) alarmed by the carnage and the seeming inhumanity.
Snowden equally conferred as one of them with an even higher “clearance” was
similarly driven to take matters into his own hands, radicalized by his
perception of post 9/11 abuses that he felt the NSA had taken, and hadn’t been
held accountable for.
Put aside WikiLeaks and the Russians. The unsealed indictment yesterday is just
the tip of a giant iceberg on the part of the U.S. government (and its
allies) to fight back against these (and future) non-conforming crusaders. After
Snowden they mounted a multi-pronged (and multi-billion dollar) effort –
including more internal surveillance and many administrative and systemic
changes to information systems – to thwart “insider threats” from again
extracting secrets. But the number of secrets had grown so big, and the number
of insiders needed to churn through them equally had become so massive that they
were not even able to police themselves. Even here, the government failed to
control its own secrets, but is anyone saying (ironically other than Assange and
Snowden themselves) that the secret keepers aren’t to be trusted to do their
jobs?
Assange is not a scapegoat, not only, but an
activated and in some ways very frightened national security establishment, is
mounting its first overt salvo against the world of anti-secrecy activists. Even while Donald Trump lauds WikiLeaks – if
he actually does anymore or even understands what is happening – the
professionals need to take matters into their own hands. And Assange, so intent
on self-aggrandizement and driven crazy in his incarceration, is certainly the
perfect villain for the system to rally round.
Is he guilty? I’ve been asked many times in the last 24
hours. My answer is yes, on these narrow charges, just like any protestor
resorting to civil disobedience is guilty. But I say, more important than
whether he is guilty and odious as an individual, he is also symbol of a bigger
sickness, where we all consume today’s episodes and avoid the deeper issues of
secrecy and perpetual warfare. In my mind, the mainstream news media, in not
doing its job better, especially on national security, contributes to a lack of
basic government accountability. That increases the power of the national
security establishment – the bringers of this expulsion, arrest and indictment –
a now so powerful and faceless officialdom that they have a greater vote in how,
where and when we fight than does the chief executive or the Congress. Or the
people.
There will be more Assange’s, more
Snowden’s, more Manning’s, more assaults on the system by those radicalized by
their frustrations with this state of affairs.
The very people who serve as sources for my article are no different, and
I applaud them. So I can’t also at the same time blithely condemn anti-secrecy
activists and facilitators, not per se.
Is it possible that the news media itself is
thus the key to greater security, not just in better reporting on national
security but also in embracing these voices? I don’t think Julian Assange’s
arrest is a direct assault on the First Amendment or the freedom of the press.
But like the official system that has too many secrets and too much to do, so
the news media has become overwhelmed and normalized, and neutered.
(8)
On Julian Assange’s Arrest, by William M. Arkin
On Julian Assange’s Arrest
William M. Arkin
Written April 11, 2019
Julian Assange’s expulsion and arrest in
London will set off a new set of dramas regarding the WikiLeaks’ founder, one
that could eventually land him in an Alexandria, Virginia courthouse and a trial
that could surprise even close observers of his now seven year drama.
This comes after the United States unsealed
an indictment against Julian Assange on Thursday, alleging Assange conspired
with Chelsea Manning, the U.S. Army intelligence analyst then known as Bradley
Manning.
In the new indictment, the U.S. alleges that
in 2010 Assange assisted Manning in cracking a password to gain administrative
access to secret networks and thus more documents, assistance that occurred
after the Army Private stationed in Iraq had already supplied WikiLeaks with
classified material relating to the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
“It was part of the conspiracy that Assange
encouraged Manning to provide information and records from departments and
agencies of the United States,” the indictment says.
According to legal and intelligence
documents reviewed by the author and over a dozen interviews, including with
three U.S. intelligence officials directly involved in WikiLeaks investigations
and damage assessments, conspiracy is at the center of what the U.S. Justice
Department is trying to prove. The official American government legal argument
is that Assange and his colleagues are really running an intelligence operation,
one that conspired with U.S. government employees by “suborning” them to break
the law, and also clandestinely conspires with foreign governments – including
Russia and China – in obtaining and trading classified government materials.
This argument, officials say, skirts the difficult question of whether WikiLeaks
is a journalistic organization, and is thereby entitled to the protection of
press freedoms.
Though Assange is wanted in a British court
for jumping bail in 2012, and has become infamous for his role in publishing
stolen Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton-related emails in the run-up to the
last presidential election, the almost
ten-year old Manning case is also not at the center of the American legal
effort.
The American case, which shifted completely
in March 2017, is based up WikiLeaks’
publications of the so-called “Vault 7” documents, an extensive set of cyber
espionage secrets of the Central Intelligence Agency.
Vault 7 was little noticed in the emerging Russian collusion scandal
of the new Trump administration, but the nearly
10,000 CIA documents that WikiLeaks started publishing that March constituted an
unprecedented breach, far more potentially damaging than anything the
anti-secrecy website had ever done, according to numerous U.S.
officials.
“There have been serious compromises –
Manning and Snowden included – but until 2017, no one had laid a glove on the
Agency in decades,” says a senior intelligence official who has been directly
involved in the damage assessments.
“Then came Vault 7, almost the entire
archive of the CIA’s own hacking group,” the official says. “The CIA went
ballistic at the breach.” The official is referring to a little known CIA
organization called the Center for Cyber Intelligence, a then unknown
counterpart to the National Security Agency, and one that conducts and oversees
the covert hacking efforts of the U.S. government.
A month after WikiLeaks released the Vault 7
documents, then CIA director Mike Pompeo blasted WikiLeaks in his first public
speech.
“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” Pompeo said.
Pompeo’s reference to Russia led everyone to
assume that the CIA director was referring to claims of collusion between
Russian intelligence and WikiLeaks in publishing the Clinton-related material.
But the fine print of his speech should have signaled that Pompeo’s ire had
nothing to do with election meddling. That is, none of the Clinton materials
were classified government secrets.
Pompeo also did not mention the obscure
Vault 7 documents directly, nor any new grievance against WikiLeaks.
But he did indirectly refer to the March
2017 documents and the CIA breach.
“As a policy, we at CIA do not comment on
the accuracy of purported intelligence documents posted online. In keeping with
that policy, I will not specifically comment on the authenticity or provenance
of recent disclosures,” he said.
Pompeo then went on to stress that the
Agency did not break any American laws in its intelligence collection. According
to the senior official, the Agency was still waiting for WikiLeaks to drop the
other shoe, the actual “source code”
behind hundreds of CIA cyber “exploits,” capabilities and actual
penetrations of computer systems and the internet of things that allowed it to
carry out its extensive covert spying on
foreign governments but could also be used in domestic spying.
“Julian Assange and his kind are not the
slightest bit interested in improving civil liberties or enhancing personal
freedom,” Pompeo went on to say. “They have pretended that America’s First
Amendment freedoms shield them from justice. They may have believed that, but
they are wrong.”
Pompeo was alluding to the new criminal case
and theory that the U.S. government wants to prove that WikiLeaks isn’t a
journalistic entity. And, according to the senior official and numerous Justice
Department documents reviewed by the author, the U.S. government has been
aggressively building this specific case by trying to establish that WikiLeaks
solicited classified information from numerous government employees, which
prosecutors believe should disqualify the organization from being afforded any
journalistic privileges and immunities.
“WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence
service and talks like a hostile intelligence service,” former director Pompeo said. “It has
encouraged its followers to find jobs at CIA in order to obtain intelligence. It
directed Chelsea Manning in her theft of specific secret
information.”
Alexa O’Brien, the leading expert on the
case, says that during Chelsea Manning’s Court Martial in 2013, prosecutors
suggested indeed that Julian Assange had instructed the Army Private on how to
crack the administrator password on her computer that connected to the SIPRNet,
the secret-level internet protocol network of the U.S. government.
Manning was ultimately acquitted of espionage in the release of the
Garani airstrike video, a May 4, 2009 airstrike in a village in
Afghanistan that may have killed as many as 147 civilians. According to
O’Brien’s meticulous reporting on the trial, that espionage charge was directly
tied to U.S. Army prosecutors’ theory at trial that Manning was involved in a
criminal conspiracy with WikiLeaks.
“Prosecutors in the Manning Court Martial
made it clear that they were not prosecuting WikiLeaks,” O’Brien says. “But they
also had chat logs between Manning and an anonymous WikiLeaks interlocutor that
they said was Assange. In other words, they knew in 2010 all of what Assange was
indicted for Thursday.”
According to a second senior official, now
retired, but one who was also directly involved in damage assessments of Edward
Snowden’s 2013 leaks of highly classified material from the National Security
Agency, U.S. intelligence and law enforcement have also been looking into
whether the Hawaii-based contractor received coaching or assistance from a
WikiLeaks employee in downloading his documents and in spiriting him to Hong
Kong. WikiLeaks subsequently assisted Snowden in leaving China and flying to
Moscow, dispatching one of its officers to accompany him. WikiLeaks, U.S.
intelligence believes, negotiated with both the Chinese and Russian governments
in moving Snowden, and some analysts believe that there was an exchange of
information.
The senior intelligence official who was
involved in the Vault 7 case says that prosecutors are also trying to establish
whether Joshua Adam Schulte, a former CIA employee who has been indicted for
transmitting the Vault 7 documents to WikiLeaks, negotiated or coordinated with
the organization or received coaching on how to obtain and move the materials he
purportedly stole. Schulte was arrested
in August 2017 and is awaiting trial.
Writing in The Washington Post in response
to the Pompeo speech, Assange characterized the Vault 7 disclosures as “evidence
of remarkable CIA incompetence and other shortcomings,” focusing on the CIA’s
loss of control of the documents.
WikiLeaks had previously taken the CIA to task for losing control of its
secrets, which it said “circulated among former U.S. government hackers and
contractors in an unauthorized manner.” Assange’s argument was that the
documents could result in infection of “the public’s ubiquitous consumer
products and automobiles with computer viruses.” Ignored was how WikiLeaks
itself had obtained the material.
One aspect of the Vault 7 documents further
obscured the scandal and muddied the waters in explaining the U.S. government’s
accelerating case against WikiLeaks. After announcing “the largest ever
publication of confidential documents on the agency” and referring to “several
hundred million lines of [computer] code”, WikiLeaks never posted the full
documents or the damaging codes. According to two U.S. intelligence officials,
that certainly lessened the damage that might have been caused, even if U.S.
intelligence at the same time sees some evidence that the source code leaked out
in other ways, causing some U.S. adversaries to change their
practices.
According to two government officials who
have been involved in the now almost decade-old WikiLeaks case, a multinational
investigation into potential illegality on the part of the organization goes
back to early 2010. A Grand Jury began its work and the FBI, supported by the
intelligence community and the governments of Australia and the UK (and then by
Sweden, Germany, and the Netherlands) began intensive collection of evidence. In
2015, the investigation took a turn towards Conspiracy and WikiLeaks as a
potential intelligence agency when U.S. intelligence obtained information that
WikiLeaks had obtained a collection of documents on Saudi Arabia from Russian
intelligence. That was a year before WikiLeaks published any Clinton-related
emails.
On Thursday, the UK Home Office said in a
statement that Assange “was arrested in relation to a provisional extradition
request from the United States.”
The ultimate fate of Julian Assange depends
upon London’s agreement to extradite the Australian on Conspiracy charges. But
looming behind the 2010 case is a far broader case, one that will ultimately
touch upon the fate not just of Assange, but also that of Edward Snowden and the
WikiLeaks organization itself.
(9)
CIA Vault 7 Whistleblower Joshua Schulte passed info to Assange
CIA Vault 7 Whistleblower Hit With New
Leaking Charges
04:03 01.11.2018 (updated 04:30
01.11.2018)
On Wednesday, federal prosecutors filed a
rewritten indictment against the 30-year-old man said to be behind the largest
leak of classified information in the history of the Central Intelligence Agency
- Joshua Schulte, who allegedly gave
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange the material for the “Vault 7”
releases.
The news comes just hours after a letter
from Schulte to the judge presiding over his case pleading for something to be
done about the conditions he faces in pre-trial detention. Between being cut off
from access to legal counsel and shoved into the "box" at a notorious prison for
unspecified reasons, Schulte described the conditions as
"unconstitutional."
Schulte was arrested in August 2017 after allegedly leaking more than
8,000 CIA documents to WikiLeaks, which were
published in March of that year. Initially, Schulte was not charged for anything
related to that matter, but for child pornography.
It wasn't until June of 2018 that a 13-count superseding indictment was
issued against him, alleging theft of classified national defense
information.
One of the most renowned whistleblowers in
CIA history, John Kiriakou, said Schulte may face a difficult road back to good
graces in the public eye. Kiriakou is a 15-year CIA veteran who blew the whistle
on the agency's unconstitutional "enhanced interrogation" program, also known as
torture. He also hosts a show on Radio Sputnik called Loud &
Clear.
"I believe that the Justice Department
learned a lesson during the Obama administration whereby whistleblowers had
great public sympathy once they were charged," Kiriakou told Sputnik
News.
"That sympathy often lead to acquittals,
such as in the case of NSA's Thomas Drake, or short sentences, like in my case.
What the Justice Department has done to mitigate that is too frequently add
child pornography charges to new cases. We saw this in the case of Matthew
DeHart and now in the case of the Vault 7 whistleblower. In the DeHart case, the
judge acknowledged that there was no evidence of child pornography. None," he
said.
"I would not be surprised if the same thing
happened in Vault 7," Kiriakou noted.
So why is the government so interested in
getting Schulte? Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern told Sputnik News that it's all
about the subject of the leak. "Julian Assange called it a ‘bigger revelation'
than all the stuff that came from Ed Snowden," McGovern said.
"The
tool that they call Marble Framework," McGovern said, "destroys this story about
Russian hacking."
"What happened there was really significant,
because that Marble Framework, by the
CIA's own admission, enabled this CIA division to hack into computers or
servers, disguise who hacked in, leave tell-tale signs like cyrillic,"
McGovern said, noting that 13 days after the revelation, Mike Pompeo "as head of
the CIA, gets up and says, ‘You know, this WikiLeaks fellow Julian Assange is a
demon,' and not only that, but he's ‘running a non-state hostile intelligence
agency.'"
An alternative theory to the Democratic
National Committee (DNC) hack coming from the CIA, pushed by the CIA-funded
cybersecurity firm FireEye's spokesperson, is that the Russians "wanted experts
and policymakers to know that Russia is behind it." FireEye is one of the few
organizations to forensically analyze the DNC servers.
Hours after a letter written by Schulte to
the judge presiding over his case was revealed online, prosecutors issued a new
indictment against him. The government accused him of continuing to leak
classified information in jail. Prosecutors say he passed off national defense
secrets.
Schulte's letter to Judge Paul Crotty reads,
in part:
"I am writing to you because I have been
unable to contact my attorney, review my discovery, or even assist on my case in
any capacity for the entire month of October. This is outrageous and clearly
unconstitutional."
"On Monday, October 1, I was called down for
a legal visit. When I arrived, I was told I was going to the ‘box' for an
indeterminate amount of time while they investigated me for something they
refused to tell me. So I was handcuffed in prison and led away in chairs to the notoriously inhumane torture
chamber that is MCC's 9 South."
"My fellow slaves constantly scream, pound
and claw at their cages attempting to get attention for basic needs fulfilled.
I've witnessed men dragged from their cages and beaten and maced. An officer
even uncuffed an inmate and told him to fight away from the cameras. Abuse runs
rampant."
"This is true cruel and unusual punishment.
If you would disagree then I beg you come and witness for yourself what the UN
Human Rights Board has condemned and denounced as detestable, inhumane and
un-American: the s**t-filled showers
where you leave dirtier than you entered; the flood of the tiers and cages with
ice-cold water; the constant blast of
cold air as we are exposed to extreme cold without blankets or long-sleeve shirts;
the uncontrollable lights that are
always on as we are sleep deprived."
"I was strip searched and my cell was raided
early in the morning on my birthday. Coincidence? Or birthday gift from the
government?"
"How is it I should be subjected to this?
Terrorists receive better treatment in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba — I have seen the
footage myself."
"I beg you Judge Crotty to read the first
search warrant affidavit and the government's Brady letter; the FBI outright
lied in that affidavit and now acknowledges roughly half of those
lies."
Kevin Gosztola, a journalist who focuses on
prisons and whistleblowers, told Sputnik News he has heard of inmate abuse at
the Metropolitan Correctional Center
(MCC), where Schulte is detained, though not at South 9, the unit he is in.
"I'm aware that there's another part of the facility called 10 South that's been
described when people share their stories of solitary confinement. His letter
describes very vividly what is going on, and there's probably very little reason
to believe that he is making this up."
"We know that it's harsh. We know that the
New York Times, for example, has profiled this and even described this facility
as something comparable to Guantanamo Bay in its harshness," Gosztola
said.
"Part of restricting people like this is
intent upon ensuring that they do not
talk about what they saw while they were in the CIA, that they don't share
other classified information that they might know, other sensitive details about
what was going on in government," Gosztola said.
"This isolation is to prevent him from
talking."
According to a former special monitor on
torture and punishment at the United Nations, the brutal conditions of solitary
confinement at the "10 South" unit at the facility are a "punitive measure that
is unworthy of the United States as a civilized democracy." Schulte is at 9
South.
"If they had the goods on him, why wait 15
months? They're gonna try to find someone to pin it on just to say that you
can't do this thing," McGovern said.
"Am I saying that the FBI will lie?
Yes."
"It seems clear that Schulte had extra
reasons for them to rough him up… and to subject him to cruel and inhumane
punishment. Habeas corpus has gone out the window; he's been held for over a
year, and they won't tell him what
charges they really want to bring against him," McGovern said. "They
doubtless have these special compartments for people who are accused of things
like Schulte."
"I think that there's there's an element of
the system that truly pressures you into situations where you want to take a
plea agreement and not go to trial," Gosztola told Sputnik News. "And so, I
think with Schulte, he's got the case that involves WikiLeaks, he's got the case
involving what he allegedly leaked, but then he's also got these other charges
that stem from what agents say they found on his computer. He faces a child
pornography charge; he faces other offenses. And this kind of pressure is, you
know, 'We don't want you to go to court and challenge us.'"
McGovern was arrested years ago at an event
held by former General David Petraeus. He was taken to central booking at One
Police Plaza in New York City, a hold facility colloquially known as "The
Tombs," which is at the same compound as the Metropolitan Correctional
Center.
"It is a horrid place," McGovern said of
central booking. "You're treated like dirt. I can't say I was singled out for
extra lousy treatment because it was a very egalitarian treatment we got. It was
awful."
"You can't lay down" because of the seating
McGovern said, and "there are roaches and stuff."
"I hadn't even been arraigned," McGovern
said, "in comparison to Schulte, all I can confirm is this is one hell
hole."
You don't end up in 9 South or 10 South by
accident, Gosztola said. "His [Schulte's] case is something that has been given
broad publicity by media. And so the Bureau of Prisons marks your case. We know
that in other cases when you've had leakers or whistleblowers, your case is
marked because they know you have broad publicity. The case of John Kiriakou was
marked because he was receiving broad publicity. The case of Reality Winner was
marked, and now that she was moved to where she will be in prison in Texas, they
know that she received broad publicity for her case."
"This is what happened — and seems to be
happening increasingly. We saw this with Reality Winner being in a pretrial
detention in a county jail in Georgia for over a year when other leakers had
been allowed to be free," Gosztola said. "And so now in this case, there's
something about Josh that the government has decided is dangerous to them, or
they want us to believe he's dangerous, so they have kept him in a cell, and
now, as he's describing, these are horrid conditions." ==
(10)
CIA Vault 7 hacking tools
CIA Vault 7 uses cyberattack techniques
& malware produced by other hackers;
disguising these attacks as the work of other groups and nations
Vault 7 is a series of documents that
WikiLeaks began to publish on 7 March 2017, that detail activities and
capabilities of the United States Central Intelligence Agency to perform
electronic surveillance and cyber warfare. The files, dated from 2013–2016,
include details on the agency's software capabilities, such as the ability to
compromise cars, smart TVs,[1] web browsers (including Google Chrome, Microsoft
Edge, Mozilla Firefox, and Opera Software ASA),[2][3][4] and the operating
systems of most smartphones (including Apple's iOS and Google's Android), as
well as other operating systems such as Microsoft Windows, macOS, and
Linux.[5][citation needed]
... Part 1 - "Year Zero"
The first batch of documents named "Year
Zero" was published by WikiLeaks on 7 March 2017, consisting of 7,818 web pages
with 943 attachments, purportedly from the Center for Cyber Intelligence,[12]
which already contains more pages than former NSA contractor and leaker, Edward
Snowden's NSA release.[13]
... Part 5 - "HIVE"
On 14 April 2017 WikiLeaks published Vault 7
part 5, titled "HIVE". Based on the CIA top-secret virus program created by its
"Embedded Development Branch" (EDB). The six documents published by WikiLeaks
are related to the HIVE multi-platform CIA malware suite. A CIA back-end
infrastructure with a public-facing HTTPS interface used by CIA to transfer
information from target desktop computers and smartphones to the CIA, and open
those devices to receive further commands from CIA operators to execute specific
tasks. Also called Listening Post (LP), and Command and Control (C2). All of the
above while hiding its presence behind unsuspicious-looking public domains. This
masking interface is known as "Switchblade".[28]
Part 6 - "Weeping Angel"
On 21 April 2017 WikiLeaks published Vault 7
part 6, code-named "Weeping Angel". Which is a hacking tool co-developed by the
CIA and MI5. Used to exploit a series of smart TVs for the purpose of covert
intelligence gathering. Once installed in suitable televisions with a USB stick,
the hacking tool enables those televisions' built-in microphones and possibly
video cameras to record their surroundings, while the televisions falsely appear
to be turned off. The recorded data is then either stored locally into the
television's memory or sent over the internet to the CIA. Allegedly both the CIA
and MI5 agencies collaborated to develop that malware and coordinated their work
in Joint Development Workshops.[29][30][31]
Part 7 - "Scribbles"
On 28 April 2017 WikiLeaks published Vault 7
part 7 "Scribbles". The leak includes documentation and source code of a tool
intended to track documents leaked to whistleblowers and journalists by
embedding web beacon tags into classified documents to trace who leaked
them.[34][35] The tool affects Microsoft Office documents, specifically
"Microsoft Office 2013 (on Windows 8.1 x64), documents from Office versions
97-2016 (Office 95 documents will not work!) [and d]ocuments that are not
[locked], encrypted, or password-protected".[36] When a CIA watermarked document
is opened, an invisible image within the document that is hosted on the agency's
server is loaded, generating a HTTP request. The request is then logged on the
server, giving the intelligence agency information about who is opening it and
where it is being opened. However, if a watermarked document is opened in an
alternative word processor the image may be visible to the viewer.
...
Marble framework
The documents describe the Marble framework,
a string obfuscator used to hide text fragments in malware from visual
inspection. As part of the program, foreign languages were used to cover up the
source of CIA hacks.[76][77][78] According to WikiLeaks, it reached 1.0 in 2015
and was used by the CIA throughout 2016.[79]
In its release, WikiLeaks described the
primary purpose of "Marble" as to insert foreign language text into the malware
to mask viruses, trojans and hacking attacks, making it more difficult for them
to be tracked to the CIA and to cause forensic investigators to falsely
attribute code to the wrong nation.[80] The source code revealed that Marble had
examples in Chinese, Russian, Korean, Arabic and Persian.[81] These were the
languages of the US's main cyber-adversaries – China, Russia, North Korea, and
Iran.[82] ...
Frankfurt base
The first portion of the documents made
public on 7 March 2017, Vault 7 "Year Zero", revealed that a top secret CIA unit
used the German city of Frankfurt as the starting point for hacking attacks on
Europe, China and the Middle East. According to the documents, the U.S.
government uses its Consulate General Office in Frankfurt as a hacker base for
cyber operations. WikiLeaks documents reveal the Frankfurt hackers, part of the
Center for Cyber Intelligence Europe (CCIE), were given cover identities and
diplomatic passports to obfuscate customs officers to gain entry to
Germany.[60][67] ...
UMBRAGE
The documents reportedly revealed that the
agency had amassed a large collection of cyberattack techniques and malware
produced by other hackers. This library was reportedly maintained by the CIA's
Remote Devices Branch's UMBRAGE group, with examples of using these techniques
and source code contained in the "Umbrage Component Library" git repository.
According to WikiLeaks, by recycling the techniques of third-parties through
UMBRAGE, the CIA can not only increase its total number of attacks,[70] but can
also mislead forensic investigators by disguising these attacks as the work of
other groups and nations.[1][60] ...
Apple products
After WikiLeaks released the first
installment of Vault 7, "Year Zero", Apple stated that "many of the issues
leaked today were already patched in the latest iOS," and that the company "will
continue work to rapidly address any identified vulnerabilities."[88]
On 23 March 2017, WikiLeaks released "Dark
Matter", the second batch of documents in its Vault 7 series, detailing the
hacking techniques and tools all focusing Apple products developed by the
Embedded Development Branch (EDB) of the CIA. The leak also revealed the CIA had
been targeting the iPhone since 2008, a year after the device was released.
These EDB projects attacked Apple's firmware meaning that the attack code would
persist even if the system gets rebooted.[89][90] The "Dark Matter" archive
included documents from 2009 and 2013. Apple issued a second statement assuring,
that based on an "initial analysis, the alleged iPhone vulnerability affected
iPhone 3G only and was fixed in 2009 when iPhone 3GS was released."
Additionally, a preliminary assessment showed "the alleged Mac vulnerabilities
were previously fixed in all Macs launched after 2013".[91][92]
On 24 March 2017 WikiLeaks described Apple
as "duplicitous" for saying it had fixed security flaws: "Apple's claim that it
has "fixed" all "vulnerabilities" described in DARKMATTER is duplicitous. EFI is
a systemic problem, not a zero-day". Echoing the lack of trust in Apple was the
German-Finnish Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom, who wrote: "Apple statement is
not credible."[93]
Cisco
WikiLeaks said on 19 March 2017 on Twitter
that the "CIA was secretly exploiting" a vulnerability in a huge range of Cisco
router models discovered thanks to the Vault 7 documents.[94][95] The CIA had
learned more than a year ago how to exploit flaws in Cisco's widely used
internet switches, which direct electronic traffic, to enable eavesdropping.
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.[96]
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.[97]
Cisco issued a warning on security risks,
patches were not available, but Cisco provided mitigation advice.[95]
Smartphones/tablets
The electronic tools can reportedly
compromise both Apple's iOS and Google's Android operating systems. By adding
malware to the Android operating system, the tools could gain access to secure
communications made on a device.[98]
Messaging services
According to WikiLeaks, once an Android
smartphone is penetrated the agency can collect "audio and message traffic
before encryption is applied".[1] Some of the agency's software is reportedly
able to gain access to messages sent by instant messaging services.[1] This
method of accessing messages differs from obtaining access by decrypting an
already encrypted message.[98] While the encryption of messengers that offer
end-to-end encryption, such as Telegram, WhatsApp and Signal, wasn't reported to
be cracked, their encryption can be bypassed by capturing input before their
encryption is applied, by methods such as keylogging and recording the touch
input from the user.[98] Commentators, among them Snowden and cryptographer and
security pundit Bruce Schneier, observed that Wikileaks incorrectly implied that
the messaging apps themselves, and their underlying encryption, had been
compromised - an implication which was in turn reported for a period by the New
York Times and other mainstream outlets.[99][1]
Vehicle control systems
One document reportedly showed that the CIA
was researching ways to infect vehicle control systems. WikiLeaks stated, "The
purpose of such control is not specified, but it would permit the CIA to engage
in nearly undetectable assassinations."[100][60] This statement brought renewed
attention to conspiracy theories surrounding the death of Michael
Hastings.[101][100]
Windows
The documents refer to a "Windows FAX DLL
injection" exploit in Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 operating
systems.[12] This would allow a user with malicious intents to hide its own
malware under the DLL of another application. However, a computer must have
already been compromised through another method for the injection to take
place.[102]
Commentary
On 7 March 2017, Edward Snowden comments on
the importance of the release, stating that it reveals the United States
Government to be "developing vulnerabilities in US products" and "then
intentionally keeping the holes open", which he considers highly reckless.[103]
...
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