Julian Assange, Wikileaks: A Russian Propaganda Operation

Remember back in the day when people thought that Wikileaks was just about whistleblowing? I remember it well. Back in those days people were thinking that their purpose was a necessary component to righting wrongs in government, with a clear balance between what goes on in backrooms and what is kept from the people’s right to know.

Today however that narrative has changed. But maybe what has really changed is how we perceive both Assange and Wikileaks as not what it was once sold to us as, which was necessary and meaningful operation, rather the perception is now with eyes wide open about who runs it and what their real purpose has been all along. That purpose, is that both Assange and Wikileaks has been from the beginning an arm of Russian propaganda and the Russian intelligence community.

The unraveling started with Edward Snowden and his flight from the United States to Hong Kong. While there Snowden was trying to escape with massive amounts of pilfered data from the intelligence community. Assange and Wikileaks stepped in to help him escape from the United States. Snowden wanted to go to Latin America, but Assange overruled that option and told him that in Latin America he could be killed very easily. But in Russia Snowden would be safe, not only from American justice, but from getting killed for what he had.

The one key problem with this scenario is that Assange supposedly sold this narrative that in Russia, no one with his type of issues gets killed. Of course this is pure fallacy. Because in Russia, people with his type of talent get killed all the time.

Snowden somewhat fashioned himself as some type of journalist who was bringing important data with him that proved malfeasance in the United States intelligence community. But, what Assange did not elude to was that Russia was considered one of the worst places for journalists and people with “information” that needed to get out.

In June a wide-ranging investigation by the International Federation of Journalists into the deaths of journalists in Russia was published in June 2009. At the same time the IFJ launched an online database^[5][6] which documented over three hundred deaths and disappearances since 1993. Both the report Partial Justice^[7](Russian version: Частичное правосудие^[8]) and the database depend on the information gathered in Russia over the last 16 years by the country’s own media monitors, the Glasnost Defense Foundation and the Center for Journalism in Extreme Situations.

In September in its own report, Justice the Committee to Protect Journalists repeated its conclusion that Russia was one of the deadliest countries in the world for journalists and added that it remains among the worst at solving their murders. They died or were killed, the CPJ is convinced, because of the work they were doing and in only one case, it notes, has there been a partially successful prosecution.

Lest we forget, Russian intelligence will also operate from countries that are considered safe from black operations that they conduct. Case in point: Alexander Litvinenko.

This was a case where Putin sent out some very dedicated killers to poison Litvinenko with radioactive Polonium. They succeeded and Litvinenko was killed.

Former spy Alexander Litvinenko was killed in November 2006, leading to a clouding of relations between London and Moscow.

The 43-year-old had been an officer with the Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor to the KGB, but he fled to Britain where he became a fierce critic of the Kremlin. In his final years he also became a British citizen.

After he was killed by radioactive polonium-210, believed to have been administered in a cup of tea, it emerged the father-of-one was being paid by the British secret service MI6.

Knowing all of this, Assange still directed Snowden to the hands of Putin, the FSB, and Mother Russia. In Assange’s mind Russia was the safest place for Snowden. This started numerous questions of what Assange was really doing and how he so connected to Russian intelligence as well as Putin, and how he could arrange a very quick flight to Russia where Snowden was eventually given asylum. Taking out all the mystery of Snowden being a Russian mole in American intelligence, if we were to take Snowden at face value as some freedom loving libertarian, then Assange played the key role in helping him to escape to a country in which he had a direct line to Putin to gain Snowden quick asylum.

Other issues started to come into play later on with Assange and his placement in the Ecuadorian embassy. Assange is not protected by regular security at the embassy, rather he is protected by Russian FSB agents whom he requested as being the only people he trusted to keep him secure. How is it that Assange can get round the clock security from the Russian FSB? Not only that, why would Assange only trust the Russians to protect him?

Especially interesting is the revelation that, while holed up in London, Assange “requested that he be able to chose his own Security Service inside the embassy, suggesting the use of Russian operatives.” It is, to say the least, surpassingly strange that a Western “privacy advocate” wants Russian secret police protection while hiding out in a Western country. The original Spanish is clear: Assange “habría sido la elección de su propio Servicio de Seguridad en el interior de la embajada, llegando a proponer la participación de operadores de nacionalidad rusa.”

Why Assange wants FSB bodyguards is a question every journalist who encounters Julian henceforth should ask. Until he explains that, Wikileaks should be treated as the front and cut-out for Russian intelligence that it has become, while those who get in bed with Wikileaks — many Western “privacy advocates” are in that group — should be asked their feelings about their own at least indirect ties with Putin’s spy services.

Of course there is much more to this story, and I’m not trying to cover every little detail in either story here, because that would take years to do. Suffice it to say that when we move to the last few weeks with the DNC hack and Russian intelligence and Russian hackers behind the DNC break in, we notice now a very familiar pattern with Assange. It was Wikileaks that produced the relevant DNC data on the eve of the Democratic convention. It was clear that Russians gave Assange the hacked information for him to produce. It was also clear that it was meant to harm Hillary Clinton and benefit Donald Trump, who has very close ties to Vladimir Putin.

For Assange, one could imagine a quid pro quo arrangement, whereby if Trump is elected President, Assange could receive a Presidential pardon for whatever the USDOJ has on him. These types of pardons are not unusual, rare maybe, but not unusual for high level elites. Lest we forget, President Ford pardoned Nixon. The excuse back then was that the country needed to move on beyond Watergate. Ford needed a clean desk to walk into, and he didn’t want himself or the country all tied up in more hearings and an eventual indictment of Nixon.

In the case of Assange, it is very clear that he thinks that Trump might just win. And if Trump does indeed win, then Assange sees himself one step closer to escaping the Ecuadorian Embassy he has been holed up in for years. The quid pro quo is that Assange helps Putin, and Putin helps Assange, and Trump helps Putin, and Putin helps Trump. For all that so called “help” or back scratching if you will, the idea is that Assange will benefit, Putin will benefit, and Trump will benefit. Thus for Assange he ends up getting a get out of jail free card if Trump is elected.

The facts are that Wikileaks is a blown operation. Too many serious individuals have questioned the entire Wikileaks narrative, and many of those people have started connecting the dots, and it all adds up to be one of those long term operations that has now started to unravel and become exposed for what it really was in the beginning. What we can see now is that Assange and Wikileaks was nothing more than a Russian propaganda and disinformation site that constantly played into the hands of Russian intelligence and Putin. One of the interesting narratives is that Putin enjoys playing disinformation and divide and conquer games.

In a story BU wrote yesterday these few items stood out:

Furthermore, ‘propaganda’ is another weapon that is being dusted off and used to influence the will of the people through social media, mass texting and other media – without firing a shot.

The document – produced by the army’s warfare branch – says that Britain must be better prepared to fight a war where everything is a weapon, from a gun to a drone to a Twitter feed.

It warns that soldiers are at risk of being targeted over Facebook and Twitter.

It even advises soldiers should leave phones and iPads at home – as details of US troops operating in Ukraine have been hacked and used to smear them.

President Valdimir Putin is combining a show of strength and propaganda – reminiscent of the Cold War – seeking to regain a sphere of influence in the region and once again make Russia compete with the West.

For Putin therefore, the annexation of Crimea has not just been hailed as a great victory back home – but has given him the chance to practice for what is to come.

Just yesterday Assange put up a 20k reward (A paltry sum I might add) for help solving the murder of DNC worker Seth Rich. Assange claimed in a TV interview that Wikileaks sources face this type of risk every time they decide to deliver information to them. Assange went further by saying that he won’t reveal sources who give him information, but that he was concerned over Seth Rich’s death and claimed he wanted to offer a reward for the capture of whoever killed him, while alluding that Rich was the source for the DNC hack.

Anchor: “What are you suggesting? What are you suggesting?”

Assange: “I am suggesting that our sources, ah, take risks and they, they become concerned to see things occurring like that.”

Anchor: “But was he one of your sources then, I mean?”

Assange: “We don’t comment on who our sources are.”

Anchor: “But why make the suggestion about a young guy being shot in the streets of Washington?”

Assange: “Because we have to understand how high the stakes are in the United States. Our sources, ah, our sources face serious risks, that’s why they come to us so we can protect, ah, their anonymity.”

Anchor: “But it’s quite something to suggest a murder. That’s basically what you are doing.”

Assange: “Well, others have suggested that. We investigated to understand what happened in that situation, with Seth Rich. I think it is a concerning situation. There is not a conclusion yet. We wouldn’t be willing to say a conclusion yet, but we are concerned about it. More importantly, a variety of WikiLeaks sources are concerned when that kind of thing happens.”

The key for Assange is trying to take the blame off of Russia for the hack, and then to find someone in the US to smear with the leak. Seth Rich then became a convenient tool for those aims. This is classic Russian propaganda. It is a way to deflect the reality that Russia was behind the DNC hack, and that Russia provided Assange with the DNC data because of his very close relationship with Putin and the Russian intelligence agencies that support and protect him.

Assange doesn’t care about Seth Rich or anyone else other than Russia and himself. His goals are to help his handlers and benefactors in Russia, and Seth Rich just became a way to deflect that Assange is and always has been a Russian intelligence agent, with Wikileaks as an arm of Russian intelligence. For every American leak, or any leak for that matter from other governments that ends up at Wikileaks, its like a gift from Santa Claus to Russian intelligence.

its a perfect scam. Set up a website to funnel leaks from government whistleblowers and make it look like its all about government accountability and holding governments accountable to the people that pay them. But in fact its all benefitting Vladimir Putin and Russian intelligence with no one the wiser, until now that is. In the old days Russian intelligence had to pay large sums of money for secrets. Today, with Wikileaks, the Russians get it for free.

The facts are now upon us. Julian Assange has always been a Russian agent. Wikileaks has always been an arm of Russian intelligence. Donald Trump is an extension of Russian power and Vladimir Putin. If you want to look at who the go between is between Putin and Trump, look no further than Paul Manafort. If you want to see the media arm of Russian propaganda, look no further than those media companies that support Assange and his activities and leaks, and those who attempt to throw shade onto those who question Assange and Wikileaks and their role in American politics and their ties with Russian intelligence.