J.J. Green, wtop.com
Lengthy and numerous conversations with U.S. government officials, intelligence analysts and former intelligence operatives have left me with one troubling conclusion.
WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange may not be the engine running the organization. He may be the face of the snake, but he’s not the head.
“We never really paid any attention to the WikiLeaks disclosures because we didn’t feel as though they were that damaging to us,” says one intelligence source. “But now with all these diplomatic cables out there, the tone has changed.”
In fact that source and others are pushing for WikiLeaks to be treated as a terrorist organization and an enemy of the state. This means prosecution and other activities reserved for suspected criminals.
One of those activities is to pressure WikiLeaks supporters.
A case in point — Amazon.com has kicked WikiLeaks off of their servers. According to Computerworld, a Swedish firm is now hosting the site. Bahnhof Internet AB, is headquartered in Uppsala, a city near Stockholm.
Apparently Wikileaks has been hopping around since it published the documents because each host service they’ve gone to has eventually kicked them off. The organization is trying to avoid Denial-of-Service attacks aimed at shutting down their cablegate.WikiLeaks.org site.
Another sign of that pressure is the fact that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is running out places to run.
Interpol issued a warrant for his arrest on sex charges in Sweden. It is no secret that when you’re wanted by international authorities, there is an unlimited array of tools at their disposal unless you’re hiding in the tribal territories.
It looks like Assange is in for a pretty rough road in the near term and may not be much of a factor in the day to day operation. But, will that stop the flow of classified documents via WikiLeaks?
Quietly, a list of questions is being asked in U.S. intelligence circles:
What if WikiLeaks is only the venue to expose the documents?
What if this is an operation run by a hostile or friendly foreign power to embarrass and weaken the United States?
How could so many documents and there are supposedly more, end up in their hands.
Was PFC. Bradley Manning really the genesis of the breach?
Why has only the U.S. been targeted, why not other countries?
If Assange did start this crusade, will it grow into a larger operation with foreign influences involved?
Regardless of what the answers are, I gather that there are a lot of angry current and former U.S. intelligence officials out there and Assange will no longer be getting letters from the U.S. government asking him to cease and desist, but perhaps he’ll be getting some different kinds of documents.
