CIA Involved in Child Trafficking?

Former CIA agent/counterintelligence operative turned whistleblower John Kiriakou exposed agency wrongdoing in his book titled “Reluctant Spy: My Secret Life in the CIA’s War on Terror.”

The Obama administration indicted him “for allegedly illegally disclosing national defense information to individuals not authorized to receive it.”

He was the first CIA officer to be imprisoned for revealing classified information, serving from February 28, 2013 – February 3, 2015 for exposing government wrongdoing.

According to TopSecretWriters.com, he accused the CIA of child trafficking, supplying children to wealthy pedophiles globally in exchange for information the agency sought.

Trafficked children were never seen again. In a video clip, Kiriakou explained “(y)our job as a CIA agent is to break the laws of the country you are serving.

“That’s your job: Your job is to commit espionage, which in most countries is a death penalty crime.”

“Your job is to convince people to commit treason for you because they like you so much or they like the money that you’re giving them so much.”

“So, because it’s the nature of your job to break the law, they’re the rules that are written for you to carry out that job.”

Kiriakou’s latest accusation followed earlier ones. He was involved in capturing alleged Al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah. He took no part in torture and other abusive interrogation practices.

CIA operations flagrantly violate rule of law principles. It operates like a global Mafia hit squad. Throughout its existence, it’s been involved in drugs trafficking – documented by Alfred McCoy’s book titled “The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade.”

Journalist Gary Webb’s expose of CIA involvement in Nicaraguan drugs trafficking, supporting the contras, dealing with Los Angeles crack dealers, made him a target for vicious vilification – hounding him out of his profession into deep depression, either committing suicide or succumbing to foul play.

In books and articles, Peter Dale Scott explained “(s)ince at least 1950 there has been a global CIA-drug connection operating more or less continuously” to this day.

“The global drug connection is not just a lateral connection between CIA field operatives and their drug-trafficking contacts.”

“It is more significantly a global financial complex of hot money uniting prominent business, financial and government, as well as underworld figures,” a sort of “indirect empire (operating alongside) existing government.”

“(G)overnments themselves, and the links they develop with major traffickers, are the key both to the drug-trafficking problem and to its solution.”

The CIA is a sinister, secretive, unaccountable agency, operating extrajudicially. The late Chalmers Johnson said its existence “shorten(s) the life of the American republic.”

Its operations are incompatible with a free society – child and drugs trafficking, assassinations, and involvement in recruiting, arming, funding, training and directing ISIS and other terrorists are some of its many sinister activities.

Former CIA agent/whistleblower Kevin Shipp calls himself a “recovering CIA officer.”

Involvement with the agency creates awareness of its enormous harm to so many worldwide.

The post CIA Involved in Child Trafficking? appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.

The Intercept Has A Source Burning Problem

(MPN) Long having built its reputation on reports derived from classified information provided to them by leakers, The Intercept now finds itself in the unpleasant position of having burned – or outed – one of its anonymous sources.

The leaker, Reality Leigh Winner, allegedly gave The Intercept classified NSA documents pertaining to an investigation of Russian military intelligence hacking within the U.S. and now faces years in prison under the Espionage Act. While outing Winner could have been the result of negligence, the FBI affidavit explaining why the bureau arrested Winner shows it went beyond mere negligence.

According to FBI documents, a reporter at the paper sent the leaked documents to a contractor working for the National Security Agency (NSA) – the very agency they had been taken from – a full week before The Intercept published the story. The alleged intention was to let the NSA itself verify the documents, an unusual move for a news outlet that was originally intended to have exclusive publication rights over the Snowden leaks that exposed NSA surveillance. Upon being contacted, the NSA asked that The Intercept redact parts of the document and The Intercept complied with some of those requests.

The FBI warrant also notes that the reporter in question – who is unnamed in the document – contacted a government contractor with whom he had a prior relationship and revealed where the documents had been postmarked from – Winner’s home of Augusta, Georgia – along with Winner’s work location. He also sent unedited images of the documents that contained security markings that allowed the document to be traced to Winner.

While the reporter’s identity remains unknown, the published report has four authors – two of whom have been known to burn sources before. Journalists Richard Esposito and Matthew Cole once found themselves involved in a case against CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou. Kiriakou specifically singled out Cole as having not only misled him, but having played a likely role in incriminating him. Kiriakou spent nearly two years in prison for exposing the CIA’s torture program.

.@theintercept should be ashamed of itself. Matthew Cole burns yet another source. It makes your entire organization untrustworthy.

— John Kiriakou (@JohnKiriakou) June 6, 2017

WikiLeaks, a publishing organization committed to transparency that maintains the confidentiality of its sources, has sharply condemned The Intercept’s role in Winner’s arrest. WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange wrote that “If the FBI affidavit is accurate, the reporter concerned must be named, shamed and fired by whomever they work for to maintain industry standards.” “Source-burning reporters are a menace,” he continued. “They chill trust in all journalists, which impedes public understanding.”

WikiLeaks is now offering a $10,000 reward for information “leading to the public exposure & termination” of the responsible reporter.

WikiLeaks issues a US$10,000 reward for information leading to the public exposure & termination of this ‘reporter’: https://t.co/W9wijCk5d3

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) June 6, 2017

The Intercept responded to the situation in a statement, stating:

“While the FBI’s allegations against Winner have been made public through the release of an affidavit and search warrant, which were unsealed at the government’s request, it is important to keep in mind that these documents contain unproven assertions and speculation designed to serve the government’s agenda and as such warrant skepticism. Winner faces allegations that have not been proven. The same is true of the FBI’s claims about how it came to arrest Winner.”

The paper’s most prominent journalist, Glenn Greenwald, has distanced himself from the article and claimed that he does not edit the paper – even though his bio lists him as a “founding co-editor.”

I didn’t write the article, & I don’t edit the Intercept. I don’t control other journalists. My views on it are here https://t.co/bLVvxrpc15

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 6, 2017

The Intercept’s corporate dark side

This latest debacle for The Intercept may be proving the organization’s long-time critics right. The short history of the publication shows that it was hardly set up to serve the public interest. The paper was founded by Pierre Omidyar, a billionaire and major owner of both eBay and PayPal, who gave the project more than $50 million in seed money.

This alone should have been enough to complicate its mission “to hold the most powerful governmental and corporate factions accountable.”

Its first hires were Glenn Greenwald, Jeremy Scahill, and Laura Poitras – all of whom were involved in publishing the Snowden revelations, as well as other leaks. Greenwald and Poitras were the only journalists with the full Snowden cache and those secrets now belong to a single billionaire running a for-profit media company.

Omidyar’s connections to the U.S. political establishment are numerous and concerning. One of his foundation’s microcredit projects to “help” farmers in India led to an epidemic of farmer suicides that gained international headlines, as farmers became unable to pay the foundation back. His network has also funded regime change operations with USAID, most recently in Ukraine. In addition, Omidyar was well-connected to the Obama White House, which stood to lose the most from the mass publication of the Snowden cache. One of Omidyar’s main companies, PayPal, is said to be implicated in some of the NSA documents that have still been withheld.

Omidyar’s influence on The Intercept has also been established. Former Intercept writer Ken Silverstein wrote that, at the paper, “a cult of personality existed around him [Omidyar] internally that disrupted the whole organization” and that “the company’s culture centered on Omidyar.”

This background makes it less surprising that The Intercept has been caught publishing partisan stories that back U.S. establishment objectives, such as articles supporting U.S.-led regime change efforts in Syria and the very piece that outed Winner.

Outing a source only to perpetuate the “Russian hacker” narrative

The Intercept piece at the center of the controversy is particularly troubling. Titled “Top-Secret NSA Report Details Russian Hacking Effort Days Before 2016 Election,” it asserts that “Russian military intelligence executed a cyberattack on at least one U.S. voting software supplier and sent spear-phishing emails to more than 100 local election officials just days before last November’s presidential election, according to a highly classified intelligence report obtained by The Intercept.”

However, the NSA report that The Intercept published in tandem with the article provides no evidence for that claim, as it does not even mention of a cyberattack by “cyber espionage operations,” indicating that no one was attacked and only that information was collected. It also presents no proof that any accounts were compromised, nor were the U.S. elections. Even worse is that the document itself states that techniques were used by this cyber espionage actor that distinguish it from known Russian military intelligence operations, meaning the act in question may not have been carried out by Russian intelligence.

In addition, the piece quotes cyber security expert Bruce Schneier. However, Schneier is a well-known Clinton supporter and argued that Russia hacked the Democrats as far back as last July, a claim for which there is still no evidence. The Intercept piece fails to mention this aspect of Schneier’s background.

Essentially, The Intercept piece – which could lead to hard prison time for one very unfortunate whistleblower – does not accurately interpret the classified information at its core and instead seeks to propagate the “Russian hacker” narrative still being peddled by the parts of the U.S. establishment that are still bitter over Hillary Clinton’s loss. Given Omidyar’s cozy ties with the Obama White House and the left-leaning slant of The Intercept’s current editor Betsy Reed, this could be more than coincidence.

While The Intercept is now making headlines for outing a source, the bigger message is that the paper has revealed itself as being part of the system of establishment journalism it purports to stand against.

By Whitney Webb / Republished with permission / MintPress News / Report a typo

Former CIA officer: All CIA agents taught to lie, primary mission is to protect the agency

(INTELLIHUB) — Since the election of Donald Trump we have witnessed an unprecedented attack on his presidency carried out by forces within the intelligence community that have collectively become known as the “deep state”.

For months intelligence operatives have continually leaked classified material to establishment media outlets who have then ran with the anonymously sourced information in attack piece after attack piece against the new president.

Laughably, some in the mainstream media have even insinuated that the deep state may not actually be real, a truly absurd notion especially when you consider that these same media outlets are openly getting information from the very operatives they are now claiming may not be real.

The existence of an entrenched “deep state” within the United States has long been known and now, with the Trump Administration under unprecedented attack by these forces, many patriots within the intelligence community are coming forward with even more confirmation that the deep state does indeed exist.

Most recently, former CIA counterterrorism officer John Kiriakou penned a piece in which he made clear that is is highly likely that elements of the intelligence community are targeting Donald Trump whether you like his politics or not. Keep in mind that Kiriakou spent 23 months in prison for attempting to expose the Bush torture program, a fact that clearly shows he is no partisan Trump supporter.

Kiriakou writes, “Is it so hard to believe that there are elements of the government that don’t like the fact that Trump is rocking their boat or not allowing them primacy in policymaking, a status they enjoyed under both Obama and Bush? As Intercept columnist Glenn Greenwald noted, disliking and distrusting Trump and disliking and distrusting the CIA are not mutually exclusive. It’s not a zero-sum game. Same with the FBI. It’s possible to have a scenario with no good guy.”

Kiriakou then reveals a crucial fact about the Central Intelligence Agency especially when you consider that the mainstream media regularly using them as a source in so-called news stories. (emphasis mine)

One of the things that most observers don’t understand is that the CIA will do anything – anything – to survive. All CIA officers are taught to lie. They lie all the time, about everything, to everybody. And they justify it by trying to convince themselves that they are doing it in the national interest, for national security.

From my very first day in the CIA, it was drilled into me, as it is into every other employee, that “the primary mission is to protect the Agency.” That was the mantra. Couple that with the CIA’s ability to intercept and take over virtually any communications device, and you have a Frankenstein monster. Is it really hard to believe that such an organization would resist a president who challenged it? Is it hard to believe that it would do so surreptitiously? I don’t think so.

Remember, all government employees swear an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution yet despite this the CIA apparently trains their employees to protect the agency above all else.

Kiriakou finishes his piece by clearly showing that elements within the FBI and the NSA also conduct illegal activities and would seem to have no problem targeting a sitting president if he was perceived to be going after their interests.

So when you see reports published by the likes of the Associated Press that claim that Trump “believes” the deep state is targeting him, remember, the CIA teaches its agents to lie, lie, lie and the mainstream media is only too happy to help them do so.

Alex Thomas is an opinion journalist and editor for Intellihub News. He was a founding member of what later became Intellihub.com and an integral part of the team that destroyed the mainstream media blockade on Bilderberg in 2012. You can contact him here.

Featured Image: Global Panorama/Flickr

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When Whistleblowers Tell The Truth They're Traitors. When Government Lies It's Politics

Via Carey Wedler via TheAntiMedia.org,

 Immediately after Wikileaks released thousands of documents revealing the extent of CIA surveillance and hacking practices, the government was calling for an investigation - not into why the CIA has amassed so much power, but rather, into who exposed their invasive policies.

“A federal criminal investigation is being opened into WikiLeaks’ publication of documents detailing alleged CIA hacking operations, several US officials,” reportedly told CNN.

According to USA Today:

“The inquiry, the official said, will seek to determine whether the disclosure represented a breach from the outside or a leak from inside the organization. A separate review will attempt to assess the damage caused by such a disclosure, the official said.”

Even Democratic representative Ted Lieu, who has been urging whistleblowers to come forward to expose wrongdoing within the Trump administration, has turned his focus away from what the documents exposed and toward determining how it could have possibly happened.

“I am deeply disturbed by the allegation that the CIA lost its arsenal of hacking tools,” he said while calling for an investigation. “The ramifications could be devastating. I am calling for an immediate congressional investigation. We need to know if the CIA lost control of its hacking tools, who may have those tools, and how do we now protect the privacy of Americans.”

According to Lieu’s statements, the problem isn’t necessarily that the CIA is spying on Americans and invading innocent people’s technology without consent. It’s that the CIA mishandled their spying tools, and in doing so, endangered Americans’ privacy by exposing the tools to presumably ‘bad actors.’ The problem isn’t the corrupt agency violating basic privacy rights, but that they weren’t skillful enough to keep their corruption under wraps.

So goes the familiar whistleblower narrative in the United States. Whistleblowers step forward to expose wrongdoing on the part of government — something the government claims to support — and immediately, establishment institutions and the media bend the conversation away from the wrongdoing in order to focus on the unlawful release of secrets.

Putting aside the fact that, according to popular American mythology breaking the law is a patriotic duty, the government and politicians’ reactions are both hypocritical and habitual.

When Chelsea Manning revealed damning evidence of U.S. war crimes in Iraq, including soldiers directly targeting Reuters news staff, the response was not to investigate who allowed those crimes (in fact, a later Pentagon manual went on to describe instances in which it’s permissible to kill journalists; that version was later retracted after outcry from reporters). Rather, Manning was subject to a military tribunal and issued multiple life sentences, a cruel and unusual punishment reversed only in President Obama’s last days in office amid his attempts to salvage his abysmal human rights, transparency, and whistleblower record.

When Edward Snowden revealed the extent of the NSA’s warrantless mass surveillance of American citizens and millions of others around the world, the government’s response was not to investigate why those programs existed in the first place. Rather, they thrashed and flailed around the world, ordering the plane of Bolivian President Evo Morales to be grounded in the hopes of catching the whistleblower. Congress later passed the deceptive “USA Freedom Act,” which codified continued surveillance.

Edward Snowden remains in exile, and establishment politicians repeatedly call him a traitor for exposing the crimes of his government. Some, including Trump’s CIA Director Mike Pompeo, have called for his execution. Mass surveillance continues, and the president himself is seeking to retain those powers as he condemns former President Obama for allegedly spying on him.

And so on and so forth. The same was true for John Kiriakou, Thomas Drake, William Binney, and Jeffrey Sterling. The government is exposed for wrongdoing, and rather than prove themselves to be representatives of the people by remedying those transgressions, they point fingers and divert, all the while refusing to relinquish the unjust power any given agency is exposed for having.

Many people are already aware that the government does little to actually serve them (Americans’ trust in political leaders and government, in general, is abysmally low). Rather, government agents and agencies operate to advance and concentrate their own interests and power. This is why penalties against killing government employees are more stringent than killing civilians. It is why stealing from the government is perceived as more outrageous to the State than stealing from a civilian. The government considers “crimes” committed against itself to carry the utmost offense, yet often fails to deliver justice to the people who provide their financial foundation.

As a result, the State does not even try to show remorse for its violative policies, even when they are exposed and splattered across social media for the world to see. Instead, with the help of corporate media, the debate is shifted to whether or not WikiLeaks is a criminal organization, or whether or not Edward Snowden is a traitor.

As White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said of the leaks:

“This is the kind of disclosure that undermines our country, our security. This alleged leak should concern every American for its impact on national security. … Anybody who leaks classified information will be held accountable to the maximum extent of the law.”

Meanwhile, we’re supposed to accept the government’s investigation of itself, which (surprise!) usually finds little or no wrongdoing on their own behalf and often consolidates and extends the very same power whistleblowers exposed in the first place.

When Whistleblowers Tell the Truth They’re Traitors. When Government Lies It’s Politics

(ANTIMEDIA) Immediately after Wikileaks released thousands of documents revealing the extent of CIA surveillance and hacking practices, the government was calling for an investigation — not into why the CIA has amassed so much power, but rather, into who exposed their invasive policies.

We"re revolutionizing the news industry, but we need your help! Click here to get started.

“A federal criminal investigation is being opened into WikiLeaks’ publication of documents detailing alleged CIA hacking operations, several US officials,” reportedly told CNN.

According to USA Today:

“The inquiry, the official said, will seek to determine whether the disclosure represented a breach from the outside or a leak from inside the organization. A separate review will attempt to assess the damage caused by such a disclosure, the official said.”

Even Democratic representative Ted Lieu, who has been urging whistleblowers to come forward to expose wrongdoing within the Trump administration, has turned his focus away from what the documents exposed and toward determining how it could have possibly happened.

“I am deeply disturbed by the allegation that the CIA lost its arsenal of hacking tools,” he said while calling for an investigation. “The ramifications could be devastating. I am calling for an immediate congressional investigation. We need to know if the CIA lost control of its hacking tools, who may have those tools, and how do we now protect the privacy of Americans.”

According to Lieu’s statements, the problem isn’t necessarily that the CIA is spying on Americans and invading innocent people’s technology without consent. It’s that the CIA mishandled their spying tools, and in doing so, endangered Americans’ privacy by exposing the tools to presumably ‘bad actors.’ The problem isn’t the corrupt agency violating basic privacy rights, but that they weren’t skillful enough to keep their corruption under wraps.

So goes the familiar whistleblower narrative in the United States. Whistleblowers step forward to expose wrongdoing on the part of government — something the government claims to support — and immediately, establishment institutions and the media bend the conversation away from the wrongdoing in order to focus on the unlawful release of secrets.

Putting aside the fact that, according to popular American mythology breaking the law is a patriotic duty, the government and politicians’ reactions are both hypocritical and habitual.

When Chelsea Manning revealed damning evidence of U.S. war crimes in Iraq, including soldiers directly targeting Reuters news staff, the response was not to investigate who allowed those crimes (in fact, a later Pentagon manual went on to describe instances in which it’s permissible to kill journalists; that version was later retracted after outcry from reporters). Rather, Manning was subject to a military tribunal and issued multiple life sentences, a cruel and unusual punishment reversed only in President Obama’s last days in office amid his attempts to salvage his abysmal human rights, transparency, and whistleblower record.

When Edward Snowden revealed the extent of the NSA’s warrantless mass surveillance of American citizens and millions of others around the world, the government’s response was not to investigate why those programs existed in the first place. Rather, they thrashed and flailed around the world, ordering the plane of Bolivian President Evo Morales to be grounded in the hopes of catching the whistleblower. Congress later passed the deceptive “USA Freedom Act,” which codified continued surveillance.

Edward Snowden remains in exile, and establishment politicians repeatedly call him a traitor for exposing the crimes of his government. Some, including Trump’s CIA Director Mike Pompeo, have called for his execution. Mass surveillance continues, and the president himself is seeking to retain those powers as he condemns former President Obama for allegedly spying on him.

And so on and so forth. The same was true for John Kiriakou, Thomas Drake, William Binney, and Jeffrey Sterling. The government is exposed for wrongdoing, and rather than prove themselves to be representatives of the people by remedying those transgressions, they point fingers and divert, all the while refusing to relinquish the unjust power any given agency is exposed for having.

Many people are already aware that the government does little to actually serve them (Americans’ trust in political leaders and government, in general, is abysmally low). Rather, government agents and agencies operate to advance and concentrate their own interests and power. This is why penalties against killing government employees are more stringent than killing civilians. It is why stealing from the government is perceived as more outrageous to the State than stealing from a civilian. The government considers “crimes” committed against itself to carry the utmost offense, yet often fails to deliver justice to the people who provide their financial foundation.

As a result, the State does not even try to show remorse for its violative policies, even when they are exposed and splattered across social media for the world to see. Instead, with the help of corporate media, the debate is shifted to whether or not WikiLeaks is a criminal organization, or whether or not Edward Snowden is a traitor.

As White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer said of the leaks:

“This is the kind of disclosure that undermines our country, our security. This alleged leak should concern every American for its impact on national security. … Anybody who leaks classified information will be held accountable to the maximum extent of the law.”

Meanwhile, we’re supposed to accept the government’s investigation of itself, which (surprise!) usually finds little or no wrongdoing on their own behalf and often consolidates and extends the very same power whistleblowers exposed in the first place.

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