You Are the Company You Keep

People have frequently asked, if the McCanns were innocent, why would they need Michael Caplan QC, known for having represented Augusto Pinochet in extradition proceedings?

Equally one might ask, why would they need the ever transparent* David Rose? Or even the despicable BBC for that matter?

Why indeed?

Read on.

Panorama walk-out over McCann film

David Rose
Sunday 25 November 2007 10.25 GMT
Last modified on Friday 8 January 2016 07.43 GMT

Why did TV journalist David Mills, the producer of a Panorama film on the McCann affair, quit the project before it was transmitted last week? The Observer's David Rose reveals the inside story of the latest row to hit the BBC's flagship show

In the credits at the end of last week's Panorama special on the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, one name was conspicuous by its absence - that of David Mills, the programme's original producer. His name had disappeared from the end credits despite the fact that it was his company, Mills Productions, that had done all the research and was responsible for bringing the exclusive footage at the film's heart to the BBC.

Two weeks before transmission last Tuesday, Mills - one of Britain's most respected documentary-makers, who in his 40-year career has made 120 investigative films for broadcasters including the BBC, Granada, Thames and America's CBS - walked out of the programme after a furious row with Panorama's editor, Sandy Smith, over the programme's approach and argument.

He then wrote a stinging email to the BBC attacking Panorama for losing its journalistic passion. It has created a stir in the media world, mixing as it does the controversial issues of the McCanns and how their story is covered, journalistic balance and television current affairs.

'I had written a draft script and had already been told it was compelling,' Mills said. 'Sandy turned up with a completely different version and basically imposed it on me. I told him, "I cannot edit the film to this: it's a completely different show, and I'm not going to do it." To have this happening is very depressing.'

The incident - one of several controversies Panorama has faced this year - suggests, Mills said, that 'the BBC is no longer interested in serious current affairs'. BBC sources confirmed last night that the decisions about the programme's shape had been taken 'close to the top' of the BBC management hierarchy - which has already conducted a series of internal meetings over how the corporation should approach McCann case coverage in general.

As one of those interviewed by Mills and the programme's reporter, Richard Bilton, I can attest to how different the programme shown was to what they told me less than a month ago that they were envisaging. Along with The Observer's Ned Temko, who has covered the case for this newspaper, I ended up on the cutting-room floor. At that stage - as Mills's draft script makes plain - his intention was to make an analytical, investigative programme that would have been very critical of the Portuguese police, not only for the errors in their investigation, but for their apparent campaign of disinformation designed to put pressure on Madeleine's parents, Kate and Gerry McCann. It would also have criticised both the local and British press over allegations that they recycled unfounded rumours with little sign of fact-checking or detachment.

It would, as Mills confirmed again yesterday, have scrutinised the various allegations that have been floated against the McCanns and concluded they are baseless: 'We had an investigative team looking into the story for weeks. Our assessment was that the purported DNA evidence was weak and inconclusive, while so far as we could tell the supposedly significant "discrepancies" between the stories told by the McCanns' friends about the night of Madeleine's disappearance amount to very little indeed.'

The original film would have compared Madeleine to the JonBenet Ramsey case in Colorado, about which Mills has made three previous documentaries. After the body of JonBenet, a child beauty pageant winner aged six, was found in her parents' Boulder home, they were vilified by the police and media, despite their continued insistence that they had nothing to do with her death. They claimed she had been killed by an intruder. Mills's version of the McCann Panorama featured an interview - eventually not used - with JonBenet's father, John, in which he said that the Colorado police 'did a great job of convincing the media and the world that we were guilty, but they couldn't charge us, because of course they had no case'. Years later DNA evidence proved beyond doubt that JonBenet had been killed by an intruder. John Ramsey told Panorama: 'It's a life-time damage. No question about it.'

The programme on the McCanns that was broadcast by Panorama was much less ambitious. It recited the case both for and against the McCanns, but had nothing harsh to say about either the police or the media. It did include new material, including a video diary shot of the McCanns in Portugal by their friend John Corner - footage that had been acquired by Mills and had led to his company getting the BBC commission.

It also cast doubt on some of the wilder claims published by the tabloids, and contained the first interview with Jane Tanner, one of the McCanns' companions on the holiday in Praia de Luz last May, who said that she was certain she had seen a girl who looked like Madeleine being carried in the street by a strange man around the time she is thought to have disappeared. But the programme avoided firm conclusions.

Having handed the film's editing over to a colleague, Mills emailed Smith on Monday, the day before transmission, saying he felt compelled to remove both his name and his company's from the credits. 'In part this is because its muddled structure and lack of narrative drive means it is far below the standard of any work that I or my company would wish to be associated with,' the email said. 'In part, too, my decision reflects the programme's intellectual impoverishment. The McCann case poses issues of real importance which Panorama should have examined. That it is instead running a laboured, pedestrian, extended news report is shameful.

'But the most important reason for my decision is that because the programme is insufficiently analytical it verges on the dishonest. Our lengthy investigation revealed that there is no meaningful evidence against the McCanns... The real question must be how, without any meaningful evidence, the Portuguese police and the media in Portugal and Britain have been able to convince most people that the couple were involved.'

Mills had been working closely with a CBS team, which also used the video diary footage. They, he told Smith, had concluded it was 'ludicrous' and 'crazy' to think the McCanns could have caused the death or disappearance.

Smith emailed Mills back, accusing him of wanting to broadcast 'advocate journalism', and pointing out that the broadcast version did describe some of the allegations against the McCanns as 'tenuous, to put it mildly'. Smith said that, while it was true that the programme 'changed substantively,' this was because 'it is a current affairs programme and it was overtaken by events'. He added: 'To get Jane Tanner and some of the McCann family meant that some of the other stuff moved to the edge, and the original version was just not journalistically as important.'

Mills disagrees. 'So far as I can see, investigative journalism at the BBC is over,' he said. 'The broadcast script contains nuances that suggest that the McCanns still have a case to answer. The BBC should have had the courage to state that this is simply not so.'

Clarence Mitchell, the former BBC reporter who is the McCanns' spokesman, said Kate and Gerry were 'content' with the broadcast version and accepted that events meant it had to change. He said they had spoken to Bilton and told him they considered the film to be 'fair'.

Other McCann family members were less happy. John, Gerry's brother, whose interview was broadcast, said: 'It wasn't the programme that I was told they were going to make. They've made something very different, and I am disappointed, because I'd hoped the full story was going to be told. Nevertheless I'm pleased they interviewed Jane Tanner. She said she saw Madeleine being abducted, and we want people to remember that.'

The row follows controversies over previous films this year, such as a report on Scientology by former Observer journalist John Sweeney, in which he lost his temper and turned - in his words - into an 'exploding tomato,' and a story claiming that wi-fi technology might be harmful, which was denounced by some scientists as 'irresponsible'.

As someone who once spent a year reporting for Panorama myself, I know that no BBC programme is more closely scrutinised and, sometimes, fought over. The fact remains some of its most distinguished contributors, including Tom Mangold and John Ware, have left in recent years, and that it has been repeatedly accused of punching below its weight. Mills is not a marginal figure, and the CBS film with which he was collaborating was much firmer in its conclusion that the McCanns had to be innocent.

Last night the BBC hierarchy was closing ranks to resist Mills's arguments. Outside the corporation, they may not be as easily dismissed.

'Your programme verges on the dishonest'

From: David

Sent: 19 November, 2007 12:12

To: 'Sandy Smith'

Subject: credit

Dear Sandy,

As you know, in the end I felt I could not leave either my name or my company credit on the programme.

In part this is because its muddled structure and lack of narrative drive means it is far below the standard of any work that I or my company would wish to be associated with.

In part, too, my decision reflects the programme's intellectual impoverishment. The McCann case poses issues of real importance which Panorama should have examined. That it is instead running a laboured, pedestrian extended news report is shameful.

But the most important reason for my decision is that because the programme is insufficiently analytical; it verges on the dishonest. Our lengthy investigation revealed that there is no meaningful evidence against the McCanns. Our CBS colleagues concluded that it was 'ludicrous' and 'crazy' to think them involved and that ... 'the child was abducted'.

The real question must be how, without any meaningful evidence, the Portuguese police and the media in Portugal and Britain have been able to convince most people that the couple were involved. Yet while the programme drips innuendos against the McCanns, it does not put a single challenging question to anyone in the Portuguese police or to anyone in the media. This is truly astonishing.

David Mills
Guardian

Tip of the hat: ?

*Transparent in this instance, being far from a compliment.

David Rose Previous

Metaphoric Comprehension Revisited by Dr Martin Roberts

For your contemplation, another thought provoking hypothesis from the pen of Martin Roberts.

How near the mark it is I couldn't say, but it would go a awful long way in explaining the anomalous behaviour of successive governments in relation to two hitherto unknown chav medics from the boonies.

It might also go some distance in explaining the totally unbefitting arrogance of the last persons to see Madeleine alive and in whose care she "disappeared",  the parents, Kate and Gerry McCann.

METAPHORIC COMPREHENSION REVISITED

 By Dr Martin Roberts
18 September 2015

Attention switching

Pitiful though it may appear to some, I cannot help but notice certain similarities between ostensibly unrelated events. I mean, whatever can the tragedy of 9/11 have in common with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann?

One notable aspect, for me at least, is the common purpose shared by the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST for short), whose report into the collapse of the ‘Twin Towers’ was commissioned by the US administration, and Operation Grange, funded, open-endedly it seems, by the UK government. Both are indisputably endeavours to impose upon the general public an official account of what happened in each case – to the World Trade Centre buildings on the one hand, Madeleine McCann on the other. Both are gratuitously disingenuous. So much so that it hardly takes a leap of logic to infer that the truth must still be ‘out there’, since it is nowhere represented by either of these officially sanctioned undertakings.

However, for the sake of parsimony if nothing else, we should confine discussion to the McCann affair and the misdirection inherent in it.

To quote briefly from a recent facebook/forum comment:

“There is no way on this earth that two insignificant doctors and their holiday companions would be protected by the full might of the British government. Some other event was happening in Praia de Luz that week and that some of those in attendance were powerful movers and shakers who needed to be protected at all costs.

“…some seeking the answer to Madeleine's disappearance will be disappointed if the reason for the protection does not lead to a high level paedophile gang. But it won’t because it isn't the reason.”

Of course there are those who adhere to the notion that the McCanns have accomplished all they have by virtue of their being no more than sharp opportunists, who happened to have had their hands on a few useful professional levers and have gone onto greater things inside the signal box since. The battleground for argument here is usually the explicit exemplars of officialdom’s having taken the couple’s part so readily. ‘Extraordinary!’ cry the conspiracy theorists. ‘Par for the course,’ claim the debunkers. But what of a smaller skirmish about which very little has so far been said?

However influential the McCanns and their T7 allies may or may not have been, it is difficult to see how they might have convinced two Police investigators into the McCann disappearance, one of them a senior and well respected officer in the field of missing persons enquiries, that their future careers lay elsewhere – outside the UK even. I refer of course to Martin Grime (now working with the FBI) and Mark Harrison (now a Police Commander in Australia). How did Team McCann accomplish that?

Our anonymous commentator is of the opinion that some powerful entity outside the McCann circle required protection, but not on account of their association with any paedophile ring. That wasn’t the reason. Which begs the obvious question: ‘What was the reason’?

Apparently, “Some other event was happening in Praia de Luz that week and some of those in attendance were powerful movers and shakers who needed to be protected at all costs.”

For ‘abduction by paedophiles’ one might read ‘destroyed by hijacked aircraft’, since both propositions share the same degree of verisimilitude. Operation Grange have of course adopted the fallback position of ‘body snatching by burglars’, in an attempt to incorporate the small detail of Madeleine McCann’s being dead at the time of departure - about as credible as NIST’s computer modelling of the collapse of WTC7, or indeed any of the hundreds of pages that make up the 9/11 Commission Report, for which countless trees were needlessly sacrificed. (Ed see below)

The inevitable lure here, and the one which has engaged so many for so long, is the urge to get to the bottom of what really happened to Madeleine McCann. And this, with the added frisson of possible misdemeanour involving high status individuals, has, for nearly a decade, successfully steered all our gazes away from the true fulcrum of the drama being played out in the Portuguese Algarve. As per the comment above: “Some other event was happening in Praia de Luz that week.” A ‘tomato fest’ it was not.

Keeping secrets

Certain students of the McCann case, as seen through the eyes of the media for the most part, have derided Goncalo Amaral’s repeated assertions that secret service activities lay behind the ruinous political intervention into the police investigation of which he was co-ordinator. Such a view establishes him as a ‘totem’ for conspiracy theorists, who, according to these learned others, lack a firm grasp of reality. Far too many people (‘three score and ten’?) would have to have been involved for it to work, and they couldn’t all keep a secret could they? Not like the thousands employed at Bletchley Park during the Second World War, or the hundred thousand engaged on the Manhattan Project in the USA, where President Truman was over a week in office before he knew anything about it (http://jpaulson.blogspot.nl/2015/09/911-decade-of-deception-full-film-new.html). (Ed see below)  Then of course we have that inglorious September date in 2001. Has anyone from the directorate ‘squealed’ about that one yet? (And don’t, for goodness’ sake, imagine that’s because there’s nothing to reveal).

Of all those whose opinions concerning the McCann case might be taken seriously, Goncalo Amaral is out in front by a country mile. He was slap bang in the middle of proceedings at the time. So if he reports that a UK police officer (Mark Harrison as it happens) was intercepted by MI5 at Faro Airport then it’s ‘odds on’ the event occurred. So we might ask ourselves, were MI5 tagging along with the diplomatic invasion, like so many opportunist refugees, just in case the people thought by Kate McCann to have been ‘spying’ on her family that week should have absconded with some living embodiment of a state secret or two? Or were they already there?

It’s safe to say that a lot of people were in the Algarve at the time of Madeleine McCann’s disappearance, no doubt representing a variety of nationalities. The T7 were known to each other, but not to fellow diners at the Tapas Restaurant. Even newly-arrived Robert Murat, whose mother’s house was just a short walk from the Ocean Club, was a complete stranger to some, whilst Martin Smith had only seen him on a couple of occasions.

A small township populated by all sorts and frequented by strangers then. Perhaps we should not be surprised therefore at the McCann appeal for holiday-makers at the time to submit to CEOP (led of course by Jim Gamble) any photos that featured unfamiliar faces – you know, the sort of family snap you happen to take just as someone else wanders into view.

Despite Gerry McCann’s personal mantra about the importance of ‘getting information into the investigation’, no photographs trawled in this manner were ever passed onto the PJ, who were conducting it. Furthermore, according to Kate McCann (Crimewatch, June 2007), "Probably about 60% of tourists to this area are British, but following that are the Germans and then the Dutch.” But then we have Gerry’s ‘blog’ of 9 June, 2007, in which he tells us:

“After returning from the beach we did the Irish version of Crimewatch -'Crimecall'. There are a lot of Irish tourists in and around Praia da Luz and although the awareness of Madeleine's disappearance in Ireland is extremely high, we want to ensure that everyone is aware of the appeal and we want the Irish public to come forward with photographs of people who they do not know who were in and around Praia da Luz in the 2 weeks leading up to the 3rd May.”

The Smith family members, whose ‘sighting’ seems to have been of some significance, are of course Irish. Maybe friends of theirs had inadvertently secured an image of the same ‘abductor’ during daylight hours? More generally, and much more likely, such an Irish photographic ‘accident’ might have involved another Irish individual, most probably at a venue frequented by Irish ‘tourists’.

The McCanns and their ‘Tapas’ friends arrived in Praia da Luz over the weekend 28/29 April. Madeleine McCann was publicly reported missing on May 3, whereafter Kate McCann was quite sure ‘They’d been watching us for days’ (well it couldn’t have been a week!). And yet the McCanns, CEOP, and in all likelihood Jim Gamble, who had rather more than one string to his professional bow at the time, were interested in photographs featuring people ‘in and around Praia da Luz in the 2 weeks leading up to the 3rd May’. That’s over a week before the McCanns even arrived.

What surreptitious activity might the suspected abductor(s) have been up to prior to watching the McCanns for a few days? Did they know the McCanns were coming? Had they access to their booking arrangements? Did they take time to reconnoitre likely vantage points for surveillance perhaps? Of course not. Yet someone of interest must have been there, otherwise there would have been no chance of their being captured on film, and concomitantly no point to the appeal for photographs.

The first rule of survival 

‘Take care of no. 1’. It follows that, on a national scale, the first priority of a state is to see to matters of state. And what might matter to the state is not the domestic fate of a young child abroad, nor the criminality, if such it be, of that child’s parents. Thus, faced with the rejection of FOI requests on the grounds that to respond could jeopardize international relations, are we not bound to infer that what was actually being safeguarded was not the good names of a rag-tag bunch of middle-class medics? (See: “A Magical Mystery Tour” and “‘Mad Cow’ Legislation” – McCannfiles, October/November 2009).

So what was happening that spring, in Praia da Luz particularly or the Portuguese Algarve in general, that was neither a tomato fest nor a child abduction? Whatever it was, it was of international significance. Did it have something to do with the Lisbon Treaty perhaps? Nope. That was not signed until December. The Freeport scandal coming to a head? Well that certainly had an international dimension, but it’s difficult to see any immediate connection with the very immediate steps taken to submerge the McCann affair. What say we look at another chain of ‘incidents’ altogether, working backward from 2012?

This from The Portugal News Online of 15 November that year (http://www.theportugalnews.com/news/security-shrouds-trial-of-real-ira-weapons-trafficking-suspects/27190):

“The trial of five men accused of trafficking weapons to supply a dissident faction of the IRA – the Real IRA (RIRA) – began in the Algarve last week under a blanket of tight security.

“Three men from Northern Ireland and two Portuguese nationals are implicated in the case, which dates back to July 2011, when a PJ counter-terrorism unit swooped on a campsite in Olhão and dismantled the set-up.

“Three of the suspects are being held in Portugal, one remains free and the fifth suspect is in Ireland where he is facing extradition.” 

The arrests were in fact reported in the Guardian at the time they occurred (10 July - http://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/jul/10/portugal-arrests-real-ira-suspects-arms-trafficking).

Continuing with The Portugal News Online:

“It is not the first time RIRA activity has been exposed in the Algarve. In 2009 two men believed to belong to the Real IRA were found to be using a restaurant in the small fishing village of Alvor as a main European base.

“It was at the Panda Grill on the fringe of the village that Paul Anthony McCaugherty and Michael Gregory allegedly negotiated the buying and selling of weapons for the Real IRA, between 2005 and 2006.”

The Telegraph (30.6.2010) explained that these 2009 arrests had proceeded to trial and that

“The trial had heard that the Real IRA was using a restaurant on the Algarve in Portugal as a global hub for weapons shipments to Ireland. McCaugherty met the agent in Portugal and in a number of other locations including Amsterdam and Istanbul.” (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/northernireland/7864018/Real-IRA-commander-caught-in-MI5-arms-dealing-sting.html).

Fully five years ago yet another ‘anonymous donor’ left a comment on a popular blog to the following effect:

“Anonymous 23 April 2010 20:34:00

“In my opinion, Jim Gamble was not looking for photos of possible abductors. He was looking for photos that could have identified MI5 operatives. There is a trial scheduled to take place this month (April 2010) in regard to the Real IRA activities in the Algarve. It may not have to do with that case….”

On the other hand it just might.

Given these suspects were only arrested in 2009, in relation to criminal activities conducted between 2005 and 2006, what were they doing in the intervening period – and where were they doing it? A quick look at the map reveals that the ‘small fishing village of Alvor’, otherwise a European base of operations for illegal arms trafficking, is just beyond the headland from Luz, to the other side of Lagos.

And that ‘agent’ the accused was supposed to have met? The Telegraph (30.6.2010) again explains:

“Paul McCaugherty, 43, was caught trying to buy an arsenal of weapons from an undercover agent posing as a Middle Eastern arms dealer.

“The Security Service agent, known as Ali, spent two years meeting McCaugherty and bugging 90 hours of conversations which became the cornerstone of the prosecution’s case at Belfast Crown Court.”

No one was arrested until 2009 remember, which means that this operation was on-going during 2007, the year the McCanns decided to visit the Algarve. And let’s not overlook the headline afterwards carried by the Telegraph (30.6.2010):

Real IRA commander caught in MI5 arms dealing sting

A Real IRA commander has been convicted of attempting to smuggle weapons and explosives into Northern Ireland after being snared by a daring MI5 sting operation. 

From which it is abundantly clear that MI5 didn’t just wander into the Algarve in the wake of the McCanns. They were already there, and had been for some considerable time.

A stitch in time

Picking up on the earlier perspicacity of ‘Anonymous’, as demonstrated on 23 April that year (2010), if there is one thing about which the security services are undeniably scrupulous it is protection of their assets’ identities, and for very good reason.

Examples of this concern (or lack thereof) are to be found in the furore following members of the Bush administration’s deliberately, and maliciously, ‘outing’ CIA field agent Valerie Plame Wilson, simply to spite her husband, a diplomat who had taken a very public moral stand against US foreign policy in the Middle-East. (Ed. Joe Wilson husband of Valerie Plame revues Bush's memoir link)  On the home front, MI5’s eventual willingness to share CCTV images of two of the alleged 7/7 bombers was counterbalanced by their ‘cropping’ the pictures in such a way as to make reliable identification of the individuals nigh-on impossible.

But that’s just for context. What we have for more immediate consideration is an on-going MI5 operation in the Portuguese Algarve, where suddenly, and without prior warning, Police activity is about to go into overdrive, possibly giving locally based targets entirely the wrong impression that they are on the point of being ‘rumbled’ (a moment that was still two years hence), and jeopardizing years of investment in under-cover infiltration in the process. Not to mention the risk of ‘Ali’s being recognised in a context other than that of his role as a putative arms dealer.

Such would have been the situation had the PJ acted without media or other intrusion on the occasion of Madeleine McCann’s ‘disappearance’.

But isn’t that what they did?

Not really. It’s what they did on the night of May 3rd.

Now consider a UK government and its security services appraised of the possibility of such imminent turmoil before it actually kicked off. Say, a few days before. Time in which to delay ‘abduction’ (in lieu of a death) and instruct ‘Ali’, for example, to adopt a low profile elsewhere for the time being. Police spot checks throughout the Algarve would be inevitable, but significant others would at least be out of the firing line. Had the Portuguese been called to action stations without prior reference to MI5 they would have taken everyone unawares, not just Madeleine McCann’s abductor, had there been one that is.

So Madeleine, instead of dying on the Monday, is abducted, as planned, on the Thursday, giving MI5 the breathing space it needed to manage its own activities in readiness. The very prompt (and loud) international media revelation of Madeleine McCann’s abduction ensured that television watchers everywhere would then know why the PJ, the GNR, and all those helicopters, were suddenly so busy, even those who might have been watching in Alvora, and who obviously hadn’t kidnapped anyone.

I know, I know, ‘if this weren’t so pitiful it would be funny’. But there is a paradox attaching to Madeleine’s disappearance which has yet to be addressed by anyone as far as I am aware, and it is this:

If Madeleine McCann was ‘abducted’ in a hurry on the Thursday night, there was not enough time for her to have lain dead beforehand. And if she died earlier that week, then why would Gerry McCann have waited several days before removing the evidence, only to snatch her corpse out bed at the last minute, just before his wife raised the alarm. The reason for the delay, I suggest, was someone else’s.

And let us not overlook the very significant role in proceedings played by Jim Gamble of CEOP, both at the time and since. Who really conjured up the notion of an extreme paedophile operating in Portugal (Madeleine McCann was barely four years old don’t forget), and who, not long previously, had been steeped in the dark practices of the security services in Northern Ireland?

MI5 eventually secured their targets. The McCanns have their ‘hush money’. And Operation Grange is probably just this current financial year away from ‘capping’ the entire episode like a toxic well (they would have done so sooner had a credible reconciliation been available - remember DCI Redwood’s admission that ‘solution’ was not on the menu?). Oh, and in the wake of the ‘St Andrews Agreement’, the Northern Ireland Assembly was restored and a new Northern Ireland Executive formed - on 8 May 2007.

The chances of the McCanns ever appearing in court as accused parties are exactly those of their daughter being returned to them by an abductor – NIL. Otherwise they would be standing before the judge as accomplices to a deception perpetrated by the very government on whose behalf they were being prosecuted! Or are we also to believe that NORAD could be blind-sided, the Pentagon attacked, and some of Manhattan’s premier real estate flattened by a bunch of dissident Saudis squatting in an Afghan cave?

Martin Roberts

~

Ed: If after all these years you are still of the opinion that the Twin Towers were knocked down by a bunch of Arabs who couldn't even fly a Cessna, then I suggest you watch this.

If after watching it you are still of that opinion, then I suggest you hand in that part of your cerebral cortex that is redundant.

Puttin’ the Pressure on Putin

Puttin’ the Pressure on Putin
By Ray McGovern
July 28, 2013

Exclusive: The Obama administration continues to compound the diplomatic mess around former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The latest blunder was announcing that the U.S. wouldn’t torture or execute Snowden, a reminder to the world how far Official Washington has strayed from civilized behavior, notes ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern.

The main question now on the fate of truth-teller Edward Snowden is whether Russian President Vladimir Putin will see any benefit in helping stop the United States from further embarrassing itself as it prances around the globe acting like a “pitiful, helpless giant.” That image was coined by President Richard Nixon, who insisted that the giant of America would merit those adjectives if it did not prevail in South Vietnam.

It is no secret that Putin is chuckling as Attorney General Eric Holder and other empty-shirts-cum-corporate-law-office-silk-ties – assisted ably by White House spokesperson Jay Carney – proceed willy-nilly to transform the Snowden case from a red-faced diplomatic embarrassment for the United States into a huge geopolitical black eye before the rest of the world.

Reminding the planet how out of step the United States has been from most of the civilized world, Holder offered a written promise to the Russians on July 9 (and released on Friday) that Snowden would neither be tortured nor put to death for disclosing secrets about how the National Security Agency has been spying on Americans and pretty much everybody else on Earth.

Holder assured the Russian Justice Minister that the U.S. “would not seek the death penalty for Mr. Snowden should he return to the United States.” Holder also saw fit to reassure his Russian counterpart that, “Mr. Snowden will not be tortured. Torture is unlawful in the United States.” Wow, that’s a relief!

The United States is so refined in its views on human rights that it won’t torture or execute a whistleblower. Of course, that only reminded everyone that the United States is one of the few advanced societies that still puts lots of people to death and was caught just last decade torturing detainees at CIA “black sites,” not to mention the brutal treatment of other prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba

And, there was the humiliating treatment afforded another American whistleblower, Private Bradley Manning, whose forced nudity and long periods in solitary confinement during eight months of confinement at the Marine base at Quantico, Virginia, just outside of Washington D.C. prompted international accusations of torture.

Holder’s strange promise may have been designed to undercut Snowden’s bid for asylum, but it also reminded the world of America’s abysmal behavior on human rights. And, even if the United States promises not to torture someone, government lawyers have shown how they can play games with the definition of the term or just outright lie. Holder’s reputation for veracity is just a thin notch above that of National Intelligence Director James Clapper, who admits he has chosen to testify under oath to the “least untruthful” things.

Perhaps no one has told Holder how shockingly out of step with other civilized nations the U.S. finds itself on the issue of capital punishment. Just calling attention to that is a diplomatic gaffe of some proportion. The global trend toward abolition of the death penalty is unmistakable and increasing. The United States even is the outlier on this issue when compared to “brutal” Russia. In Russia, there has been a moratorium on executions since 1996, although it is still technically lawful.

The European Union holds a strong and principled position against the death penalty, and the abolition of capital punishment is a pre-condition for entry into the Union. The U.S. enjoys the dubious distinction of joining a list with China, Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia as the leaders in executing people.

Closing the Barn Door Too Late

Holder’s high-profile push to get the Russians to hand over Snowden damages the United States in other ways, too, such as reminding the world how the U.S. government has violated the privacy rights of people everywhere, including in allied countries. There is a reasonable argument to be made that the smartest U.S. move would be to simply leave Snowden alone.

Depending on your perspective, Edward Snowden has already done his damage – or, in my view, accomplished his patriotic duty of truth-telling – demonstrating with documents how the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama have trashed the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

Moreover, Snowden apparently had the foresight to handle his revelations in such way that, to the degree there are still more genies about to be let out of the bottle, it will be near impossible to stuff them back in. Indeed, he has said as much, in indicating how easily he can accede to Putin’s condition that he does “no further harm” to the U.S. Snowden has even been specific in acknowledging that he cannot prevent journalist Glenn Greenwald and others from publishing more of the material he made available.

So why the hue and cry from Washington? While the Obama White House has utterly failed to honor Obama’s earlier promises to run a transparent administration, there is one area in which it has been as transparent as Saran Wrap. And that is its fixation with pursuing whistleblowers “to the full extent of the law” … and then some.

The administration has been transparently vindictive, revengeful and determined to exact retribution on “leakers” as a warning to others whose consciences might trouble them enough to reveal war crimes, as Bradley Manning did, or crass violations of our rights as citizens, as Edward Snowden did.

But the recent thrashing around — demanding and cajoling Putin to turn over Snowden — has further made the United States look petulant and inept. Meanwhile, Putin has demonstrated a much more deft touch in handling this delicate international incident.

After making it clear that “we do not extradite,” Putin has had the good sense to put some distance between himself and the Snowden affair. As Secretary of State John Kerry bemoaned (from Saudi Arabia, of all places) about “standards of behavior between sovereign nations,” and (of all things) “respect for the rule of law,” Putin said the issue is simple:

“Should such people [as Snowden] be extradited to be jailed, or not? In any case, I would prefer not to deal with such issues, because this is just the same as shaving a piglet – too much noise but too little hair.”

Will Putin Cave?

Do the feckless folks running President Barack Obama’s foreign policy really think they can force Putin to back down? Can they actually believe they can achieve that by putting into play what they apparently consider a diplomatic “nuclear option”? The thinly veiled threat surfaced ten days ago that Obama will snub Putin by canceling their planned tete-a-tete before the G-20 summit in St. Petersburg in September.

Can they possibly think that by pouting, jibing and stamping their feet, they will frighten Putin into “behaving” as obediently as the malleable Italians, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Austrians did when they forced down Bolivian President Evo Morales’s plane for inspection? Morales was en route home from a visit to Russia when someone provided the U.S. with a “tip” that Snowden was hiding on Morales’s plane.

I find myself wondering who provided Washington with that great tip, and whether it is no longer the practice among U.S. intelligence agencies to take rudimentary steps to verify such tips before they let their masters get greasy diplomatic egg all over their faces?

Finally, how many more times does Putin have to say, as he did through his spokesman again Friday that: “Russia has never extradited anyone, and will not extradite [Snowden].”

Months ago, former UK MI5 intelligence officer Annie Machon coined the term “asymmetric extradition law” referring to U.S. policy, which, in the vernacular, might be called “pick-and-choose.” While there is no extradition treaty between the U.S. and Russia, there has been one between the U.S. and Italy for 30 years. Yet, Washington has turned a deaf ear to Italy’s appeals to extradite convicted kidnapper Robert Seldon Lady, former head of the CIA worker bees in Milan where the CIA mounted an “extraordinary rendition” against the Muslim cleric known as Abu Omar off the streets in 2003. Omar was given over to the tender mercies of Egyptian intelligence interrogators.

In 2005, when Lady got a tip that the Italian police were coming for him, he reportedly fled his villa without destroying sensitive files on the CIA’s mission. Italy convicted Lady and 22 other U.S. operatives in absentia and gave them hefty jail sentences. Last December, Italy’s justice minister signed a warrant for Lady’s arrest. On July 18, Lady was identified and detained in Panama, but slipped away the next day on a plane headed toward the U.S.

Few were surprised that Panama was pressured into joining the servile company of the four U.S.-crony European countries that had already embarrassed themselves as accessories to the Washington’s latest Excellent Adventure regarding Evo Morales’s plane – a fiasco code-named OARR (for Operation Airline Rest Room) after the suspected place where Snowden was believed stowed away.

But when it came to extraditing a convicted kidnapper from Panama to Italy? Puleeze. Great powers don’t have to do that kind of thing, treaty or not. Except for Russia, you see. Moscow must surrender Snowden, even absent a U.S.-Russia extradition treaty. And Putin should understand that, no?

It must have been that kind of superpower-think that prompted Jay Carney on July 12 to add insult to injury, as he jibed at the Russian government to “afford human rights organizations the ability to do their work in Russia throughout Russia, not just at the Moscow transit lounge.” That kind of comment is sure to endear the White House to the Kremlin.

Vladimir Volokh, head of the Russian Migration Service, seemed to welcome a chance to retaliate in kind. Rubbing in the awkwardness of Snowden’s present status because of actions by Washington, Volokh told the Interfax news agency Friday: “We know that he is Edward Snowden only from his words. The passport he has has been canceled. … He is under protection in the transit area for his safety. He is an individual being pursued and his life is in danger.”

The Russians, and pretty much everyone else, are smart enough to realize that, given Washington’s transparent motives, there is nothing to be gained by serving Snowden up to American “justice,” such as it has become. Russia is no banana republic, so it beggars belief that President Putin will follow the supine example of Panama. Nor is the fawning example of Italy, France, Spain and Portugal something Putin would wish to emulate.

Russian History more

John Pilger: "The Guardian Like a Spurned Lover" and Home Truths All Round

I do so admire this man, the world would be a lesser place were it not for John Pilger telling it like it is. More Pilger in the sidebar

Update below: John Pilger speaks at Socialism 2009

The Pursuit of Julian Assange Is an Assault on Freedom and a Mockery of Journalism
by John Pilger
August 24, 2012

The British government’s threat to invade the Ecuadorean embassy in London and seize Julian Assange is of historic significance. David Cameron, the former PR man to a television industry huckster and arms salesman to sheikdoms, is well placed to dishonor international conventions that have protected Britons in places of upheaval. Just as Tony Blair’s invasion of Iraq led directly to the acts of terrorism in London on July 7, 2005, so Cameron and Foreign Secretary William Hague have compromised the safety of British representatives across the world.

Threatening to abuse a law designed to expel murderers from foreign embassies, while defaming an innocent man as an “alleged criminal,” Hague has made a laughing stock of Britain across the world, though this view is mostly suppressed in Britain. The same brave newspapers and broadcasters that have supported Britain’s part in epic bloody crimes, from the genocide in Indonesia to the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, now attack the “human rights record” of Ecuador, whose real crime is to stand up to the bullies in London and Washington.

It is as if the Olympics happy-clappery has been subverted overnight by a revealing display of colonial thuggery. Witness the British army officer-cum-BBC reporter Mark Urban “interviewing” a braying Sir Christopher Meyer, Blair’s former apologist in Washington, outside the Ecuadorean embassy, the pair of them erupting with Blimpish indignation that the unclubbable Assange and the uncowed Rafael Correa should expose the western system of rapacious power. Similar affront is vivid in the pages of the Guardian, which has counseled Hague to be “patient” and that storming the embassy would be “more trouble than it is worth.” Assange was not a political refugee, the Guardian declared, because “neither Sweden nor the U.K. would in any case deport someone who might face torture or the death penalty.”

The irresponsibility of this statement matches the Guardian’s perfidious role in the whole Assange affair. The paper knows full well that documents released by WikiLeaks indicate that Sweden has consistently submitted to pressure from the United States in matters of civil rights. In December 2001, the Swedish government abruptly revoked the political refugee status of two Egyptians, Ahmed Agiza and Mohammed el-Zari, who were handed to a CIA kidnap squad at Stockholm airport and “rendered” to Egypt, where they were tortured. An investigation by the Swedish ombudsman for justice found that the government had “seriously violated” the two men’s human rights. In a 2009 U.S. embassy cable obtained by WikiLeaks, entitled “WikiLeaks puts neutrality in the Dustbin of History,” the Swedish elite’s vaunted reputation for neutrality is exposed as a sham. Another U.S. cable reveals that “the extent of [Sweden's military and intelligence] cooperation [with NATO] is not widely known” and unless kept secret “would open the government to domestic criticism.”

The Swedish foreign minister, Carl Bildt, played a notorious leading role in George W. Bush’s Committee for the Liberation of Iraq and retains close ties to the Republican Party’s extreme right. According to the former Swedish director of public prosecutions Sven-Erik Alhem, Sweden’s decision to seek the extradition of Assange on allegations of sexual misconduct is “unreasonable and unprofessional, as well as unfair and disproportionate.” Having offered himself for questioning, Assange was given permission to leave Sweden for London where, again, he offered to be questioned. In May, in a final appeal judgment on the extradition, Britain’s Supreme Court introduced more farce by referring to nonexistent “charges.”

Accompanying this has been a vituperative personal campaign against Assange. Much of it has emanated from the Guardian, which, like a spurned lover,has turned on its besieged former source, having hugely profited from WikiLeaks disclosures. With not a penny going to Assange or WikiLeaks, a Guardian book has led to a lucrative Hollywood movie deal.The authors, David Leigh and Luke Harding, gratuitously abuse Assange as a “damaged personality” and “callous.” They also reveal the secret password he had given the paper in confidence, which was designed to protect a digital file containing the U.S. embassy cables. On Aug. 20, Harding was outside the Ecuadorean embassy, gloating on his blog that “Scotland Yard may get the last laugh.” It is ironic, if entirely appropriate, that a Guardian editorial putting the paper’s latest boot into Assange bears an uncanny likeness to the Murdoch press’s predictable augmented bigotry on the same subject. How the glory of Leveson, Hackgate, and honorable, independent journalism doth fade.

His tormentors make the point of Assange’s persecution. Charged with no crime, he is not a fugitive from justice. Swedish case documents, including the text messages of the women involved, demonstrate to any fair-minded person the absurdity of the sex allegations — allegations almost entirely promptly dismissed by the senior prosecutor in Stockholm, Eva Finne, before the intervention of a politician, Claes Borgstr?At the pre-trial of Bradley Manning, a U.S. army investigator confirmed that the FBI was secretly targeting the “founders, owners, or managers of WikiLeaks” for espionage.

Four years ago, a barely noticed Pentagon document, leaked by WikiLeaks, described how WikiLeaks and Assange would be destroyed with a smear campaign leading to “criminal prosecution.” On Aug. 18, the Sydney Morning Herald disclosed, in a Freedom of Information release of official files, that the Australian government had repeatedly received confirmation that the U.S. was conducting an “unprecedented” pursuit of Assange and had raised no objections. Among Ecuador’s reasons for granting asylum is Assange’s abandonment “by the state of which he is a citizen.” In 2010, an investigation by the Australian Federal Police found that Assange and WikiLeaks had committed no crime. His persecution is an assault on us all and on freedom. johnpilger.com

John Pilger speaks at Socialism 2009 "The Invisible Government"

Or you may wish to try John Pilger "The Invisible Government" Part 1/4 a different and more comprehensive speech on the same subject. And as you might expect by now from Pilger, no prisoners taken. Good stuff and recommended more than the above.




Part two.

Part three.

Conclusion.

The Boundless Hubris of The American Empire: Iceland's MP Birgitta Jónsdóttir

Even in the face of all this US hubris I had to smile.

(US) Ambassador Arreaga had been instructed by the US department of justice to give me the following verbal message: a) I would not be subjected to involuntary interrogation; b) I was free to travel to the US; c) I was not subject to criminal investigation.

I'll bet he did just that, give Jónsdóttir a verbal message.

Come into my parlour said the spider to the fly.

Evidence of a US judicial vendetta against WikiLeaks activists mounts

Iceland's government warns me not to visit the US, which tried to hack my Twitter account: Julian Assange has legitimate fears
Birgitta Jónsdóttir
3 July 2012

Icelandic MP Birgitta Jónsdóttir says her lawyers have seen documents confirming that a grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks' whistleblowing is underway in the US.

I knew when I put down my name as co-producer of a video, released by WikiLeaks, showing United States soldiers shooting civilians in Baghdad from a helicopter that my life would never be the same. Telling the truth during times of universal deceit might be considered a revolutionary act, but only to those who want to keep us in the dark, not by those who feel compelled to do so.

Most of us who expose an inconvenient truth know that we will be attacked for it and ridiculed. And every trick in the book of maintaining power will be applied to silence us. It's no big deal. The beauty of it is that, usually, these attempts gives us a chance to see the actual face of power and to understand, with real-time examples, how healthy or unhealthy our democracies have become.

The US Department of Justice (DoJ) tried to hack by legal means into my social media accounts without my knowledge. But they were exposed by Twitter's legal team who manged to unseal the DoJ's secret document and give me a chance to defend in court my personal information from being used in a dragnet for the first serious attacks on WikiLeaks' supporters and volunteers. I still am not sure why they chose to take the risk of going after a member of Iceland's parliament, because it has caused distress among fellow parliamentarians from around the world. As a result of the speaker of the Icelandic parliament raising the issue at the International Parliamentarian Union (IPU), I was asked to appear for the human rights committee at the IPU to explain the details of my case. A resolution on my case was put forward and adopted unanimously by the IPU's governing council, in October 2011.

The resolution is informative and draws together all the key elements I would like to highlight. I urge you to read the resolution, for it has not received enough attention – despite the fact that it addresses issues of concern to all of us who use social media in any shape or form. Here are some key sections from the resolution:

"The information sought by the United States government with respect to Birgitta Jónsdóttir concerned the period from 1 November 2009 to date and involves subscriber account information including names, user names, screen names or other identities, mailing and other addresses, connection records, or records of session times and duration, length and types of service, telephone or instrument number or other subscriber number or identity, means and sources of payment for such services, including any credit card or bank account number, and billing records, records of user activity for any connections made to or from the account, including the date, time, length, and method of connections, data transfer volume, user name, and source and destination internet protocol address(es), non-content information associated with the contents of any communication or file stored by or for the account, and correspondence and notes of records related to the accounts; […]

"Is concerned that the national and international legal framework concerning the use of electronic media, including social media, does not appear to provide sufficient guarantees to ensure respect for freedom of expression, access to information and the right to privacy; the guarantees protecting freedom of expression and privacy in the 'offline world' seem not to operate in the 'online world'; […]

"Notes also with concern that the parliamentary immunity Ms Jónsdóttir would have enjoyed under Icelandic law in exercising the political activity which is apparently at stake, is not operational in this case; given that the use of social networks by parliamentarians with their constituents and others is today commonplace in many countries, disclosure orders such as the one in question would undermine and even render void the ability of states to protect their members of parliament from unwarranted interference with their mandates."

In November 2011, Judge Liam O'Grady expressed an interesting opinion when discussing his ruling in my case – something that has escaped the attention of those who say Assange is overreacting to the threat of possible extradition to the US:

"The [my Twitter] information sought was clearly material to establishing key facts related to an ongoing investigation and would have assisted a grand jury in conducting an inquiry into the particular matters under investigation."

During my second meeting at the Icelandic State Department to discuss my Twitter case, I got a message from the newly appointed US Ambassador Luis E Arreaga, delivered by the assistant of the foreign affairs minister in Iceland. Ambassador Arreaga had been instructed by the US department of justice to give me the following verbal message: a) I would not be subjected to involuntary interrogation; b) I was free to travel to the US; c) I was not subject to criminal investigation.

Despite this message, the Icelandic State Department strongly advised me against traveling to the US; the same applied to my EFF and ACLU legal advisers. Shortly after this message, their caution proved to have been prudent because my lawyers spotted at least two sealed grand jury documents relating to me when requesting access to all documents pertaining to my case. Of course, I have not been able to find out what these documents entail.

On Monday, news broke that the US Department of Justice had confirmed that WikiLeaks remains the object of an ongoing criminal investigation. The US army has confirmed that it is investigating the Bradley Manning Support Network, an international activism group that advocates on behalf of the imprisoned accused whistleblower. I happen to have been one of the early supporters in this network; and I have to consider whether I am also a target of that investigation.

The WTF (the CIA's WikiLeaks Task Force) has been building a case against Assange and others from WikiLeaks for two years. There is no doubt there is a grand jury in action. There is no doubt that the US wants to get even with WikiLeaks. Assange has every reason to worry about being extradited to the US, be it from Britain or Sweden, or any country that cannot or will not give him a guarantee against extradition. The best possible solution to the current situation is for Sweden to provide such guarantees. If there were the will, it could be done. Guardian

It was reading the comments that caused me to post the video, though must be said, they aren't all that scintillating.

Transcript: Julian Assange's First Interview from Ecuadorian Embassy

Transcript: Julian Assange's First Interview from Ecuadorian Embassy
by m_ceter
6/21/2012

Julian Assange interview on ABC Radio National Breakfast, 21 June 2012. This is his first interview conducted since he applied for political asylum in Ecuador. At the time of this interview, Mr Assange had been at the Ecuadorian Embassy for three days. Full Audio is avialable at the ABC Radio website.

Fran Kelly: And let's head straight to Britain where Julian Assange is about to spend his third night holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, as he awaits a decision on his bid for political asylum. The 40 year old Australian walked into the Embassy on Tuesday in a dramatic bid to avoid extradition to Sweden for questioning over sexual assault allegations. Even if he's granted asylum in Ecuador, British police say they will arrest him as soon as he steps foot outside the embassy, accusing him of being in breach of his bail conditions. Julian Assange joins us now live from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Julian, welcome back to RN Breakfast.

Julian Assange: G'day, Fran. Good to be with you.

Fran Kelly: Julian Assange, why did you walk into the Ecuadorian Embassy?

Julian Assange: Well, I just noticed in your promo, Fran, you said 'dramatic bid to do something about Swedish'...

Fran Kelly: To avoid extradition to Sweden for questioning?

Julian Assange: Yeah, and that's... I don't know where you get that from. We've never said that's the case, and that's simply not the case. The issue is about a very serious matter in the United States and an announcement was made by the Swedes and the Swedish Government that I would be detained, without charge, in Sweden, immediately on extradition. They tried to cancel the 14 days that I had here to apply to appeal the matter at the European Court of Human Rights. So my opportunity to exercise my asylum rights in the United States was at an end. And this is not a matter of onwards extradition from Sweden to the United States. The situation here for me in the UK is extremely, has been extremely precarious. And the refusal by the Swedish prosecutor has led to a technical... the refusal by the Swedish prosecutor to come to the UK for the past 18 months, despite that being absolutely normal procedure, and the refusal of her to explain it in any matter whatsoever to the British court, has kept me trapped in the United Kingdom while the United States has prepared a case against me. We now have intelligence, public record, that the FBI file in its case preparation now runs to 48,135 pages.

Fran Kelly: Okay, let's break this down a bit just in the name of complete accuracy, Julian. Yes, I did say that you had sought political asylum in Ecuador to avoid extradition. What you're saying is, you did it because the Swedish Government had made an attempt to truncate your curtailed freedom as it already is there in the UK, but you are not prepared to go to Sweden under the terms that you believe you would be held in there. Is that what you're saying?

Julian Assange: That's right. My ability to exercise an asylum right would be at an end, and even to exercise rights of appeal, would be at an effective end because the Swedes announced publicly that they would detain me, in prison, without charge, while they continued their so-called investigation, without charge. So we had heard that the Ecuadorians were sympathetic in relation to my struggles and the stuggles of the organization with the United States. And the ability to exercise that option was at an effective end and we had the surprise news that the Crown Prosecution Service here suddenly objected to the 14 days we were meant to have to file an EU appeal and were asking for zero.

Fran Kelly: Okay, I'll come back to those bigger issues, but just in the short term people, I think, are very interested in what indications you're getting from the Ecuadorians there in terms of the success of this application for political asylum.

Julian Assange: Well the Ecuadorian people have been quite supportive; I saw the Ecuadorian Ambassador in Australia was making supportive comments. Ecuador, back in 2010, suggested that perhaps I should come to Ecuador and be given residency. So they are sympathetic over a long period of time. So we hope the asylum application will be viewed favorably. Now it's a matter of gathering alleged sort-of extensive evidence about what has been happening in the U.S. and submitting that with a formal request for asylum. There's Ecuadorians on the outside of the Embassy, together with Londoners, protesting in the street, demanding that Ecuador accept the asylum application.

Fran Kelly: Have you gotten any indication of the timing of this?

Julian Assange: We have no indication of the timing.

Fran Kelly: When this happened, it took a lot of people by surprise, including many of your own supporters, and for some people, I believe, it made you look more guilty, it made you look like you're on the run, desperate to avoid questions about those sexual assault allegations.

Julian Assange: Well, this Swedish prosecutor, if the intent is really to proceed with the technical requirements of this case, she is perfectly entitled to come to Embassy, the Ecuadorians have said she could come to the Embassy, she could pick up the telephone, like she could've picked up the telephone for the past 18 months, if that's really what she is interested in.

Fran Kelly: And did you have legal advice suggesting you seek asylum in another country, including Ecuador?

Julian Assange: I spoke to several lawyers about the situation. In relation to sureties and other supporters, because of the sort-of legal requirements there, for their own protection I was not able to speak to them before I have to.

Fran Kelly: So you're position is that you don't believe that the evidence suggests that the Swedes are really interested in having you there for questioning, because they could come to Britain to question you, and that's been your position all along. So you're more concerned, as you say, with what's been happening in the U.S. What makes you so worried about the Americans, because repeatedly the Americans are saying they are not interested in extraditing you?

Julian Assange: Well, they are being very, very careful with their words, Fran. They now have a 48,135 page FBI file, there's official statements made in court in the prosecution of Bradley Manning, the next date which is on Monday, saying the founders and managers of WikiLeaks are among the subjects of the grand jury proceedings, which has now been going since 2010. Their careful statements reflect that the Department of Justice is not able to formally confirm or deny the existence of the grand jury, a policy with all grand juries. But there are subpoenas everywhere, there are witnesses who have come out on public record about how they've been dragged into the grand jury, we have received subpoenas, the subpoenas mention my name, in the past months two people have been detained at U.S. airports by U.S. officials and interrogated by the FBI, asked questions about me and my organization, asked to become informers - one of those has gone on the public record, he's a prominent free speech activist of France, Jérémie Zimmermann - and the other, Smári McCarthy, who has worked with me in Iceland. This is a hot, ongoing, active investigation. And as of two weeks ago.

Fran Kelly: It's a quarter past six on Breakfast, our guest this morning is Julian Assange. He's currently inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he arrived three days ago now seeking political asylum. In terms of the public record, the Australian Government says they've received no indication that the U.S. would seek your extradition from Sweden if you were to go there. Can I just play you - we spoke to the Attorney-General Nicola Roxon about this yesterday - let's have a listen.

Nicola Roxon (recording): We have, I've made clear that I've made representations... [Kelly: And the answer was?] Let me tell your listeners who those have been made to - because it's not just the Ambassador - the Minister for Homeland Security, the Deputy to Attorney-General in the U.S.; we have from all of those conversations no indication that they are about to take action, and we have also said that we don't believe, now having taken advice from the federal police, that we have any evidence of Mr Assange having committed any offence that would breach an Australian law.

Fran Kelly: So that's the Attorney-General Nicola Roxon speaking to us yesterday, no indication that the Americans are about to take legal action. That doesn't reassure you? And is that what the Australian Government is telling you?

Julian Assange: But they are taking legal action. There have been nine prosecutors working this case, the evidence is everywhere, they've been issuing subpoenas to our ISPs, to the people I've been meeting, etc. It's a matter of public record. They are taking legal action. They've taken action against Twitter. We've been fighting a legal case in the public record in relation to the Twitter subpoenas for over a year now; it involves the ACLU, etc, etc. So they're playing word games here. The games that they're playing is that the grand jury needs to conclude. On the conclusion of the grand jury process, they... The grand jury is a device, a judicial device, if you like - it does not seem to be part of the executive - and so they can say they are not about to extradite, because the grand jury has not yet concluded. On the conclusion of the grand jury, the Department of Justice will take the indictments of the grand jury and pursue the matter. They are certainly spending vast amounts of resources; I mean, just today it was discovered that a contract put out by the Department of Justice for one to two million dollars to maintain the WikiLeaks computer systems that the Department of Justice is running - one to two million dollars contracted to MANTEC as a matter of public record, just discovered today.

Fran Kelly: So, you're clearly agitated, understandably, if you believe that the U.S. is preparing this extradition treaty for you. Therefore, your future is very much up in the air, you're waiting to hear whether the Ecuadorian Government will give you protection. Do you feel cornered? Because the British police are saying if you set foot outside that Embassy, you will be arrested.

Julian Assange: Well, there's, I think, an important question is why aren't I in the Australian Embassy?

Fran Kelly: Why didn't you seek protection in the Australian Embassy?

Julian Assange: Because, Nicola Roxon, after very reasonable requests made by my lawyer Jennifer Robinson to her in a half an hour meeting, and following reasonable requests by one of the most celebrated human rights lawyers who represents me here in the UK, Gareth Pierce, asking them to ask for very simple conditions of the Swedes - such as that if I was imprisoned in the United States and I could serve my sentence in Australia – refused any of those requests, refused to consult in any extradition to the United States, refused to be involved in any of those discussions, refused to ask that the Swedes come and solve this matter by simply coming and speaking to me in the UK, etc. So this is has been an effective declaration of abandonment; there is not a single matter of concern under which the Australian Government, as represented by the Attorney-General, would ask other governments to be reasonable or just in this case.

Fran Kelly: Again, I put that to the Attorney-General yesterday. Do you want to hear her - let's hear her response.

Nicola Roxon (recording): I totally reject that he has been abandoned by the Government. We've offered support to him through consular services, we've made representations to the British Government, to the Swedish Government, to the U.S. Government.

Fran Kelly: That's what the Attorney-General said yesterday in terms of... and the Government has also said that you have received as much or more consular support as anybody else has in matters like this.

Julian Assange: There is no matter like this at all, everyone knows that. But y'know, maybe that's up until this recent case in Libya, maybe that's true even. The Australian Government simply does not support it's people. There's a journalist, Austin Mackell, who's trapped in Egypt and he also has exactly the same complaints I have. These are empty words. When you hear this word "consular assistance" - I haven't met with anyone from the Australian High Commission since December 2010. What are they talking about?

Fran Kelly: So you've had no consular contact with the Australian High Commission since 2010?

Julian Assange: Well, they send SMS messages, 'Does Mr Assange have any concerns?' But we know what this is for: this is so they can just tick off a box. And yes, we formally put our concerns to the Attorney-General and the response was dismissal in every single area.

Fran Kelly: And have you formally put to the Australian Government, ask them to seek reassurances from the U.S. about any plans to extradite you and what those answers are?

Julian Assange: Yes, we have formally put requests to Nicola Roxon and DFAT to ask that the United States... I can't remember the exact request, but for instance for the prisoner transfer arrangement and so on. And she rejected this in every single area. In relation to the sort-of clever rhetoric that's being used at the moment, when they say that there is not... we have not received evidence from the United States that they plan to extradite - of course not. At the moment the matter is before the grand jury and until it comes out of the grand jury there will be no such evidence afforded. And you look at other questions of Gillard, for example, where the follow-up question... Sorry, sorry, to the Foreign Minister - 'Is there any indication, any evidence from the U.S. that they will try to extradite Mr Assange' and the Foreign Minister says, 'Oh no, no, of course not'. Follow-up question, 'Have you asked for any evidence?' - no!

Fran Kelly: So, Julian Assange, let's go to what's next for you. If Ecuador doesn't grant you asylum, what's Plan B?

Julian Assange: Well, we're in the position to draw attention to what it happening. Y'know, the Department of Justice in the United States has been playing a little game, and that little game is they refuse to confirm or deny the existence of a grand jury. And as a result, the press goes, 'Oh well, they don't confirm it, and therefore we can't really write about it'. That's not true; there's public record everywhere, there's multiple witnesses everywhere, there's testimony in military courts about the existence of what is happening in these 48,000 pages, and that the founders and managers of WikiLeaks are amongst the subjects. So, we hope what I am doing now will draw attention to the underlying issues. In a case where the truth in on your side, what is most against you is lack of scrutiny. So, y'know, I welcome the lack of scrutiny - welcome the scrutiny. People should go to http://justice4assange.com/ and they can read about some of these issues. Good journalists in Australia, such as Phillip Dorling who's been heroic in exploration of the FOI traffic between Australia and the U.S., are also showing that there are serious issues here, and they are being hidden through slimy rhetoric coming out of the U.S. Ambassador to Australia, by Gillard, and by the Foreign Minister. And that really needs to stop.

Fran Kelly: Is scrutiny really what you're after here, rather than a life and a future in Ecuador? What if you're granted political asylum? Are you ready for a life in Ecuador? And also, back to that original question, do you think you'd ever make it there given what the British Metropolitan Police are threatening: to apprehend you if you stepped foot outside the embassy?

Julian Assange: Well, a life in Ecuador, I mean these are friendly generous people, is much better than a life behind bars in the United States under SAMS restrictions which are Guantanamo Bay-like restrictions, which they routinely apply to people accused of espionage. You can't speak, can't communicate, because I might communicate some password or something. And this is a routine matter that is applied in these sorts of cases.

Fran Kelly: And in terms of a life in Ecuador, amongst more than friendly people - no doubt they are - but Ecuador's justice system and record on free speech has been criticized by Human Rights Watch, Reporters without Boarders, Amnesty International... You know, it seems ironic, really, that you, the founder of WikiLeaks, would be seeking protection in a country which is criticized as limiting free speech.

Julian Assange: Well, it's free speech issues are certainly no worse than ones in the UK. I mean, this is the country with hundreds of gag orders, so let's keep things in perspective. I mean, I would enjoy campaigning for the rights of journalists in Ecuador.

Fran Kelly: Do you think you'd have the freedom to do that? I mean, Human Rights Watch says journalists get locked up for doing that.

Julian Assange: Well, look. Human Rights Watch is based in New York. Ecuador has an issue with Chevron, which is a U.S. company, and so on. There's been a lot of tussles between the U.S. and Ecuador which is one of the reasons why Ecuador, I presume, would be happy to grant me asylum because they understand the difficulties when you square off with the United States.

Fran Kelly: Julian Assange, thank you very much for joining us on Breakfast.

Julian Assange: Thank you, Fran. B-bye.

Fran Kelly: Julian Assange is the founder of WikiLeaks. He's currently taken refuge, sought refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London where he's made an application for political asylum, and he's still waiting, as we heard, for that decision by Ecuador. And as he does, the world watches. wlcentral

Democracy Now: Julian Assange Seeks Asylum in Ecuador in Attempt to Avoid Extradition to U.S.

An interesting few minutes.

Julian Assange of WikiLeaks Seeks Asylum in Ecuador in Attempt to Avoid Extradition to U.S.

From the transcript, Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights and attorney for Julian Assange and WikiLeaks:

MICHAEL RATNER: Well, I was completely surprised by it. In fact, I got a tweet from—or, no, a text message from you, Amy, that said, "Michael, Julian Assange has gone into the Ecuadorian embassy." So that really surprised me.

On the other hand, if you look at what he was facing, I had—I’ve been really very upset and nervous for, really, since he lost the decision in the High Court of England on the 14th of June, because here’s his situation. He’s about to be extradited now to Sweden. Sweden does not have bail. Now, these are on allegations of sex charges—allegations, no charges—and they’re to interrogate Julian Assange. But despite that, he would have been in prison in Sweden. At that point, our view is that there was a substantial chance that the U.S. would ask for his extradition to the United States. So here you have him walking the streets in London—sure, under bail conditions; going to a jail in Sweden, where he’s in prison, almost an incommunicado prison; U.S. files extradition; he remains in prison; and the next thing that happens is whatever time it takes him to fight the extradition in Sweden, he’s taken to the United States. There’s no chance then to make political asylum application any longer. In addition, once he comes to the United States—we just hold up Bradley Manning as example one of what will happen to Julian Assange: a underground cell, essentially abuse, torture, no ability to communicate with anybody, facing certainly good chance of a life sentence, with a possibility, of course, of one of these charges being a death penalty charge. More Transcript

Julian Assange's Right to Asylum by Glenn Greenwald

Thank you Glenn Greenwald.

Julian Assange's right to asylum

Given the travesty that is American justice, WikiLeaks' founder is entitled to seek asylum and well-advised to fear extradition
by Glenn Greenwald
20 June 2012

If one asks current or former WikiLeaks associates what their greatest fear is, almost none cites prosecution by their own country. Most trust their own nation's justice system to recognize that they have committed no crime. The primary fear is being turned over to the US. That is the crucial context for understanding Julian Assange's 16-month fight to avoid extradition to Sweden, a fight that led him to seek asylum, Tuesday, in the London Embassy of Ecuador.

The evidence that the US seeks to prosecute and extradite Assange is substantial. There is no question that the Obama justice department has convened an active grand jury to investigate whether WikiLeaks violated the draconian Espionage Act of 1917. Key senators from President Obama's party, including Senate intelligence committee chairwoman Dianne Feinstein, have publicly called for his prosecution under that statute. A leaked email from the security firm Stratfor – hardly a dispositive source, but still probative – indicated that a sealed indictment has already been obtained against him. Prominent American figures in both parties have demanded Assange's lifelong imprisonment, called him a terrorist, and even advocated his assassination.

For several reasons, Assange has long feared that the US would be able to coerce Sweden into handing him over far more easily than if he were in Britain. For one, smaller countries such as Sweden are generally more susceptible to American pressure and bullying.

For another, that country has a disturbing history of lawlessly handing over suspects to the US. A 2006 UN ruling found Sweden in violation of the global ban on torture for helping the CIA render two suspected terrorists to Egypt, where they were brutally tortured (both individuals, asylum-seekers in Sweden, were ultimately found to be innocent of any connection to terrorism and received a monetary settlement from the Swedish government).

Perhaps most disturbingly of all, Swedish law permits extreme levels of secrecy in judicial proceedings and oppressive pre-trial conditions, enabling any Swedish-US transactions concerning Assange to be conducted beyond public scrutiny. Ironically, even the US State Department condemned Sweden's "restrictive conditions for prisoners held in pretrial custody", including severe restrictions on their communications with the outside world.

Assange's fear of ending up in the clutches of the US is plainly rational and well-grounded. One need only look at the treatment over the last decade of foreign nationals accused of harming American national security to know that's true; such individuals are still routinely imprisoned for lengthy periods without any charges or due process. Or consider the treatment of Bradley Manning, accused of leaking to WikiLeaks: a formal UN investigation found that his pre-trial conditions of severe solitary confinement were "cruel, inhuman and degrading", and he now faces capital charges of aiding al-Qaida. The Obama administration's unprecedented obsession with persecuting whistleblowers and preventing transparency – what even generally supportive, liberal magazines call "Obama's war on whistleblowers" – makes those concerns all the more valid.

No responsible person should have formed a judgment one way or the other as to whether Assange is guilty of anything in Sweden. He has not even been charged, let alone tried or convicted, of sexual assault, and he is entitled to a presumption of innocence. The accusations made against him are serious ones, and deserve to be taken seriously and accorded a fair and legal resolution.

But the WikiLeaks founder, like everyone else, is fully entitled to invoke all of his legal rights, and it's profoundly reckless and irresponsible to suggest, as some have, that he has done anything wrong by doing so. Seeking asylum on the grounds of claimed human rights violations is a longstanding and well-recognized right in international law. It is unseemly, at best, to insist that he forego his rights in order to herd him as quickly as possible to Sweden.

Assange is not a fugitive and has not fled. Everyone knows where he is. If Ecuador rejects his asylum request, he will be right back in the hands of British authorities, who will presumably extradite him to Sweden without delay. At every step of the process, he has adhered to, rather than violated, the rule of law. His asylum request of yesterday is no exception.

Julian Assange has sparked intense personal animosity, especially in media circles – a revealing irony, given that he has helped to bring about more transparency and generated more newsworthy scoops than all media outlets combined over the last several years. That animosity often leads media commentators to toss aside their professed beliefs and principles out of an eagerness to see him shamed or punished.

But ego clashes and media personality conflicts are pitifully trivial when weighed against what is at stake in this case: both for Assange personally and for the greater cause of transparency. If he's guilty of any crimes in Sweden, he should be held to account. But until then, he has every right to invoke the legal protections available to everyone else. Even more so, as a foreign national accused of harming US national security, he has every reason to want to avoid ending up in the travesty known as the American judicial system. Gruniad

John Pilger On Assange's Extradition Case And Infringements On His Human Rights

The full interview with author, documentary filmmaker and journalist John Pilger conducted by Thomas Hall, of Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter (DN).

DN: Julian Assange has ben fighting extradition to Sweden at a number of British courts. Why do you think it is important that he wins on Wednesday?

John Pilger: Because the attempt to extradite Assange is unjust and political. I have read almost every scrap of evidence in this case and it's clear, in terms of natural justice, that no crime was committed. The case would not have got this far had it not been for the intervention of Claes Borgström, a politician who saw an opportunity when the Stockholm prosecutor threw out almost all the police allegations. Borgström was then in the middle of an election campaign. When asked why the case was proceeding when both women had said that the sex had been consensual with Assange, he replied, "Ah, but they're not lawyers." If the Supreme Court in London rejects Assange's appeal, the one hope is the independence of the Swedish courts. However, as the London Independent has revealed, Sweden and the US have already begun talks on Assange's "temporary surrender" to the US -- where he faces concocted charges and the prospect of unlimited solitary confinement. And for what? For telling epic truths. Every Swede who cares about justice and the reputation of his or her society should care deeply about this.

DN: You have said that Julian Assange's human rights have been breached. In what way?

John Pilger: One of the most fundamental human rights -- that of the presumption of innocence -- has been breached over and over again in Assange's case. Convicted of no crime, he has been the object of character assassination --perfidious and inhuman -- and highly political smear, of which the evidence is voluminous. This is what Britain's most distinguished and experienced human rights lawyer, Gareth Peirce, has written: "Given the extent of the public discussion, frequently on the basis of entirely false assumptions ... it is very hard to preserve for [Assange] any presumption of innocence. He has now hanging over him not one but two Damocles swords of potential extradition to two different jurisdictions in turn for two different alleged crimes, neither of which are crimes in his own country. [and] his personal safety has become at risk in circumstances that are highly politically charged."

DN: You, as well as Julian Assange, don't seem to have confidence in the Swedish judicial system. Why not?

John Pilger: It's difficult to have confidence in a prosecutorial system that is so contradictory and flagrantly uses the media to achieve its aims. Whether or not the Supreme Court in London find for or against Assange, the fact that this case has reached the highest court in this country is itself a condemnation of the competence and motivation of those so eager to incarcerate him, having already had plenty of opportunity to to question him properly. What a waste all this is. More Professors blogg

H/T Maren.

Pual Watson on Democracy Now + Shark Finning in Taiwan

Captain Paul Watson is presently released from a German court on a quarter of a million dollars bond.

As hard as it might be to comprehend, fifty million sharks, valued in the billions of dollars, are taken annually by the shark finning industry.

Little wonder that Paul Watson and Sea Shepherd Conservation society have enemies. And let us not forget the Japanese, you can bet the farm that they will be up to their necks in this transparent piece of political chicanery.

For further reading: Don't Fuck With Teddy Blogspot

Captain Paul Watson, founder of the anti-whaling group Sea Shepherd, has been released on bail in Germany following his arrest for possible extradition to Costa Rica on decade-old charges stemming from a confrontation with shark fin poachers. Sea Shepherd continues to maintain that Watson’s arrest was politically motivated and is calling on its supporters to come together in a day of action on Wednesday when the Costa Rican President Laura Chinchilla visits Germany. Watson joins us from Frankfurt. “We’ve never injured anybody,” Watson says. “The most powerful weapon in the world as far as I’m concerned is the camera, so we go into battle armed with cameras...Right now 19 million sharks a year are being destroyed to feed the shark fin industry in Asia. And that means the fins are cut off of these animals and they’re thrown back into the ocean, and this is what we filmed off of Guatemala and this is what we intervened against — a highly illegal operation.” [Transcript to come. Check back soon.]

The post below previously posted here.

Sharks piled high, rows of fins: Photos reveal breadth of killings in Taiwan

By Juliet Eilperin
10/19/2011

Documenting the extent to which Taiwan is scouring the seas for sharks, the Pew Environment Group released a series of images Wednesday that capture that nation’s impact on global fisheries.

Shark fishing boats in Taiwan. ( Shawn Heinrichs for the Pew Environment Group) A series of photos and accompanying video suggest that Tawain, which reports the fourth-largest shark catch in the world, is an even greater player in the international shark trade than previously thought. The images capture imperiled shark species, such as scalloped hammerhead and oceanic whitetip, being prepared to be sold.

“These images present a snapshot of the immense scale of shark-fishing operations and show the devastation resulting from the lack of science-based management of sharks,“ said Matt Rand, director of global shark conservation at the Pew Environment Group. “Unfortunately, since there are no limits on the number of these animals that can be killed in the open ocean, this activity can continue unabated.” Scientists estimate the global shark fin trade kills between 26 million and 73 million sharks a year. Sharks have become an increasingly priority for enviornmentalists because of the rising prices of shark fins. California recently banned shark fin soup to curb the trade and a number of countries have created shark sancturaries to protect the animals from overfishing. Those measures have not stopped the trade. In Colombia, this week, the Guardian reports that divers discovered a huge shark massacre in a shark sanctuary of the cost of an islaned called Malpelo.

Taiwanese officials, contacted in Washington, emphasized that the catch Pew documented complied with both Taiwanese and international law. Only three shark species — whale, basking and white sharks — have international trade protections, and there are no global limits on shark fishing.

Grace Lin, deputy director of the economic division at the Taiwan Economic and Cultural Representative Office, said her country has a national action plan for sharks in place and is working to protect whale sharks, which swim in Taiwan’s waters. She added that as of Jan. 1 vessels will have to land sharks with fins attached, a move aimed at curbing the fin trade.

“We are aware of this,” Lin said of the massive shark trade in her nation.

Shark fins at a processing warehouse in Taiwan.

The U.S.-based environmental Pew Environment Group expressed concern over new photos that seem to show the killing of large numbers of "biologically vulnerable" sharks by fishermen in Taiwan

Shark fins

The remains of sharks after their fins have been removed.

A shark processing plant in Taiwan. (Shawn Heinrichs for the Pew Environment Group) WaPo