Government Now "Leaking Harmful Info & Attributing It To Others-To Make Snowden et al Look Dangerous

[kpete]

Curiouser and curiouser

Last night The Independent published a story on UK intercepts of all cable traffic from the Middle East secret location

This a.m. Greenwald writes the government gave The Independent that story to make Snowden et al look dangerous

...............


Snowden: UK government now leaking documents about itself

The NSA whistleblower says: 'I have never spoken with, worked with, or provided any journalistic materials to the Independent.'

The Independent this morning published an article - which it repeatedly claims comes from "documents obtained from the NSA by Edward Snowden" - disclosing that "Britain runs a secret internet-monitoring station in the Middle East to intercept and process vast quantities of emails, telephone calls and web traffic on behalf of Western intelligence agencies." This is the first time the Independent has published any revelations purportedly from the NSA documents, and it's the type of disclosure which journalists working directly with NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden have thus far avoided.

That leads to the obvious question: who is the source for this disclosure? Snowden this morning said he wants it to be clear that he was not the source for the Independent, stating:

I have never spoken with, worked with, or provided any journalistic materials to the Independent. The journalists I have worked with have, at my request, been judicious and careful in ensuring that the only things disclosed are what the public should know but that does not place any person in danger. People at all levels of society up to and including the President of the United States have recognized the contribution of these careful disclosures to a necessary public debate, and we are proud of this record.

"It appears that the UK government is now seeking to create an appearance that the Guardian and Washington Post's disclosures are harmful, and they are doing so by intentionally leaking harmful information to The Independent and attributing it to others. The UK government should explain the reasoning behind this decision to disclose information that, were it released by a private citizen, they would argue is a criminal act."

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/23/uk-government-independent-military-base



UPDATE

The Independent's Oliver Wright just tweeted the following:

"For the record: The Independent was not leaked or 'duped' into publishing today's front page story by the Government."

Leaving aside the fact that the Independent article quotes an anonymous "senior Whitehall source", nobody said they were "duped" into publishing anything. The question is: who provided them this document or the information in it? It clearly did not come from Snowden or any of the journalists with whom he has directly worked. The Independent provided no source information whatsoever for their rather significant disclosure of top secret information. Did they see any such documents, and if so, who, generally, provided it to them? I don't mean, obviously, that they should identify their specific source, but at least some information about their basis for these claims, given how significant they are, would be warranted. One would think that they would not have published something like this without either seeing the documents or getting confirmation from someone who has: the class of people who qualify is very small, and includes, most prominently and obviously, the UK government itself.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/23/uk-government-independent-military-base

[GeorgeGist]

1. Let the Sunstein in!

[Aerows]

3. Exactly

He's been hired as head turd polisher on the turd polishing committee. They want to pressure the public to embrace the NSA - not change the things that they are doing that are Unconstitutional.

[Aerows]

2. Yep

This is going to be Sunstein's new job.