Journalism Is Not Espionage #Unity4J

Please take a moment to read this speech by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo when he was the CIA Director.

Once you read this speech Pompeo gave at the Center for Strategic and International Studies,  I hope people will understand that no matter what side of politics you're on journalism is not Espionage.

Mike Pompeo outlines many things in this speech like how to cut off Assange's ability to communicate, how to turn the public against Assange and strengthen support for the intelligence community.

But nothing is more obvious in this rant towards Assange than the intelligence community in America's hatred for Assange and Wikileaks.

Before you read this nastiness, absorb this quote from NSA whistle-blower Thomas Drake

”I was not going to sit still and remain silent because if I had remained silent then I myself would have been complicit in the conduct of a crime against a sovereignty, against who we are as people, that’s we the people, capital W, capital P, We the People” - Thomas Drake

Pompeo's Wikileaks Tantrum

And that is one of the many reasons why we at CIA find the celebration of entities like WikiLeaks to be both perplexing and deeply troubling. Because while we do our best to quietly collect information on those who pose very real threats to our country, individuals such as Julian Assange and Edward Snowden seek to use that information to make a name for themselves. As long as they make a splash, they care nothing about the lives they put at risk or the damage they cause to national security.

WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a  hostile intelligence service. It has encouraged its followers to find  jobs at CIA in order to obtain intelligence. It directed Chelsea Manning  in her theft of specific secret information. And it overwhelmingly  focuses on the United States, while seeking support from anti-democratic  countries and organizations. 

 It is time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is – a non-state  hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia.  In January of this year, our Intelligence Community determined that  Russian military intelligence—the GRU—had used WikiLeaks to release data  of US victims that the GRU had obtained through cyber operations  against the Democratic National Committee. And the report also found  that Russia’s primary propaganda outlet, RT, has actively collaborated  with WikiLeaks. 

 Now, for those of you who read the editorial page of the Washington  Post—and I have a feeling that many of you in this room do—yesterday you  would have seen a piece of sophistry penned by Mr. Assange. You would  have read a convoluted mass of words wherein Assange compared himself to  Thomas Jefferson, Dwight Eisenhower, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning  work of legitimate news organizations such as the New York Times and the  Washington Post. One can only imagine the absurd comparisons that the  original draft contained. 

 Assange claims to harbor an overwhelming admiration for both America and  the idea of America. But I assure you that this man knows nothing of  America and our ideals. He knows nothing of our third President, whose  clarion call for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness continue to  inspire us and the world. And he knows nothing of our 34th  President, a hero from my very own Kansas, who helped to liberate Europe  from fascists and guided America through the early years of the Cold  War. 

 No, I am quite confident that had Assange been around in the 1930s and  40s and 50s, he would have found himself on the wrong side of history. 

We know this because Assange and his ilk make common cause with  dictators today. Yes, they try unsuccessfully to cloak themselves and  their actions in the language of liberty and privacy; in reality,  however, they champion nothing but their own celebrity. Their currency  is clickbait; their moral compass, nonexistent. Their mission: personal  self-aggrandizement through the destruction of Western values.

Clearly, these individuals are not especially burdened by conscience. We  know this, for example, because Assange has been more than cavalier in  disclosing the personal information of scores of innocent citizens  around the globe. We know this because the damage they have done to the  security and safety of the free world is tangible. And the examples are  numerous. 

When Snowden absconded to the comfortable clutches of Russian  intelligence, his treachery directly harmed a wide range of US  intelligence and military operations. Despite what he claims, he is no  whistleblower. True whistleblowers use the well-established and discreet  processes in place to voice grievances; they do not put American lives  at risk.

 In fact, a colleague of ours at NSA recently explained that more than a  thousand foreign targets—people, groups, organizations—more than a  thousand of them changed or tried to change how they communicated as a  result of the Snowden disclosures. That number is staggering.

 And the bottom line is that it became harder for us in the Intelligence  Community to keep Americans safe. It became harder to monitor the  communications of terrorist organizations that are bent on bringing  bloodshed to our shores. Snowden’s disclosures helped these groups find  ways to hide themselves in the crowded digital forest. 

 Even in those cases where we were able to regain our ability to collect,  the damage was already done. We work in a business with budgetary and  time constraints. The effort to earn back access that we previously  possessed meant that we had less time to look for new threats. 

 As for Assange, his actions have attracted a devoted following among  some of our most determined enemies. Following a recent WikiLeaks  disclosure, an al Qa’ida in the Arabian Peninsula member posted a  comment online thanking WikiLeaks for providing a means to fight America  in a way that AQAP had not previously envisioned. 

 AQAP represents one of the most serious terrorist threats to our country  and the world. It is a group that is devoted not only to bringing down  civilian passenger planes, but our way of life as well. That Assange is  the darling of terrorists is nothing short of reprehensible.

 Have no doubt that the disclosures in recent years caused harm—great  harm—to our nation’s security, and they will continue to do so over the  long term. They threaten the trust we’ve developed with our foreign  partners when trust is a crucial currency among allies. They risk  damaging morale for the good officers of the Intelligence Community who  take the high road every day. And I can’t stress enough how these  disclosures have severely hindered our ability to keep all Americans  safe. 

 No, Julian Assange and his kind are not the slightest bit interested in  improving civil liberties or enhancing personal freedom. They have  pretended that America’s First Amendment freedoms shield them from  justice. They may have believed that, but they are wrong. 

 Assange is a narcissist who has created nothing of value. He relies on  the dirty work of others to make himself famous. He is a fraud—a coward  hiding behind a screen. 

 And in Kansas, we know something about false Wizards. 

 But I’m not the only one who knows what Assange really is. Even those  who often benefit from Assange’s leaks have called him out for his  overblown statements. The Intercept, which in the past has gleefully  reported on unauthorized disclosures, accused WikiLeaks in late March of  “stretching the facts” in its comments about CIA. In the same article,  the Intercept added that the documents were “not worth the concern  WikiLeaks generated by its public comments.” 

 So we face a crucial question: What can we do about this? What can and  should CIA, the United States, and our allies do about the unprecedented  challenge posed by these hostile non-state intelligence agencies? 

 While there is no quick fix—no foolproof cure—there are steps that we  can take to undercut the danger. First, it is high time we called out  those who grant a platform to these leakers and so-called transparency  activists. We know the danger that Assange and his not-so-merry band of  brothers pose to democracies around the world. Ignorance or misplaced  idealism is no longer an acceptable excuse for lionizing these demons 

 Second, there are steps that we have to take at home—in fact, this is a  process we’ve already started. We’ve got to strengthen our own systems;  we’ve got to improve internal mechanisms that help us in our  counterintelligence mission. All of us in the Intelligence Community had  a wake-up call after Snowden’s treachery. Unfortunately, the threat has  not abated. 

 I can’t go into great detail, but the steps we take can’t be static. Our  approach to security has to be constantly evolving. We need to be as  clever and innovative as the enemies we face. They won’t relent, and  neither will we. 

 We can never truly eliminate the threat but we can mitigate and manage  it. This relies on agility and on dynamic “defense in depth.” It depends  on a fundamental change in how we address digital problems,  understanding that best practices have to evolve in real time. It is a  long-term project but the strides we have taken—particularly the rapid  and tireless response of our Directorate of Digital Innovation—give us  grounds for optimism. 

 Third, we have to recognize that we can no longer allow Assange and his  colleagues the latitude to use free speech values against us. To give  them the space to crush us with misappropriated secrets is a perversion  of what our great Constitution stands for. It ends now. 

 And finally—and perhaps most importantly—we need to deepen the trust  between the Intelligence Community and the citizens we strive to  protect. 

Now more than ever we have to stand with Julian Assange and Wikileaks as the-powers-that-be try further their crusade against the freedom of information. #Unity4J