Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange Hunted by Pentagon Over Massive Leak - The Daily Beast

Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange Hunted by Pentagon Over Massive Leak - The Daily Beast

by Philip Shenon

Anxious that Wikileaks may be on the verge of publishing a batch of secret State Department cables, investigators are desperately searching for founder Julian Assange. Philip Shenon reports. Plus, Daniel Ellsberg tells The Daily Beast: "Assange is in Danger."

(This story has been updated to reflect new developments on Assange's whereabouts, including the cancelation of a scheduled appearance in Las Vegas.)

Pentagon investigators are trying to determine the whereabouts of the Australian-born founder of the secretive website Wikileaks for fear that he may be about to publish a huge cache of classified State Department cables that, if made public, could do serious damage to national security, government officials tell The Daily Beast.

The officials acknowledge that even if they found the website founder, Julian Assange, it is not clear what they could do to block publication of the cables on Wikileaks, which is nominally based on a server in Sweden and bills itself as a champion of whistleblowers.

continued article


Please note that this has been posted already. Missed it as title was not in thread

Pentagon Manhunt

[edit on 11-6-2010 by StealthKix]

I bet they'll find him faster than they can with OBL. afterall Wikileaks can actually hurt them

Well Julian Assange is in Vegas tonite at the 2010 IRE conference on a panel. I can picture car chase right now! Seriously ...I respect Mr. Assange and Wikileaks and wish him all the best!

link

Walking the tightrope: The risks and rewards of anonymous sources

Friday 4:35 - 6 p.m.

At a time of increasing tensions between government and the news media over national security reporting, confidential source relationships and disclosures of classified information, noted veterans of the information wars provide new insights about past and current battles and advice about conflicts sure to lie ahead.

Panelists:
LEONARD DOWNIE JR.(moderator) is Weil Family Professor at Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication and vice president at large of The Washington Post, where he worked as a reporter and editor for 44 years. During his 17 years as executive editor, its news staff won 25 Pulitzer prizes. Downie is the author of five books, including “The New Muckrakers,” which is being republished by IRE, and a novel, “The Rules of the Game.”

JULIAN ASSANGE is a founder and editor of Wikileaks, a website that publishes anonymous submissions and leaks of sensitive documents from governments and other organizations around the world. He won the 2009 Amnesty International Media Award (New Media) and the 2008 Economist Index on Censorship award, among others.

T. CHRISTIAN MILLER is an award-winning investigative reporter for ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative news organization. In 15 years as a professional journalist and foreign correspondent, Miller has covered four wars, a presidential campaign and reported from more than two dozen countries. He has won the Selden Ring, the Livingston Award and shared the Overseas Press Club Award. Miller is the author of “Blood Money: Wasted Billions, Lost Lives and Corporate Greed in Iraq.”

RHONDA SCHWARTZ, ABC News chief investigative producer, runs the Brian Ross Investigative team which reports on terrorism, national security, corporate fraud, political corruption and human rights abuses. Her decades of reporting on stories including Wal-Mart’s use of child labor, the Mark Foley congressional page scandal, and the influence of big money on politics have received many top honors including the DuPont, Peabody, Edward R. Murrow, Overseas Press Club, IRE Renner, four George Polk Awards and a half dozen Emmys.

VALERIE PLAME WILSON worked as a former covert CIA operations officer to protect America’s national security and prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Plame Wilson is the author of the New York Times best-selling autobiography “Fair Game: My Life as a Spy, My Betrayal by the White House.” She is a consultant to the Santa Fe Institute, a nonprofit research institute for multidisciplinary collaborations in the physical, biological, computational and social sciences.

reply to post by StealthKix


I read about this earlier. Pentagon is worried about the latest installment of information Wikileaks is about to release. Rumors are they are some back room chatter about diplomatic relations and foreign leaders in US Foreign policy but not sure.

Ahh the plot thickens according to The Daily Beast Assange has canceled his appearance at the IRE conference!

This could get interesting. Really it is amazing he has not "disappeared" or been in a "plane crash" or "car accident".

Originally posted by Leo Strauss
Ahh the plot thickens according to The Daily Beast Assange has canceled his appearance at the IRE conference!

This could get interesting. Really it is amazing he has not "disappeared" or been in a "plane crash" or "car accident".

no they cant do such things..bet if he dies all the files will be reliesed on internet for savety... its like poker...

reply to post by StealthKix

Living in the British army life, i know that the army think of civilians differently to them. 'Civies' are seen as the fluffy population whom are sensitive to horrible events but when it comes to the army's reaction, "S**T happens".

I can see why they want to stop the wikileaks founder, he is unsettling the population by showing the truth. The goverment are protecting the majority from bad emotions because they arn't used to seeing horribile acts as seen in the video of the chopper gunman. Blame the media and society for making you emotional and sensitive to things like these.

This is of course an opinoin post.



[edit on 12-6-2010 by jonnyc55]