‘Who controls the past controls the future’

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange formally unveiled on Monday the latest release from the whistleblower site, Project K, calling it “the single most significant geopolitical publication that has ever existed.”

Speaking via Skype from the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, Assange introduced Project K on Monday morning to a group of journalists at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

Nearly three years earlier to the day, Assange spoke at the Press Club in person to debut “Collateral Murder,” a video of US soldiers firing at Iraqi civilians that has since become one of WikiLeaks’ most well-recognized contributions to journalism. Since that release, WikiLeaks and the organization’s associates have become the target of a number of government investigations, with Assange himself having been confined to the embassy in London for nearly one year while awaiting safe passage to Ecuador where he was granted political asylum. Ongoing attempts to prosecute the journalists for sharing state secrets aside, however, Assange and company have now unloaded the organization’s biggest leak yet.

Project K, says Assange, contains roughly 1.7 million files composed of US Department of State diplomatic communications. And although the material has been classified, declassified and, in some instances, re-classified, the public’s inability to access and peruse the unredacted copies has made them nearly inaccessible.

“One form of secrecy is the complexity and the accessibility of documents,” WikiLeaks spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson said during Monday’s event. “You could say that the government cannot be trusted with these documents.”

"He who controls the past controls the future, and he who controls the present controls the past,” Assange chimed in using his webcam in London to quote from George Orwell’s novel 1984.

“The US administration cannot be trusted with its control of its past,” he said. “That is the result of this information being hidden by secrecy, but more often being hidden in the borderline between secrecy and complexity.”


The 1.7 million cables released on Monday span the period of time between 1973 and 1976 when Henry Kissinger sat at the head the State Department under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. WikiLeaks has now combined their latest files with the previously-released State Department diplomatic cables that they published starting in 2010 after US Army Private first class Bradley Manning gained access to military intelligence servers and sent over 250,000 documents to the site, along with “Collateral Murder” and a trove of other documents.

By combining the earlier State Dept. memos with the new collection of Kissinger cables, Assange says WikiLeaks has created a database that gives journalists unprecedented access to roughly 2 million documents that paint a unique picture of the United States’ relationships with foreign nations during a number of presidential administrations.

That infrastructure, dubbed the WikiLeaks Public Library of US Diplomacy (PlusD), “is what Google should be like,” Assange said.

“This is a search system that investigative journalists can use effectively,” he said.

With the publishing of the State Dept. cables credited to Pfc. Manning, WikiLeaks previously brought to the public periphery a tome of material that largely focuses on US foreign policy at the dawn of the twenty-first century. The Kissinger cables though, said Assange, reveals a multitude about the US and other nations during a time when western society as we know it today really began to take form.

“The period of the 1970s in diplomacy is referred to as the ‘Big Bang.’ This is when the modern international order came to be,” Assange said at the press conference. “There is really only two periods: post-World War Two and the 1970s.”

During the ‘70s, vast decolonization caused the number of countries on the planet to go from only 104 to roughly 160. “To understand all of that complexity, the US State Dept. put together a system to harvest intelligence from its diplomats across the world,” Assange said of Project K.

Today, he added, the White House has “more direct control of the periphery.” During the 70s, however, “the relationship between ambassadors and their host government was more essential.” Project K helps shine a light on exactly how those interactions played out during a time when the Vietnam conflict, Watergate and the Cold War warranted the US to embark in a number of conversations with persons of all affiliations around the world.

“The United States makes a priority gaining influence and contacts and informants within opposition movements. Partly in order to corrupt them, partly in order to have bets on both the lead horse and the second in case there is a transition of power,” he said. But while American interest in the Soviet Union was largely a focal point of the US during the 1970s as one might expect, Assange said that the “titanic struggle” between the two bodies represents only a small sampling of the State Department’s interests during that time. The Kissinger Cables, at roughly one billion words, show that the US “is essentially checking the activity and inactivity of other empires,” said Assange. France, Spain, the UK, Australia and Sweden are all discussed in length in the cables, and even politicians still relevant today make appearances.

“Margaret Thatcher died last night and of course there is a great many cables about her,” said Assange, who put the figure of memos relating to the recently passed former prime minister at around 400.

Kissinger, who is alive and active today, is referenced in over 200,000 individual documents included in the trove. Former Swedish Prime Minister Carl Bildt — a critic of the whistleblower site and today the nation’s foreign minister — also makes a number of appearances in Project K as well.

Speaking to RT at the conference, Hrafnsson said that neither Kissinger nor the current Department of State has yet to respond to the leak — nor does he expect them to. On his part, however, Assange told RT that any formal federal investigation into this project will likely not dwell on any damages spawned by the leak, but instead will focus on how his organization managed to take 1.7 million documents and reverse engineer them in order to publish them in the public domain.

“Essentially,” said Assange, it’s “what Aaron Swartz was doing.”

“If the Department of Justice was to go after us for this release like they are attempting to prosecute us for previous releases involving US embassies documents, the approach would probably be along the lines of the approach that was taken was Swartz,” said Assange, “which is the sort of manner of acquisition as opposed to the classification for the matter.”

Hrafnsson said that WikiLeaks has been working on Project K and the PlusD database for roughly one year.


http://rt.com/usa/assange-kissinger-cables-wikileaks-500/


History will eventually look back on such men and call them heroes, you'll see.

I can only have respect for those that endure great personal sacrifice, to a shine a light on that merits light.

Sometimes such men are our only hope, and without them, we would be a great deal poorer.

Those that in their ignorance have a bash at people like that, or Vanunu for instance, they would not have the balls to make such a selfless sacrifice, since selfish is what they know.

 

No, whistlblowers who are heroes (as many are) do not unveil confidential informants against the Taliban, wikileaks does not give a damn about people which is why they just do data drops rather than sift through the documents themselves, but what does Assange care about some dead brown people half a world a way when he's do busy sodomizing passed out drunk girls?

 

Unsubstantiated libellous crap.

 

Too soon in the thread to make a Time Lord joke?

 

lol said the defender of the rapist who fled the country to Equador, innocent men don't run

 

Why do governments persecute innocent people in the first place?

 

He's not innocent unless you're blaming the rape victim.

 

Everybody that has/have a voice via the mass media (mainstream and the 'alternatives') is part of the system. The past was about empires and dictators, in this post 9/11 period the same is going on, rulers that try to get control over the masses/people, by causing revolution via worsen economy/jobs, politics and the changes. Wikileaks is part of the media because Assange gets attention/a voice. You will not succeed to break through the media, while Asssange's speeches were was broadcasted via the BBC world wide (he is clearly a political revolutionary of the system, leaking documents to cause political change, this political change leads to the same as happened in the past, empire, and ofcourse another war)

The present is controled via mass media and politics, both part of the system (system is controled from the top of power/hierarchy, which is not politics, but an establishment of rulers)
Wikileaks does never digs deeper into the past (into history), because there are the answers why this period of history is going on.
Wikileaks does not 'leak' history (informing people about how empires occured/were built/created, about the dictatorships, kings, emperors, rulers)
RT, Infowars, Wikileaks, the big news media are all part of the same system, all working for the same rulers/establishment (this is how hierarchy works, this is how hsitory is written over and over again, this time is again the same history) Today these rulers have control over their setup mass media (took them over a century to create, they were the past of history, they are in control because people didn't/don't pay attention to their past, the 'royals'/rulers of/in Europe, the empires/kingdoms is were the answers are)

 

CIA's whore doesn't count as a rape victim

 

Congratulations.

You've just made the elite band on here that are only worth ignoring altogether.

What's the use when you just make stuff up...

- - - Updated - - -

Never too soon.

If I were the Doctor, and looking at his assistants, I don't think I would get much Dalek fighting done.

If you know what I mean..

 

I think some folks think Assange and WikiLeaks are doubleplusungood.

 

Please explain .

Why so ?

 

Well, I bet that both he and, for instance, Vanunu esp, have more courage, took more risks, and have been more selfless in their efforts than anyone on here.

Not so bad in my book.

 

They're trying to close him down.

 

I am afraid that the verdict on Julian Assange is still out for me. While I believe in freedom of information, there are issues of national security that must remain secret for reasons of national survival. The real question is who, and how decisions as to what information be released. I really think the American people would be very much surprised to learn what is being discussed in the board rooms of the Fortune 500. I would like to see the notes of corporate board meetings made public, but I can also think of strong Constitutional reasons why they should not be.

 

Whenever I hear those words leave the lips of the shot callers, I know they really mean their own interests, and those that they really work for.

Not us.

And not the nation.

 

I can understand your hesitancy on the term "national security." Look at what is going on in north Korea. We have a 29 year old dictator, who thinks Dennis Rodman is a superstar, trying to establish his presence on the international scene. So far he has offended everyone in the region plus the United States, and now China. Let's face it, China needs American markets. China's people are enjoying a better life than ever. Some are getting very rich over there. Like the United States, China is not going to let some "nobody dictator" rock the boat. Together the United States and China will put this North Korean prick in his place. In order to do this, the details of every strategy can not be made public before taking action. Full disclosure at this time could ruin the solution to this potentially nuclear problem. Like it or not we have to trust our government to look out for the world's best interest. Yes, the implications of screwing this up could cause the destruction of the entire planet.