New documents show COINTELPRO operations aganst WikiLeaks

New top-secret documents show the FBI is targeting Wikileaks, as well as other activist groups. The program was revealed through papers obtained by whistleblower Edward Snowden. They reveal the FBI created a broad campaign that included foreign agencies. These efforts were aimed at Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, as well as his “human network.” In addition to that organization, federal officials also kept a close watch on Pirate Bay and the hacker group anonymous.

In 2010, President Obama asked foreign leaders to file charges against Julian Assange for publishing military logs from Afghanistan. The NSA also considered naming Wikileaks as a “malicious foreign actor.” This would have given the agency extensive new powers to listen in on group activities.

British spy agency GCHQ also participated in the program. That group watched visitors to the Wikileaks Web site. The group was able to record IP addresses in real time. They also made note of the search terms viewers used to reach the site.

The U.S. Army developed a plan to destroy Wikileaks, back in 2008. Documents profiling COINTELPRO efforts against the group were published by Alexa O’Brien.

The journalist wrote, “I am publishing for the first time, two court orders that detail the US Department of Justice’s surveillance of a Jacob Appelbaum, a WikiLeaks associate, security expert and journalist, who has recently collaborated on articles in Der Spiegel detailing NSA surveillance.”

FBI counterintelligence programs, called COINTELPRO, have been around for decades. These efforts include eavesdropping on communications, watching targets as they travel, and ruining reputations of public figures. Martin Luther King Jr. was subject to these tactics in the 1960′s. Later, other critics of the Vietnam War came under watch by the agency. Communist and socialist groups, as well as civil rights organizations were victims of COINTELPRO programs.

Assange said “News that the NSA planned these operations at the level of its Office of the General Counsel is especially troubling. Today, we call on the White House to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the extent of the NSA’s criminal activity against the media, including WikiLeaks, its staff, its associates and its supporters.”
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