F. William Engdahl: Something stinks about Wikileaks …

Mr. F. William Engdahl also mentions this in his article:

Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange on 9/11 and Bilderberg:

What about 9/11?

“I’m constantly annoyed that people are distracted by false conspiracies such as 9/11, when all around we provide evidence of real conspiracies, for war or mass financial fraud.”

What about the Bilderberg conference?

“That is vaguely conspiratorial, in a networking sense. We have published their meeting notes.”


f-william-engdahl
F. William Engdahl

F. William Engdahl: Since the dramatic release of a US military film of a US airborne shooting of unarmed journalists in Iraq, Wiki-Leaks has gained global notoriety and credibility as a daring website that releases sensitive material to the public from whistleblowers within various governments. Their latest “coup” involved alleged leak of thousands of pages of supposedly sensitive documents regarding US informers within the Taliban in Afghanistan and their ties to senior people linked to Pakistan’s ISI military intelligence. The evidence suggests however that far from an honest leak, it is a calculated disinformation to the gain of the US and perhaps Israeli and Indian intelligence and a cover-up of the US and Western role in drug trafficking out of Afghanistan.

Since the posting of the Afghan documents some days ago the Obama White House has given the leaks credibility by claiming further leaks pose a threat to US national security. Yet details of the papers reveals little that is sensitive. The one figure most prominently mentioned, General (Retired) Hamid Gul, former head of the Pakistani military intelligence agency, ISI, is the man who during the 1980s coordinated the CIA-financed Mujahideen guerrilla war in Afghanistan against the Soviet regime there. In the latest Wikileaks documents, Gul is accused of regularly meeting Al Qaeda and Taliban leading people and orchestrating suicide attacks on NATO forces in Afghanistan.

The leaked documents also claim that Osama bin Laden, who was reported dead three years ago by the late Pakistan candidate Benazir Bhutto on BBC, was still alive, conveniently keeping the myth alove for the Obama Administration War on Terror at a point when most US Americans had forgotten the original reason the Bush Administration allegedly invaded Afghanistan to pursue the Saudi Bin Laden for the 9/11 attacks.

Demonizing Pakistan?

The naming of Gul today as a key liaison to the Afghan “Taliban” forms part of a larger pattern of US and British recent efforts to demonize the current Pakistan regime as a key part of the problems in Afghanistan. Such a demonization greatly boosts the position of recent US military ally, India. Furthermore, Pakistan is the only muslim country possessing atomic weapons. The Israeli Defense Forces and the Israeli Mossad intelligence agency reportedly would very much like to change that. A phoney campaign against the politically outspoken Gul via Wikileaks could be part of that geopolitical effort.

The London Financial Times says Gul’s name appears in about 10 of roughly 180 classified US files that allege Pakistan’s intelligence service supported Afghan militants fighting Nato forces. Gul told the newspaper the US has lost the war in Afghanistan, and that the leak of the documents would help the Obama administration deflect blame by suggesting that Pakistan was responsible. Gul told the paper, “I am a very favourite whipping boy of America. They can’t imagine the Afghans can win wars on their own. It would be an abiding shame that a 74-year-old general living a retired life manipulating the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan results in the defeat of America.”

Notable, in light of the latest Afghan Wikileaks documents, is the spotlight on the 74-year-old Gul. As I wrote in a previous piece, Warum Afghanistan? Teil VI: Washingtons Kriegsstrategie in Zentralasien, published in June, Gul has been outspoken about the role of the US military in smuggling Afghan heroin out of the country via the top-security Manas Air Base in Kyrgyzstan.

As well, in a UPI interview on September 26, 2001, two weeks after the 9/11 attacks, Gul stated, in reply to the question who did Black September 11?, “Mossad and its accomplices. The US spends $40 billion a year on its 11 intelligence agencies. That’s $400 billion in 10 years. Yet the Bush Administration says it was taken by surprise. I don’t believe it. Within 10 minutes of the second twin tower being hit in the World Trade Center CNN said Osama bin Laden had done it. That was a planned piece of disinformation by the real perpetrators…”

Gul is clearly not well liked in Washington. He claims his request for travel visas to the UK and to the USA have repeatedly been denied. Making Gul into the arch enemy would suit some in Washington nicely.

Who is Julian Assange?

Wikileaks founder and self-described “Editor-in-chief,” Julian Assange, is a mysterious 29-year-old Australian about whom little is known. He has suddenly become a prominent public figure offering to mediate with the White House over the leaks. Following the latest leaks, Assange told Der Spiegel — one of three outlets with which he shared material from the most recent leak — that the documents he had unearthed would “change our perspective on not only the war in Afghanistan, but on all modern wars.” He stated in the same interview that “I enjoy crushing bastards.” Wikileaks, founded in 2006 by Assange, has no fixed home and Assange claims he “lives in airports these days.”

Yet a closer examination of the public position of Assange on one of the most controversial issues of recent decades, the forces behind the September 11, 2001, attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center shows him to be curiously establishment. When the Belfast Telegraph interviewed him on July 19, he stated, “Any time people with power plan in secret, they are conducting a conspiracy. So there are conspiracies everywhere. There are also crazed conspiracy theories. It’s important not to confuse these two….”

What about 9/11?: “I’m constantly annoyed that people are distracted by false conspiracies such as 9/11, when all around we provide evidence of real conspiracies, for war or mass financial fraud.” What about the Bilderberg Conference?: “That is vaguely conspiratorial, in a networking sense. We have published their meeting notes.”

That statement from a person who has built a reputation on being anti-establishment is more than notable. First, as thousands of physicists, engineers, military professionals and airline pilots have testified, the idea that 19 barely-trained Arabs armed with box-cutters could divert four US commercial jets and execute the near-impossible strikes on the Twin Towers and Pentagon over a time period of 93 minutes with not one Air Force NORAD military interception, is beyond belief. Precisely who executed the professional attack is a matter for genuine unbiased international inquiry.

Notable for Mr Assange’s blunt denial of any sinister 9/11 conspiracy is the statement in a BBC interview by former US Senator, Bob Graham, who chaired the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence when it performed its Joint Inquiry into 9/11. Graham told BBC, “I can just state that within 9/11 there are too many secrets, that is information that has not been made available to the public for which there are specific tangible credible answers and that that withholding of those secrets has eroded public confidence in their government as it relates to their own security.”

BBC narrator: “Senator Graham found that the cover-up led to the heart of the administration.”

Bob Graham: “I called the White House and talked with Ms. Rice and said, ‘Look, we’ve been told we’re gonna get cooperation in this inquiry, and she said she’d look into it, and nothing happened.'”

Of course, the Bush Administration was able to use the 9/11 attacks to launch its War on Terrorism in Afghanistan and then Iraq, a point Assange conveniently omits.

For his part, General Gul claims that US intelligence orchestrated the Wikileaks on Afghanistan to find a scapegoat, Gul, to blame.

Conveniently, as if on cue, British Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron, on a state visit to India, lashed out at the alleged role of Pakistan in supporting Taliban in Afghanistan, conveniently lending further credibility to the Wikileaks story.

The real story of Wikileaks has clearly not yet been told.

F. William Engdahl
[email protected]

Published: Wednesday, August 11, 2010
F. William Engdahl

More on Wikileaks:

Pentagon Demands WikiLeaks To Hand Over All Documents Or Else … “We will figure out what alternatives we have to compel them to do the right thing.”

The Afghanistan War Logs: Wikileaks Condemned By White House Over War Documents

Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange on 9/11 and Bilderberg

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange emerges from hiding, next big leak to be of the ‘calibre’ of publishing information about the way the top secret Echelon system had been used

Pentagon Hunts WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange

President Obama Has Already Outdone Every Previous President In Prosecuting Whistleblowers

No Secrets! WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange’s Mission For Total Transparency

Left-Wing Icon Daniel Ellsberg: ‘Obama Deceives the Public’

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange has passport confiscated in Australia

WikiLeaks Plans to Post Video Showing US Massacre of Afghani Civilians

In case you want to know what the US government response was to this video:

WikiLeaks Release: Classified US Military Video Depicts The Indiscriminate Slaying of Over a Dozen People in Iraq – Incl. Two Reuters News Staff

Here is what Defense Secretary Robert Gates had to say:

Gates: WikiLeaks Video ‘Painful To See’ But Won’t Have ‘Lasting’ Impact (Huffington Post):

“And, you know, we’ve investigated it very thoroughly. And it’s unfortunate,” he added. “It’s clearly not helpful. But by the same token, I think it should not have any lasting consequences.”

The War on WikiLeaks … and Why It Matters

US Must Stop Spying on WikiLeaks

Pentagon Targets WikiLeaks Whistleblowers

Pentagon Adds WikiLeaks to The List of Enemies Threatening National Security

US Army considered attack on Wikileaks

Germany Prepares For Internet Censorship

Germany muzzles WikiLeaks

4 thoughts on “F. William Engdahl: Something stinks about Wikileaks …”

  1. Something stinks about F. William Engdahl.

    Just because someone hasn’t yet gone down the rabbit hole of 911 truth doesn’t make him an intelligence operative. I don’t see any contradiction in Gul working against the Soviets then using those same contacts to work against the U.S.
    Why is his word more reliable than the information published by Wikileaks? Do you think Julian Assange just makes this stuff up??

    Your analysis is full of straw man arguments and doesn’t make any logical sense other than as a personal attack on Julian Assange. Who is not 29 years old btw, he’s 39. Much is known about him and has been written about him. He reluctantly came forward to be the face of Wikileaks knowing he was going to end up a punching bag. Fortunately he’s not after popularity or even after people agreeing with him or his methods. His moral philosophy is very highly developed and (at least so far) I would trust his decisions about who should know what over the decisions of any government bureaucracy that exists today.

    If my logic worked like William Engdahl’s then I would discount all of what I read on globalresearch due to this one article about Mr. Assange. Fortunately I judge each article individually and until I see a pattern of disinformation I will continue to do so.

    Reply
  2. @woga, you’re clueless. Do you personally *know* Assange? No? Didn’t think so.

    There’s a healthy level of scepticism regarding Assange and Wikileaks in general on the blogs and elsewhere, and it doesn’t necessarily dictate that one has to be a “9/11 truther” in order to qualify as a viable critical thinker (although that wouldn’t hurt, considering the continuing abject irrationality of the government’s formal narrative regarding what actually happened that day 9 years ago).

    No, the reality of the situation is that, considering the overwhelming information, logistical and enforcement advantages that the government/Establishment have online and off, a simple website and lone voice PR face of it couldn’t possibly get away with this sort of repeated leakage of supposedly highly classified material.

    REAL threats to the govt. and its military are swiftly ‘taken care of’. In other words, Assange would be ‘disappeared’ were he a viable threat, rather than getting pristine face time on every global media outlet on earth. No, more than likely, Assange/Wilileaks are a coordinated distraction campaign, dressed up as genuine skullduggery, so that bushy-eyed idealists like yourself can continue to ‘champion’ (IE be distracted by) someone in the Zeitgeist that’s ‘fighting the power’.

    Listen: Have you ever continued thinking *critically* regarding current affairs?

    Reply

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