Exposed: U.S. May Have Designated Julian Assange and WikiLeaks An "Enemy of the State"

[rachel1]

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DemocracyNow.org - Documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange may have been designated an "enemy of the state" by the United States. U.S. Air Force counter-intelligence documents show military personnel who contact WikiLeaks or its supporters may be at risk of being charged with "communicating with the enemy" — a military crime that carries a maximum sentence of death. We speak to attorney Michael Ratner, president emeritus of the Center for Constitutional Rights and a legal advisor to Assange and WikiLeaks.

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[struggle4progress]

1. Scoop has a link to pdf of the actual FOIA release: it doesn't seem to show what some folk claim:

http://img.scoop.co.nz/media/pdfs/1209/AssangeWikiLeaksEnemyUSAFFOI.pdf

It seems to be some records from a (now-closed) 2011 investigation into a military person stationed in the UK

[midnight]

2. The piece of paper you post has is addressed to a Ms. which indicates a female, and Michael Ratzner

Wikileaks council indicates that a Female analyst with high security clearance triggers an investigation 104D. This is a number assigned to the communicating with the enemies.... Hence the concern of the enemies list...

[struggle4progress]

3. The 104 charge "communicating with the enemy" is broadly drawn: to establish the charge, it is

necessary only to show that the accused personnel deliberately engaged in behavior that could communicate information to the enemy, even indirectly; and it is not necessary to show that the enemy actually received the information

So (for example) the military charge, that Bradley Manning violated rules against communicating with the enemy, is based on the idea that Manning knowingly transferred information to Wikileaks -- an organization that would widely disseminate that information, with the foreseeable result that said information could be received by the enemy: to prove this charge against Manning, it is not necessary to label Wikileaks as an enemy of the US, nor is it necessary to prove that either Manning or the Wikileaks directly transferred the information to any enemy of the US


... The Taliban has issued a chilling warning to Afghans, alleged in secret US military files leaked on the internet to have worked as informers for the Nato-led coalition, telling Channel 4 News "US spies" will be hunted down and punished ...
Taliban hunt Wikileaks outed Afghan informers
By Jonathan Miller
Updated on 30 July 2010
http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/uk/taliban+hunt+wikileaks+outed+afghan+informers/3727667.html