Wikileaks Threatened with Criminal
Prosecution by the BND
By Tom Burghardt
Tue, 23 Dec 2008
The global whistleblowing website Wikileaks has been threatened with
criminal prosecution by the head of Germany's spy agency Ernst Uhrlau, President
of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), if they do not remove all "files or
reports related to the BND".
According to a Wikileaks press release, "the spy chief claims to
have already engaged the BND's legal machinery."
Threats against the journalists were triggered according to Wikileaks,
by the publication of my article, "The End of the Affair? The BND,
CIA and Kosovo's Deep State," (Antifascist Calling, December 7, 2008) on
their website.
I did not seek to become part of the story, nevertheless Uhrlau's threats
cannot go unchallenged. The censorship and prior restraint he demands are toxic
to a free society.
In addition to my piece, the "files or reports" which the German spook
insists they remove is a 2005, 25-page BND dossier on corrupt senior Kosovo
politicians as well as unredacted pages from the Bundestag's 2006 Schaefer Report pertaining to
illegal BND domestic operations targeting journalists and left-wing political
organizations in Germany.
In denouncing this unwarranted provocation Wikileaks said: "The
BND, like the CIA, is forbidden by law to engage in domestic activities. Yet the
threats, which were made in German as well as in English, hold no legal power
outside of Germany. They must be assumed to be an attempt to engage Wikileaks
via its German component--or does Mr. Uhrlau suggest it is now BND policy to
kidnap foreign journalists and try them before German courts?"
My article explored the parapolitical connections to a recent scandal in
which three BND officers working under deep cover, were arrested and deported
from Kosovo. What sparked the scandal was the arrest of one of the operatives
when he was caught photographing the headquarters of the European Union Special
Representative in Pristina, bombed under mysterious circumstances November
14.
The affair exposed the agency's extensive covert operations in Kosovo through
a cut-out, the "private security firm" Logistics-Coordination & Assessment
Services (LCAS). Information on LCAS was in the public domain after exposure by
German investigative reporters writing in Spiegel International.
Compromising notebooks and electronic files were subsequently seized by Kosovan
authorities.
While the "evidence" presented linking the agents to the blast was slim at
best, one cannot rule out that Thaci's intelligence service, with prompting by
some "other government agency (OGA)," a foreign service with close ties to the
corrupt statelet perhaps, exploited the agents' poor tradecraft to roll-up their
operation because of fears of what they might have discovered.
I speculated whether the operatives were convenient foils of a plot hatched
by the Kosovan government in cahoots with the CIA over BND disclosure of
extensive links amongst Thaci and his henchmen to international criminal
syndicates involved in the global drugs, arms and sordid trade in human beings.
Revelations which Thaci and the CIA would prefer never come to light. I
speculated that one motive for rolling-up the BND's operation may have been that
the seized operative's notebook contained information that Camp Bondsteel
continues to serve as a CIA "black site" where prisoners are illegally detained
and tortured.
Additionally, I cited Wikileaks documents that revealed the BND's illegal
manipulation of the media to influence domestic coverage of the spy agency
through the infiltration of Focus Magazine as well as intelligence
operations that sought to gain knowledge of journalists' confidential
sources.
Wikileaks German correspondent Daniel Schmitt and Investigative Editor
Julian Assange, said that the Schaefer Report, "in general shows the
extent to which the collaboration of journalists with intelligence agencies has
become common and to what dimensions consent is manufactured in the interests of
those involved."
Following Schmitt and Assange's reporting, one must now add the criminal
lengths that unaccountable spy agencies will go to prevent journalists from
exposing their dirty and illegal operations.
Wikileaks also disclosed and posted a document that
revealed the IP addresses "of an internally distributed mail from German
telecommunications company T-Systems (Deutsche Telekom)" containing over two
dozen IP "address ranges" used by the BND.
I cited this document in relation to a Berlin internet prostitution service
("Belle-Escort.de") and said the following: "While the document does not spell
out who was running the sex-for-hire website, one can't help but wonder whether
Balkan-linked organized crime syndicates, including Kosovan and Albanian sex
traffickers are working in tandem with the BND in return for that agency turning
a blind eye to the sordid trade in kidnapped women."
That question, as well as many others, is still unanswered.
My article cited open-source media reports from Spiegel International, the World Socialist Website, Mother Jones Magazine, as well as
the work of scholars and investigative journalists Misha Glenny, Christopher
Deliso, Michel Chossudovsky and Peter Dale Scott. Are journalists and
researchers now expected to submit copy to spooky censors for appropriate
redactions before publishing their findings? I think not.
I stand by my conclusions and denounce Uhrlau's threats as an attack on the
rights of investigative- and citizen journalists to reveal information that
agencies such as the BND would rather never see the light of day.
Wikileaks should be commended, not attacked, for their brave
documentary project and supported by everyone who upholds the rule of law, a
free press and an open, democratic society.
As the heroic Israeli journalist Amira Hass told The
Independent's Robert Fisk "our job is to monitor the centers
of power," not shill for them.
Visit
Tom Burghardt's Website Anti-fascist Calling!
Tom Burghardt is a researcher and activist based in the San
Francisco Bay Area. In addition to publishing in Covert Action Quarterly
and Global Research, an independent
research and media group of writers, scholars, journalists and activists based
in Montreal, his articles can be read on Dissident Voice, The
Intelligence Daily, Pacific Free Press and the
whistleblowing website Wikileaks. He is the editor of Police State America: U.S. Military "Civil
Disturbance" Planning, distributed by AK Press.
http://www.inteldaily.com/news/173/ARTICLE/9068/2008-12-23.html