Tag: war on whistleblowers

“Wolves In MAGA Hats”: Assange Details CIA’s War Against Him In First Remarks Since Gaining Freedom

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange this week traveled to Strasbourg, France for his first ever public remarks since gaining his freedom in June, after his many years-long ordeal in the Ecuadorian Embassy and then Belmarsh Prison in London. His speech was given Tuesday before the legal affairs and human rights committee of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. The assembly subsequently issued a formal resolution recognizing Assange as a ‘political prisoner’ and highlighted the chilling effect on journalism worldwide that his case caused. The US government spent years pursuing his extradition, and at one point there were even alleged assassination plans hatched by US operatives.

Among the more interesting and illuminating parts of his speech included a detailed retelling of how the CIA waged war against him personally, especially under the Trump administration, given that “Trump appointed two wolves in MAGA hats. Mike Pompeo, a Kansas Congressman and former arms executive as CIA director and William Barr, a former CIA officer as US attorney general.” Assange further talked about how the CIA has infiltrated European governments and institutions via sophisticated software later exposed by WikiLeaks, and how this unleashed further government retribution against him and whistleblowers. His full speech is below.

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Julian Assange makes first public statement since being freed: ‘I pled guilty to journalism’

Julian Assange has said that he is free after years of incarceration because he “pled guilty to journalism.”

Assange was released in June after five years in a British prison after he pleaded guilty to obtaining and publishing U.S. military secrets in a deal with Justice Department prosecutors that concluded a drawn-out legal saga.

Prior to his time in prison, he had spent seven years in self-imposed exile in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he claimed asylum on the grounds of political persecution.

Assange said since his incarceration he has observed a campaign to internationally criminalise journalism, adding: “I want to be totally clear: I am not free today because the system worked. I am free today [after] years of incarceration because I pled guilty to journalism. I pled guilty to seeking information from a source. I pled guilty to obtaining information from a source, and I pled guilty to informing the public what that information was.”

Assange’s wife Stella, who he married while in a top security London jail, said he would need some time to regain his health and sanity after his long incarceration, as well as to be with their two children who he had never seen outside of a prison.

He added: “My wife and my infant son were also targeted, a CIA asset was permanently assigned to track my wife, and instructions were given to obtain DNA from my six-month-old son’s nappy.

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Environmental Protection Agency accused of retaliating against scientists who voiced concerns about toxic chemicals

A group of government scientists say they were pressured by management at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to present new chemicals they were investigating as being safer than they actually were.

When they failed to delete evidence of the serious dangers associated with the chemicals, their managers did it themselves.

The scientists claim that after pushing back, they were hit with negative performance reviews, while some lost their positions in the new chemical division and were reassigned to other parts in the agency.

Last week, the Inspector General of the EPA announced their finding that three of the scientists’ treatment can be considered retaliation, confirming that their negative reviews and reassignments were retaliatory. They also concluded that the scientists being denied a work-related incentive that can be used to take time off or traded for cash was retaliatory as well.

The report instructed the EPA to take “appropriate corrective action” as a result, including a potential three-day minimum suspension for supervisors who violated the Whistleblower Protection Act.

In response to the report, EPA assistant administrator Michael Freedhoff sent a letter to the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention explaining that all managers would be undergoing “refresher training” on the Whistleblower Protection Act as well as scientific integrity in general and that their office would be reviewing the reports to see if additional action is needed.

Further reports are expected to be released about the scientific allegations made by the whistleblowers.

The three whistleblowers in question – Sarah Gallagher, William Irwin and Martin Phillips – maintained that the chemicals they were vetting for the agency could cause damages ranging from neurological problems and miscarriages to cancer.

The EPA appears to be trying to shift the blame for what happened to former President Donald Trump as the incident took place during his administration. They say that the agency was under pressure to push chemicals through the approval process more quickly.

“The events covered by these reports began during the previous administration when the political leadership placed intense pressure on both career managers and scientists in EPA’s new chemicals program to more quickly review and approve new chemicals,” the agency claimed.

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EPA Scientists Said They Were Pressured to Downplay Harms From Chemicals. A Watchdog Found They Were Retaliated Against.

More than three years ago, a small group of government scientists came forward with disturbing allegations.

During President Donald Trump’s administration, they said, their managers at the Environmental Protection Agency began pressuring them to make new chemicals they were vetting seem safer than they really were. They were encouraged to delete evidence of chemicals’ harms, including cancer, miscarriage and neurological problems, from their reports — and in some cases, they said, their managers deleted the information themselves.

After the scientists pushed back, they received negative performance reviews and three of them were removed from their positions in the EPA’s division of new chemicals and reassigned to jobs elsewhere in the agency.

On Wednesday, the EPA inspector general announced that it had found that some of the treatment experienced by three of those scientists — Martin Phillips, Sarah Gallagher and William Irwin — amounted to retaliation.

Three reports issued by the inspector general confirmed that the scientists’ negative performance reviews as well as a reassignment and the denial of an award that can be used for cash or time off were retaliatory. They also detailed personal attacks by supervisors, who called them “stupid,” “piranhas” and “pot-stirrers.”

The reports called on the EPA to take “appropriate corrective action” in response to the findings. In one case, the inspector general noted that supervisors who violate the Whistleblower Protection Act should be suspended for at least three days.

The reports focus only on the retaliation claims. The inspector general is expected to issue reports in the future about the whistleblowers’ scientific allegations.

In an email sent to the staff of the Office of Chemical Safety and Pollution Prevention after the reports were released, EPA Assistant Administrator Michal Freedhoff wrote that the office plans to hold a “refresher training on both scientific integrity and the Whistleblower Protection Act” for all managers in the office. Freedhoff also wrote that the office is “reviewing the reports to determine whether additional action may be necessary.”

In a statement to ProPublica, the EPA tied the problems laid out in the report to Trump. “The events covered by these reports began during the previous administration when the political leadership placed intense pressure on both career managers and scientists in EPA’s new chemicals program to more quickly review and approve new chemicals,” the agency wrote, going on to add that the “work environment has been transformed under Administrator Michael Regan’s leadership.”

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Whistleblowers Reveal Homeland Security’s Sinister Plot to Drive Them to Suicide for Exposing Border Agency’s Federal DNA Collection Failures

In a bombshell revelation, whistleblowers within Homeland Security have accused the agency of actively retaliating against them for exposing a systemic failure to comply with a federal DNA collection law.

The whistleblowers have risked their careers to reveal that U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), a division of DHS, has systematically failed to collect the DNA of illegal immigrants as mandated by the DNA Fingerprint Act. This law, passed in 2005 with bipartisan support, mandates the collection of DNA samples from non-U.S. persons detained for immigration violations.

This failure has allowed violent criminals to evade detection and commit further crimes on American soil.

In an exclusive interview with Catherine Herridge, the whistleblowers detailed a chilling campaign of retaliation, including demotions, the stripping of law enforcement credentials, and the creation of a hostile work environment. According to the whistleblowers, the agency’s intent was clear: to silence them at any cost.

The whistleblowers, who collectively have over seven decades of law enforcement experience and held TOP SECRET clearances—Mark Jones (20 years), Fred Wynn (18 years), and Michael Taylor (31 years)—assert that the agency’s non-compliance has directly endangered American lives.

In their letter to the DHS Inspector General, they stated that out of nearly 1.7 million encounters with illegal immigrants in FY 2022, only about 37% resulted in DNA collection. Alarmingly, this figure dropped to just over 31% in Q2 FY23.

I was punished under the Espionage Act. Why wasn’t Joe Biden?

In February, I was released from federal prison, having served 33 months for a violation of the Espionage Act, after I disclosed classified information detailing what I saw as the high moral cost of America’s drone assassination program. Before having time to adjust to the world beyond concrete walls, I was struck by the news of Special Counsel Robert Hur’s report [PDF] wherein he lays out the reasons he decided not to charge President Joe Biden for alleged violations of the same law.

I am always encouraged to hear whenever the Justice Department decides against using the Espionage Act. By the time the ink of the 1917 law had dried, it was already being used to silence voices of dissent across the country. Thousands were rounded up and summarily convicted for their opposition to America’s involvement in the bloodiest conflict in human history at the time.

While some of the worst aspects of the law have since been amended, the Espionage Act remains the premier criminal statute for prosecuting government sources who rely upon the press to expose secret government abuses to the public. The decision by Justice Department officials to go after government whistleblowers with the Espionage Act has been a part of a concerted effort to signal clearly that the next person who dares speak with a reporter could find themselves facing decades of incarceration.

After reading Special Counsel Hur’s report, I was curious to find the similarities between my case and that of the investigation into the president. According to the report, President Biden kept classified information outside of a secure facility at his home and office – as did I. The president later spoke with a reporter about the classified information he retained – again, as did I.

Both President Biden and I expressed to our respective reporters the concerns we had about official US policy – his about the failed 2009 surge in Afghanistan (as vice president) and mine about the consequences of that policy. So why the decision to prosecute one and not the other?

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Suppression of Dissent

The fragile facade of transgender ideology has cracked over the past year. Whistleblowers from within the medical profession have emerged to provide damning evidence that doctors are performing procedures based on shoddy scientific evidence under the label of “gender-affirming care,” as outlined in the WPATH Files and the Cass Review. Former patients who received “gender-affirming” care as adolescents have now detransitioned and are suing the doctors who cut off their breasts and put them on hormones that permanently damaged their bodies. Businesses ranging from Target to NFL teams are scaling back or eliminating Pride-themed merchandise and promotions. The public, too, is increasingly turning against transgender ideology. The tide is shifting.

The Left has adopted a new approach in response: political persecution of those speaking out against trans dogma. Earlier this month, the Department of Justice indicted Eithan Haim, a surgeon at Texas Children’s Hospital (TCH) who exposed the hospital’s secret continued use of irreversible sex-change procedures on minors after having publicly stated that it had stopped. By indicting Haim, the DOJ is seeking to silence future whistleblowers and to signal its disregard for the mounting evidence that gender-affirming care is harmful, and often irreversible.

Haim had anonymously sent City Journal’s Christopher Rufo documents proving that doctors at TCH were still prescribing hormone replacement therapy drugs and implanting puberty blockers in minor-age patients more than a year after the hospital announced it had stopped its pediatric gender-affirming care program. A month after Rufo published his article in May 2023, federal agents from the Department of Health and Human Services knocked on Haim’s door to let him know that he was a “potential target” in an investigation of alleged violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). This week, an unsealed indictment revealed that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas is charging Haim with four felony counts of violating HIPAA. A press release on the indictment alleges that Haim accessed patient information “under false pretenses and with intent to cause malicious harm to TCH.”

According to a letter written by Haim’s lawyers, Assistant U.S. Attorney Tina Ansari admitted that she hadn’t reviewed the purported evidence against Haim and was instead relying on what FBI agents told her. In the same discussion, Ansari insisted that the documents Haim sent to Rufo included children’s names, but nothing in the documents Rufo saw identified any individuals. All were redacted. The prosecutor then asked Haim to admit wrongdoing, telling him that he should apologize to the families of the children who received transgender medical interventions at TCH if he wanted her to help him avoid a felony prosecution. When this tactic failed, Ansari intimated that the families would sue if she didn’t bring criminal charges.

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Assange Freed, but Supporters Say Guilty Plea a ‘Big Blow to Freedom of the Press’

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange agreed to a plea deal with the U.S. government and was released on bail, leaving Belmarsh maximum security prison and the United Kingdom (U.K.) on Monday morning WikiLeaks announced on X, formerly known as Twitter.

His wife, Stella Assange, an attorney who has worked for years for his release, celebrated the deal on X.

“This is the result of a global campaign that spanned grass-roots organisers, press freedom campaigners, legislators and leaders from across the political spectrum, all the way to the United Nations,” WikiLeaks wrote. “This created the space for a long period of negotiations with the US Department of Justice, leading to a deal that has not yet been formally finalised.”

A federal judge must still approve the plea deal.

Assange is en route to appear Wednesday in a U.S. federal court in Saipan, the capital of the Northern Mariana Islands near Australia. He is scheduled to return to Australia after the hearing.

In exchange for his release, Assange agreed to plead guilty to a single felony count of illegally obtaining and disclosing national security material in violation of the U.S. Espionage Act, The New York Times reported.

Under the terms of the agreement, Justice Department prosecutors will seek a 62-month sentence, which is equal to the amount of time Assange has served at Belmarsh while he fought his extradition to the U.S. The deal would credit that period as time served, which would allow Assange to return home, according to CNN.

The deal would also disallow him from later making any claim that his long prison time in Belmarsh, where he was confined to a cell for 23 hours a day, was unjust, according to journalist Glenn Greenwald.

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JULIAN ASSANGE IS FINALLY FREE

Julian Assange has agreed to a plea deal with the United States. He left Belmarsh on Monday and is headed to Australia, WikiLeaks said.

“He was granted bail by the High Court in London and was released at Stansted airport during the afternoon, where he boarded a plane and departed the UK,” WikiLeaks said in a tweet early Tuesday morning London time.   

Stella Assange, tweeted: “Julian is free!!!! Words cannot express our immense gratitude to YOU- yes YOU, who have all mobilised for years and years to make this come true. THANK YOU. tHANK YOU. THANK YOU.”

Assange was released as a result of a plea deal with the United States, the BBC reported. The British national broadcaster said:

“According to CBS, the BBC’s US partner, Assange will spend no time in US custody and will receive credit for the time spent incarcerated in the UK.

Assange will return to Australia, according to a letter from the justice department.

The deal – which will see him plead guilty to one charge – is expected to be finalised in a court in the Northern Mariana Islands on Wednesday, 26 June.” 

The New York Times reported that Assange agreed to the one count of the Espionage Act — “conspiracy to disseminate national defense information” —  in exchange for a five year sentence, which the U.S. agreed had already been served on remand in Belmarsh.

WikiLeaks released this video of Assange walking onto the pane on his way out of London, where he was imprisoned for five years. 

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