The CIA under the Trump
administration was plotting to
kidnap and possibly assassinate
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
Now, this was something that
emboldened the CIA,
especially under former Secretary
of State Mike Pompeo's leadership.
Pompeo was certainly targeting
Assange in a far more aggressive
way, especially compared to the
Obama administration, I'll get to
those differences in just a second.
But according to this explosive
report from Yahoo News, some senior
officials inside the CIA and
the Trump administration
discussed killing Assange.
Going so far as to request sketches
or options for how to assassinate
him, discussions over kidnapping or
killing Assange occurred at
the highest levels of the Trump
administration, former senior Intel
counter intelligence officials,
now there seem to be no boundaries.
And the fact that there were no
boundaries was very much something
that was pushed by Mike Pompeo.
Now, these plans for
an all out war against Assange were
sparked by WikiLeaks.
Ongoing publication of
extraordinarily sensitive CIA
hacking tools known collectively as
"Vault 7, which the agency
ultimately concluded represented,
quote, The largest data loss in CIA
history.
Now, just to give you a little more
context about vault seven,
it came in dozens of parts on
the WikiLeaks website,
and it essentially informed
the American people and the world
about how the CIA would identify
certain security vulnerabilities
in the technology that we use
every day, things like iPhones.
And rather than help to protect the
privacy and security of Americans,
I know it's laughable to even,
[LAUGH] >> Propose that
The CIA itself took advantage of
those vulnerabilities in order to
spy on unsuspecting individuals,
now WikiLeaks obtained that
classified information and
then proceeded to publish it.
They've redacted certain things,
of course anything that would pose
a threat to national security, but
none of that even matters,
because The American government
was incredibly embarrassed.
Pompeo was livid.
And so now we get to Pompeo,
Pompeo asked a small group of
senior CIA officials to, or
officers I should say, to figure
out the art of the possible when it
came to WikiLeaks said another
former senior CIA official,
he said nothing's off limits.
Don't censor yourself,
I need operational ideas from you
all worry about the lawyers in
Washington and listen, in order for
that to happen.
There needs to be a very specific
classification regarding Wikileaks
and what is that classification?
Well, in order for the CIA to do
anything questionable unilaterally,
meaning without any oversight
from the federal government,
the Offending group or
offending person needs to be
identified as an offensive counter
intelligence group or person and
that's exactly what Pompeo did in
this press conference.
This is from 2017 watch.
>> Individuals, such as
Julian Assange and Edward Snowden
seek to use that information to
make a name for themselves.
As long as they make a splash they
care nothing about the lives they
put at risk or the damage they
cause to national security.
WikiLeaks walks like a hostile
intelligence service and talks like
a hostile Intelligence Service and
has encouraged its followers to
find jobs at the CIA,
In order to obtain intelligence.
It's time to call out Wikileaks for
what it really is a non state
hostile Intelligence Service,
often abetted by state actors like
Russia.
>> A non state hostile counter
Intelligence Service,
those were the words that Pompeo
needed to utter.
In order to give the CIA unchecked
power to go after Julian Assange,
and that's what they attempted to
do, and now we're learning
the details about what they tried,
So we'll get some more details in
a second, but Jank.
>> So is it theoretically possible
that someone could be a foreign
agent who's actually taking CIA
material and making it public under
the guise of journalism I can
think of an extreme case where
it is theoretically possible.
We have the nuclear codes, okay.
And it has no journalistic value
other than the fact that you could
disable the nuclear codes or maybe
launch the nukes with the nuclear
codes, but we publish them anyway.
All right, maybe in that literally
nuclear case, I could see it.
But it would have to be near that
extreme.
So, in this case, in vote seven,
it looks like there's plenty of
reasons that this is information
that is relevant to
the American public.
If it turns out your iPhone can get
tapped, as an example, and
the CIA knows of a loophole, and
instead of closing it so
that your private information won't
be hacked by Either
just nefarious forces robbers, etc.
or foreign governments or
our government, and they sit on it
because they're thinking they
might want to spy in on you.
>> Bingo.
>> Is that relevant public
information?
Hell yes.
Is that just doing that so
that other governments can win?
No, no that's real
journalism, okay?
Now, look Assange has done some
things that where I go why are you
doing that?
That doesn't look like journalism
to me which is offering up $100,000
bounties for stories.
Although somebody is going to that
information that you're
looking for.
Whether it raises a different
question, but that is not normal
journalistic practices, and
I think he gets himself into
trouble by doing that, and
I don't think it's necessary.
I don't know or
care about his motivations.
All I care about is,
is it actual journalism or
isn't it, in this case it is.
But by the way, guys,
even if it wasn't,
you're going to murder him.
I mean, these goons they're back.
Like in the in the battle days of
CIA going around going, things that
are opposed to us, or corporations,
or anything that keeps us in power,
let's just murder them.
And so, now in the Trump era,
apparently they were back to
murder.
>> Yeah, I mean, I think a lot of
that hasn't really changed.
I mean, the multiple attempts to
orchestrate a coup in Venezuela is
an example, and I'm actually
fascinated with the incompetence by
today's CIA, because back in
the past, they were ruthless.
And so,
The competence is a positive thing
because I don't think that the CIA
should be orchestrating coups in
other countries.
But nonetheless,
in regard to this explosive story,
it's fascinating to see just
the significant difference between
the Trump administration and
the Obama administration,
and remember Obama
was not friendly to whistleblowers.
>> But it was terrible.
>> Obama's foreign policy
was awful, there's no question.
But in comes the Trump
administration, with Mike Pompeo
was Secretary of State and
he specifically puts this mission
to get Julian Assange on overdrive.
So, WikiLeaks was a complete
obsession of Pompeo's.
After Vault 7, Pompeo and
Deputy CIA Director Gina Haspel
wanted vengeance on Assange.
And that's according to a Trump
administration national
security official.
Also Pompeo and others at
the agency, here's some specifics,
proposed abducting Assange
from the British embassy.
>> Jesus.
>> And surreptitiously bringing him
back to the United States via
a third country a process known as
rendition.
The idea was to break into
the embassy, drag Assange out and
bring him to where we want, said
a former intelligence official.
Now, when you look at the Obama
administration, the question of
whether Julian Assange can be
considered a journalist, or
whether Wikileaks can be considered
a journalistic publication,
was front and
center in their decision making.
Which of course, didn't really
matter that much to Pompeo and
to the Trump administration.
Now, let me go back to the Obama
administration and
the type of negotiations and talks
that were happening back then.
So, there was a fundamental change
on how WikiLeaks was viewed,
said a former senior
counterintelligence official.
When it come to prosecuting
Assange, something the Obama
administration had declined to do.
The Trump White House had
a different approach, said a former
Justice Department official,
nobody in that crew was going to be
too broken up
about the First Amendment issues.
So for all the First Amendment
warriors out there who love
Donald Trump, love conservatives
and think that they actually value
the Constitution, our first
amendment rights, where are you at?
But let me give you more.
Again going back to the Obama
administration, top intelligence
officials lobbied the Obama White
House to redefine Wikileaks and
some high profile journalists known
as information brokers.
Which would have opened up the use
of more.
So they wanted to reclassify,
essentially, Wikipedia, sorry,
WikiLeaks as information brokers
rather than journalists.
And so, in order to do that,
that would have opened up the use
of more investigative
tools against Wikileaks,
potentially paving the way.
For their prosecution, according to
a former official, it was a step in
the direction of showing a court.
If we got that far,
that we were dealing with agents of
a foreign power.
A former senior counterintelligence
official said, now look,
this not only impacts those
who work at WikiLeaks,
it impacts journalists altogether.
Because if you are a journalist who
reports on a leak,
a whistleblower has provided you
a classified information.
Well, if we set a precedent where
we prosecute and demonize WikiLeaks
and Julian Assange that gets
extended to other reporters and
other journalists.
>> So guys,
this is an insane conversation.
They're like, we were thinking of
kidnapping him from the British
embassy, and then, we're going to
put them in a burlap bag.
Well, we're going to go take him
somewhere and dismember him,
whoever was in the Trump
administration, they approved of
a journalist being dismembered
by the Saudi government.
>> That's literal [CROSSTALK]
>> To help cover up.
>> Yeah, it's a fact.
Trump said,
we make a lot of money off them,
and he let them go.
We know for a fact that they
chopped up Khashoggi,
was a Washington Post columnist.
And now, here's the American
government saying, we're thinking
about murdering Assange.
Does it matter too much, if they
were going to dismember him, were
they going to gouge his eyes out,
what were they going to do,
these goons, these murderers that
work at the CIA including Pompeo,
or at least considering murder.
And so, the Obama administration
was terrible, and
anyone pretending that they weren't
terrible on the issue of journalism
is just lying to themselves,
because they're just front for
the Democratic establishment.
He used the Espionage Act against
reporters.
>> Yeah. >> And what did Trump do,
he used the Espionage Act against
Julian Assange, because Obama
opened the door, because Obama was
the most important thing to Obama
is his ego.
My legacy, my God, these people
have besmirched my legacy,
hunt them down.
Now, Trump's like,
hunt them down and kill them.
[LAUGH] >> So, I always wonder why
Trump didn't pardon Assange because
Assange is arguably, whether he
meant to or not, wound up helping
Trump a lot in the 2016 election.
In terms of releasing the info
about the democratic campaigns, but
not the Republican campaigns.
I don't know for sure if he had
the ones on Republican campaigns,
but he certainly had
the Democratic ones, and
he certainly released it, and
he certainly did a lot of damage.
So I would have figured to Trump
who loves anyone who helps him
would would just pardoned him.
>> But he didn't.
>> But it turns out it's because
Pompeo wanted to murder him, and so
they were at loggerheads.
That goon, Haspel, who a lot
of people in the establishment,
like she might get an MSNBC show
one day, she's the worst,
she tortured people, she covered up
the evidence of torture.
And now, of course, he was thinking
about murdering somebody,
that's who the CIA director is,
that's who Gina Haspel is, and
a lot of Democrats like her.
So be honest about, by the way,
Hannah is totally right.
How about all you people pretending
to be progressives, no, no, no,
Trump's better than Obama on these
things, no, he's not [CROSSTALK].
You're disingenuous,
gargantuan liar, if you say Trump
is better than Obama on this,
they're both terrible, and
Trump is clearly worse.
So, now, on the issue of murder,
you got three possibilities,
one is, well, we didn't like and
we thought he was revealing some
sources so we wanted to kill him.
A, not remotely good enough
that's insane.
By the way good point by
Perpendicular Time in our member
section, he said hostile
Intelligence Service takes one to
know one, doesn't it Pampeo.
And that made me think, hey,
wait a minute, I could probably put
together a better legal case that
Trump was a hostile, helping
hostile intelligence services.
Then I could that Assange was, so
I'm going to kill him, no,
that's insane, of course not,
of course we shouldn't do that.
So why isn't it also of course we
shouldn't kill Assange,
the elites versus the non elites.
And then, of course,
the next layer is, no,
I didn't think he was a journalist.
I had a debate about whether he was
a journalist, so
I decided to sell that debate by
chopping his head off, or
putting a bullet in his head.
Is that how we settled debates in
America, theoretically, a country
that believes in rule of law.
Yeah, no,
I knew he was a journalist,
I just wanted to murder him,
because he did things that hurt my
feelings, that I didn't like.
It embarrassed me at the CIA,
that he got the secret out.
You couldn't be embarrassed, hey,
look, if you're embarrassed,
you might strike out and
like hit the wall or something.
At the CIA, if they're embarrassed,
they look to murder you.
So this is a great story,
by the way.
>> It is. >> Credit to Yahoo News.
And by the way,
who's one of the guys who broke it,
old friend, Michael Isikoff.
We tell you there are great
reporters in the country,
he's one of them, that's why he's
been featured here, more than
almost any other reporter.
There's not a lot of them, but
there are a couple that are still
doing great stories like this last
thing.
These guys Report the story,
do you see it on cable news 24/7.
I mean if the all the other
journalists, the New York Times,
MSNBC, CNN, were really worried
about journalism, and
when Trump said enemy of the state,
my god they were livid.
Now, well, those goons at the CIA
are still in this administration.
Is there going to be pressure for
Biden to fire them, or
are the rest of the journalists
going to stick up for
not killing Assange, I doubt it.
>> I doubt it.
>> I think basically they'll go,
he ain't one of us,
he's not one of us.
We'll do whatever you say
government, we'll follow whatever
the CIA says, and later we'll hire
them to be news anchors,
I'm begging you please.
There are signs they'll throw under
a bus, I just told you I disagree
with some of the things that
Assange did, but that doesn't
mean you should kill him,
are you insane?
But they are,
the people in power in America
right now are that insane,
that they had that conversation,
Trump administration did.
And by the way under Biden,
no one's been fired so far.
To be fair,
the story just came out,
also To be fair,
he won't fire them, and
you know it.
>> Yeah