Beyond Snowden: US General Cartwright has been indicted for espionage

Posted on July 7, 2013 by RonMamita — 8 Comments

For discussion and information purposes two reports from 21wire are presented.
These reports are excellent reference to start investigations and fact gathering; perhaps some conclusions reported in these reports are wrong? The State certainly has many questions and activities to address to avoid criminal prosecution.

“Under the administration of Barack Obama, the Espionage Act has been invoked 8 times, a peacetime record.”

July 2, 2013 By 21st Century Wire

Beyond Snowden: US General Cartwright has been indicted for espionage

While the world focuses on Washington’s pursuit of NSA whistleblower Ed Snowden, another much more high ranking member of the US power structure has been indicted for espionage this week…

US General James Cartwright was regarded by Washington insiders as ‘Obama’s General’, and now he’s facing prosecution for blowing the whistle on ‘Operation Olympic Games’ which planted the Stuxnet and Flame viruses in Iranian nuclear facilities in order derail Iran’s civilian nuclear program. At closer examination, it appears that Cartwright’s revelations didn’t so much harm US interests per say, but they hindered Israeli ambitions towards a war with Iran.

But why espionage?
What is the line between “whistleblowing” and “espionage” in America today?

Journalist Thierry Meyssan give us a historical perspective and tells is what it really means…

Voltaire Net

While the international press plays up the information leaked by Edward Snowden as a revelation concerning the PRISM surveillance program, feigning to have discovered what everyone should already have known for a long time, Thierry Meyssan, is particularly curious about the meaning of this rebellion. From this perspective, he attaches more importance to the case of General Cartwright, who has also been indicted for espionage.

Thierry Meyssan
Are American public servants, civilian or military, who face a minimum of 30 years in prison for revealing U.S. state secrets to the press “whistleblowers” exercising power in a democratic system, or are they “resistors to oppression” at the hands of a military-police dictatorship?

The answer to this question does not depend on our own political opinions, but on the nature of the U.S. government. The answer completely changes if we focus on the case of Bradley Manning, the young leftist Wikileaks soldier, or if we consider that of General Cartwright, military adviser to President Obama, indicted Thursday, 27 June 2013, for spying.
US General James Cartwright

Here, a look back is needed to understand how one shifts from “espionage” in favor of a foreign power, to “disloyalty” to a criminal organization that employs you.

Worse than censorship: the criminalization of sources

The President of the United States and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Woodrow Wilson, tried to confer on the Executive branch the power to censor the press when “national security” or “the reputation of the government” are in play. In his speech on State of the Union (7th of December 1915), he said:

“There are citizens of the United States … who have poured the poison of disloyalty into the very arteries of our national life, who tried to drag the authority and reputation of our government in contempt … to destroy our industries … and degrade our policy in favor of foreign intrigue …. We are without adequate federal laws …. I urge you to do nothing less than save the honor and self-respect of the nation. Such creatures of passion, disloyalty, and anarchy must be crushed.”

However, Congress did not heed him immediately. After the U.S. entry into the war, it passed the Espionage Act, taking in most of the British Official Secrets Act. It was no longer a matter of censoring the press, but of cutting off access to information by muzzling the custodians of state secrets. This device allows the Anglo-Saxons to present themselves as “defenders of freedom of expression“, though they are the worst violators of the democratic right to information, constitutionally defended by the Scandinavian countries.

Silence, not secrecy

Thus, the Anglo-Americans are less informed about what is happening at home than are foreigners. For example, during World War II, the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada managed to keep under wraps something as big as the Manhattan Project, that created the first nuclear bomb, while it employed 130,000 people for 4 years and it was widely penetrated by foreign intelligence services. Why? Because Washington did not prepare the weapon for this war, but for the next, against the Soviet Union. As shown by Russian historians, the abdication of Japan was postponed until after Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed as a warning to the USSR. If Americans had known that their country possessed such a weapon, their leaders would have had to use it to finish with Germany and not to threaten the Soviet ally at the expense of the Japanese. In reality, the Cold War began before the end of World War II [1].

In terms of secrecy, it should be noted that Stalin and Hitler were informed of the Manhattan Project from its inception. They indeed had inside agents. Meanwhile Truman was informed in his capacity as vice president, but only at the last moment, after the death of President Roosevelt.

The real utility of the Espionage Act

In any event, the Espionage Act deals only secondarily with espionage as shown by its jurisprudence.

In wartime, it is used to punish dissent. Thus, in 1919, the Supreme Court recognized in Schrenck v. United States and Abrams v. United States that calling for insubordination or non-intervention against the Russian Revolution fell under the Espionage Act.

In peacetime, the same law serves to prevent public officials from exposing a system of fraud or crimes committed by the state, even if their revelations are already known, but not yet proven.

Under the administration of Barack Obama, the Espionage Act has been invoked 8 times, a peacetime record. Let’s put aside the case of John Kiriakou, a CIA officer who revealed the detention and torture of Abu Zubaydah. Far from being a hero, Kiriakou is actually an agent provocateur funded by the Agency, whose role it was to delude the public regarding pseudo-confessions extorted from Zubaydah to justify, a posteriori, the “fight against terrorism“ [2].

Let’s also eliminate the case of Shamal Leibowitz, since his revelations were never released to the public. There remain six cases instructing us about the U.S. military-police system.

Stephen Jin-Woo Kim confirmed to Fox News that North Korea was preparing a nuclear test regardless of U.S. threats; a confirmation that caused no harm to the USA other than pointing out their inability to be obeyed by North Korea. In another context, this information had already been released by Bob Woodward without provoking reactions.

Andrew Thomas Drake revealed the mismanagement of the Trailblazer program to a member of the U.S. House of Representatives Intelligence Committee. He was alleged to have informed those congressmen tasked with keeping an eye on the intelligence agencies with regard to the billions that the NSA was secretly throwing out the window. Trailblazer sought to find a way to plant viruses on any computer or mobile phone. It has never worked.

In a similar vein, Edward Snowden, an employee of the Booz Allen Hamilton technology consulting firm, published various NSA documents attesting to U.S. spying in China as well as on the guests of the British G20. Above all, he has revealed the scope of the military phone tapping and internet spy system, which no one can escape, not even the President of the United States. U.S. politicians described Snowden as “a traitor to kill” only because his documents prevent the NSA from continuing to deny before Congress activities long known to all.

Bradley Manning, a simple soldier, sent to Wikileaks videos of two blunders by the army, 500,000 intelligence reports on military bases in Afghanistan and Iraq, and 250,000 cables on the information gathered by U.S. diplomats in conversations with foreign politicians. None of this is of paramount importance, but the documentation projects a poor image of the gossip collected by the State Department to serve as the basis for its “diplomacy.”

Jeffrey Alexander Sterling is a CIA employee who revealed “Operation Merlin” to the New York Times. More surprisingly, General James Cartwright was number two man in the military, in his capacity as Vice-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and so close an advisor to the President as to be dubbed “Obama’s general“. He supposedly revealed “Operation Olympic Games” to the New York Times last year and has been placed under investigation, according to CNN.

Sterling and Cartwright don’t buy into the Israeli myth of “the atomic bomb of the mullahs.” So they tried to defuse the war into which Tel Aviv is trying to plunge their country. “Operation Merlin” consisted in sending to Iran false information about the manufacture of the bomb. In reality, it was supposed to push Iran to engage in a military nuclear program to justify a posteriori the Israeli accusation [3]. As for “Operation Olympic Games,” it was meant to implant the Stuxnet and Flame viruses in the Natanz plant, to disrupt its operation, notably that of its centrifuges [4]. It was therefore intended to block Iran’s civilian nuclear program. None of these revelations damaged U.S. interests, but they hindered Israeli ambitions.

Resistance heroes

A salon opposition presents the men indicted under the Espionage Act as “whistleblowers“, as if the United States today were a real democracy and they were alerting citizens to the need to correct some errors. In fact, what they show us is that in the United States, from a common soldier (Bradley Manning) to the second in command (General Cartwright), men are trying as best they can to fight against a dictatorial system in which they discover themselves to be a cog. Faced with a monstrous system, they ought to be celebrated as major resistance figures such as Admiral Canaris or Count Stauffenberg.

Thierry Meyssan

Translation:
Roger Lagassé
.

Whistleblower General Cartwright: demonized by a criminal US government

July 5, 2013
21st Century Wire says…
With all the talk of Edward Snowden, many would not have heard the name General James Cartwright, who is quite possibly the most high-ranking, high-profile whistleblower in the history of the United States, who is the Obama administration’s latest victim by way of the 1917 Espionage Act.

GEN. CARTWRIGHT: Did the right thing – but is treated like a criminal by a criminal government.

As we pointed out earlier this week, Cartwright was regarded as ‘Obama’s General’ and chief military adviser, but he fell foul of K Street and war financiers, after blowing the whistle on the highly illegal, and potentially dangerous, ‘Operation Olympic Games’, which planted the infamous Stuxnet and Flame viruses in Iranian civilian nuclear facilities in an attempt to destroy their energy program. It was an act of war by any other name. He leaked the story to New York Times reported last July, and has since been indicted for espionage.

Now the criminal institution who calls itself the ‘US Department of Justice’ (DOJ), has begun the process of ruining the four star general’s career and his reputation built on decades of service to the American people. Many believe that because of its implication in damaging the image of the state of Israel, Gen. Cartwright’s case has been conveniently buried under the Snowden media avalanche, in the hope that the American people will not be able to identify or sympathise with the plight of this apparent American hero.

Ironic that the DOJ – who itself was caught illegal seizing the phone records and other data of the Associated Press (AP) news agency- are the ones dispensing justice on this landmark case. As a result of AG Eric Holder’s criminal racketeering, longtime sources have since stopped talking to the AP in response to the Obama administration’s illegal secret seizure of their phone records, said AP head Gary Pruitt at the National Press Club.

In attempt to take PR cover against more revelations of the NSA and the FBI spying on its own US military brass, FBI agents claim to have identified the former US Marine General ‘without resorting to a secret subpoena of the phone records of New York Times reporters’ – which itself is about the only true and honest statement spoken in Washington regarding domestic spying. Of course there were no secret subpoenas – we know they can tap our phones whenever they choose without any warrant.

All this, from a US government that does not even have a moral leg to stand – as America sits back and watches the night of the long knives take place right before their eyes.

Gen. James Cartwright took an oath to protect and defend the US Constitution which is what he clearly did in service to the American people, but he did not take an oath to protect and defend the interests of Barack Obama, or the state of Israel.

Make no mistake about it, the US is engaged in a war on whistleblowing, and its ultimate goal is the prevent the press from being able expose high level crimes carried out by those in positions of power. The result will be pure tyranny, so its incumbant on moral citizens to stand up and support the efforts of whistleblowers and what is left of the free press.

The time is approaching when all Americans will have to choose their side on this issue…

The four-star general who headed the reported cyber-attack by American and Israeli hackers on an Iranian nuclear site is under a DoJ investigation over leaking the details of the operation to the press, reports NBC News.

Retired Marine Gen. James ‘Hoss’ Cartwright, who was deputy chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff between 2007 and 2011, was the one responsible for the ‘Olympic Games’, a massive attack on Iranian uranium enrichment facilities conducted under the Bush and the Obama administrations, the New York Times reported last July.

At the time the newspaper broke details of the top secret operation, including collaboration of Israeli hackers in development of the Stuxnet computer worm, which was used to infect Iranian computer networks and damage hundreds of centrifuges at the Natanz enrichment facility.

The leak caused outrage in the Congress, as some Republican politicians alleged that it was sanctioned high in the Obama administration to bolster his national security record ahead of the 2012 election campaign.

Legal sources told NBC News that the FBI investigating the leak zeroed on Cartwright, once the second-highest ranking officer in the Pentagon, as the source that provided the newspaper with the sensitive information. Agents identified the former general without resorting to a secret subpoena of the phone records of New York Times reporters, the report says.

Cartwright, 63, received a target letter informing him that he’s under the investigation, but so far the DoJ hasn’t made a final decision on whether to charge him, according to the sources.

Cartwright and his lawyer did not comment to NBC.

If indicted, Cartwright would join Bradley Manning, Edward Snowden and six others charged under the 1917 Espionage Act by the Obama administration. The current US government has invoked the law more than all previous administrations combined.
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