"Kidnapping, assassination and a London shoot-out: Inside the CIA's secret war plans against WikiLeaks"

[grarpamp]

Assange must be released with all charges dropped
and compensation and damages paid to him.
https://twitter.com/hashtag/FreeAssange


The CIA Has Stultified American Consciences

https://mises.org/wire/cia-has-stultified-american-consciences

Authored by Jacob Hornberger via The Mises Institute,

One of the worst consequences of converting the federal government to
a national security state has been the stultification or warping of
the consciences of the American people. With unwavering allegiance to
the Pentagon, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National
Security Agency, all too many Americans have sacrificed their sense of
right and wrong at the altar of “national security,” the two-word term
that has become the most important term in the political lexicon of
the American people.

The best example of this phenomenon is the CIA’s power of
assassination. Most Americans have come to passively accept this
power, with nary a thought as to the victims against whom it is
carried out and under what what circumstances it is carried out.

Consider recent revelations that the CIA was planning to assassinate
Julian Assange, the head of WikiLeaks, for disclosing dark-side
secrets of the US deep state to to the world.

That’s why US officials have pursued him with a vengeance—not because
he lied about the Pentagon’s and the CIA’s dark-side activities but
rather because he disclosed the truth about them.

That’s why they were seeking to murder him—to silence him, to punish
him, and to send a message to other potential disclosers of dark-side
secrets of the national security establishment.

But anyone with a conscience that is operating would easily see that
assassinating Assange would be just plain murder. And at the risk of
belaboring the obvious, the murder of an innocent person is just plain
evil.

Yet the reaction to all this from the mainstream press has been one
great big collective yawn. No big deal. It’s just another
state-sponsored assassination intended to protect “national security.”
If US national security state officials have decided that Assange
needs to be taken out, then that’s just the way it is. That’s why we
have a CIA, after all. We have to defer to its judgment, even if it
means sacrificing our consciences in the process. After all, that’s
its job—to protect “national security.”

By the way, there is virtually no doubt that if they could get away
with assassinating Edward Snowden for disclosing the truth about NSA
dark-side activity, they would murder him too. The probable reason
they haven’t assassinated Snowden is because they haven’t figured out
a way to get the assassins out of Russia.

When the federal government was converted to a national security state
after World War II, the American people made an implicit bargain with
the devil. The bargain empowered the national security establishment
to engage in dark-side activity, including assassination. But another
part of the bargain was that officials would keep their dark-side
activity secret from the American people so that people wouldn’t have
to deal with their consciences over a governmental entity that was
assassinating people.

Assange’s and Snowden’s great “crime” was in violating that pact. By
bringing dark-side activity to the attention of the American people,
they ran the risk that people’s consciences might start operating.

So far, there appears to be no risk of that happening. Consider, for
example, the assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani. That
was just plain murder. Iran and the United States are not at war with
each other. Sure, we are told that Iran is a “rival,” an “enemy,” an
“opponent,” or an “adversary,” but does that morally entitle US
officials to murder Iranian officials? It does not, just as it doesn’t
entitle Iranian officials to murder US officials.

Again, however, the reaction among the mainstream press to the
assassination of Soleimani was one great, big collective yawn.
Revealingly, there was also no moral outrage expressed among church
ministers across America. If the Pentagon and the CIA deemed it
necessary to assassinate Soleimani, that’s all we need to know.

To get America back on the right track, what we need is a moral
awakening, one that entails the operation of conscience. If that day
were to come, there is no doubt that the American people would cast
the CIA into the dustbin of history, where all evil agencies belong.