Ryan Gallagher on Journalism

Hackgate: a week of extraordinary revelations

2011-07-08T12:30:00Z

When the story broke on Monday that the News of the World (NOTW) allegedly hacked the phone of missing schoolgirl Milly Dowler and her family in March 2002, a public outcry ensued.

Every day since has seen a new revelation in the scandal, with almost hourly developments culminating yesterday in the NOTW being closed down by its parent company, News International.

The story is expected to drag on for months, or even years, as various inquiries and investigations take place into the scale of hacking culture at the NOTW and other titles. In recent days we have learned that not only was Milly Dowler's phone targeted -- widows of soldiers and even the families of those who died in the terrorist attacks on London in July 2005 may also have been victims.

The implications are undoubtedly hugely significant for the future of tabloid journalism, and for the industry of journalism as a whole. The Press Complaints Commission are under heavy attack for what Labour leader Ed-Miliband described today as toothlessness, while prime minister David Cameron faces questions over why he hired Andy Coulson, a former News of the World editor now accused of perjury, as his head of communications.

It has certainly been a rollercoaster of a week... Here we chart some of the most significant of the massive revelations that have taken place over the last five days...

Monday 4 July

The Guardian publishes a story alleging that missing schoolgirl Milly Dowler's voicemail was hacked by the News of the World in 2002. The story claims Metropolitan police officers have taken statements in relation to the interception and deletion of Dowler's voicemail messages at the time she was missing.

It is believed that by deleting the messages, the journalists concerned hampered the investigation into the whereabouts of the teenager -- who was later found murdered -- and also gave false hope to the parents, who believed the deleted messages showed she was still alive. The Dowlers' family lawyer calls the revelation "heinous" and "despicable", and confirms the family is pursuing a damages claim against the News of the World.

The story causes huge ripples across the internet, and Twitter is instantly ablaze with people expressing their outrage.

A Boycott News of The World Facebook page calls for the paper to be "taken down and shown for what it really is and that's a disgrace!"

Tuesday 5 July

While in Afghanistan, prime minister David Cameron is confronted by questions about the latest revelations. "If they are true, this is a truly dreadful act and a truly dreadful situation," he says.

A spokesperson for News International tells the BBC it had been co-operating fully with the police inquiry into hacking since News International's "voluntary disclosure in January restarted the investigation into illegal voicemail interception".

In reference to the Milly Dowler hacking, the spokesperson added: "This particular case is clearly a development of great concern and we will be conducting our own inquiries as a result.

"We will obviously co-operate fully with any police request on this should we be asked."

The private investigator at the centre of the hacking allegations, Glenn Mulcaire, releases a statement. He apologises to anyone "who was hurt or upset by what I have done," adding: "Working for the News of the World was never easy. There was relentless pressure. There was a constant demand for results. I knew what we did pushed the limits ethically. But, at the time, I didn't understand that I had broken the law at all."

The actor Hugh Grant, who recently secretly recorded a conversation with an ex-NOTW features editor, joins a number of other prominent public figures calling for a public inquiry in to the hacking scandal.

Labour leader Ed Miliband says ex-News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks must "consider her position" over the Dowler phone-hack claims.

Brooks releases a statement in which she says she is "appalled and shocked" about the Dowler allegations. She adds:

It is almost too horrific to believe that a professional journalist or even a freelance inquiry agent working on behalf of a member of the News of the World staff could behave in this way.

If the allegations are proved to be true then I can promise the strongest possible action will be taken as this company will not tolerate such disgraceful behaviour.

I hope that you all realise it is inconceivable that I knew or worse, sanctioned these appalling allegations. [...]
We will face up to the mistakes and wrongdoing of the past and we will do our utmost to see that justice is done and those culpable will be punished.

The controversy takes another explosive turn as Channel 4 reveals that a Metropolitan Police detective was put under surveillance by News of the World journalists and his personal details targeted.

Wednesday 6 July

The Independent leads with a story claiming Rebekah Brooks "contacted Dowler private detective herself".

Another major development, as a solicitor reveals that the family of a 7/7 bombing victim may have had their phone hacked in 2005.

Labour MP Tom Watson tells the BBC that he believes "Coulson authorised payments to the police".

Editor-in-chief of the Guardian, Alan Rusbridger, says Jeremy Hunt, the culture secretary, should delay the decision on whether to allow News Corporation to takeover BSkyB. The paper later publishes an editorial expressing the same position.

The Financial Times and the Independent both call for Rebekah Brooks to go.

Rupert Murdoch, Chairman of News Corporation, releases a statement calling the latest revelations "deplorable and unacceptable", and also makes clear that he will support Rebekah Brooks:

Recent allegations of phone hacking and making payments to police with respect to the News of the World are deplorable and unacceptable. I have made clear that our company must fully and proactively co-operate with the police in all investigations and that is exactly what News International has been doing and will continue to do under Rebekah Brooks' leadership. We are committed to addressing these issues fully and have taken a number of important steps to prevent them from happening again.

Thursday 7 July

It is reported that the number of phone hacking victims could number 4,000.

The scandal takes yet another astonishing turn, as the Telegraph reveals families of war dead may have had their phones hacked by the NOTW.

The Guardian publishes a list of the phone hacking victims identified so far. It includes names such as actor Hugh Grant, London Mayor Boris Johnson, former secretary of state David Blunkett, chancellor George Osborne, actor Jude Law and Prince Harry among many others.

Channel 4 broadcast undercover footage in which the private investigator Glenn Mulcaire says hacking victims were decided "by committee". This is a particularly important development, as it had previously been claimed by News International that hacking was conducted by a "rogue reporter".

In a jawdropping development, chairman of News International James Murdoch announces that the NOTW will close, ending the newspaper's 168 year history as of Sunday 10 July. The decision is met with shock. Rebekah Brooks, current News International chief executive, who was editor of the NOTW at the time of the Milly Dowler hacking, keeps her job, while over 200 editorial staff at the paper are made redundant.

The paper's political editor, David Wooding, says: "People are just standing round in the office looking dazed. They just can't believe what's happened. All I am concerned about is that 200 professional people who have done nothing wrong have lost their jobs because of what's happened five or six years ago."

James Murdoch issues a statement to staff:

These are strong measures. They are made humbly and out of respect. I am convinced they are the right thing to do.
You may see these changes as a price loyal staff at the News Of The World are paying for the transgressions of others. So please hear me when I say that your good work is a credit to journalism. I do not want the legitimacy of what you do to be compromised by acts of others. I want all journalism at News International to be beyond reproach. I insist that this organisation lives up to the standard of behaviour we expect of others.

There is immediate speculation about whether the News of the World will simply become the "Sunday Sun". It is noted that the domain names sunonsunday.co.uk, thesunonsunday.co.uk, thesunonsunday.com, .co.uk, .org.uk & .net were all registered anonymously between the 5-7 July, some by a Guildford-based company offering an "indentity protection service".

Friday 8 July

Labour leader Ed Miliband delivers a speech on the "future of print journalism".

He says:

I welcome James Murdoch's admission of serious errors. But closing the News of the World, possibly to re-open as the Sunday Sun, is not the answer. Instead those who were in charge must take responsibility for what happened.

Miliband also strongly criticises the Press Complaints Commission, and calls for a new body with stronger powers:

The PCC was established to be a watchdog. But it has been exposed as a toothless poodle.
Wherever blame lies for this, the PCC cannot restore trust in self-regulation. It is time to put the PCC out of its misery. We need a new watchdog. There needs to be fundamental change. My instincts continue to be that a form of self-regulation would be the best way forward. That is a debate we should have. But it would need to be very different to work.
Let me make some initial suggestions, drawing on many of the debates about the inadequacies of the system. A new body should have: far greater independence of its Board members from those it regulates; proper investigative powers; and an ability to enforce corrections.

Around the same time Miliband is delivering his speech, Andy Coulson, David Cameron's former press spokesman, is arrested and held in custody at a South London police station. The arrest was prompted after police officers were handed further information from News International detailing allegedly illegal payments made to a handful of officers at Scotland Yard.

David Cameron appears at a press conference and delivers a speech on phone hacking. He calls hacking "disgraceful" and "despicable", adding: "this scandal is not just about some journalists on one newspaper."

Cameron says he employed Coulson in order to give him a "second chance", and states that he takes full responsibility for hiring him.

And on the case of Rebekah Brooks, he says:

As I have said, it's not right for a prime minister to start picking and choosing who should and shouldn't run media organisations. But it has been reported that she offered her resignation over this …and in this situation, I would have taken it.

The saga continues...

Journalists detained in Ethiopia to stand trial

2011-07-06T08:44:21Z

Two Swedish journalists have been taken in to custody by the army in Ethiopia, and are set to stand trial over yet unknown charges.

Freelancers Johan Persson and Martin Schibbye entered Ethiopia from Somalia, and were reporting on the ongoing conflict between Somali guerrillas and the Ethopian state.

The last person to see Persson and Schibbye before their arrest was Anna Roxwall, a journalist who has worked with Persson in the past.

“Last time I spoke to them they were being pursued by car. They are in a very dangerous area,” she told Swedish news agency TT.

The men were reportedly caught up in a clash between the warring groups, and were hurt after being shot at by Ethiopian soldiers. The journalists' two guides were killed during the incident, according to TT.

A spokesman for the Ethiopian government told Reuters: “15 rebels, all armed, were killed and six were injured. Two Swedish reporters sustained minor injuries during the fighting.”

Ethiopian authorities say the men are receiving treatment for their injuries, and claim they are being held because they entered the country illegally.

Sveriges Radio reported that both men had been in contact with their families in recent days, and on Monday were visited by the Swedish ambassador, Cecilia Julin.

"They're physically and mentally exhausted, and feel strained by the situation" said Julin in a statement. "They've received medical attention in jail, and they were given first aid in connection with their arrest."

On Sunday it was reported that Persson and Schibbye were taken to Jijiga, a city in eastern Ethiopia and the capital of the Somali Region of the country, where they were expected to stand trial yesterday.

Kent Öberg of the foreign ministry information service initially told TT that the Swedish embassy was having difficulty establishing contact with the journalists

“We have received information that they will go to court ... but we have not been informed as to what the charges are,” he said.

'Harassed' US journalist fights to protect source

2011-06-24T17:25:59Z

A Pulitzer prize-winning New York Times journalist is being pressured by the Obama administration to reveal the identity of a whistleblower.

James Risen, who wrote extensively about the Bush administration’s domestic wiretapping programme, has been issued a subpoena forcing him to testify as part of the prosecution of Jeffrey Sterling, a former CIA agent whom the DOJ alleges leaked details of a failed US agency plot to infiltrate Iran's nuclear programme.

Risen wrote about the plot in his bestselling book State of War, which included:

explosive revelations about a series of illegal or potentially illegal actions taken by President [George W.] Bush, including the domestic wiretapping program. It also disclosed how President Bush secretly pressured the CIA to use torture on detainees in secret prisons around the world; how the White House and CIA leadership ignored information before the 2003 invasion of Iraq that showed that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction; documented how, in the aftermath of the invasion, the Bush Administration punished CIA professionals who warned that the war in Iraq was going badly; showed how the Bush Administration turned a blind eye to Saudi involvement in terrorism; and revealed that the CIA's intelligence operations on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Iran and other countries were completely dysfunctional, and even reckless.

According to Salon.com columnist Glenn Greenwald, Risen's subpoena was originally issued but then abandoned by the Bush administration, before later being "revitalised by Obama lawyers."

The Subpoena, Risen claims, is the latest in a campaign of government harassment that began under the Bush administration. In a 22-page affidavit submitted to the court on 21 June, he alleges his phone calls have in the past been tracked to "root out [my] confidential sources".

He adds:

"The administration was embarrassed by the disclosures I made in the course of my reporting for State of War as well as in The New York Times, and eventually singled me out as a target for political harassment.

"I believe that the investigation that led to this prosecution started because of my reporting on the National Security Agency's warrantless wiretapping program. The Bush White House was furious over that story. I believe that this investigation started as part of an effort by the Bush Administration to punish me and silence me, following the publication of the NSA wiretapping story. I was told by a reliable source that Vice President Dick Cheney pressured the Justice Department to personally target me because he was unhappy with my reporting and wanted to see me in jail."

Risen has vowed protect his sources at any cost, and is believed to be willing to go to jail in order to do so. "This is a fight to defend the First Amendment and freedom of the press," he told ABC News.

BBC appeal for release of detained Tajikistan reporter

2011-06-21T11:30:48Z

The BBC World Service is "highly concerned" about the safety of their correspondent in Tajikistan, Urunboy Usmonov, who has been detained in the country for a week without regular access to his lawyer.

A statement was made by the BBC on June 16 condemning the detention and demanding the immediate release of Usmonov. But despite similar statements from the British and American Embassies, the Tajik authorities have not responded.

An article published by Tajik press agency Press.tj on June 18 claimed Usmonov was a member of Hizbut-Tahir, a banned Islamic political organisation whose goal is for all Muslim countries to unify as an Islamic state.

The BBC say the accusation represents a breach of legal practice and a serious violation of presumption of innocence.

A statement, released today by the World Service, said: "We strongly reiterate that these allegations are unfounded and the BBC sees them as a serious threat to professional journalism and to freedom of expression in Tajikistan.

"Urunboy Usmonov as a BBC journalist is expected to cover all sides of any story and in the course of his work it is only natural that he would meet and interview people representing all shades of opinion."

Since he was detained Usmonov has been denied access to his family, who have expressed deep concerns about his health and possible maltreatment in the detention centre. He suffers from a serious heart condition and has requested further medical attention.

"Our thoughts are with Urunboy and his family," said the BBC. "We appeal to everyone with influence over this situation to redouble their efforts to secure [his] immediate release."

In praise of... the WikiLeaks Truck

2011-06-09T21:00:43Z

Described as part prank, part art and part activism, the WikiLeaks Top Secret Mobile Information Collection Unit has been bothering US authorities in recent months.

A white van emblazoned with the WikiLeaks logo by the artist Clark Stoeckley, the Collection Unit has paid unwelcome visits to notable sites including the White House, Capitol Hill and the Washington Monument.

In March, after a "Free Bradley Manning" rally in Washington, the truck was pulled over and Stoeckley arrested for driving in a "no truck zone" near the White House, though the charges were later dropped.

"The Secret Service searched the truck and found nothing," tweeted the artist on Wednesday. "They follow me wherever I go hoping for a traffic violation."

He added: "I asked the Secret Service officer who arrested me if he had any secrets he wanted to leak to WikiLeaks, and that made him laugh."

Stoeckley's aim is to have a WikiLeaks truck in every country. He is raising money via the website Flattr and is willing to send adhesive vinyl graphics to anyone who wants to start their own mock 'Collection Unit'.

"Just imagine these popping up all over the globe," he says.

View more photos of the WikiLeaks Truck here, and follow the truck on Twitter here. Above photo credit: WikiLeaks Top Secret Mobile Information Collection Unit.

A Q&A with Julian Assange (part II): on Lockerbie, copycat leaks sites, and protecting whistleblowers

2011-05-11T19:53:14Z

Yesterday WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize gold medal for Peace with Justice at the Frontline Club. You can read our report of events here.

After Assange gave his acceptance speech, there was time for a question and answer session. He spoke in depth in reponse to many questions, giving insight into his position on everything from the role WikiLeaks may have played in the uprisings across the Arab world, to his opinion on the News of the World phone hacking scandal.

We have already posted the first half of the Q&A here, with word from Assange on the Arab Spring, phone hacking and WikiLeaks' ethics.

You can now find the second and final part of the edited transcript of the Q&A below, in which Assange gives a stern evaluation of the Wall Street Journal's new 'Safe House' leaks site and suggests new WikiLeaks material on the Lockerbie bombing may be appearing soon in a Scottish newspaper...

*****

There are many who think that [convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset] al-Megrahi was simply a fall guy who was used to cover up other people who were involved in that atrocity. My question is whether WikiLeaks has information, that goes back to that sort of period (1988), on any conspiracy between the British and American governments at that time in uncovering the perpetrator of that atrocity?

We have published quite a bit of material on the Lockerbie bombing. I suspect you will see more soon in [Scottish national newspaper] the Scotsman, but I can’t say off hand whether it will change the view that has evolved over the last year.

Some of the media have now tried to set up their own version of WIkiLeaks – the Wall Street Journal for example. I’m just wondering if you’ve had a look at them and what you think about those operations?

So we have pushed for a long time for media organisations to be more aggressive in their sourcing and to be more protective of the people who actually are involved [in leaking information]. So in so far as the Wall Street Journal represents a tendency to take up our ideas we were really pleased, and in fact we told everyone: 'look, the Wall Street Journal’s doing this'. al-Jazeera has also done a similar thing.

Unfortunately, it’s not as easy as it looks. It’s not as easy to stand up to influence as it looks and taking heat is not as easy it looks. So, the Wall Street Journal, if you look at the fine print, says that it can sell you out to anyone at any time – law enforcement, any other interests that it feels like. It makes no guarantees. And a security system analysis shows that it is also weak. But there is a broader general principle, that I think that we’re going to see over the next couple of years – as major media organisations try to retain their role of having sources of information coming directly to them and not having any intermediary – and that is: whistleblowers, like writers, need agents. And for all the same reasons: that if they become captive to a particular publisher ... they need someone who knows the system and knows how to deal with potential publishers.

Similarly, those presenting to a court need lawyers to represent them. And those presenting to the court of public opinion need experts in how to understand the difficulties and dangers of presenting to the court of public opinion.

What about the distrust between the ISI [Pakistani intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence] and the US? How real is it?

From my reading the distrust has been there for a long time. But when a strong relationship started to occur between the ISI there was computerisation of ISI’s systems by the US – there was also scrutiny of the top tier staff within the ISI. There are divergent interests between the ISI and the United States as I outlined before. I don’t expect those divergent interests to go away. The battle between divergence and convergence I think is possibly on the side of divergence. But that’s just speculation on my behalf.

The Wall Street Journal have said that they won’t be able to protect sources. What do you think about that? And secondly, is it possible at the moment to give information to WikiLeaks?

Presently we are reengineering our submission system and that has to do with quite a long and difficult story of sabotage of various kinds and the differing and extra hostile environment which we have found ourselves in.

However, it is possible to get us information in a number of ways. We’ve also reached a publicity profile so high now that it means we have to do things differently. Because we’ve started to become completely inundated with material. So that’s a matter of the appropriate engineering, and making sure the material is of a particular calibre that fits the size of the number of people who can assess it.

It’s quite an interesting psychological problem, when dealing with sources, in that, most sources, most of the time, don’t reveal anything. People can go 40 years without revealing anything and then one day they do. So this is about an activations threshold. That at some point, the feeling becomes strong enough that if they want to act and they then need to be caught at this moment and protected at this moment. And some of them have a feeling that they want to act that is so strong that they don’t care about the risks at all. So one also must protect them from themselves, which is quite a difficult thing to do.

So the Wall Street Journal and the similar organisations that whistleblowers are thinking about dealing with: it is not just the technology, it’s a combination of technology and people. The technology is opaque and very complex and sophisticated if done right. So how are you to assess whether the technology has been done right? How are you to assess whether these people will sell you out? You have to look at the people who are running the organisation. What is their history and their experience. Have they stood up to pressure before? And have they managed themselves before?

There’s almost no organisations that have that track record other than us – and individual journalists, there’s just a few with a track record of not buckling when they receive pressure. So I advise everyone who’s thinking about disclosing confidential information to look very closely at the track record of the people that they may be dealing with. But don’t Google their name from your home.

So the Wall Street Journal doesn’t measure up?

No. It doesn’t measure up on any criteria.

A Q&A with Julian Assange (part I): on the Arab Spring, phone hacking, and WikiLeaks' ethics

2011-05-11T19:03:35Z

Yesterday WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize gold medal for Peace with Justice at the Frontline Club. You can read our report of events here.

You can now find the first half of our edited transcript of the Q&A below.

*****

What role did WikiLeaks have in the creation of the Arab Spring?

Yes it does appear that there was a significant role. I saw a documentary recently interviewing professors and people in the street in Tunisia outlining some of what that role was. We tried very hard to release as much material relevant to that part of the world back in early December. A wonderful Lebanese newspaper by the name of al Akhbar took alot of our material and translated it to Arabic. And other sites also translated it to French and that material then spread. al Akhbar, for its efforts, was attacked and redirected to a Saudi website for 24 hours. It was then attacked by computer hackers using denial of service attacks and then increasingly sophisticated denial of service attacks, and finally, very sophisticated hackers that I attribute to the state intelligence went in and wiped out their entire publishing operation for months. Approximately one month ago, they started publishing again.

In relation to Egypt, I think our most significant role there was to concentrate on the information to do with [former army general Omar] Suleiman and [former president] Hosni Mubarak. Suleiman you may remember was posited as being a vice president who would somehow take over the role of Mubarak. And he ... was a long term partner with Israel and the United States. He was a trusted pair of hands as far as they were concerned in relation to the relationship between Egypt and Israel. [He was] involved personally, it is alleged, in the torture of a number of rendered people.

So, by bringing all that information out on a consistent basis when no one else was willing to do so, we made it very difficult for the west to be able to posit Suleiman as an alternative power structure within Egypt [...]

We must remember [American] vice-president [Joe] Biden said on the one hand that I was a high tech terrorist and on the other hand that Mubarak was not a dictator.

What do you think about Australia’s hypocrisy championing freedom of speech during the [Arab] revolutions but denouncing yours; and what would you say to detractors who accuse you of hypocrisy, and say you’re all for transparency unless it’s turned on you (in terms of accusations of ego or your court cases)?

There’s a comment I saw on a newspaper article last night that puts it well: WikiLeaks is the most scrutinised organisation per capita in the world. We have something like ten to twenty full time staff and a large volunteer core ... We are a very small operation. We had (or have) an 120 man CIA taskforce, operatives here in the UK and in other countries, all scrutinising us – and an extremely contemptive media. Like it or not we are the most transparent organisation in the world. Of course, it is our role to give knowledge to the people about power; it is not our role to prevent people giving knowledge to people about power. In fact, one of our core principles is to protect the identities of whistleblowers. So sometimes one needs to be opaque to protect people. We are an organisation facing extraordinary threats from a superpower. It is absurd that should need to make that statement, but that is the reality.

The reality is that here I am in an absurd situation receiving the Sydney peace medal. I am an Australian citizen and I am receiving it in London. At the same time, I have a state surveillance device attached to my ankle. That is the absurd situation we are in. So this rhetorical threat to try and apply a double standard to us is just that.

And you will notice a similar – this is a basic trick in rhetoric – one was done last year, when we exposed the deaths of 20,000 people in Afghanistan, including many children killed by special forces operations and so on. The response by the United States government to our exposure of all that blood, was to say: Julian Assange has blood on his hands. The first response. Because we were saying that they were wading in blood. And so that is just a basic trick of rhetoric.

If you now Google ‘blood on hands’ and ‘WikiLeaks’ without the word Pentagon, you will see there is approximately 770,000 web pages. If you Google for Pentagon and ‘Blood on hands’, without the word WikiLeaks, you will see there’s about 60,000 web pages. So in terms of the amount of articles that have been published, many talking about the blood of the Pentagon, the blood of WikiLeaks – there has been ten times as many that have been about the blood that WikiLeaks has supposedly caused and yet even these organisations cannot adduce a single case of anyone being harmed by our work over the course of [the last] four years.

What about [recently killed al Qaeda leader] Osama [bin Laden] and the alleged Mush-Bush deal between then US president George W. Bush and then Pakistani president Musharraf? Do you have any WikiLeaks cables supporting the allegation that there was a secret deal between the two presidents at the time? ... And what do you make of operation Geronimo?

We have a lot of documents, but the cables along are 285 million words and I do not have them all in my brain at any one point in time. That’s why we’re working with 73 other media organisations ... in order that you may do this work that you are able to do more efficiently than us, and directly to your audience. So I don’t have off hand more information about that.

I saw commentary by the former heads of ISI [Pakistani intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence] in the Pakistani press talking about what the relationship should be between the ISI, the Taliban and the United States. And I think that was the clearest description that I have seen. Which is: there are two superpowers in Afghanistan right now: they are NATO (minus Europe) plus the United States. That’s the reality that people don’t want to talk about: that Europe is a superpower. Europe added together spends just over half as much money as the entire United States on military expenditure. Europe is a superpower. And we can see that happening in Libya now, that Europe is acting together with the United States, like a superpower, in the conflict.

So we have two superpowers ensconcing themselves for 10 years in Afghanistan right on the border of Pakistan – and we must understand these borders are a bit artificial; the language crosses over the border and the culture crosses over the border – it is the national incentive of Pakistan, in so far as the ISI is acting in a legitimate way, it is acting to protect the national identity of Pakistan to make sure that those forces eventually leave. And so I assume, in so far as the ISA is acting for the national interest of Pakistan, it is engendering a situation to make sure western forces will leave Afghanistan.

Just a general question on the ethics, and how you derive the ethics of openness, investigation and privacy. Where does one make the ethical distinction between an operation say, WikiLeaks directed towards powerful institutions and processes and something such as the News of the World phone hacking scandal and the processes therein. What is not merely the contingent ethical decision, but what is the deeper political ethical basis on which one would make those distinctions?

I quite like it [the question]. And this probably horrified my British colleagues and my lawyers, but I wrote about the News of the World phone hacking scandal. And what I said back about a year and a half ago is that the British press should be very careful what they are doing in relation to spending time on that as opposed to all the other injustices that they could be spending their time on. Because we had been involved in something called the Petrogate scandal in Peru just a few months before, where we revealed 87 telephone intercept tapes of Peruvian politicians speaking for businessmen. The famed audio tapes. And that was the biggest political story in Peru that year.

And to engender a climate where that is hard to do is extremely dangerous. Now of course, the media abuses people and misuses its power in approximate proportion to the size of the particular industrial grouping. And News Corporation is a very large industrial grouping, and it uses its power accordingly. But when organisations like the Guardian write over a hundred stories about putting in default passwords in to voice mailboxes – because that’s what we’re actually talking about here – they are taking space from other things and they have other agendas at work. The other agendas at work are: attacking a newspaper rival; the New York Times became involved because similarly it wants to attack the Wall Street Journal.

It is to say, that the interests of the proletariat, which are the readers of the News of the World, are insignificant and are not important, and that the middle class moral majority that embodies itself in the Guardian is to be the arbiter of what is important and what is not important.

The reality is – if readers of the News of the World (and there are very many) find a particular thing to be of significance, to be influential to their lives, about how that person truly behaves ... people have a right not to be influenced by people whose external affairs and statements do not mirror their internal affairs and statements. It also seems to me to be a way to get in to the Guardian news about celebrities and tabloid salacious rumours: you can just report on what News of the World are saying.

So generally I say that the public interest is to be determined by what the public is interested in. Because otherwise, who’s going to determine the public interest if it’s not the public? Is it going to be a self-appointed committee of people? Well who appoints those people? Who appoints that committee? Through what process? How do we know that process won’t become corrupted?

That said, I do think there should be redress for libel say, committed by very powerful organisations against smaller organisations. There should be opportunities for redress against large institutions abusing small institutions.

Part II of our Q&A transcript can be viewed here, with Assange commenting on the Lockerbie bombing, distrust between Pakistan and the United States, and the Wall Street Journal's new 'Safe House' leaks site.

Julian Assange Sydney Peace Prize: full audio

2011-05-11T10:15:30Z

Yesterday at Frontine, WikiLeaks editor Julian Assange was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize gold medal for Peace with Justice. You can read our report of events here. Below you can find the audio of each of the speeches.

Emeritus Professor Stuart Rees, director of the Sydney Peace Foundation, gives his introduction:

Former SBS World News Australia presenter Mary Kostakidis next spoke, before presenting Assange with his award:

Julian Assange gives his acceptance speech:

We will be posting full video of the event soon. A write up of a Q&A section with Assange, which followed the speeches, can be found here (part I) and here (part II).

Report: Whistleblowers make the world a safer place debate (II)

2011-04-12T11:56:28Z

WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange makes his case at Kensington Town Hall. Photo by Sophia Spring.

This is part II of our report on the special debate, "whistleblowers make the world a safer place," organised by the Frontline Club in collaboration with New Statesman magazine. Part I can be found here.

Bob Ayers

It was always going to be fascinating seeing former CIA agent Bob Ayers share the stage with Julian Assange. It is well documented that the WikiLeaks editor-in-chief has been trailed by intelligence agents many times before – but rarely has he engaged with one head on in a public debate.

Ayers, now an international security analyst, spoke quietly and calmly. His argument was nuanced, raising his voice only briefly at one point to tell Assange to “sit down” as he attempted to make an interjection. “As people, we’ve developed a very rich language that describes people who reveal secrets,” he said. “We call them a ‘snitch’, a ‘rat’, a ‘squealer’, a ‘traitor’ or a ‘whistleblower’.”

Unlike his fellow panelist Sir David Richmond, Ayers made no concessions. His argument appeared critical of anyone who broke what he repeatedly referred to as “an oath.”

Reaching his conclusion, he seemed to take a veiled pop at Assange and WikiLeaks, asking: “Individuals, or organisations, who encourage us to break that oath, or facilitate our breaking of that oath, or promote us breaking that oath … are they just as guilty as the person who breaches the oath itself?”

The whistleblowers

After Ayers, there was a brief interlude for the input of two prominent whistleblowers, Paul Moore and Annie Machon. Machon, an ex-MI5 agent who in 1996 revealed, among other things, an illegal MI6 assassination attempt against Colonel Gaddafi of Libya, was first to talk about her experiences. Machon spoke about her shock at uncovering criminality within the British intelligence services and said revealing the information to the public was the right thing to do. When challenged by Douglas Murray over signing the Offical Secrets Act, she quickly retorted: “We signed the Official Secrets Act to protect secrets, not crimes."

Former head of risk at the bank HBOS, Paul Moore was next. Moore spoke out in 2009 after being made redundant for blowing the whistle on alleged recklessness at HBOS. Quoting the bible, he said that whistleblowers are necessary as we are “transformed by truth”. Expressing his disapproval that a whistleblower was not on either panel, Moore also blew a whistle on stage in protest. “Whistleblowers prevent disasters but they get treated like toxic waste or lepers,” he said.

Questions

After contributions from the whistleblowers, chair Jason Cowley read out a question submitted by the audience. The question was based on a common criticism leveled against WikiLeaks – that the information they have published could, in some instances, put lives at risk. What about the “collatorial damage”? Cowley asked Assange.

The 39-year-old Australian stepped forward and confidently proclaimed his belief that “WikiLeaks has never got it wrong". The Pentagon, Assange said, had more blood on its hands than WikiLeaks.

(Assange then told the audience to Google “Pentagon” and “blood on its hands”, and compare the results with “WikiLeaks” and “blood on its hands”. It is a far from scientific measure, but interesting nonetheless ... the WikiLeaks search gets around 30,000 results and the Pentagon 125,000.)

Mehdi Hasan

Next to take centre stage was Question Time heavyweight, New Statesman senior editor and Ed Miliband biographer Mehdi Hasan. A natural orator, Hasan’s passionate speech was immediately hailed on Twitter as the best of the evening (even before the final speaker, Douglas Murray, had got his chance to speak).

Hasan began by talking about Joe Darby, the former US soldier who exposed horrendous abuses of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad. Quoting Darby, he recounted: “’They say ignorance is bliss, but to actually know what they were doing – you can’t stand by and let that happen’ ...

"That is what whistleblowing is all about," said Hasan, "and that is why it is so important.

“In a perfect world, of course we wouldn’t need whistleblowers, we wouldn’t want whistleblowers. But, surprise surprise, we don’t live in a perfect world … We live in a very imperfect world, where out governments and others lie to us, repeatedly."

He continued: “They engage in corrupt backroom deals, they break the law at home and abroad and then they demand our trust … and then they say, ‘well you don’t need whistleblowers’ … well stop lying to us and we won’t have any whistleblowers!”

Hasan then questioned the political right’s fear of whistleblowers, urging support for the motion “whistleblowers make the world a safer place” for the sake of the whistleblowers themselves.

“Whistleblowers empower us all by exposing the truth,” he concluded.

Douglas Murray

A ubiquitous commentator, author and journalist Douglas Murray is often touted as the UK’s only neoconservative. Murray began slowly, building up his argument towards a gradual crescendo.

At first he acknowledged there were flaws inherent in western democratic governments. “It is perfectly true that democracies and democratic governments can be and in most cases are at some point dishonest,” he said, “and yes, they can be corrupt.”

Reiterating a similar line of argument taken by his fellow panelist Sir David Richmond, Murray spoke about “checks and balances” and said he didn’t believe it should be up to “leakers” to decide what we know.

Looking at Assange, he then went on the attack. “Do the leakers – do WikiLeaks – know what they’re doing?” he asked.

“My own personal feeling is this: when you unleash thousands and of documents that were never meant for the public eye, were never meant for your opponents eyes, were never meant for foreign intelligence agencies eyes – you introduce an element of chaos. It’s like war. It’s very hard to contain once you start it. You may think you know what you’re doing … but what about the collateral damage in your campaign.”

Straying from the discussion about whistleblowers, Murray rattled off a number of questions in Assange’s direction. He asked why WikiLeaks has never exposed wrongdoing in countries such as Russia and asked about WikiLeaks sources of funding.

“Who works for you?” Murray asked. “Who are you involved with? Where are you even based? …

“What gives you the right to decide what should be known to governments and what should not?

“Governments are elected. You, Mr Assange, are not.”

Midway through his speech, each member of his opposition – Assange, Swisher and Hasan – attempted to make an interjection, but were sent back to their places by a firm Murray.

Assange was eventually allowed to make a ‘point of information’ when Murray repeated a claim – made by the Guardian’s David Leigh – that he had stated Afghan informants deserved to get killed.

Assange said he was taking legal action over the remark, and asked Murray if he wanted to “join the cue” of those he was suing. (Note: David Leigh has since stated there has been no law suit filed against him or the Guardian.)

Cowley then asked Assange: “Should the great champion of open society use libel law to sue newspapers?”

Assange responded: “Lies have no social utility, the truth has a social utility. The abuse of libel laws is a terrible thing. That is why I was involved in constructing the world’s strongest libel legislation, in Iceland, to protect us all from the abuse of libel laws, and have complained constantly here in the UK.

“But actual lies, by powerful organisations that abuse the size of their megaphone in the industry, must have recourse. And that recourse is in the courts and in the court of public opinion.”

By the time Murray neared the end of his speech, there was little time for more contributions or points of information. He accused Assange of thinking he was “better than our governments”, to which someone in the audience retorted, “that’s because he is!”

Moments later, due to the delays at the start of the event, Assange was forced to leave the stage early in order to meet the conditions of his bail. A vote was cast while he was still on the stage, which showed little change in the audience’s opinion.

The motion, “this house believes whistleblowers make the world a safer place,” was passed overwhelmingly and the debate was concluded.

Many thanks to all those who came along and made the event a great success!

Full video footage coming soon. All photos by Sophia Spring.

Report: Whistleblowers make the world a safer place debate

2011-04-11T16:59:31Z

Sir David Richmond makes his case against whistleblowing at Kensington Town Hall. Photo by Sophia Spring.

More than 850 people crammed in to Kensington Town Hall on Saturday evening for our special debate in collaboration with New Statesman magazine, “this house believes whistleblowers make the world a safer place.”

In the style of Oxford University debates, there were two teams – one arguing against the motion, the other arguing in favour of it. Each speaker was given no more than seven minutes to make his case, and objections were encouraged in the form of ‘points of information’ or ‘interjections’.

For

* Clayton Swisher, head of Al Jazeera’s transparency unit

* Julian Assange, WikiLeaks editor in chief

* Medhi Hasan, New Statesman’s senior political editor

Against

* Sir David Richmond, former director, defence and intelligence, British Foreign & Commonwealth Office

* Bob Ayers, former director of the US Department of Defence Information Systems Security Programme

* Douglas Murray, author and political commentator

Also featuring

* HBOS whistleblower Paul Moore

* MI5 whistleblower Annie Machon

The debate

After a 20 minute delay because of large queues to get in to the venue, the room fell silent as Frontline Club’s founder Vaughan Smith took to the stage to welcome the audience. He then introduced the debate’s chair, New Statesman editor Jason Cowley.

Each of the panelists gathered silently on the stairway beside the stage, awaiting their introduction. Clayton Swisher was first, followed by Julian Assange and Mehdi Hasan. Then the opposition: Sir David Richmond, Bob Ayers and Douglas Murray. Before the debate got underway, there was an audience vote on the motion. It revealed that the overwheming majority of those in the room believed whistleblowers did indeed make the world a safer place.

Clayton Swisher

Swisher was first to take to the podium. A previous US federal investigator turned journalist, he spoke at length about what he described as “unprecedented government secrecy”.

“We live in a time of unprecedented govt secrecy and unprecedented wrongdoing,” he said. “We also have a phenomenon of collusion between mainstream media organizations … it’s a distressing trend in this era of journalism.”

He went on to describe data journalism of the kind pioneered by WikiLeaks as “the future”, before recounting the problems al Jazeera faced in January prior to the publication of the Palestine Papers.

Interestingly, Swisher revealed the British secret service – Mi6 – had directly pressured al Jazeera to prevent publication of an alleged MI6 agent’s name prior to the release of the Palestine Papers.

“We were under tremendous pressure from the British government,” he said. “In fact, we fielded calls from MI6 to withhold publication of the name of an alleged MI6 officer who proposed a secret rendition programme to take mid level operatives and intern them with EU funding. Now this is a plan that is illegal under international law.

“At the end of the day we said, if this was a Libyan intelligence officer, would we withhold his name? No...

“We put the name out there and guess what? The world kept turning. No one got hurt; the end was not nigh. “

Sir David Richmond

Next to the podium was member of the opposition, Sir David Richmond. He started by acknowledging that his panel had their “work cut out”, and immediately conceded that “blowing the whistle can be justified."

But, in a direct attack on WikiLeaks, he condemned the leaking of information on a massive scale.

“Genuine examples of whistleblowing are buried in an avalanche of classified material that shows no abuse at all,” he said.

“Many leak not to expose wrongdoing but for political advantage, because they disagree with a particular policy or because they take the view that governments should not be in the business of keeping information secret.”

He then proposed there were better ways to improve government than whistleblowing, suggesting that reform was the answer:

“If the right balance is not being struck [between the public’s need to know and the government’s need to keep secrets], the democratic way to address this is not by whistleblowing … instead we should improve the democratic and constitutional processes by which the executive is held up to scrutiny: parliament, the media, the courts and the rights enjoyed by individual citizens operating within a framework established by law.”

Julian Assange

By a long way the most anticipated speech of the evening, Julian Assange was greeted by a huge wave of applause as he took his turn to argue in favor of the motion, “this house believes whistleblowers make the world a safer place.”

Standing tall in a black suit and red tie, Assange began by reframing the question, asking: “would the absence of whistleblowers make the world a more harmful place?”

He dismissed previous speaker Sir David Richmond’s position, before making his case against secrecy.

“How are we going to know if the secrecy process is working or not?” he said, “because when information is concealed, we do not know about it. The only way we can know if information is legitimately kept secret is when it is revealed. All systems of censorship have that problem encoded within them. And because of that original sin of censorship they all must be held to outside account.”

He went on to describe whistleblowers as “courageous individuals” who in difficult circumstances engage in “squirreling out” information. He also took a jab at the mainstream media, describing it as “rarely” an “honest conduit”.

Referencing the Iraq War Logs as well as Cablegate, Assange criticised the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq war, calling it a “set up”.

“I could speak for hours about what has occurred in Cablegate and all the tremendous revelations that have happened there,” he said. “Just yesterday the editor of the Hindu – the most respected paper in India – brought over 21 front pages from the past six weeks that were based on Cablegate material. The Indian parliament has walked out four times and there is now a tremendous anti-corruption movement that is building up in that country. . . something that hasn’t happened since the time of Gandhi.”

He then reached his conclusion, in which he made an underreported and often overlooked clarification on his position, by asserting that he does in fact not believe in absolute transparency.

“It is obvious that whistleblowers make the world a safer place,” he said. “And when we try to look at the counter arguments we see hot air. It doesn’t mean that everything in government should be exposed. What it does mean is that the system of breaking alleged laws is working. And that must be kept going … otherwise wars cannot reflect accurately the reality that we are in.”

More to follow

Eight modern-day whistleblowers (part II)

2011-04-06T15:04:49Z

Mordechai Vanunu talks to the press after winning his freedom in 2004. Credit: Getty Images

Concluding our run-down of some of the most prominent whistleblowers in recent memory.....

Clive Ponting

A former senior civil servant at the Ministry of Defence, Clive Ponting leaked information about the sinking of Argentine warship General Belgrano in 1984. The classified documents leaked by Ponting revealed that, contrary to official accounts of the incident, the ship was outside of an exclusion zone and was moving away from a Royal Navy taskforce when it was sunk by submarine HMS Conqueror, resulting in the loss of 323 lives. Ponting was charged with breaching the Official Secrets Act (1911) after the leak, but was later acquitted by a jury who decided, against the direction of the presiding judge, that it was in the "public interest" for the documents to be released. In the years following Ponting's acquittal, the Thatcher government introduced the Official Secrets Act (1989), which effectively removed the public interest defence. Ponting has since written 13 books. His latest, A New Green History of the World: The Environment and the Collapse of Great Civilisations, was published in 2007 by Penguin.

Frank Serpico

Frank Serpico's story was immortalised in 1973, after the release of a film depicting his time as a New York cop. Starring Al Pacino, the film -- titled, simply, Serpico -- detailed the true story of a principled young policeman's battle against endemic corruption in the NYPD. Serpico was appalled by what he saw: drug deals, bribes and various other criminal dealings, involving colleagues at the highest levels of the force. With no other option, eventually he blew the whistle, reporting the corruption to journalists at the New York Times. In the weeks that followed he was subject to intense intimidation by officers at all levels of the NYPD, and at one point was shot in the face in what was rumoured to have been an attempted "execution". Serpico was eventually awarded an NYPD Medal of Honour in 1972, but claims he has continued to be shunned by the NYPD. Married four times and having travelled Europe for several years in a campervan, Serpico today lives in a cabin in relative seclusion near New York. Now aged 74, he remains vocal in his condemnation of police corruption.

Mordechai Vanunu

Between 1975-1985, Mordechai Vanunu worked as a nuclear technician for the Israeli government. Throughout this period, Israel claimed it would not be the first to introduce nuclear weapons to the Middle East. But in 1986, Vanunu leaked information to the British press revealing that the country had in fact manufactured between 150 and 200 nuclear bombs and were also attempting to produce a hydrogen bomb, the most destructive of all. After the publication of Vanunu's leaked information in the Sunday Times on 5 October 1986, he was lured from London to Italy by an American citizen doubling as an Israeli intelligence agent, Cheryl Bentov. He was then taken by boat to Israel, where he was sentenced to 18 years imprisonment, 11 of which he spent in solitary confinement. Released in 2004 after serving 16 years of his sentence, Vanunu today remains subject to strict conditions that forbid him from leaving Israel, using the internet or the telephone. He has been nominated for the Nobel Prize on more than 16 occasions, and served as Rector of Glasgow University for three years from 2004-2007 while still confined in Israel, risking imprisonment to remain in regular contact with students.

Bradley Manning (?)

Private First Class Bradley Manning is the 23-year-old US soldier accused of leaking more than 720,000 diplomatic and military documents to the whistleblower website, WikiLeaks. Manning was arrested in May 2010 by US authorities in Iraq, after he allegedly confessed to a friend that he had obtained and released classified files. An avid and proficient computer user, Manning reportedly discovered instances of war crimes while serving in Iraq and was told to "shut up" by his commanding officer when he tried to have something done about it. According to unverified chat logs, he then took it upon himself to "blow the whistle" by leaking classified files to WikiLeaks in order to expose instances of wrong doing -- such as a video depicting the killing of 12 civilians (including two Reuters journalists) by US Apache helicopters in 2007. Manning, who has not yet faced trial, has since been in solitary confinement for over 300 days in conditions that have been widely condemned by campaigners and human rights groups. Critics say Manning -- if he is indeed the leaker -- is a traitor who has endangered the lives of American soldiers. He faces 34 charges, the most serious of which, known as "aiding the enemy", could see him face the death penalty.

Read Eight modern-day whistleblowers (part I)

Eight modern-day whistleblowers (part I)

2011-04-05T13:02:55Z

Daniel Ellsberg, publisher of 'The Pentagon Papers,' speaks at a press conference, 1970s.

Credit: Hulton Archive/Getty Images

This Saturday, the Frontline Club and New Statesman host a special adversarial debate, "this house believes whistleblowers make the world a safer place". Here we profile some of the most prominent whistleblowers in recent memory...

Joe Darby

In 2004, a US military reservist named Joe Darby passed a CD containing shocking images to a member of the army's criminal investigation command. The photographs on the disc were taken at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, and depicted US soldiers torturing, humiliating and abusing Iraqi prisoners. The images caused an international uproar. In the weeks that followed, after an investigation, instances of rape and homicide were also uncovered at the prison, photographs of which have since been suppressed by the Obama administration. Eleven soldiers were eventually convicted of charges relating to the incidents at Abu Ghraib, and Darby was awarded a John F Kennedy Profile in Courage Award in 2005. But not all Americans have celebrated Darby's actions. Some, including members of his own family, have branded him a traitor. He now lives in an undisclosed location and has started a new life out of the army.

Daniel Ellsberg

While working as a US military analyst in the late 1960s, a 38-year-old Daniel Ellsberg made copies of classified documents relating to the Vietnam War. The Papers detailed America's political and military involvement in Vietnam from 1945 to 1967 and demonstrated, in the words of Ellsberg, "unconstitutional behaviour by a succession of presidents, the violation of their oath and the violation of the oath of every one of their subordinates". Upon their publication in the New York Times in 1971, the Papers caused a sensation, exposing how four consecutive presidents - Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson - had knowingly lied to the public over the war. The reigning president at the time, Richard Nixon, tried to prosecute Ellsberg under the Espionage Act, but all charges were dismissed after it was revealed the prosecution had gathered evidence illegally through wiretaps and other means. Now aged 79, Ellsberg remains vocal in his support of other whistleblowers, and has been a staunch advocate of WikiLeaks.

Mark Felt

When five men were arrested after breaking in to offices of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) at the Watergate Hotel in 1972, few expected the huge political scandal that would result. Known up until 2005 only as Deep Throat, then-Associate Director of the FBI, Mark Felt, leaked details of the Watergate investigation to Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. The investigation detailed how burglars who had broken in to the DNC's offices had done so with the explicit prior knowledge of the White House, the Justice Department, the FBI and the CIA. Most controversially, tape recordings of conversations between President Nixon and his closest aides revealed that Nixon was himself directly involved in attempting to cover up links between his administration and the break-in, forcing his resignation. For 30 years Felt denied he was the source of leaks to Woodward and Bernstein, but came out shortly before his death in 2008 at the insistence of his family.

Katharine Gun

An ex-translator for the British intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), Katharine Gun was catapulted into the public eye after she leaked a top-secret email from the US National Security Agency (NSA) in 2003. The email detailed US plans to illegally bug the offices of six UN countries in the lead up to the Iraq War - contravening both the Vienna Conventions (the set of rules that govern global diplomacy) as well as the 1946 Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations. Gun, aged 29 at the time of the leak, felt that the email was a direct attempt to undermine democratic process in the lead up to the war. It outlined how the US wanted British help in order to access "The whole gamut of information that could give US policymakers the edge in obtaining results favourable to US goals or to head off surprises." After the Observer splashed the contents of the email across its front page just two weeks prior to the Iraq invasion, Gun was arrested and charged under the Official Secrets Act. The prominence of the case won her high profile support from the likes of Pentagon Papers leaker Daniel Ellsberg and actor Sean Penn, and the charges were eventually dropped after the prosecution declined to offer evidence.

Read Eight modern-day whistleblowers (part II)

What WikiLeaks has told us

2011-02-17T11:11:25Z

Since 2006, the whistleblowers' website WikiLeaks has published a mass of information we would otherwise not have known. The leaks have exposed dubious procedures at Guantanamo Bay and detailed meticulously the Iraq War's unprecedented civilian death-toll. They have highlighted the dumping of toxic waste in Africa as well as revealed America's clandestine military actions in Yemen and Pakistan.

The sheer scope and significance of the revelations is shocking. Among them are great abuses of power, corruption, lies and war crimes. Yet there are still some who insist WikiLeaks has "told us nothing new". This collection, sourced from a range of publications across the web, illustrates nothing could be further from the truth. Here, if there is still a grain of doubt in your mind, is just some of what WikiLeaks has told us:

* American planes bombed a village in Southern Yemen in December 2009, killing 14 women and 21 children (see Amnesty)

* The Secretary of State's office encouraged US diplomats at the United Nations to spy on their counterparts by collecting biographic & biometric information (see Wired.com)

* The Obama administration worked with Republicans to protect Bush administration officials facing a criminal investigation into torture (see Mother Jones)

* A US Army helicopter gunned down two Reuters journalists in Baghdad in 2007 (see Reuters)

* US authorities failed to investigate hundreds of reports of abuse, torture, rape and even murder by Iraqi police and soldiers (see the Guardian)

* In Iraq there were scores of claims of prison abuse by coalition forces even after the Abu Ghraib scandal (see the Bureau of Investigative Journalism)

* Afghan President Hamid Karzai freed suspected drug dealers because of their political connections (see CBS News)

* Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed support for the concept of “land swaps” (see Yahoo News)

* The United States was secretly given permission from Yemen's president to attack the Al-Qaeda group in his country (see the Guardian)

* Then-Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld and his top commanders repeatedly knowingly lied to the American public about rising sectarian violence in Iraq beginning in 2006 (see the Daily Beast)

* The US was shipping arms to Saudi Arabia for use in northern Yemen even as it denied any role in the conflict (see Salon.com)

* Saudi Arabia is one of the largest origin points for funds supporting international terrorism (see the Guardian)

* A storage facility housing Yemen's radioactive material was unsecured for up to a week (see Bloomberg)

* Israel destroyed a Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007, fearing it was built to make a bomb (see the Sunday Times)

* Top officials in several Arab countries have close links with the CIA (see the Peninsula)

* Swiss company Trafigura Beheer BV dumped toxic waste at the Ivorian port of Abidjan, then attempted to silence the press from revealing it by obtaining a gagging order (see WikiLeaks)

* Pakistan's government has allowed members of its spy network to hold strategy sessions on combating American troops with members of the Taliban (see the New York Times)

* A stash of highly enriched uranium capable of providing enough material for multiple "dirty bombs" has been waiting in Pakistan for removal by an American team for more than three years (see CBS News)

* US military Special Operations Forces have been conducting offensive operations inside Pakistan, despite repeated denials from US officials (see the Nation)

* China was behind the online attack on Google (see ZDNet)

* North Korea is secretly helping the military dictatorship in Myanmar build nuclear and missile sites in its jungles (see CBS News)

* The Indian government "condones torture" and systematically abused detainees in the disputed region of Kashmir (see CBS News)

* The British government has been training a Bangladeshi paramilitary force condemned by human rights organisations as a "government death squad" (see the Guardian)

* BP suffered a blowout after a gas leak in the Caucasus country of Azerbaijan in September 2008, a year and a half before another BP blowout killed 11 workers (see the Guardian)

* Saudi Arabia's rulers have deep distrust for some fellow Muslim countries, especially Pakistan and Iran (see CBS News)

* Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah repeatedly urged the United States to attack Iran (see the Guardian)

* Iranian Red Crescent ambulances were used to smuggle weapons to Lebanon's militant Hezbollah group during its 2006 war with Israel (see CBS News)

* Dozens of US tactical nuclear weapons are in Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium (see * The Libyan government promised "enormous repercussions" for the UK if the release of Abdel Baset al-Megrahi, the Lockerbie bomber, was not handled properly (see CBS News)

* Pope Benedict impeded an investigation into alleged child sex abuse within the Catholic Church (see MSNBC)

* Sinn Fein leaders Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness carried out negotiations for the Good Friday agreement with Irish then-prime minister Bertie Ahern while the two had knowledge of a bank robbery the Irish Republican Army was planning to carry out (see CBS News)

* Anglo-Dutch oil giant Royal Dutch Shell PLC has infiltrated the highest levels of government in Nigeria (see the Guardian)

* A US official was told by Mexican President Felipe Calderon that Latin America "needs a visible US presence" to counter Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez's growing influence in the region (see Yahoo News)

* Cuba's economic situation could become "fatal" within two to three years (see Business Week)

* McDonald's tried to delay the US government's implementation of a free-trade agreement in order to put pressure on El Salvador to appoint neutral judges in a $24m lawsuit it was fighting in the country (see the Guardian)

* British officials made a deal with the US to allow the country to keep cluster bombs in the UK despite the ban on the munitions signed by Gordon Brown (see Politics.co.uk)

* The British government promised to protect America's interests during the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war (see the Guardian)

* The US government was acting on behalf of GM crop firm Monsanto in 2008, when the US embassy in Paris advised Washington to start a military-style trade war against any European Union country which opposed genetically modified (GM) crops (see the Guardian)

* Pfitzer tested anti-biotics on Nigerian children, contravening national and international standards on medical ethics (see Medical News Today)

* Prisoners at Camp Delta (Guantanamo Bay) were denied access to the Red Cross for up to four weeks (see the Telegraph)

* More than 66,000 civilians suffered “violent deaths” in Iraq between 2004 and the end of 2009 (see the Telegraph)

* Russia is a “virtual mafia state” with rampant corruption and scant separation between the activities of the government and organised crime (see the Guardian)

* The Obama administration tried to “sweet-talk” other countries in to taking Guantanamo detainees, as part of its (as yet unsuccessful) effort to close the prison (see the New York Times)