Wikileaks: CIA's Brennan on 'witch hunt' when Hastings was killed

[951-Riverside]

A 2010 email released by Wikileaks from a top-level CIA contractor asserts that CIA Director John Brennan, the subject of a story by now deceased journalist Michael Hastings, was on a "witch hunt" against "investigative journalists" perceived as hostile.


Hastings, a reporter for the Rolling Stone who ruffled many feathers in his career, was killed in an unusual high-speed car accident in which the vehicle exploded on impact with a tree, and perhaps before. Hastings' wife confirmed to San Diego 6 News Television, soon after the uncharacteristic high-speed automobile crash, that Hastings' next "big story," as he called it, was to be on Brennan.

The email, written by Stratfor President Fred Burton and reported by San Diego 6, reads:

Brennan is behind the witch hunts of investigative journalists learning information from inside the beltway sources.

Note -- There is specific tasker from the WH to go after anyone printing materials negative to the Obama agenda (oh my.) Even the FBI is shocked. The Wonder Boys must be in meltdown mode...

The story on Brennan was never published.

Read more: http://www.digitaljournal.com/news/world/wikileaks-cia-s-brennan-on-witch-hunt-when-hastings-was-killed/article/421913

Original source: https://twitter.com/wikileaks/statuses/549701643437346817

[Octafish]

1. Brennan's the guy who orders the drones to kill people.

Obama's Drone-Master

John Brennan, the CIA director and the man largely responsible for the U.S.'s drone strategy, is so influential that some Pentagon officials have taken to calling him the "Deputy President." In an exclusive interview, GQ's Reid Cherlin talks to Brennan about the ethics of targeted killing, the next global arms race (get ready for everybody to have their own drones), and what it feels like to be the guy the president turns to when he wants a bad guy blown away

by Reid Cherlin
GQ, June 17, 2013

"I'm going up to Jersey tomorrow, to try to escape." John O. Brennan, President Obama's top counterterrorism advisor and his soon-to-be new CIA director, leans back in his chair. Brennan is a proud son of Hudson County, a baseball player at his Catholic high school, a commuter student at Fordham. It's a common-touch backstory that, a tad predictably, Brennan's fans bring up all the time, and that he himself seems to cling to. He points to a photograph on the wall behind my head, a black and white shot of George H.W. Bush, surrounded by aides.

"The guy walking through the door actually is me, with hair," he says. "That was the first time I went into the Oval Office. I remember almost pinching myself, saying, 'What's a guy from Jersey doing in here? And why does the president really care about what I say?' Now, since then, I've been in the Oval Office I guess hundreds of times, and there are still a lot of times I say to myself, 'What's a guy from Jersey—you know, doing in this?'"

Brennan is 57, his broad, creased face framed by a cropped fringe of gray hair. He's wearing a blue dress shirt and a red tie; there are two pens clipped into his breast pocket. He seems to be thinking for a moment. Bolted to the ceiling above us, a flat-screen TV loops Al Jazeera, on mute. "One, it shows that this is truly a land of opportunity, that someone like me can work his way up through the ranks. And can have a, uh"—he looks over his shoulder, at a workspace as cramped and synthetic as a ship captain's quarters—"a windowless office in the West Wing. With a low ceiling."

It is February, shortly after his raucous confirmation hearings for the top job at Langley, and he has agreed to a rare interview—so far as I can tell, still his only one this year—to talk about America's drone campaign, a program he'd helped to steer. Outside estimates of the death toll range as high as 4,000 (numbers the administration scoffs at), including at least four American citizens. And though you and I are probably never going to join Al Qaeda or hang out with militants in Yemen, our government definitely thinks it could kill you if it thought you had joined up with Al Qaeda or were hanging out with militants in Yemen. It is a worrying indication of where things are headed that in his May counterterrorism speech, the president actually had to reassure people, "For the record: I do not believe it would be constitutional for the government to target and kill any U.S. citizen—with a drone, or with a shotgun—without due process, nor should any president deploy armed drones over U.S. soil."

"I don't think going in, a lot of people thought that President Obama would be more aggressive, more on the offense than President Bush was, in that region, and he has been," says Michael Leiter, a former director of the National Counterterrorism Center. "And a big reason he has been, in my view, is because John made him comfortable that those were the means necessary to accomplish the goal." In his previous job as Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, Brennan would often make the final recommendation to the president, and receive the go or no-go for high-stakes strikes. He was, reportedly, the primary supervisor of a new "playbook," a set of rules that will govern our drone program going forward.

CONTINUED...

http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/201306/john-brennan-cia-director-interview-drone-program

[nashville_brook]

6. thanks for this!

as always keeping us informed. i need a flowchart of these guys.

[Jesus Malverde]

14. We have an assassination program at work in the United States.

We are aware of it because it sometimes they use drones.

It would be naive to think that those that murder for policy, only kill people from the air with bombs.

Israel has an assassination program as well, they also murder from the air. They also were caught in Dubai killing people using other methods

Initially, Dubai authorities believed al-Mabhouh had died of natural causes. Fawzi Benomran, the Dubai police coroner, said, "It was meant to look like death from natural causes during sleep." It took 10 days for the Dubai police to come to the conclusion that al-Mabhouh was assassinated. Benomran described the determination of the exact cause of death as "one of the most challenging cases" his department faced.

The Khaleej Times quoted an unnamed senior police official as saying that four masked assailants had shocked al-Mabhouh's legs before using a pillow to suffocate him. Another story reported by Uzi Mahnaimi stated that a hit team murdered al-Mabhouh with a heart-attack inducing drug, then proceeded to take photographs of his documents before leaving.

Al-Mabhouh's family said that medical teams that examined his body determined that he died in his hotel room after being strangled and receiving a massive electric shock to the head, and that blood samples examined by a French laboratory confirms that electrocution was the cause of death. According to Reuters news agency, traces of poison were found in al Mabhouh's autopsy. Dubai authorities stated they were ruling the death a homicide and were working with the International Criminal Police Organization to investigate the incident.

Other news reports gave varying causes of death, including suffocation with a pillow and poisoning. In an international press conference General Tamim, the head of the investigation, said that the exact cause of death is yet to be concluded.
Moreover, on 1 March 2010, the Dubai Police stated that he was first drugged.

Major General Khamis Mattar al-Mazeina as the deputy commander of Dubai's police gave details of the death of al-Mabhouh after forensic tests. Al-Mabhouh was injected in his leg with succinylcholine, a quick-acting, depolarizing paralytic muscle relaxant. It causes almost-instant loss of motor skills, but does not induce loss of consciousness or anaesthesia. Then al-Mabhouh was suffocated. Al-Mazeina said, "The assassins used this method so that it would seem that his death was natural."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Mahmoud_al-Mabhouh

What an assassination team looks like.


No reason to believe we also don't have specialist teams like these.

[sabrina 1]

21. It was yet another shock to those who elected this president when he appointed that liar and

torture supporter as head of the CIA.

Yet one more cabinet member to a cabinet that looks more like a Republican president's.

That man is a criminal, which I thought we knew back when Bush was in the WH. But the silence now regarding these war criminals, has been deafening.

[TwilightGardener]

2. It appears that everyone is afraid of Brennan, including Obama. He acts with

impunity, and will never be fired. I don't know if he had Hastings killed, that's pretty far-fetched, but he is a scary person.

[grasswire]

4. Why is it far fetched?

That's what spy masters in charge of counter terrorism do. He was protecting the brand.

Why should we imagine that an agency that would torture captives would not kill a person who threatened to expose the evil deeds to the world?

[reddread]

8. what else is there to be scared of?

lets get real.

[Crowman1979]

13. Sounds like Brennan is doing everything from the J Edgar Hoover playbook.

Can't wait to find out that scumbag's sordid past after he dies.

[ucrdem]

3. "The email, written by Stratfor President Fred Burton"

[grasswire]

7. your post is quite revealing. nt

[ucrdem]

9. The OP is a festive blend of RW sources and memes.

Bon appétit!

[sabrina 1]

23. Considering Brennen is a Right Wing torturer and Bush loyalist, and HE is the focus

of this OP, and WAS very much the focus on DU during the Bush years, 'right wing' is a mild description of who this liar, yes he lied to Congress too with no consequences, is.

Can you explain why a Democrat who was elected to rid this country of Bush's gang of war criminals, would even THINK of placing this well-known-to-be dangerous man in his cabinet?

How many Republicans have been nominated by this President?

Are there ANY progressive Dems in his cabinet?

[ucrdem]

28. You're thinking of Paul Bremmer. Brennan actually left govt service in 2005. nt

[sabrina 1]

30. I am NOT thinking of Paul Bremer, I know who Brennen is I know his views on

torture, and how he funneled 'intelligence' to the Bush gang to help them continue to 'sell' their WOT.

Someone who openly supports torture as he has, which led him to turn down the first Obama nomination, should not be a part of this government.

Bremer fled Iraq after starting a war over attempting to censor newspapers there, leading to riots and bloodshed. AND after 'losing' 9 Billion Iraqi dollars which has yet to be found.

[ucrdem]

31. Great, then please supply evidence that Brennan "openly supports torture," thanks. nt

[FSogol]

11. "Stratfor Is a Joke and So Is Wikileaks for Taking It Seriously"

"Maybe what these emails actually reveal is how a Texas-based corporate research firm can get a little carried away in marketing itself as a for-hire CIA and end up fooling some over-eager hackers into believing it's true. "

and

"The group's reputation among foreign policy writers, analysts, and practitioners is poor; they are considered a punchline more often than a source of valuable information or insight. As a former recipient of their "INTEL REPORTS" (I assume someone at Stratfor signed me up for a trial subscription, which appeared in my inbox unsolicited), what I found was typically some combination of publicly available information and bland "analysis" that had already appeared in the previous day's New York Times. A friend who works in intelligence once joked that Stratfor is just The Economist a week later and several hundred times more expensive. As of 2001, a Stratfor subscription could cost up to $40,000 per year."

Whole article here:

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2012/02/stratfor-is-a-joke-and-so-is-wikileaks-for-taking-it-seriously/253681/

[FSogol]

5. Stratfor? Really?

[sabrina 1]

24. Yes, interesting they should rear THEIR ugly heads AGAIN. Seems their cover has been blown a

few times now.

Yet, they are still in business. Last time we heard about them, Big Banks seem to like them for some reason, guess to do some 'dirty work' taking care of Liberal Orgs and Journalists etc, they struggled hard to try to keep their cover.

[nationalize the fed]

10. ^

Hastings, driving a 2012 Mercedes, hits a tree head on at ~65mph. The engine somehow flies *around* (or over?) the tree that he hit head on and lands ~200 or so feet down the street. Amazing, that.

Lady Diana's 1994 Mercedes hits a tunnel pillar head on at ~65 mph and the engine does not fly around the pillar and land ~200 feet down the tunnel.

One might conclude that Mercedes automobiles were not as safe in 2012 as they were in 1994. Or something.

Hastings thought his car was being tampered with
USA Today August 22, 2013

At 12:30 a.m. on the morning he died, an agitated Michael Hastings went to his neighbor and friend Jordanna Thigpen and asked to borrow her car. He said he was afraid to drive his own car, because he believed that someone had been tampering with it.

"He was scared, and he wanted to leave town," Thigpen recalls.

But she declined, saying her car was having mechanical problems. When she woke up, Hastings was dead, his car having crashed into a tree..
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/08/22/newser-hastings-car/2684631/

[zeemike]

18. All of that is dismiss-able with a single trump card

The conspiracy theory...works every time no matter how convincing the evidence is.

[sabrina 1]

25. No, it isn't anymore. Not since we learned where the tactic came from. It's funny though

when you know where it came from, to see it in practice. But THAT is what is dismissable now, the old 'CT' attempt to try to intimidate people or discredit them, as it should be.

Hastings death, his fears before it, what he was working on, the fact that he knew they were after him, no, none of that is dismissable and anyone who tries to do so, who isn't interested in knowing why journalists and Liberal Orgs and peaceful protesters and Whistle Blowers are all being attacked, should be completely dismissed.

[Rex]

12. The CIA? Innocent angels one and all! It's not like they tried to overthrow a democratically elected

government...oh...they did? It's not like they smuggled heroine and cocaine out of a country we were at war with...oh...they did that too? Okay...not like they would ever kill someone to hide the truth...HA...see? No proof of that...just the other stuff which is not major at all. Nope.

The CIA would never kill anyone with impunity, they are much to busy trying to overthrow governments in foreign lands...who has time to just focus on one lousy person that MAY or MAY NOT have had an explosive story to print about the head of the CIA?

At least the FBI is not scared of the CIA.

[BeanMusical]

22. And the NSA?

They are all saints at that holy agency, I tell ya.

[jalan48]

15. Like the Mafia

Just don't mess with us and we will leave you alone. Except, you need to pay the required monetary tribute to insure your safety from "terrorists".

[nolabels]

16. With billions at stake any friendly operative could have been part of it or done it in whole

No doubt it's easier to off somebody covertly then spend time repairing an image damaged by such. What is the definition of what that agency does anyway. Deception is rule in the whole ball of wax, is it not?

[starroute]

17. This is related to the way they've gone after Barrett Brown

http://my.firedoglake.com/yellowsnapdragon/2013/07/29/what-did-michael-hastings-know/

Michael Hastings was interested in how private contractors and government were working together to stop journalists from publishing details of illegal government surveillance.

Julian Assange, Glenn Greenwald and Barrett Brown have been government targets, among others. Those three are important. The stories of Julian Assange and Glenn Greenwald are well known and thoroughly documented by now and include a campaign of smears, threats, international legal contortions, and general hyperventilation from government, corporate America, and talking heads around the globe.

Less known is journalist Barrett Brown. Unofficial spokesman for Anonymous–although he denied holding that title–Barrett Brown’s work has focused on the secretive world of contract spies. Through Project PM, “a crowd-sourced research effort to expose government intelligence contractors,” Barrett Brown uncovered a strategy concocted by a consortium of private contractors called Team Themis to discredit activist groups opposing the contractors’ big-name clients, namely Bank of America and the US Chamber of Commerce. Strategies of Team Themis included Persona Management, which created false social media accounts to infiltrate and discredit progressive groups like Wikileaks and anti-Chamber group Chamber Watch. . . .

Rather than winning accolades for exposing a nefarious public/private partnership to damage the credibility of journalists, Barrett Brown won indictments on charges that could result in over 100 years in jail. One obviously spurious charge was for cutting and pasting a link onto a discussion board. Some believe that Brown was targeted because he got dangerously close to discovering PRISM before Edward Snowden leaked top secret documents detailing the program.


http://rt.com/usa/214047-barrett-brown-sentence-secret/

On the eve of a court hearing more than two years in the making, federal attorneys are asking a Texas judge to keep details about their case against journalist Barrett Brown secret as they seek an eight-and-a-half year sentence.

Brown, a 33-year-old journalist and hacktivist, was arrested in September 2012 and subsequently charged with more than a dozen counts ranging from computer crime to threatening a federal agent – the likes of which left him at one point facing the possibility of 100 years behind bars. A plea deal entered last April let him off the hook for all but three charges, however, and Judge Sam A. Lindsay is now slated to announce his sentencing next Tuesday. . . .

Attorneys for Brown have filed a pre-sentencing memorandum with the court that contains the defense’s arguments for time served. Because that filing challenges the government’s own pre-hearing recommendations entered under seal, however, now neither party’s proposal concerning the fate of Brown can legally be made public.


https://freebarrettbrown.org/faq/

The government wants Brown to serve the maximum sentence possible under his plea agreement, which is a full 8 ½ years. See the factual resumé for specific details of the conduct constituting the offenses. They are seeking to punish him for the criminal activity of all of Anonymous, who they say are a criminal organization. They are even using the fact that he linked to information hacked from Stratfor – charges which were dropped in March 2014 – as relevant conduct that he should serve more time for.

Incredibly, the prosecutors absurdly maintain that Brown is not an actual journalist, despite the fact that he’s worked solely as a writer and began receiving payment starting in his teenage years for a wide variety of journalistic assignments, having more recently contributed to the Guardian, Huffington Post, Vanity Fair and others, has authored two books, appeared in the media as a commentator, currently publishes a column with D Magazine, and has received support from Reporters Without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Free Press, Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Freedom of the Press Foundation, among others.

Prosecutors and/or the FBI have also:

* written that Brown, along with Anonymous, sought to overthrow the U.S. government
* tried to seize funds that were raised for his legal defense
* obtained a gag order against the defendant and his lawyers restricting what they could say about the case for several months
* sought to identify contributors to a website where Brown and others dissected leaks and researched links between intelligence contractors and governments
* pursued a case against Brown’s mother, who was forced to plead guilty to a misdemeanor for obstruction, resulting in six months probation and a $1,000 fine
* argued that he should not be allowed to criticize the government, his First Amendment right
* federal agents seized the Declaration of Independence from his apartment as evidence against him
* used a retweet of a quote from Fox News commentator Bob Beckel threatening Julian Assange – “a dead man can’t leak stuff” – and attributed it to Brown within his indictment as threatening

[sabrina 1]

27. Don't forget all the Whistle Blowers also. They were embarrassed when their secret Contract Bids

to smear Journalists, Glenn Greenwald was on the list, and Liberal Orgs, was exposed by Anonymous, more than embarrassed, those exposures verified what many people were wondering about. The obvious talking points, such as CONSPIRACY THEORIST btw, calculated to try to distract from topics, such as this one, that seemed to appear every time people were discussing them, were suspected of being bought and paid for.

Stratfor, HB Gary bidding on a BOA contract to try to silence people like Greenwald by doing 'research' on his life to find out what could be used to try to discredit him, that confirmed what people had thought.

That contract on Greenwald may not have gone to HB Gary, but someone got it, as we are still seeing the attempts to smear him. They must have cheaped out and the 'talking points' are always the same, kind of worn out at this point.

THIS SHOULD BE ILLEGAL. Security Contractors getting paid to discredit journalists and others who have every right to know the truth about what is going on in this country.

[starroute]

29. The Barrett Brown situation is a lot more bizarre, though

He didn't have the audience that Greenwald does. He wasn't an obvious target. And yet they tried to throw the book at him, imposed a gag order on his talking about his own case, and have a veil of secrecy over the reasons why they're arguing that he should get the maximum under the plea bargain rather than time served. And now the sentencing has been delayed and they've moved him to a different prison where he has fewer resources and less access to outside contacts.

There's something deeply weird about the Brown case that goes further than a mere smear job. For example, why are they trying to accuse him of plotting with Anonymous to overthrow the US government? I mean, that's beyond insane.

And Brown and Hastings were personal friends -- which wasn't the case with Greenwald. Brown had written a sympathetic article about Hastings in 2010 (http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2010/06/why-the-hacks-hate-michael-hastings). And Hastings may have been working on a story about Brown at the time of his death, along with his story about Brennan.

http://freepress.org/departments/display/16/2013/5030

Hastings is also believed to have been working on a story about the Petraeus's replacement as director of the CIA, John Brennan. Brennan is the key architect of Obama's Disposition Matrix, affectionately called a “kill list” by the press, which help the National Command Authority to decide who to kill and how to kill them outside of combat zones without judicial review. A career CIA man, Brennan was considered for nomination by Obama for the agency's top post once before, but withdrew his name once his public support for torture and extraordinary rendition (illegal kidnapping and torture) became a potential liability.

Hastings's third reported pending story was the most potentially shocking. It concerned his friend and fellow investigative journalist Barrett Brown. Like Hastings, Barrett Brown was a young iconoclast deeply concerned about national security and domestic spying issues. When Brown came into possession of emails from HBGary and Stratfor he ceased work on his book and began looking into the mechanisms and implications of domestic spying. The sheer volume of the revelations by Jeremy Hammond and other members of LulzSec caused him to initiate a crowd sourced journalistic entity called Project PM.

[gregcrawford]

19. Surprise, surprise!

I recall reading that Michael Hastings was a very cautious, little-old-lady driver behind the wheel, and that he told several people that he feared for his life.

The engine of his car landed a couple of hundred feet away from the wreck that killed him, but engineers from the manufacturer said that the chassis was designed to force the engine to slide UNDER the car in a head-on collision, and that what DID happen simply could NOT happen... unless the car exploded BEFORE impact.

Is there really anyone naive enough to believe that the government would NEVER murder a journalist - or anyone else - they didn't like? If there is, their My-Little-Pony fantasy world must be all sweetness and light. Until they go off their meds.

[BeanMusical]

20. Yeah, I'm afraid that the usual bozos are naive enough.

Must be a side effect of the Kool-Aid. Another one is the pathetic and compulsive posting of the rofl smiley.

[sabrina 1]

32. I don't think there is anyone left in this country naive enough to believe

anything certain Govt Agencies are capable of. But THERE are people in this country who agree with those agencies, who know what they do and have done, and who are actively engaged in trying to distract from open discussion about it.

One of their favorite tactics, we learned from leaked documents, is to call anyone who dares to question, 'Conspiracy Theorists'.

This, they decided, should help to undermine the questions. The problem is questioners are growing in numbers and their old, jaded 'CT' tactic isn't having the effect they had hoped. In fact whenever I see it, I know think of what I read about how THIS was decided, to call anyone, including investigative journalists, a CT when they were getting close to the truth.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

26. Oh, that's OK because Brennan is a "patriot under a lot of pressure".

Aka a thug dressed in a suit.

[Quantess]

33. Interesting.

[neverforget]

34. Torture, spying on the Senate, lying to Congress yet he still has a job.