
Your Man in the Public Gallery: Assange Hearing Day 11 - bainsfather
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/
======
motohagiography
The discussion of journalists not understanding or respecting the need to keep
material encrypted is consistent with why I feel like I'm developing a lower
degree of trust for people who lack a physical or technical skill, as without
one, it is hard for them to have a sense of consequences for being careless or
stupid in new domains. Ultimately one of the Guardian or NYT writers published
Assange's insurance archive password in a book. Whether that was mendacious or
stupid doesn't matter, Assange overestimated reporters and editors in their
ability to apprehend risk.

It becomes a moral issue when they don't hold themselves above that standard.
They're fine for administrative tasks, but not people you want to take risks
together with.

~~~
bainsfather
I was very struck by this when watching Citizenfour (the documentary on
Snowden leaks). The newspaper journalists had little understanding of good
procedures (even "don't have a very short password") and thought Snowden
hiding his keystrokes from the camera (and anything else) was funny, rather
than good practice. And these were the best people Snowden could find.
Hopefully, among journalists, there is now more awareness of how important
this really is.

As regards Harding/Leigh giving away the password in their book - I find it
very hard to believe that this was an honest accident on their part. The
defence that they and the Guardian newspaper gave is just not credible ~ 'oh,
but we didn't realise'. And beyond that, if you were going to publish the
password and somehow thought it was ok, you would at least consult someone who
knew more on the topic that they claim that they did.

~~~
jules-jules
It's hard to remain impartial when the prosecutor's case mainly rests on
WikiLeaks knowingly and wittingly publishing unredacted files, and one of the
key witnesses who could refute this point is not allowed to talk about it.
From the text:

>James Lewis QC for the prosecution had been permitted gratuitously to read to
two previous witnesses with zero connection to this claim, an extract from a
book by Luke Harding and David Leigh in which Harding claims that at a dinner
at El Moro Restaurant Julian Assange had stated he did not care if US
informants were killed, because they were traitors who deserved what was
coming to them.

>This morning giving evidence was John Goetz, now Chief Investigations Editor
of NDR (German public TV), then of Der Spiegel. Goetz was one of the four
people at that dinner. He was ready and willing to testify that Julian said no
such thing and Luke Harding is (not unusually) lying. Goetz was not permitted
by Judge Baraitser to testify on this point, even though two witnesses who
were not present had previously been asked to testify on it.

>Baraitser’s legal rationale was this. It was not in his written evidence
statement (submitted before Lewis had raised the question with other
witnesses) so Goetz was only permitted to contradict Lewis’s deliberate
introduction of a lie if Lewis asked him. Lewis refused to ask the one witness
who was actually present what had happened, because Lewis knew the lie he is
propagating would be exposed.

[...]

>Summers then asked about events leading to the publishing of the unredacted
cables. Goetz said this was a complicated process. It started when Luke
Harding and David Leigh published a book in February 2011 containing the
password to the online cache of encrypted cables. This was discussed on
various mirroring sites, and eventual publication of the full cache by
Cryptome after Die Freitag became involved. Cryptome was at that time very
well known and an important source for journalists.

>Summers then asked about the breakdown of relationships between Wikileaks and
the Guardian. It was at this point that Baraitser ruled that Summers was not
allowed to ask about what happened at the dinner he attended at El Moro
restaurant. Summers made a formal request, as Lewis had introduced the subject
with other witnesses who unlike Goetz had not been there. Lewis objected, and
Baraitser said no.

Can someone explain to me how this is possible? I mean if witnesses with
material knowledge about one of the key charges are barred from speaking about
them during the trial, how are we to believe that this isn't anything other
than a kangaroo court?

------
nabla9
Murray sows mistrust and conspiracy like thinking towards everything he sees
as the man he is fighting against. He has uncritically trusted Kremlin sources
because they have common enemy.

For example Kremlin dismissed photos of Salisbury suspects as fake news, and
Murray jumped right into it without critical thinking or distrust against
Kremlin as source. NATO chemical weapons exercise taking place on Salisbury
Plain seems like better explanation to him.

For these and other reasons I can't trust his reporting to be factual. We
should find other sources.

~~~
mjw1007
Here's an example of his conspiracy-like thinking from last year:
[https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/10/bad-faith-
ne...](https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/10/bad-faith-negotiation/)

He claimed to have inside information from the Foreign Office, that the
government was negotiating an agreement with the EU with the intention of
breaking it later. I don't think anyone else reported this at the time.

A little under a year later, it seems that what he reported was true.

~~~
mhh__
I'm not seeing it, at least just from that. Can you point out the connection
between exactly what Murray writes and the "limited and specific way" debacle?

 _Boris Johnson to skirt around law and violate treaty_ isn't exactly out of
character.

~~~
mjw1007
Note the article says which bit of the treaty it's talking about (the Northern
Ireland protocol).

If he'd written "I've heard from legal advisers that they've been asked to
provide a justification for breaking part of a treaty but they don't want me
to say which", I wouldn't put much weight on that turning out to be true.

------
dash2
Craig Murray is on record expressing skepticism that Russia was involved in
the Salisbury poisoning. Judge his trustworthiness accordingly.

~~~
roenxi
The Salisbury poisoning was bizarre. The Russians had arrested Sergei, then
spy-swapped him in 2010.

So the Russians have to have figured out a reason, after a decade, that
suddenly this man had to die in a grizzly and obvious assassination. Despite
the fact they already had him under arrest and decided he wasn't all that
important to them. It is very hard to imagine what that reason would be. And
on the converse, anglosphere intelligence services have a history of lying.

It is reasonable to question the Salisbury poisoning. It is hard to see what
was in it for Russia. There wasn't an outcome here that is good for them, so
it is unclear why they would have done it.

~~~
arethuza
"die in a grizzly and obvious assassination"

I think the point is very much to send a message to current serving Russian
intelligence officers to think very carefully before betraying their country.

~~~
mhh__
This is apparently hard to grasp for some (HN is the only site on the internet
I frequent where the Russian security services of all people seem to be given
the benefit of the doubt)

~~~
mlthoughts2018
I think it’s because US / UK security services are just as ruthless and
bloody, they just cover it up better. I doubt anyone here disputes the extreme
moral failure of Russian state security. It’s just that we should be much more
skeptical of countries that are just as bloody and flippant in their lack of
concern for human life or decency, like US & UK.

~~~
mhh__
Who has the UK assassinated in the last 20 years? The western intelligence
services are awful too but no one does it quite like the russians

~~~
tsimionescu
Not sure about the UK, but didn't the US recently publically assassinate a
high official of another state (an Iranian general)?

~~~
jacobush
As (insert expletive here) that was, it was more of an Act of War than just an
assasination. So totally different, though I think it was immoral,
strategically unsound, and stupid. Also loathable and with no regard for
innocent lives.

~~~
tsimionescu
An act of war implies the existence of a war. The USA is not at war with
either Iran or Irak, so not sure how this could qualify (except that, had the
roles been reversed, it would have definitely been seen as an act that can
START a war).

~~~
somesortofsystm
You seem to have hit on a very important point: American's don't realize that,
while their country is the #1 cause of terror and war around the world, its
not 'legally at war', and therefore - laws of war that traditionally the
public would understand, are simply not applicable.

 _This_ is another atrocity being committed on the general public by the
military industrial criminal state. Doublethink and newspeak have been very
skillfully applied to ensure a lack of culpability - however, to those of us
who have had to dig innocent loved ones out from under America's piles of
burning rubble, it is very, very clear that the American people are
responsible for this mess, whether they understand their own laws or not.

------
oxymoran
I don’t know why you would be surprised that you cannot randomly call people
up to testify during the proceedings. You have to submit your witness lists
months before a hearing.

~~~
ifdefdebug
If you are talking about Goetz, he actually was a witness and testifying that
morning. The point is that he was forbidden by the judge to testify about a
specific event, in favor of Assange, but that's all in the article.

~~~
DiogenesKynikos
Exactly. The point is that the prosecutor has repeatedly brought up a specific
event that Goetz witnessed. But when Goetz comes to testify, Goetz is not
allowed to discuss that very same event.

The prosecutor is allowed to repeatedly quote Luke Harding's account of what
Assange supposedly said, but Goetz isn't allowed to give his opinion - which
is apparently very different from that of Harding. Harding's personal hatred
of Assange is well known, and he published this false (and as-of-yet un-
retracted) story [1] about Assange supposedly meeting with Manafort in the
Ecuadorian embassy, so it's entirely plausible that Goetz' "memory" of what
Assange said is more accurate than Harding's.

It's been pretty clear throughout this story that the judge is very
unfavorable towards Assange. They're just going through the formalities, but
we can all guess what the outcome will be - unless there's enough political
pressure on the UK government to stop the extradition.

1\. [https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/27/manafort-
hel...](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/27/manafort-held-secret-
talks-with-assange-in-ecuadorian-embassy)

