Through The Looking Glass

Up until four years ago, nobody had ever heard of WikiLeaks, but the fact is, it is becoming massively important. There are currently over 74,000,000 references to WikiLeaks on Google. It has been said that in just three years, WikiLeaks has published more scoops than the Washington Post has in thirty. The operating manual from the Guantanamo prison camp was leaked by the group, and most recently, a CIA report on how to manipulate public opinion in France and Germany with the goal of keeping their troops in Afghanistan.

During his live television show, Brian Lehrer asked Salon's columnist Glen Greenwald and Cryptome's John Young: "So, what does it mean when anyone can post secret information on line? Is it a wonderful new era of openness and citizen journalism or is it an irresponsible age in which governments, corporations and individuals become embarrassed, ineffective and even in danger." No matter how one decides to look at it, WikiLeaks represents a change to the status quo, an international and non-corporate interference into the business of information; a brown paper envelope of the digital age, striking fear into the heart of everyone with something to hide.

Or so it seems.

But there is more to WikiLeaks than meets the eye.

"There is an old English expression ... that a man is known by the company he keeps. What I find significant however, is the company WikiLeaks keeps, especially the funny organizations and foundations they call friends."

WikiLeaks had also entered into negotiations with several corporate foundations with a view to securing funding.

As Adam K. East reports in Executive Intelligence Review, "A closer look at the activities of these private agencies reveals that there was much more at stake. ... The source of policy for most of these groups was Anglo-American intelligence" and their One World Company planners. "As such, these groups lobbied the U.S. Congress, set up conferences, launched propaganda campaigns, and, in some cases, even provided military training for various mujahideen groups," while simultaneously supporting oppressive dictatorships around the world.

For example, part of the "process of cooptation is implemented and financed by US based foundations including the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and Freedom House (FH)."

Freedom House is a Washington based organization founded in 1941 by Leo Cherne to promote American entry into World War II. "During the Cold War, [it was used] as a vehicle for CIA-directed anti-communist propaganda. Its recent activities have been a central role as NGO in Washington-directed destabilization [efforts] in Tibet, Myanmar, Ukraine, Georgia, Serbia and other countries apparently not pursuing policies satisfactory to certain powerful people in the USA."

Amongst its marquis projects, it launched the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya (ACPC). Jeffrey Steinberg, writing for the EIR reports that, "The goal of the group was unabashed: to interfere into the internal affairs of Russia under the doublespeak slogan that the 'Russo-Chechen war' must be settled 'peacefully.'"

Freedom House is another funny organization, that under the cover of benevolent, peace-loving mover of democratic reform "has worked closely with George Soros' Open Society Institutes ... in promoting such projects as the 2005 Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan that brought the Washington-friendly dictator and drug boss, Kurmanbek Bakiyev to power."

Steinberg made it quite clear when he stated in his September 17, 2004 Executive Intelligence Review article, "A review of the group's leading members reveals that this is anything but a bunch of peaceniks. The founding chairs of the group [ACPC] were Brzezinski, former Reagan Secretary of State Alexander "I'm in Charge Here" Haig, and former Congressman Stephen Solarz (D-N.Y.). Members include: Elliott Abrams, Kenneth Adelman, Richard Allen, Richard Burt, Eliot Cohen, Midge Decter, Thomas Donohue, Charles Fairbanks, Frank Gaffney, Irving Louis Horowitz, Bruce Jackson, Robert Kagan, Max Kampelman, William Kristol, Michael Ledeen, Seymour Martin Lipset, Robert McFarlane, Joshua Muravchik, Richard Perle, Richard Pipes, Norman Podhoretz, Arch Puddington, Gary Schmitt, Helmut Sonnenfeldt, Caspar Weinberger, and James Woolsey. ACPC operates out of Freedom House and the Jamestown Foundation, a Cold War-era Washington think-tank which includes Brzezinski and Woolsey on its board, and which boasts a mission of conducting 'democracy'-promoting operations inside 'totalitarian' states."

Freedom House has "connections and/or are affiliated to a number of establishment organizations, major corporate foundations and charities" has been confirmed from WikiLeaks-published email exchanges at the outset of the project on January 4, 2007. This included an invitation to Freedom House (FH) to participate in the WikiLeaks advisory board:

We are looking for one or two initial advisory board member from FH who may advise on the following:

1. The needs of FH as consumer of leaks exposing business and political corruption.

2. The needs for sources of leaks as experienced by FH.

3. FH recommendations for other advisory board members.

4. General advice on funding, coalition [sic] building and decentralised operations and political framing.

Furthermore, "both FH and the NED have links to the US Congress, the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), and the US business establishment. Both the NED and FH are known to have ties to the CIA."

"National Endowment for Democracy, the congressionally created funding conduit for Project Democracy" is a top-secret project with a clear cut objective: undermine any and all governments around the world whose interests do not coincide with the publicly stated long range interests of the United States government. In his fabulous piece on the protest movement in Egypt, Michel Chossudovski writes that "The NED is actively involved in Tunisia, Egypt and Algeria. Freedom House supports several civil society organizations in Egypt," funded through the U.S. State Department.

The history of National Endowment for Democracy reads like a John Le Carré novel, full of sinister characters, behind-the-scenes covert agendas and special interests that when taken together, have very little to do with promoting democracy throughout the planet. "The NED was established by the Reagan administration after the CIA's role in covertly funding efforts to overthrow foreign governments was brought to light, leading to the discrediting of the parties, movements, journals, books, newspapers and individuals that received CIA funding. ... As a bipartisan endowment, with participation from the two major parties, as well as the AFL-CIO and US Chamber of Commerce, the NED took over the financing of foreign overthrow movements, but overtly and under the rubric of 'democracy promotion.'"

Among the plethora of private "aid" agencies and think-tanks with direct links to Freedom House, providing active support and which stand out head and shoulders above the rest is the little known but extremely powerful and well-connected group – Afghan Aid. What does an...