WikiLeaks Volunteer Was a Paid Informant for the FBI

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Wikileaks' secrets leaked to the FBI by a mole in the organization? You have to admit, that's pretty damn funny when you think about it.

For the next three months, Thordarson served two masters, working for the secret-spilling website and simultaneously spilling its secrets to the U.S. government in exchange, he says, for a total of about $5,000. The FBI flew him internationally four times for debriefings, including one trip to Washington D.C., and on the last meeting obtained from Thordarson eight hard drives packed with chat logs, video and other data from WikiLeaks.
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And if someone were to do the same thing to the US government, or an entity inside the US, they would cry afoul, call it espionage/treason/etc and throw you in a cell the rest of your life.

Just thinking of a world where the government was fair, just, and treated people how it wanted to be treated... almost hurts because we are so far away from a good society such as that.
 
collegeboy69us said:
And if someone were to do the same thing to the US government, or an entity inside the US, they would cry afoul, call it espionage/treason/etc and throw you in a cell the rest of your life.

Just thinking of a world where the government was fair, just, and treated people how it wanted to be treated... almost hurts because we are so far away from a good society such as that.
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True. What's even more telling of our society is that 50% of us in this thread thought about the amount over the actions ;)
 
Thordarson got a pretty crappy deal. Hopefully he makes it out alright.
 
5k isn't much, but unlike infiltrating, say, North Korea, there is very little inherent risk to penetrating wikileaks ;)

Qinsp said:
Wait. Wikileaks is against secrecy. What could the Mole find?
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Thier sources and exactly WHAT they know, for damage control reasons.
 
It's a government job. The President only makes around 200K (I forget the exact figure). The top salaries at The Pentagon are the football coaches. Why get get paid out of The Pentagon is beyond me but a report was published the other day.
 
welp.. I wonder if he realizes they have no real use for him anymore. Wouldn't be surprised if he disappeared.
 
ChrisRam said:
It's a government job. The President only makes around 200K (I forget the exact figure). The top salaries at The Pentagon are the football coaches. Why get get paid out of The Pentagon is beyond me but a report was published the other day.
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~$450k.
 
ChrisRam said:
It's a government job. The President only makes around 200K (I forget the exact figure). The top salaries at The Pentagon are the football coaches. Why get get paid out of The Pentagon is beyond me but a report was published the other day.
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The pay from their corporate masters in the form of campaign donation, insider trading, speaking fees, etc add up to millions. :mad:
 
Here's the thing that boils my braut...

"Presidential Retirement and Maintenance
Under the Former Presidents Act, each former president is paid a lifetime, taxable pension that is equal to the annual rate of basic pay for the head of an executive federal department -- $199,700 in 2013".

So, $400K a year in office (and really, what do they have to pay for? They can bank it all, if they want), then $200K a year for life along with other security and medical perks. Good deal if you can get it, ehh?
 
The FBI got a damn good deal here and I'm not talking about the $5,000. Its going to do a lot more harm to wikileaks and any promise of anonymity they offer.
 
Arcygenical said:
Thier sources and exactly WHAT they know, for damage control reasons.
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Which is pretty awful when you think of it.

Why should be FBI be allowed to spy for political reasons and to stop whistle blowers? Everyone involved at the FBI from the top down who participated in spying on wikileaks should be fired even if you hate wikileaks.

When countries start getting high level government crime enforcement agencies involved in what amounts to political policy enforcement and political crime/ethics violation cover-ups then historically they tend to go down hill fairly fast into fascist or totalitarian states. But then we've been on that downward slide for quite a while now...at a bare minimum since the Patriot Act got passed but I'd say since Nixon became president and certainly since Regan.
 
450 said:
Thordarson got a pretty crappy deal. Hopefully he makes it out alright.
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I hope he burns in hell along with the other scumbags who work to help cover up our politicians/governments' failed policies and stupidity for money.
 
It should be noted that in wars the only people that consistently tend to get killed are the poor and under represented people.
 
It should be noted that poor and under represented people outnumber rich over represented people by several orders of magnitude.
 
Which makes it OK to for them to die en masse, usually to further enrich the already rich or to protect the entitlements of the already highly entitled?
 
mesyn191 said:
It should be noted that in wars the only people that consistently tend to get killed are the poor and under represented people.
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If you're referring to the military, this has been proven to be a myth.
So, what we found was that the casualties there are—of course, they’re young, but they are mostly with a high school education. They don’t have more than a high school education. And they are overwhelmingly white. They’re not disproportionately black and Hispanic, which a lot of people think. They’re disproportionately white.

They are not from rural areas and small towns; they’re from big cities and cities greater than 50,000 in this country. More than three-quarters come from those big cities. Now, of course, most people live in the big cities, so that there is a disproportional representation from rural areas and small towns. But really, most of the dead come from big cities and the suburban areas.

What we found was also that most of the people who are dying are not the poor. They don’t come from poor communities. They come from communities that are solidly working-class communities, that are—whose incomes in the communities are a little bit less than the median, so maybe $40,000.
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http://www.democracynow.org/2011/10/10/americas_longest_war_new_study_examines
 
That study only focuses on the Afghan War and only refers to the US military's deaths and not that of the civilians or military of Afghanistan.
 
mesyn191 said:
Which makes it OK to for them to die en masse, usually to further enrich the already rich or to protect the entitlements of the already highly entitled?
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Last I checked invading armies didn't stop to check peoples bank balances before they killed them, so when they go through and wipe out most of the indigenous population chances are both rich and poor will suffer similar levels of casualties, but since the poor outnumber the rich by such a large margin, on an absolute numbers scale yes, far more poor die than rich.

Another fact, every day far more poor people die of natural causes than rich people. Nature hates the poor.
 
Welcome to War.

The world's oldest sport.

Yes, fewer kings have been killed than peasants.

Now, back to the issue. Military Intelligence reduces casualities on both sides, and shortens wars.

So are the Leakers who damage military operational intelligence killing more Kings or Peasants?

The answer is both. They are increasing the body count of civilians to boot.
 
I'm not surprised to hear this, but this is still pretty scary. This seems akin to the FBI having moles at the New York Times, and/or any other news agency. And frankly, they probably do. Of course, they don't really need moles anymore since they can (are) just collect all their phone records now.
 
-Dragon- said:
Last I checked invading armies didn't stop to check peoples bank balances before they killed them, so when they go through and wipe out most of the indigenous population chances are both rich and poor will suffer similar levels of casualties, but since the poor outnumber the rich by such a large margin, on an absolute numbers scale yes, far more poor die than rich.
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Actually many of the rich and powerful usually just flee the country and its the poor and under represented that end up almost exclusively doing the dying. It also still isn't a moral justification for wanting huge numbers of poor and under represented people, the defacto riff raff as it were, dying. Also if the poor and under represented vastly out number the rich it is by default impossible for there to be a "similar level of casualties" or are you trying to argue that 1 rich man's death is worth x number of poor deaths?

-Dragon- said:
Another fact, every day far more poor people die of natural causes than rich people. Nature hates the poor.
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Nature isn't even a thing which can or can't hate and your fact while true is a non sequitur to the point at hand.
 
mesasone said:
I'm not surprised to hear this, but this is still pretty scary. This seems akin to the FBI having moles at the New York Times, and/or any other news agency. And frankly, they probably do. Of course, they don't really need moles anymore since they can (are) just collect all their phone records now.
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Not to single you out, but did people actually think certain government agencies didn't have spies/recon in organizations all over the world already? Hearing that Wikileaks hade a mole neither surprised nor upset me. It's just the way it things have been for a long time.
 
Qinsp said:
So are the Leakers who damage military operational intelligence killing more Kings or Peasants?

The answer is both. They are increasing the body count of civilians to boot.
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Nonsense. Some of wikileaks releases that didn't remove names have resulted in the deaths of some operatives who worked with the US, which in of itself is bad, but that wasn't their intent and it doesn't come anywhere the body count the US military has been able to rack up in Afghanistan or Iraq or pretty much anywhere really. The US military (or any other military for that matter) however knows that when they go to drop bombs or send troops into a city that they, statistically, will end up killing a certain minimum number of civilians and simply shrugs their shoulders at the collateral damage.
 
LeninGHOLA said:
neither surprised nor upset me. It's just the way it things have been for a long time.
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But does that make it right and shouldn't we try and do something about it or at least be upset about it as citizens?

"this has been going on for a long time so I don't care even if it is bad" doesn't sound so rational or reasonable IMO.
 
mesyn191 said:
Nonsense. Some of wikileaks releases that didn't remove names have resulted in the deaths of some operatives who worked with the US, which in of itself is bad, but that wasn't their intent and it doesn't come anywhere the body count the US military has been able to rack up in Afghanistan or Iraq or pretty much anywhere really. The US military (or any other military for that matter) however knows that when they go to drop bombs or send troops into a city that they, statistically, will end up killing a certain minimum number of civilians and simply shrugs their shoulders at the collateral damage.
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Read up on what happened in London, Dresden, Tokyo, Nanking during WWII to get a taste of how things have changed.

Did you know everybody bombed the shit out of civilians?

Today, Islamic Radicals are still doing that, not allied forces.
 
Qinsp said:
Read up on what happened in London, Dresden, Tokyo, Nanking during WWII to get a taste of how things have changed.

Did you know everybody bombed the shit out of civilians?

Today, Islamic Radicals are still doing that, not allied forces.
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Enough with this bs. As if US pillaging other countries is something noble.

I'd take "Islamic radicals" over US military thugs any day of the week. Scumbags.
 
Qinsp said:
Read up on what happened in London, Dresden, Tokyo, Nanking during WWII to get a taste of how things have changed.
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Just because we don't firebomb cities on the level we used to doesn't mean we aren't going to kill lots and lots of civilians.

Qinsp said:
Did you know everybody bombed the shit out of civilians?
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Which isn't a moral argument in favor of the practice and just reinforces my earlier point: in war the poor and under represented are the groups that consistently get killed.

Qinsp said:
Today, Islamic Radicals are still doing that, not allied forces.
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Actually even they don't do that on the level of the Allies in WWII. This doesn't mean that what they do is somehow OK or reasonable but there is a huge difference between using a IED to kill a few hundred civilians and firebombing a city so thoroughly you kill more people than if you had dropped a atomic bomb on it.
 
dgz said:
I'd take "Islamic radicals" over US military thugs any day of the week. Scumbags.
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How about if we took neither? The lesson to be learned from history is both _can_ be scumbags and if they aren't acting like scumbags (unlikely if not borderline impossible) they'll both still end up killing lots of civilians.
 
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