The
Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) was set to break ties with
WikiLeaks amidst concerns among the foundation’s board, which
includes such well-known figures as Daniel Ellsberg, Edward Snowden,
Laura Poitras, John Cusack and Glenn Greenwald, among others. The
news was confirmed less than a month later when the nonprofit’s
board officially voted to stop accepting U.S. donations for
WikiLeaks, which had been blacklisted for years by Visa, MasterCard
and PayPal after publishing leaked U.S. government documents provided
by Chelsea Manning. WikiLeaks took to Twitter to suggest that
something more nefarious was behind the board’s decision to cut
ties. Once the news became public, WikiLeaks and its associated
accounts linked the FPF’s decision to the fact that many of its
members now work for organizations financed by eBay billionaire and
PayPal co-founder Pierre Omidyar. In addition, the FPF itself has
received large sums of money from Omidyar and his various businesses
and foundations. Pierre Omidyar, prior to the founding of The
Intercept, was known not for any commitment to journalism or free
speech but rather for his connections to the U.S. government and his
role in the financial blockade of WikiLeaks that began in 2010. Sibel
Edmonds, FBI whistleblower and founder of the National Security
Whistleblowers Coalition, told MintPress News that the FPF has a
reputation for being a “very, very partisan organization and
populated with ideologues.” She further asserted that the “number
one reason” for the FPF’s decision was directly related to
Wikileaks’ releases in 2016, namely the DNC leaks and the Podesta
emails.
Part
1
The
Daily Beast ran an exclusive report detailing how the Freedom of the
Press Foundation (FPF) was set to break ties with WikiLeaks amidst
concerns among the foundation’s board, which includes such
well-known figures as Daniel Ellsberg, Edward Snowden, Laura Poitras,
John Cusack and Glenn Greenwald, among others. The news was confirmed
less than a month later when the nonprofit’s board officially voted
to stop accepting U.S. donations for WikiLeaks, which had been
blacklisted for years by Visa, MasterCard and PayPal after publishing
leaked U.S. government documents provided by Chelsea Manning.
Even
though the FPF had been founded to allow WikiLeaks to circumvent the
banking blockade — which, according to WikiLeaks, sapped nearly 95%
of the transparency organization’s funds — the board’s decision
to end its founding mission was unanimous.
Last
Monday, the FPF made it official, severing its ties with WikiLeaks,
leaving it to rely on cryptocurrencies and other esoteric means of
funding in order to get around the banking blockade. Journalist
Trevor Timm, the FPF’s director, told WikiLeaks’ editor-in-chief
Julian Assange in an email that the foundation’s reason for ending
the partnership was “that the financial blockade by the major
payment processors is no longer in effect, and as such, we will soon
cease processing donations on behalf of WikiLeaks readers.”
“The
financial censorship of WikiLeaks is ongoing in various ways, as is
our litigation in response,” Assange told Timm in response,
adding that: “The FPF faces criticism for receiving donations on
our behalf, but that is its function. If it bows to political
pressure it becomes part of the problem it was designed to solve and
yet another spurious free-speech organization — of which there are
plenty.”
Assange
had made the exchange public by publishing it on his personal
Twitter, but it has since been deleted.
Indeed,
the pressure against WikiLeaks has reached fever pitch, with Attorney
General Jeff Sessions’ calling Assange’s arrest a “priority”
and CIA Director Mike Pompeo labeling it a non-state hostile
intelligence service. Last Thursday, former CIA analyst and
whistleblower John Kiriakou stated his belief that “the
Americans want Assange’s head on a platter.” All of this has
followed Wikileaks’ publication of the Podesta emails and DNC leaks
in 2016 prior to that year’s U.S. presidential election, as well as
its more recent publication of CIA hacking secrets in the “Vault 7”
and “Vault 8” releases.
Read
also:
Comments
Post a Comment