Saturday, July 31, 2010

Not enough people know about Wikileaks


An Interview with Ray McGovern
By Press TV

"....The founder of whistle-blower website Wikileaks Julian Assanges argues that the US secret war files show a systematic pattern of criminal behaviors by the US military forces. Assanges says an official probe may reveal that war crimes have been committed by the US military in Afghanistan.

The US is scared that these documents will put their national security at risk.

The following is a rush transcript of Press TV's interview with Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst, on the leak of US military document by including the brutal helicopter attack on Iraqi civilians, which Wikileaks released on April 5, 2010.....

McGovern: Well it's very clear that the campaign is designed to divert attention away from the atrocities and to try and blame the whole mess on the people who made those documents available --Manning, if he was the one, and of course Wikileaks.

Now Wikileaks has performed a function that is known as the so-called the fourth estate -- the media in this country -- that is unable or unwilling to perform. In other words, we have a fifth estate. We have it in the ether. It is not susceptible to control by government or corporations or by advertisers. It's free and it's out there and what can happen now is that citizens can get informed.....

Press TV: Many are saying they we are now seeing the dawn of a new era of transparency with new organizations like Wikileaks taking the first steps. Now how do you think this is going to affect the policies of key players around the world especially the United States?

McGovern: Well it's going to have a huge effect and that's why the administration is acting so vociferously to contain this genie which is now out of the bottle.

The Wikilinks' gun-barrel video photography with sound that showed a brutal attack on Iraq civilians in Baghdad on July 12, 2007 from Apache helicopter gunships and US soldiers is shocking. It showed in vigorous detail 12 Iraqis killed outright. They were civilians minding their own business, and two children were badly wounded. Now that was up on Wikileaks website and all you need to do is put in collateral murder on the URL line. That was good but you know what? Most of the people in the United States didn't know that. So as I go around making lectures and so forth and ask how many know about the Wikileaks' gun-barrel photography, only about five have. And I ask how many have downloaded it and have watched the full 39 minutes. It's only about one or two. So that's the missing link. It's out there. There's a new fifth estate and it's not controllable by anybody. But people need to know that it exists, and should know how easy it is to find out what's going on....."

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