Latest Wikileaks News: Whistleblower Site Claims It Did Not Support Any Particular Candidate, Suggests Files On War And Possible War Crimes May Be Released Soon
Staffers of the infamous Wikileaks whistleblower website participated in an “Ask Me Anything” segment on the social news aggregate website Reddit this week, answering a wide range of questions from both supporters and critics, RT reports.
One of the biggest questions asked concerned Wikileaks possible role in influencing last week’s U.S. presidential elections and whether or not the nonprofit news organization exhibited considerable bias towards a particular candidate during the election cycle. As Bloomberg and other news outlets have implied, there has been widespread speculation among Hillary Clinton supporters that Julian Assange, the founder and director of Wikileaks, worked in collaboration with the Donald Trump campaign, the Kremlin, or other Russian actors to undermine Clinton’s campaign and tilt the political scales in Republican candidate Donald Trump’s favor.
?? #wikileaks Founder #JulianAssange ~ “The Real Victor is the U.S. Public”
@healthandcentshttps://t.co/3uZPEoZOPt— MAGA Nancy ? (@LVNancy) November 9, 2016
“We were not publishing with a goal to get any specific candidate elected. We were publishing with the one goal of making the elections as transparent as possible. We published what we received,” WikiLeaks responded, according to RT. “I know that many media, including the New York Times, did editorially back one candidate over another. We didn’t and haven’t. We would have published on any candidate. We still will if we get the submissions.”
This answer failed to satisfy some of the people on the “Ask Me Anything” discussion thread.
“How do you reconcile this with the fact that you sold Bill Clinton ‘D*cking Bimbos’ t-shirts on your website?” one Reddit user asked, referring to leaked emails from former Secretary of State Colin Powell in which he referred to Hillary Clinton as “greedy, not transformational,” suggested that former President Bill Clinton is “[still] dicking bimbos,” and called then-presidential-candidate Donald Trump “a national disgrace,” as The Daily Beast previously reported.
“The allegations that we have colluded with Trump, or any other candidate for that matter, or with Russia, are just groundless and false,” the WikiLeaks staffers replied. “We receive information anonymously, through an anonymous submission platform. We do not need to know the identity of the source, neither do we want to know it.”
The staffers hinted that one of the next batches of leaked emails to be released may relate “to war,” though they didn’t offer which of the many wars currently underway throughout the world they may be referring to. It is reasonable to assume they would be most interested in documents related to the ongoing conflicts in Syria, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Ukraine, or Somalia.
The staffers also noted that they are “definitely” interested in receiving any documents related to war crimes.
“We will definitely publish on war crimes if and when we get the submissions,” they said in one comment in the “Ask Me Anything” thread. “Without commenting too much on upcoming publications we do have documents regarding war we will be publishing soon.”
Thank you Julian Assange! And thank you whistleblowers who risked everything exposing U.S. government corruption. #Heroes pic.twitter.com/bhmybhMwy4
— Nicole Pettibone (@NicolePettibone) November 9, 2016
Other topics discussed included batches of encrypted files Wikileaks recently tweeted out to their more than four million Twitter followers, and concerns about net neutrality and surveillance under the future Trump presidency.
“The encrypted files we released a few days ago are insurance files,” the staffers explained. “We have done this before. Insurance files are encrypted copies of unpublished documents submitted to us.”
“Insurance files” are often made public online or otherwise, for anyone to download and access, by persons or organizations in possession of potentially damaging information. In the case those persons or organizations perceive a threat, the insurance files work as a form of leverage in a way, suggesting that if anything should happen to those holding the information, the information will nevertheless be released to the public, potentially exposing those who pose the threat.
“We do this periodically, and especially at moments of high pressure on us, to ensure the documents can not be lost and history preserved,” the staffers further explained. “You will not be able to see the contents of any of our insurance files, until and unless the we are in a position where we must release the key. But you can download them and help spread them to ensure their safe keeping.”
[Featured Image by Chris Ratcliffe/Getty Images]
