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Comment by avsteele | Hacker News Reader

If he's guilty this is a more or less normal process. The real shocker is the stuff surrounding the leak in the article:

It was one of the largest leaks of information in the history of CIA and a huge embarrassment for then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who responded by labeling WikiLeaks a "non-state hostile intelligence agency" and developing "secret war plans" against the media organization that included kidnapping or even killing WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

Just so we are clear: if you are a member of an org, anywhere in the world, with no particular obligation to keep the CIA's secrets, but who's only mission is to make public CIA actions / capabilities, they may try to extra-judicially murder you.

Real are we the baddies? vibes. If you work there, or for them as a contractor, please consider putting your abilities to more ethical use.

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> Are we the baddies?

Well, the history of the CIA is clear. But that's not the point.

This whole story is about failed management of a deranged employee. The lesson for employers is to stop toxic antics and attitudes. You don't need to be "woke" to know that when employees are insulting and bullying one another, it will in time destroy a project and maybe even ruin lives.

> This whole story is about failed management of a deranged employee

I thought this as just par for the course with the CIA.

Ha!

Deranged management of failure may also explain a few things.

I agree with your comment. Though there’s enough people here and elsewhere dying on the hill for the CIA that even their history isn’t clear. Like seeing all the coups as unselfish acts of bringing freedom to the disenfranchised global south.

Nice bio too

Well it's... information warfare. People live and die based on what intel these agencies can keep and lose. I'm not saying they should have murdered him, but I'm unsurprised that they considered it as an option.

>If you work there, or for them as a contractor, please consider putting your abilities to more ethical use.

Yes, we need more of the best and brightest to be contributing to addictive social media apps and algorithms to subvert artificial quirks in financial systems.

Nah instead, we need to contribute to the organization that's committed some of the worst atrocities against US citizens and gets away with it.

And we get off easy compared to the rest of the world.

There are so many other things to do in between. And it is really sad your snarky and fallacious comment doesn't reflect that

This seems entirely in line with what I've read about the history of the CIA.

Just so we are clear: if you are anywhere in the world, they may try to extra-judicially murder you.

All the extra words were surplus to requirements.

You should always be asking yourselves these questions, but I can't agree with the implications of no one should ever work for the CIA. Out of full disclosure, I have been a US Army officer and have also done technical contracting work for IC agencies (not the CIA, purely collection-tasked agencies that didn't perform any kind of field ops). So take from that what you will. Maybe I'm just a bootlicker that doesn't want to think of myself as evil.

But I'm well aware that the military and intelligence services of the US have done some evil things. As far as I can tell, every military and intelligence service has done evil things, and maybe in some idealized world, that means these services shouldn't exist, but right now, as a purely practical matter, if every American simply refused to ever join the military or work for an intelligence service (as opposed to objecting to and refusing to obey illegal orders), we would just not have a military or any intelligence services. But doing that would not get rid of the others. We'd just be abdicating the global stage to China. Personally, I don't believe that would make the world better than it is now.

Is the choice between having no intelligence service at all, and one that consists of warmongering, drug-running, black site torturing, extrajudicial assassinating, media infiltrating, Epstein exonerators?

Is that the only way to maintain a presence on the "global stage"? Are we in a stronger position for having spent trillions to replace the Taliban with... the Taliban? Was Vietnam smart? Was all that murder in South America for corporate profits justifiable?

> Maybe I'm just a bootlicker that doesn't want to think of myself as evil.

I hope you really ask yourself that.

Of course not. It's a false dichotomy. And I don't know why anyone would want the US government in its current incarnation "on the global stage."

Problem is not that some people do bad things; problem is that Americans who do evil things go unpunished. It wouldn’t look so bad if you weren’t so fixed at protecting your war criminals from justice.

Also funny that you mention China, a country with incomparably better track record when it comes to foreign policy.

I do respect a good "Are we the baddies?" reference :-)

https://youtu.be/hn1VxaMEjRU

We shall always ask this ourselves.

Before, during and after an argument. Before, during and after a conflict.

If preventing future leaks by any means would ensure security for you, your country, and your future generations, would you do whatever it took to make sure it never happened again? I'm not agreeing or disagreeing with it, I'm just saying people that have a knee-jerk reaction to casting a negative perspective on something because "CIA bad" never seem to think what might the world look like without these agencies. I also certainly don't think we're getting the full picture of what transpired from just that quote.

Yeah, I wonder, what the world would look like without destabilizing most of South America and Middle East.

I think the article is being deliberately misleading. Assange is still only charged with the Cablegate leak, not this one. And if his extradition is ever served he may fave additional charges for his relationships with GRU and Roger Stone.

It is just developing plans, which is not as bad as developing the plan and carrying it out like the Saudis.

The plans you hear of, those are the failures.

A well-executed assassination is one that is never linked back to them.

This person gets it.

Julian Assange was not murdered, but we're hearing about it.

Yes, that's a double failure. And it will be triple when he's locked away - the US will suffer a reputational hit as big as (or even bigger than) the one it suffered from the material that him and Chelsea Manning surfaced.

Doubt it.

Assange is a bad faith actor that has shown that he has no problem kissing Russian boots to attack the US.

With Russia's invasion and desire to genocide Ukraine, associations with Russia are looked upon much less kindly.

He's still effectively a journalist being thrown in jail for doing journalism. From Europe, even given all that's going on, the optics are terrible.

Guilt by association is a terrible mindset.

What do you mean?

WikiLeaks has intentionally not published documents damaging to the Russian govt

Uh...and? That has no bearing on the fact that Russia -- not Wikileaks -- is responsible for "Russia's invasion and desire to genocide Ukraine". I may not like Wikileaks a lot but I won't blame them for invasions and genocides.

Furthering Russia's interests over the past few years does not make them culpable for Russia's invasion but it does show that they are more allied with Russian interests than the US's

>WikiLeaks has intentionally not published documents damaging to the Russian govt

For the reason that they thought those documents had already been published elsewhere. And a lot of the documents had been, though there were some new ones. Oddly, the leaked chat never mentions that to Wikileaks. It instead apparently assumed an organization with no Russian speakers and it's leader essentially imprisoned must have fully vetted all the documents.

Since when has wikileaks fully vetted any document?

Since around halfway through the Diplomatic Cables, when the Guardian published the encryption key while they were meticulously going through the documents. Shortly after Assange was basically imprisoned, making it very difficult for him to do anything of the sort.

edit I really shouldn't answer in good faith when you completely ignored my point to make a cheap attack.

Well, you can still hear of it -- JFK and Shinzo Abe spring to mind -- but yes, the "never linked back" part is key.

What would be the point of killing Abe after he's already out of office?

Perhaps threat messaging to current leaders who feel safe and protected by the spotlight of political coverage. It would have to be paired with additional messaging to indicate the bad actors demands but I imagine most politicians anticipate and hope for life after office.

In many countries, the preparation of many serious crimes, (murder included) is criminal on its own.

I was being sarcastic to juxtapose the public reaction of Saudis or MBS murdering Kashoggi (which is horrible no doubt) to the US planning basically the same thing.

Or Russia in UK and elsewhere.

Accidentally, today an "are we the baddies?" post was also discussed here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32105908

Wow that thread is a dumpster fire with showdead on.

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