![\"\"](\"http:\/\/libertyblitzkrieg.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/08\/Screen-Shot-2017-08-31-at-2.11.28-PM.jpg\")
<\/p>\nMichael Krieger | Liberty Blizkrieg<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Today I want to highlight a troubling bill moving through Congress that seems inspired by a thuggish, authoritarian speech given earlier this year by CIA head Mike Pompeo.<\/p>\n
I found that speech so disturbing at the time, I wrote\u00a0an entire piece<\/a>taking it apart. Below is an excerpt from that talk which is relevant to this piece:<\/p>\n WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service. It has encouraged its followers to find jobs at CIA in order to obtain intelligence. It directed Chelsea Manning in her theft of specific secret information. And it overwhelmingly focuses on the United States, while seeking support from anti-democratic countries and organizations.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n It is time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is \u2013 a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia. In January of this year, our Intelligence Community determined that Russian military intelligence\u2014the GRU\u2014had used WikiLeaks to release data of US victims that the GRU had obtained through cyber operations against the Democratic National Committee. And the report also found that Russia\u2019s primary propaganda outlet, RT, has actively collaborated with WikiLeaks.<\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Pompeo said that in April. Fast forward a few months, and let\u2019s take a look at what the U.S. Senate is up to.<\/p>\n From\u00a0The Daily Beast<\/em>:<\/p>\n If the\u00a0Senate intelligence committee<\/a>\u00a0gets its way, America\u2019s spy agencies will have to release a flood of information about Russian threats to the U.S.\u2014the kind of threats that Donald Trump may not want made public.<\/em><\/p>\n The committee also wants Congress to declare\u00a0WikiLeaks<\/a>\u00a0a \u201cnon-state hostile intelligence service,\u201d which would open Julian Assange and the pro-transparency organization \u2013 which most of the U.S. government considers a handmaiden of Russian intelligence \u2013 to new levels of surveillance.<\/em><\/p>\n On Friday, the committee quietly published its\u00a0annual intelligence authorization<\/a>, a bill that blesses the next year\u2019s worth of intelligence operations. The bill passed the committee late last month on a 14-1 vote, with Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon as the lone dissenter, owing to what he calls the \u201clegal, constitutional and policy implications\u201d that the WikiLeaks provision may entail\u2026<\/em><\/p>\n The bill would establish a \u201csense of Congress\u201d that WikiLeaks and its leadership \u201cresemble a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors and should be treated as such a service by the United States.\u201d The language echoes almost exactly CIA director Mike Pompeo\u2019s scathing April\u00a0speech<\/a>\u00a0calling WikiLeaks a \u201cnon-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia,\u201d a departure from the \u201cI love WikiLeaks<\/a>\u201d rhetoric from then-candidate Trump.<\/em><\/p>\n The move, Eoyang assessed, would open WikiLeaks up to even more extensive surveillance.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cIt would allow the intelligence community to collect against them the same way they collect against al-Qaeda,\u201d Eoyang said. \u201cIf you think you\u2019re helping WikiLeaks to aid a transparency organization, the US government fundamentally disagrees with you and you could find yourself on other end of NSA scrutiny.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n