Obama Escalates Crackdown On Whistleblowers Of Classified Information (UPDATED)

by Ana Interiano

Julian Assange (pictured), co-founder of WikiLeaks who helped release a classified US military video and might be in possession of hundreds of thousands of more State Department classified cables, is being hunted down by Pentagon investigators. The US military recently arrested Army Specialist Bradley Manning, who may have been responsible for leaking the classified video and 260,000 classified government records. He is currently being held in pre-trial confinement in Kuwait.

The notorious US airstrike on the village of Garani in May 2009 that killed roughly 140 civilians is one among the many classified Pentagon videos that WikiLeaks obtained from Afghanistan. The Garani airstrike is believed to be one of the deadliest attacks in terms of civilian casualties of the US invasion.

Daniel Ellsberg, the most famous whistleblower of the United States who released the Pentagon Papers, that many say helped to end the war in Vietnam, spoke of this in an interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now.

Julian Assange is in danger of more than arrest. He’s under danger of kidnapping, rendition, enhanced interrogation, even death. The fact is that this president is the first in our history, in any Western country that I know of, who has claimed the right to send military forces not just to apprehend, but to kill suspected, even American citizens.

UPDATE: With Assange still underground, WikiLeaks is about to release the video of the US air raid in Afghanistan, said to be more shocking that the Iraq video that got Assange in trouble in the first place.

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.