Thread by @Suzi3D

TL;DR THREAD: The key findings in #BeingJulianAssange, in sequential order.

I will detail a large number of unique conclusions in the below thread.

Full text available here: contraspin.co.nz/beingjulianass…
Archive here: web.archive.org/web/2018030816…
Reading guide: steemit.com/life/@suzi3d/r…

1: Part of undermining @wikileaks & @JulianAssange is bleaching their record of achievements & good deeds.

But it is not only their history that is being erased and rewritten. The true history of the Support Network for @xychelsea has also been largely expunged from the record

2. WikiLeaks had @xychelsea's back from the day she was arrested. They tweeted about her some 800 times between her arrest and her conviction. No one did more than @JulianAssange & @couragefound to keep her visible in ppl's minds, organise assistance for her and work to free her

3. There has been a covert agenda at play to prevent the worlds most famous whistleblowers from supporting @wikileaks & @JulianAssange or acting in concert together against their common enemies. Each is influenced to turn them against each other. @laurilove has not fallen for it.

4. @micahflee tries to further divorce @xychelsea from @wikileaks & @JulianAssange by reiterating that she tried to leak to the NYT and WaPost before leaking to WikiLeaks.

But if she had, her releases may not have got anywhere near as much traction nor got so much early support

5. @micahflee & cohorts have gone to great lengths to assert that @wikileaks had nothing to do with creating SecureDrop. But history tells a different story. All of the original promotional material & events by @FreedomofPress directly traded on WikiLeaks name as the heritage.

6. The sole remaining "creator" of SecureDrop, @kpoulsen, is a long-time associate of the FBI informant who snitched on @xychelsea.

That Aaron Swartz worked with (& loved) @WikiLeaks has been written out of Aaron's legacy, incl why he was a target, & the history of SecureDrop.

7. Changing the official narrative about why Aaron Swartz was targeted to being all about the JSTOR hack, rather than his work with @wikileaks, switched the focus from the intelligence agencies investigating & persecuting WikiLeaks staff & supporters, onto MIT & the DOJ instead.

8. There is an ongoing theme of high profile people in the infosec/privacy activist community engaging in nasty Twitter tirades against @WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, even though WikiLeaks/JA outright promote their work or barely ever say anything negative about them in response

9. One of the most widely circulated hit pieces on @wikileaks in recent times, @juliaioffe's Atlantic article about tweets between WikiLeaks & @DonaldJTrumpJr, failed to establish @JulianAssange sent the DM's & omitted that the request to DTJr had already been disclosed publicly!

10. Another hit piece on @wikileaks, by @micahflee & @coracurrier had more serious collateral damage.

Firstly, it misattributed tweets to @JulianAssange & skewered a group of WikiLeaks supporters by association & smeared them as anti-semitic ignoring that they were Jewish

11. In an egregious violation of the public good @micahflee & @coracurrier's determination to smear @wikileaks supporters led to proven material damage to the ability of transparency campaigners to petition Members of Parliament on social media in support of future whistleblowers

12. @micahflee falsely accused @wikileaks of trying to claim credit for the movement against the TPP.

Totally incorrect.

WikiLeaks worked directly with major figures across the international movement, publishing their professional analyses of TPP chapters leaked to WikiLeaks.

13. @micahflee accused @JulianAssange of lying about being involved in founding @FreedomofPress.

Just as with Micah's other accusations, this has been proven false.

By Micah's own tweets, from 2012.

Julian Assange's version of events is historically accurate.

14. @micahflee's motion to get @FreedomofPress to cut off @wikileaks was based on diversionary logic.

The funding channel wasn't just established to bypass the PayPal banking blockade - but to protect every day citizen donors from legal jeopardy.

The decision must be reversed

15. Pre JakeGate, Laura Poitras denied having any issues with @JulianAssange. Far from being credit hogs, it turns out @wikileaks was actually secretly supporting some of the most significant reporting on the Snowden files to date incl the Merkel revelations

16. Poitras's "Risk" exposed Julian Assange & Sarah Harrison's relationship & diminished @wikileaks Investigations Editor Harrison to a "girlfriend"/secretary role, ignoring the price of saving Edward Snowden: this historic couple was separated for 3yrs by Sarah's exile in Berlin

17. Before Poitras and Appelbaum's relationship imploded, they were doing the most vital infosec work together: exposing the NSA's Kill List, from the Snowden files.

This means Snowden leaked the most sensitive documents imaginable.

Anyone who tells you he is a fake is WRONG.

(and before you start with the "oh but he didn't leak documents on CIA or DIA only on NSA - that's total lies too, go check out #DecipherYou videos, we have extensively studied Snowden files live online that detailed CIA/DIA operations & functions. NSA & CIA work hand in fist)

18. @sibeledmonds' claims that Booz Allen Hamilton is behind the Snowden leaks are fabricated bullshit. Its stock plummeted & the leaks were an existential threat to its business.

Edmonds attacks on Snowden & on @ggreenwald trace back to FBI smears on Glenn post-Snowden leaks.

19. @_whitneywebb's claim @TheIntercept only released 3 Snowden documents in 2017 is false. It released 600 & wrote a dozen articles. The only outlet to release any.

Her claim that @FreedomofPress are bound by Intercept (NYC/DC) connections is false. They are majority EFF (SF)

20. Some awesome people on Reddit are pulling some great excerpts and findings out of my article. Check it out here: reddit.com/r/WikiLeaks/co… while I keep working on finishing this Twitter thread.

21. The WL/FPF psyop is to make you hate either @wikileaks or @FreedomofPress. But the 2 biggest targets of the US intelligence agencies are 1 in each org: @JulianAssange & @Snowden. Don't fall for it. Look at the bigger picture. There is another way to view the situation.

22. As first reported by Poulsen & Ackerman in an appalling (yet inadvertently helpful) anti-WikiLeaks smear in The Daily Beast, the FPF decision to cut off WikiLeaks didn't come at the drop of a hat. It was a year long internal struggle that came at the loss of a Board member.

23. The section "Saving Ourselves" has tons of important info and findings inside it but as credited within, the FOIA portions are from the prior work of @ractack - a fantastic researcher who had already done great work on the EFF. Thank you @ractack!

24. TL;DR of 2nd part of "Saving Ourselves": @EFF executives have resumes that would make privacy activists wilt - World Economic Forum, Google, Obama White House, Verizon. @torproject is used by the US military to kill people. Core SecureDrop people are dead or hate @WikiLeaks

25/25: I'll end the thread here. Last half of the article is the most important. Is largely a narrative retelling + calls to action:

It is the story of what @JulianAssange has been quietly enduring IRL while the world's media encourages us to sit around arguing about his tweets