Pentagon leak exposes NATO special forces in Ukraine

One document lists almost 100 personnel, half of them British, deployed in the country

One of the classified US military documents leaked online shows the presence of 97 NATO special forces operators in Ukraine as of March 1, 2023, of which 50 were British, multiple UK outlets reported on Tuesday.

The Guardian reported it had seen two files, dated late February and early March, that listed 50 British special operatives as being active in Ukraine. The US had 14 special operatives in the country, and France, another 15.

The documents were labeled ‘secret’ and were prepared for senior US defense officials, according to the outlet. The daily updates contained information about NATO military operations, logistics, weapons deliveries, and training of Ukrainian troops.

Another UK outlet, Declassified, noted that the 14 US special operators were among the 29 Pentagon personnel present in Ukraine, which included the Marine security detachment at the US Embassy in Kiev and military attaches. Another 71 State Department personnel were listed as being in the country as well, amounting to a total of 100 Americans.

Declassified also said that the slide was marked “not releasable to foreign nationals.”

While US special operators come from two units, Navy SEALs and the Army’s Delta Force, the British definition extends beyond the Special Air Service (SAS) to paratroopers, marines, and other units. The prime minister is not obligated to brief Parliament on their deployment.

Dozens of classified US military documents have been discovered online over the past week, attracting considerable media attention. The US government has not officially confirmed their authenticity, but the Pentagon has launched a hunt for whoever leaked them, and the Department of Justice is conducting a criminal investigation as well. Russia and Ukraine have largely shrugged off the documents as irrelevant.

While Washington and London have never officially confirmed the presence of their special forces in Ukraine, multiple media outlets have reported on it over the past year. In April 2022, the French daily Le Figaro claimed that SAS and Delta Force operators had been present since the beginning of Russia’s military operation, waging a “secret war” on behalf of Ukraine.

The British Daily Mirror reported that dozens of retired SAS operators had gone to Ukraine to contribute their expertise to Kiev’s cause, funded through a private military company in an unnamed European country. Shortly after those revelations, the Times said a number of SAS operators had returned to Ukraine to teach Kiev’s soldiers how to operate British-made anti-tank rockets.

The outlet Grayzone reported in November that British special operators had been working through a private company called Prevail Partners to train Ukrainian saboteurs targeting Crimea. In December, a British military publication admitted that up to 300 Royal Marines had been deployed to Ukraine for “discrete operations.”

https://www.rt.com/news/574565-nato-special-forces-ukraine-leak/

Democrats urge Biden to drop Julian Assange charges

The case against Assange poses a “grave and unprecedented threat” to press freedoms, the lawmakers argued

Several Democrats in the House have penned a letter calling for the immediate release of WikiLeaks co-founder Julian Assange, urging the Department of Justice to drop its charges against the publisher and halt extradition proceedings aiming to bring him to the US to face prosecution under the World War I-era Espionage Act.

The group of progressive lawmakers, known as ‘the Squad’, addressed their letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland on Tuesday to mark the fourth anniversary since Assange’s 2019 arrest, saying the charges against him represent a serious threat to the free press.

“We write you today to call on you to uphold the First Amendment’s protections for the freedom of the press by dropping the criminal charges against Australian publisher Julian Assange and withdrawing the American extradition request currently pending with the British government,” the lawmakers said.

They went on to cite warnings from a long line of human rights, civil liberties, and press freedoms groups – among them the ACLU, Amnesty International, Reporters Without Borders, the Committee to Protect Journalists, Defending Rights and Dissent, and Human Rights Watch – which have argued Assange’s case poses “a grave and unprecedented threat to everyday, constitutionally protected journalistic activity.”

Assange was arrested by the British authorities in 2019 after losing political asylum status at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he was holed up for more than seven years for fear of prosecution by the US due to WikiLeaks’ publication of large amounts of classified material. Under then-President Donald Trump, the US Department of Justice unsealed a multi-count indictment against Assange on April 11, 2019 – the same day of his arrest – slapping him with 17 charges under the Espionage Act, which can potentially carry the death penalty.

He has been held at the UK’s maximum-security Belmarsh Prison in the years since, as Washington presses an extradition request to bring Assange to the US to face his charges. The publisher’s legal team has appealed a prior ruling in favor of extradition on the grounds of Assange’s declining health, a process which continues to play out in the British courts.

The Democratic lawmakers argued that Assange’s prosecution would “greatly [diminish] America’s credibility” as a defender of human rights around the globe and set a dangerous legal precedent “whereby journalists or publishers can be prosecuted.”

In the future the New York Times or Washington Post could be prosecuted when they publish important stories based on classified information. Or, just as dangerous for democracy, they may refrain from publishing such stories for fear of prosecution,” they continued.

Assange’s charges stem from the 2010 publication of a massive trove of classified documents obtained by US army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning, including material suggesting US forces committed war crimes in Iraq and elsewhere. Manning was charged and sentenced to 35 years in prison, but was later released after President Barack Obama commuted Manning’s sentence.

https://www.rt.com/news/574561-democrats-assange-drop-charges/

'Special' service: Declassified Guantanamo court filing suggests some 9/11 hijackers were CIA agents

What does the intelligence agency have to do with the suicide terrorist attack?

An explosive court filing from the Guantanamo Military Commission – a court considering the cases of defendants accused of carrying out the "9/11" terrorist attacks on New York – has seemingly confirmed the unthinkable.

The document was originally published via a Guantanamo Bay court docket, but while public, it was completely redacted. Independent researchers obtained an unexpurgated copy. It is an account by the Commission’s lead investigator, DEA veteran Don Canestraro, of his personal probe of potential Saudi government involvement in the 9/11 attacks, conducted at the request of the defendants’ lawyers.

Two of the hijackers were being closely monitored by the CIA and may, wittingly or not, have been recruited by Langley long before they flew planes into the World Trade Center buildings.

The story of two men

Of the great many enduring mysteries of the 9/11 attacks still unresolved over two decades later, perhaps the biggest and gravest relate to the activities of Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar in the 18 months leading up to that fateful day. The pair traveled to the US on multi-entry visas in January 2000, despite having repeatedly been flagged by the CIA and NSA previously as likely Al Qaeda terrorists.

Mere days before their arrival, they attended an Al Qaeda summit in Kuala Lumpur, during which key details of the 9/11 attacks are likely to have been discussed and agreed. The meeting was secretly photographed and videotaped by Malaysian authorities at the direct request of the CIA’s Alec Station, a special unit set up to track Osama bin Laden, although oddly, no audio was captured.

Still, this background should’ve been sufficient to prevent Hazmi and Midhar from entering the US – or at least enough for the FBI to be informed of their presence in the country. As it was, they were admitted for a six-month period at Los Angeles International airport without incident, and Bureau representatives within Alec Station were blocked from sharing this information with their superiors by the CIA.

“We’ve got to tell the Bureau about this. These guys clearly are bad. One of them, at least, has a multiple-entry visa to the US. We've got to tell the FBI,” Mark Rossini, a member of Alec Station, has recalled discussing with his colleagues. “[But the CIA] said to me, ‘No, it’s not the FBI’s case, not the FBI’s jurisdiction.’”

https://www.rt.com/news/574490-cia-dirty-deeds-nine-eleven/

UK Denies Accuracy of Pentagon Leak Claiming Western Special Forces in Ukraine

Allegedly leaked U.S. intelligence documents that claim a number of Western nations presently have special forces on the ground in Ukraine have “a serious level of innacuracy”, the UK government said.

Around 100 pages of U.S. intelligence reports are said to have been uploaded to social media sites and gaming forums in recent months, which if true would be one of the most serious breaches of security for America in years. Yet the content of these allegedly leaked pages and slides is only emerging slowly, with claims of one document outlining the deployment of special forces troops to Ukraine emerging overnight, five days after the leak was initially reported.

According to a slide reported by the UK’s state broadcaster the BBC, the U.S. intelligence assessment page says the United Kingdom has the largest deployment of special forces in Ukraine of NATO allies, with 50 individuals in-country. The UK was followed in this list by Lativa with 17, France with 15, the United States with 14, and the Netherlands with one soldier.

Of course, it is normal — if not widely discussed — for nations to keep specially trained troops in small numbers in foreign countries and particularly in war zones to protect their embassies and diplomatic staff. The United States, for instance, officially keeps a detachment of U.S. Marines at its Kyiv embassy and has done through the war, and also has troops deployed to keep track of the equipment the government donates to Ukraine.

The larger-than-expected figure of 50 special forces soldiers claimed by the alleged leak for the United Kingdom may go beyond what’s strictly needed for embassy protection, assuming it is true. A top British military commander has already admitted in 2022 that Royal Marine Commandos have been deployed in Ukraine, describing secret missions they performed in addition to protecting the embassy as: “discreet operations in a hugely sensitive environment and with a high level of political and military risk.”

Nevertheless, the British Ministry of Defence moved with uncharacteristic speed to pour cold water on the claim.

In a statement posted to social media without context but shortly after the special forces claims began to circulate, the Ministry of Defence said: “The widely reported leak of alleged classified information has demonstrated a serious level of inaccuracy.

“Readers should be cautious about taking at face value allegations that have the potential to spread disinformation.”

The Russians, for their part — although some Kremlin-amplified voices have already cast doubts on the veracity of the alleged leaks in recent days — say they already knew what the documents said without them having to be leaked. Official state news service TASS reports the comments of Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov who said the claims that there are Western soldiers deployed to Ukraine was already understood.

Voicing his doubt on whether the leak was genuine or an American attempt at counterintelligence, Peskov said: “Like everyone else, we don’t know to what extent we can trust these documents”, yet nevertheless: “long before these documents popped up, we had and still have information that many instructors from NATO countries, including the UK, as well as fighters, are taking part in combat operations.”

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2023/04/12/uk-denies-accuracy-of-pentagon-leak-claiming-western-special-forces-in-ukraine/

COVID vaccine fraud prosecution could force feds to share correlated deaths data: targeted doc

Advised by vaccine-skeptic philanthropist Steve Kirsch, Utah's Kirk Moore plans to use legal discovery to get records government has refused to make public.

Aplastic surgeon indicted for COVID-19 vaccine fraud believes his prosecution could blow the lid off the alleged connection between the therapeutics and deaths — if a judge agrees to expose the government records believed to document the connection.

Utah's Kirk Moore is soliciting and receiving advice from Vaccine Safety Research Foundation Executive Director Steve Kirsch, a philanthropist once courted by Democratic presidential hopefuls, on what documents to request in legal discovery in a bid to pursue "jury nullification."

The January grand jury indictment alleges Moore, his Plastic Surgery Institute of Utah and codefendants accepted "direct cash payments" or purported charitable donations in exchange for "fraudulently completed vaccination record cards" for more than 1,900 doses that were never administered, according to a Justice Department press release.

The alleged scheme destroyed more than $28,000 worth of government-provided vaccines, including those meant for children who actually received saline shots "at the request of their parents," according to DOJ.

Moore left a comment on Kirsch's newsletter last week about his prosecution and plan to "get as much data as possible" held by the feds to buttress his defense, asking what data he should request. "This could be monumental for all of us."

He invoked the so-called Brady rule, which requires prosecutors to disclose "material, exculpatory information" to the defense by default, without prior request, even if it only has the potential to reduce a sentence, according to Cornell Law School's Legal Information Institute.

His interest was piqued by Kirsch's April 5 newsletter post on authorities' refusal to release granular data that could show the inherent risk of COVID vaccination. "Every state has both death and vax status databases" and a "simple merge of the two tables" would show how many days elapsed from each vaccine dose for each person who died, Kirsch wrote.

Moore's lawyer Kathryn Nester told Just the News she couldn't confirm what his defenses will be "at this time" but expects to file public "motions in the near future concerning discovery matters."

Kirsch believes federal prosecutors have given "the anti-vax movement in America the greatest gift ever" by charging Moore, potentially giving his defense "the secret public health records of every state" allegedly showing the neat overlap between COVID vaccination and deaths.

He "cannot be denied discovery to show that the vaccines are deadly," perhaps leading jurors to conclude his alleged actions may have saved lives, according to Kirsch.

The philanthropist pointed to historic and contemporary uses of jury nullification — an option defendants typically can't suggest to juries — such as in low-level drug prosecutions. A former federal prosecutor argued in The Washington Post in 2016 that jurors should use the tool to reduce racial disparities in prosecution.

https://justthenews.com/government/courts-law/covid-vaccine-fraud-prosecution-could-force-feds-share-correlated-deaths-data