This afternoon, WikiLeaks published on its website a memo from the CIA "Red Cell" group that asks what would happen if foreign countries see the United States as an exporter of terrorism. The release comes just days after the Swedish government issued an arrest warrant for Assange, the group's founder, on suspicion of rape.
Assange has vigorously denied the accusations, made by two women in Sweden. He alleged the U.S. government could be behind the charges, an assertion a Pentagon spokesman called "absurd." Assange has since been cleared of the rape allegations, although he is still under investigation by the Swedish government for the lesser charge of molestation.
AP
WikiLeaks, the whistle-blower website founded by Julian Assange, here in Stockholm, Sweden, earlier this month, posted on Wednesday a classified CIA memo about the American export of terrorism.
The Swedish arrest warrant is just the latest spark in a media firestorm over WikiLeaks. In July, the organization, which believes in extreme transparency, released some 76,000 classified military documents related to the war in Afghanistan, setting off a battle of words between U.S. officials and Assange.
WikiLeaks says it has another 15,000 classified documents that it plans to release in the coming weeks.
Why WikiLeaks chose this week to release a CIA report from February is unclear. WikiLeaks announced plans to publish the report Tuesday on its Twitter page, which it frequently uses to issue official statements.
But the allegations of sexual misconduct against Assange may have thrown a cloud over the organization, which was already facing mounting criticism for releasing documents that contained the names of Afghan civilians who had helped U.S. forces and could now face retaliation by the Taliban.
The brief, three-page CIA memo describes how foreign countries might view terrorists from the United States and how those views might affect support for U.S. policies. "Contrary to common belief, the American export of terrorism or terrorists is not a recent phenomenon, nor has it been associated only with Islamic radicals or people of Middle Eastern, African or South Asian ethnic origin," the report says. it cites cases of Americans helping or promoting terrorist causes, including Irish-American support for the Irish Republican Army and a Jewish-American attack on Palestinians.
"In extreme cases, US refusal to cooperate with foreign government requests for extradition might lead some governments to consider secretly extracting US citizens suspected of foreign terrorism from US soil," says the report.
Although it is classified secret, the report does not appear to reveal any unknown information, but rather, focuses on analysis of cases already covered in the media.
"These sorts of analytic products -- clearly identified as coming from the agency's 'Red Cell' -- are designed simply to provoke thought and present different points of view," CIA spokesman George Little told AOL News in an e-mail. "That's the kind of thing our government ought to be doing."
It's unclear whether the CIA memo was recently leaked to WikiLeaks, or whether it was something provided earlier to the organization. Bradley Manning, an Army intelligence analyst, is believed to have provided WikiLeaks with a treasure trove of documents, including the Afghan war documents, a videotape of a gunship attack in Iraq that killed two Reuters employees, and a CIA report on WikiLeaks itself, which was also produced by the agency's Red Cell.
WikiLeaks does not reveal the identity of its sources.
As for the latest WikiLeaks posting, it doesn't appear to be evoking nearly the level of concern from the U.S. government as the documents associated with the war in Afghanistan.
"This is not exactly a blockbuster paper," a U.S. government official told AOL News of the CIA memo.