Was Global Warming A Significant Factor In California's Camp Fire?

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Via Cliff Mass Weather & Climate blog,

The Camp Fire that struck the northern California town of Paradise and vicinity is a profoundly disturbing environmental disaster of first magnitude.  Nearly 100 people have lost their lives, approximately 10,000 homes have been lost, a major community has essentially been destroyed, and millions of people have been exposed to high concentrations of smoke.  Tens of thousands of people have been displaced and lives of millions substantially affected.

And beyond the heart-wrenching losses noted above, it is doubly tragic that this disaster was both foreseeable and avoidable, resulting from a series of errors, poor judgment, lack of use of available technology, and poor urban planning.

It is more than unfortunate that some politicians, environmental advocacy groups, and activist scientists are attempting to use this tragedy as a tool for their own agenda, make the claim that the Camp Fire was result of global warming.

As I will discuss below, this claim has little grounding in fact or science.  Global warming is a profoundly serious threat to mankind, but it has little impact the Camp Fire and many of the coastal California fires of the past few years (e.g., the Wine Country Fires of October 2017).  And blaming global warming takes attention away from the actions needed to prevent such  tragedies from happening again.

Analyzing the Origins of the Camp Fire

Winds

A central causative factor was the strong, offshore-directed, winds that both initiated the fire and drove it rapidly towards the town of Paradise.   These winds are known as Diablo winds, and are driven by the difference in pressure between the intermountain interior (e.g., Nevada) and the coast.

The easterly (from the east) winds that struck that day were not that unusual, something that is evident by looking at the wind climatology at the nearby Jarbo Gap USDA RAWS weather station.  The sustained winds on the day of the fire initiation (November 8) accelerated to 32 mph (with gusts to 52 mph), with peak winds at 4 AM that day.   Looking at the entire record at Jarbo (back to 2003), northeasterly winds of 30 mph or more have occurred 508 times in those 15 years--not an unusual event.  And my inspection of the individual records does not suggest an increasing trend.

Furthermore, there is no reason to expect that Diablo winds will increase under global warming; in fact, the opposite is the case.  Global warming preferentially warms the interior of the continent compared to the eastern Pacific.  Thus, human-caused warming would tend to weaken the interior high pressure, thus lessening a key driving force of the Diablo winds.   There are several studies in the peer-reviewed scientific literature  (e.g., this one) that show that global warming should weaken southern California's Santa Ana winds, which are also driven by the pressure difference between the western interior and the coast.

Initiation of the fires

There is strong evidence that that Camp Fire was caused by failure of PG&E powerlines, not by any natural causes that could be linked to global warming.  In fact, nearly all wildfires in California are caused by human error or arson. 

Increased population in California would clearly lead to more human fire initiation.  Thus, global warming is not a factor in fire initiation.

Surface dry conditions

One of the most popular handwaving arguments about why global warming is enhancing wildfires is through temperature and precipitation changes.   It is argued that warming temperatures are causing more evaporation and thus drying the "fuels" at the surface.  And it is argued that global warming is causing increasing drought that dries fuels and encourages fires.

Now this sounds reasonable enough on the surface, but when you examine the facts more closely, it rapidly becomes clear that global warming has little role in producing the dry conditions that assisted  the Camp Fire, the wine country fires, or the fires in coastal southern CA.

The truth is that California is quite dry during nearly half of the year and that fuels such as grasses, bushes and small vegetation dry out during any typical summer.   Even more important, virtually all of the fires noted above (including the Camp Fire) were associated with offshore, downslope winds which rapidly dry out vegetation, even it is wet the day before!

A nearby landscape.  Not all the grass and small vegetation

The fire weather community divides fuels by how quickly they dry.  1-h fuels are less than 1/4 of an inch in diameter and can dry in LESS THAN AN HOUR.  This includes grass and small weeds/plants.  10-h fuels have diameters of 1/4 to 1 inch and dry in less than 10 hours, and include small bushes, branches, and the like.

In much of California, and particularly in the areas of the fires noted above, most of the fuels were grasses and small stuff--mainly 1 and 10-h fuels.    Thus, they dry very quickly, such as when Diablo winds start to blow.  This kind of small diameter fuels is known as chaparral in California, and there was a lot of such ground cover north and east of Paradise.

Now let me prove to you that global warming had nothing to do with the dry conditions near Paradise on the morning of November 8.  Below is a plot of the ten-hour fuel moisture at the nearby Jarbo Gap observation side, a site that was in the path of the fire, for the five years ending November 20.  You will note a repeatable pattern, with values reaching around 27% during the winter, but 3-8% every summer and early fall.  The fuels are not getting progressively drier.  I should note that I was told by local fire experts that values below approximately 10% are plenty dry enough to burn.

Looking at a blow-up image of the fuel moisture of the last 3/4 year you can see the summer drying clearly and something else very important....there are short dry periods even in the middle of winter when rain is falling occasionally.  Why?  Because there are diablo wind events that can dry out the vegetation even then.

The bottom line is that the vegetation is plenty dry enough to burn every summer right now...and has been like that forever.  Even if global warming is increasing temperatures a few degrees (and it probably is), IT DOESN'T MATTER.  The fuels are plenty dry enough to burn already.  That is why the handwaving argument that global warming is contributing to the fires simply don't make sense.

And then there is the argument that global warming is somehow decreasing autumn rains in the area.  This has little basis in truth.  Here is the plot of precipitation form the NOAA/NWS climate division data set for 1930-2018 for August to October precipitation for the area of the Camp Fire.  There is no obvious trend.  August to October precipitation is typically light (about 2 inches), with lots of variation year to year.  Many years are as dry or drier than this year. And the global warming simulations for the end of the century that I have seen do not show a consistent change in fall precipitation.

As long as I taking on taking on claims of global warming-fire connections, some folks like to talk about tree deaths, bark beetles, and the like, with the claim that global warming is killing trees and thus leading to fires.   The Camp Fire areas is NOT  noted for tree death and besides, most of the fire was on chaparral vegetation.  Below is a satellite photo showing the boundaries of Paradise (brown line), with the fire starting near Pulga (on the NE side of the image).   The fire spread over a region that had been logged, previously burned, and was then mainly grass and small shrubs.

In summary, if one analyzes the situation, it is evident that global warming had little to do with the Camp Fire. 

As I will discuss in a future blog, the Paradise area was a ticking time bomb.    There was a huge influx of population into a wildland area, which had burned many times in the past.  Previously logging and fires had left a conduit of highly flammable grass and bushes, through which fire could move rapidly.  Flammable, non-native invasive grasses had spread through the region. Homes were not built to withstand fire and roadways were inadequate for evacuation. Powerlines started the fires and were not de-energized even though strong winds were skillfully forecast.   Warnings to the population were inadequate.  The list is long.   And global warming should not be on the list if we are to focus on the real problems.

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Large study reveals that junk food really DOES increase your risk for cancer

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(Natural News) We all know that junk food is terrible for us, but there may be occasions when you’re tempted to give in. Perhaps the vending machine is the social center at your office and you find yourself chatting and snacking more often than not, or you’ve given in to your kids’ requests that you...

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Some "wonder drug:" Aspirin found to have NO benefits for older adults, and may even cause significant harm

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(Natural News) For years, the “daily baby aspirin” propaganda has suggested that taking a daily dose of the “wonder drug” would help stave off cardiovascular disease and heart attacks. But new research has just confirmed what many have long suspected: The notion that aspirin will prevent heart disease in healthy people is nothing but a...

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Conservative 'Proud Boys' Labeled "Extremist Group" By FBI

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The "Proud Boys", a self-described "Western chauvinist" group founded by Vice Media co-creator Gavin McInnes, has officially been labeled by the FBI as an "extremist group with ties to White Nationalism". News of the classification (which had previously not been made public) was broken by the Guardian, which reported that disciplinary action taken against a female sheriffs deputy in Clark County, Washington led to the designation.

In a warning issued to police departments in Washington state, the FBI described the Proud Boys as "contributing to the escalation in street violence" at political rallies and noted that they are "actively recruiting" in the area.  The report was first issued two months ago.

"The FBI has warned local law enforcement agencies that the Proud Boys are actively recruiting in the Pacific north-west," and: "Proud Boys members have contributed to the recent escalation of violence at political rallies held on college campuses, and in cities like Charlottesville, Virginia, Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington."

Of course, this isn't the first time that a conservative or "alt-right" group like the Proud Boys has been lumped in with overtly racist, white supremacist or otherwise extremist groups. The Proud Boys have repeatedly insisted that they condemn bigotry in all of its forms (though their embrace of traditional gender roles has led to them also being labeled "misogynist".) However, the involvement of the FBI represents a troubling escalation. In recent years, organizations like the ACLU and SPLC have started lumping in socially and politically conservative groups like the Family Research Council with overtly racist groups, effectively opening the door to the criminalization of conservative groups. Meanwhile, groups like Antifa, which regularly participates in street violence and vandalism, have evaded this classification, despite warnings from the Department of Homeland Security.  

The firing of Erin Willey, a sheriffs' deputy who was photographed in a "Proud Boys Girls" sweatshirt, reportedly precipitated the internal law enforcement inquiry that led to the classification. Willey was fired last July after the photo was published by the Vancouver Columbian.

The document, provided to the Guardian by the government transparency non-profit Property of the People, was part of an internal affairs investigation into a probationary deputy in the Clark county sheriff’s department.

The former clark county deputy, Erin Willey, was fired last July after a photo of her wearing a “Proud Boys Girls” sweatshirt was published by the Vancouver, Washington newspaper the Columbian. The Proud Boys Girls is the female auxiliary of the men-only group founded by McInnes in 2016.

The author of the document, headquarters commander Michael McCabe, is in charge of internal affairs, training, background investigation and courthouse security in the Clark county sheriff’s department.

The internal affairs commander who led that investigation said the classification was first disclosed to him back in August during a meeting between local law enforcement and the FBI.

After confirming the authenticity of the document, he told the Guardian in a telephone interview that the FBI’s classification of the Proud Boys as an extremist group was revealed to him in “a briefing we were given by the FBI” on 2 August, at Clark county’s west precinct.

The briefing included agency heads from local law enforcement, and in it the FBI said that they “have been warning [local law enforcement] for a while” about the Proud Boys, “not just in Washington but around the nation”.

The briefing including the Proud Boys was delivered by an FBI analyst, according to information forwarded to the Guardian by McCabe.

It touched on topics including "How the FBI tracks hate/extremist groups," "Brief history of these groups in the Pacific NW," "A description of currently active groups with a focus on the Portland/Vancouver area," and "Current trends or concerns over law enforcement officers/employees involvement with these groups."

According to the FBI report, Willey was an active member of the organization for roughly a year beginning in late 2016, helping it to distribute merchandise. Her membership, according to the bureau, violated the CCSD's oath to "protect the laws of the US" and also constituted a "Brady violation" - meaning that defense attorneys could potentially cite Willey's membership in the extremist group as evidence to have criminal charges against minorities arrested by Willey thrown out (based on claims of bias).

The document says that Willey was an active Proud Boys Girls member between November 2016 and October 2017, and in February 2017 she "actively participated in the manufacturing, advertising and selling of Proud Boys Girls’ merchandise on a website."

The document concludes that membership in the Proud Boys may constitute a violation of the Clark county sheriff’s department oath to support and protect the laws of the United States, since Proud Boys “members have been documented as having called for the closure of all prisons, the issuing of firearms to everyone, the legalization of all drugs, the deportation of all illegal immigrants and the shutdown of the government”.

Another concern expressed in the document produced by McCabe – which was handed to the sheriff, Chuck E Atkins, so he could make a decision on Willey’s future in the department – was the possibility that the deputy’s membership in the group would constitute a so-called “Brady violation”.

The Brady doctrine requires prosecutors to disclose any potentially exculpatory evidence to defenses in the discovery phase of criminal trials.

Hate crimes in the United States are on the rise generally. The Southern Poverty Law Center has uncovered 953 registered hate groups across the United States.

You will find more infographics at Statista

But there's no evidence that the Proud Boys have contributed in any way to this increase. In fact, according to a Daily Beast article published earlier this year, several African Americans and other minorities have become heavily involved with the Proud Boys, even rising to lead local chapters of the group.

Perhaps the FBI, while conducting its investigation into the group, neglected to do a simple Google search.

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How the US Creates ‘Sh*thole’ Countries – Consortiumnews

https://consortiumnews.com/2018/11/19/how-the-us-creates-shthole-countries/

Who Or What Is Really Responsible For The Huge Forest Fires In California?

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Authored by Bruce Bialosky, op-ed via Townhall.com,

Once again, faced with the failure of the “press” to educate us on an issue, we decided to go out and research the truth about what appears to be the significant increase in huge forest fires.  Once we did the research, we found out major differences in facts from the random barkings in the MSM.

Let us start with this simple aspect.  Forest fires are a normal thing.  Often caused by lightning or other natural causes, they are God’s way of clearing forests.  In those natural forest clearances, the wildlife that exists in them are threatened or their habitat is destroyed.  What has changed is mankind’s intervention in the natural process.  The question is, what other factors may be causing the change in the intensity of recent forest fires?

We also came armed with a thought.  If you believe that global warming is making life more challenging for forest management, then you should support proper forest clearance. Otherwise we will be left with even more intense fires.

For this column, other than reading everything available, we went to two sources: our national Forest Service and the Union of Concerned Scientists to get different perspectives.

Speaking with Chris French, the Acting Deputy Chief of Forest Service (FS), we received a primer on what is really going on with forest fires today.

When asked what he believes is the primary cause of the intense forest fires, Mr. French’s immediate response was “Forests are overstocked.  There are more trees than 100 years ago.”  He went on to say that part of the problem was the Forest Service’s good work in the recent past stopping forest fires. This meant, however, that their focus was largely directed away from forest maintenance, which caused the elements that fuel a fire like underbrush, dead trees or more density to occur. 

The changes French would like to see would be more active forest clearance and clearance of the underbrush.   He also wants to do more controlled fires when the risks are minimized.  If you are wondering why they are not doing that now it is because of budget restraints.

What government department does not advocate for additional money in their budget?  In this case, there may truly be rationale.  Because of the good work the FS was doing, they were spending 85% of the budget on forest maintenance and 15% on fire suppression.  

Over the recent years as forest fires became more intense, they spent more money on suppression and less on clearance causing a vicious cycle of less money on clearance.  At this point French stated that it was projected that 60% of their budget went toward suppression leaving fewer precious dollars for clearance.  Recent Congressional budget bills have increased the Forest Service budget providing additional funding for clearance, thus hopefully stopping as many fires from happening and less money spent on suppression.

While doing the clearance the Forest Service does, French stated they were controlled by a myriad of federal laws which limit their actions.  These laws include The Clean Air Act, Natural Forest Management Act, Endangered Species Act and National Environmental Policy Act to name a few.  The Forest Service must put information out to the public before they do their clearance work.  They are not always questioned, but quite often interest groups jump in armed with legal briefs to stop the planned work.  

Currently there are groups trying to stop certain aspects of the Farm bill from being passed that would enhance the funding for forest clearance because they are against logging even though it is clear much of the land in question has three times the density that it should.

Just a thought:  If you have a concern about destroying the natural habitat and thus limit the proper clearance of the areas in question, what do you say about what happens to the improperly-cleared forest during a major fire when the habitat is destroyed and the animals’ lives are put at risk?

One other point French made was about risks being higher today.

 He stated “People are living closer to where the fire dangers are, causing more damage and peril to human lives.”  We asked if this is akin to all the people living in flood plains today.  His response: “Exactly.”

This kind of fire has a catchy new name – urban interface fires.  The Forest Servicedefines the wildland-urban interface as the place where "homes and wildlands meet or intermingle". As French described, it's where "humans and their development meet or intermix with wildland fuel".  These used to be called fire areas.  I live in one and we have to do special clearance each year to make sure that if a fire starts there will be little fuel to feed the fire.  Where I live has built up for seventy years.  This new situation describes the recent fires in California where people reached further in to these areas to homestead. 

What is the government’s responsibility in these cases?  Few would restrict people’s rights to build homes on private property.  Fewer would suggest the authorities should not protect those people from danger if there is a fire, mud slide or their home is washed out in a flood. Many will question whether the government should have any financial risk to help the survivors rebuild in the areas in question. Others would say that just encourages questionable behavior.  

While we can all feel sadness for those who have lost their homes in the fires, many have built homes in areas that are inherently dangerous to be “away from the hubbub.”  Their choice; their risk.  To build a home near a forest and not accept the uncertainty of fire verges on insanity.   

When dealing with an environmental group today, one anticipates that a focal point will be global warming/climate change.  In fact, the article I pulled from the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) website is titled "Is Global Warming Fueling Increases Fire Risks?"  The column is a mix of warnings about how global warming is increasing wildfires and encouragement to do more forest clearance.  I spoke with Rachel Cleetus, lead economist and policy director with the climate and energy program for the UCS.

Ms. Cleetus painted a somewhat different picture.  She also forwarded a 64-page report she personally authored for the UCS on the matter.  She was very aware of the many factors that are involved and echoed many of the same themes that the FS had stated, including the need for a greater budget especially with the extra monies being spent on forest clearance.  

Cleetus was unclear whether the organization just supported the procedures that the FS argued for or advocated for them.  She stated that they were not involved in stopping the FS from doing their work like some other interests often do.

But she did state the primary reasons for the increased risk of major fires was because of more people living in the areas and the forest management (or lack thereof) being done.  

Whether you believe in global warming/climate change or not, it is quite clear that the forest service needs to get a handle on proper forest management to lessen the risks of major forest fires.  The only way they can do that right now is to throw more resources at the problem to stop the downward spiral of clearance necessary to halt/minimize the risk of major fires.  

Certainly, the federal/state governments need to make clear that they will not assume any liability for financial loss if anyone lives is in a fire zone.  Citizens need to evaluate whether the joy of being in these areas is worth the exposure to their belongings and possibly their lives.  

One thing we know for sure is that the wild charges made by some that this is all due to change in environmental factors is wrong.  Though the UCS is vested in the issue of climate change, they support that there are other factors as proposed by the FS.    

Climate change/global warming is not the answer to everything on our planet.

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The Mosaic of Autoimmunity: Top doctors reveal vaccines turn our immune system against us

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The research is hard to ignore, vaccines can trigger autoimmunity with a laundry list of diseases to follow. With harmful and toxic metals as some vaccine ingredients, who is susceptible and which individuals are more at risk? No one would accuse Yehuda Shoenfeld of being a quack. The Israeli clinician has spent more than three decades studying the human immune system and is at the pinnacle of his profession. You might say he is more foundation than fringe in his specialty; he wrote the textbooks. The Mosaic of Autoimmunity, Autoantibodies, Diagnostic Criteria in Autoimmune Diseases, Infection and Autoimmunity, Cancer and Autoimmunity - the list is 25 titles long and some of them are cornerstones of clinical practice. Hardly surprising that Shoenfeld has been called the "Godfather of Autoimmunology" - the study of the immune system turned on itself in a wide array of diseases from type 1 diabetes to ulcerative colitis and multiple sclerosis.

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American Politics' Unmistakable Odor Of Perfidy

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Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

I suspect there’s a hidden agenda behind the announcement in The Wall Street Journal op-ed by former Hillary Clinton aide Mark Penn that the Ole Gray Mare is actually eyeing another run for the White House in 2020. No, it’s not just that she would like to be president, as she averred on video last week in a weak moment, or that she has decided late in life to go full Bolshevik policy-wise. It is to establish her in the public mind as a serious candidate so that when she is indicted a hue-and-cry will arise that the move is a purely political act of revenge by the wicked Trump.

Of course, she’s not a serious candidate because too many people recognize her naked corruption, and she’s carrying so much noisome baggage that her entourage looks like one of those garbage truck convoys hauling New York’s trash to flyover country. Prosecutors don’t even have to search very hard for evidence of her misdeeds. It’s smeared all over the swamp-scape in the established facts about the Steele Dossier and its engineered journey through the highest levels of the FBI and Department of Justice, and the wild machinations that ensued when the cast of characters in those places scrambled to cover their asses following the debacle of Hillary’s election loss.

Little is known about what is going on inside the Mueller commission. But if, as it appears, the Special Counsel is still stalking Russian Facebook trolls and ignoring the slime-trail of  huggermugger left behind by Hillary & Company, then we are seeing one of the most fantastic failures of law enforcement in history. Still, there’s a possibility — low-percentage in my view — that Mr. Mueller might disclose a raft of charges against the Clinton gang and her errand boys.

The trouble is that such charges may lead to the some of the highest former officials in the land, including former CIA director John Brennan, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, and perhaps even the sacred former President Obama. Even Mr. Mueller himself is suspect in the 2009 Uranium One deal that conveyed over $150-million dollars from Russian banks into the Clinton Foundation coffers.

If it turns out to be the case that Mr. Mueller’s report completely overlooks all that, then there is going to be a mighty collision between his office and the new management of the Justice Department, Mr. Whitaker, the Acting Attorney General, and whomever is finally confirmed as the new regular AG. Personally, I don’t see how Mr. Mueller can evade the questions over these matters. Too many wheels have been set in motion, and some of these wheels are coming loose — such as the mischief promulgated by the international man-of-mystery Joseph Misfud, who was likely working for US intel via the British MI6 to game George Papadopoulos into a Russian collusion set-up that he demurred from. The set-up failed spectacularly, and now that the facts are becoming known about it, Mr. Mifsud has come out of hiding, and his lawyers are preparing to serve him up to the Senate Judiciary Committee. Won’t that be fun?

Many of the other characters involved in these perfidious schemes — Comey, Strzok, Page, Ohr, McCabe, et al — have been keeping remarkably low profiles lately (except for the reckless and feckless John Brennan, who apparently can’t keep his pie-hole shut on MSNBC). Hillary has been making the rounds, too, on some kind of phony-baloney “listening” tour. But she looks sore-beset and worried on stage, slumped in her easy chair, and I’m persuaded she’s simply going through motions to pretend that she’s still a credible political figure so that when the hammer comes down on her she can issue the war whoops that will start Civil War 2 in earnest.

Meanwhile, a giant archive of documents in these matters is awaiting declassification.

The buzz is that Mr. Trump delayed this before the midterm elections due to threats from our “intel community” that the documents would compromise our relations with foreign intel outfits in friendly lands - namely the aforementioned MI6 of the UK.  The collusion was apparently done to avoid legal questions about using US intel to spy on members of the Trump election campaign.

But Theresa May’s government is imploding now, and that nation will be preoccupied with other problems going forward, so it is more likely that the garbage barge of unredacted emails, texts, and agency transcripts will sail right into public domain in the days ahead, whether Mr. Mueller likes it or not.

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There's a Good Reason Many Women Make Less Than Men

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Whenever it is reported that women make less money than men, it is automatically assumed that this must be the result of discrimination. What is seldom mentioned is the factors that go into these statistics. 

 

Are they talking about women who work the same hours as men? Who have the same level of seniority? Do the market conditions for the kinds of jobs women gravitate toward dictate that anyone in those jobs (men or women) will make less (e. g. executive assistants are easier to find than executives, so they make less)?

 

In order to prove that women are being discriminated against, all of these factors have to be taken into account.

 

A new study sheds light on one reason why women might make less than men: because they themselves make that decision.

 

In a research study at that bastion of conservative economics, Harvard University, titled, “Why Do Women Earn Less Than Men? Evidence from Bus and Train Operators,” Ph.D candidate Valentin Bolotnyy, studied unionized train and bus drivers and found something interesting. 

 

The study, which analyzed administrative data from the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) found that "Even in a unionized environment where work tasks are similar, hourly wages are identical, and tenure dictates promotions, female workers earn $0.89 on the male-worker dollar (weekly earnings). Must be discrimination, right? 

 

Wrong.

 

The data show that "the weekly earnings gap can be explained entirely by the workplace choices that women and men make." In other words women make decisions that they know will result in reduced earnings--decisions that, if men made them, would result in the same thing.

 

What decisions are they making? Here is a portion of the study's abstract:

Women value time and flexibility more than men, possibly due to a combination of preferences and personal life constraints. Women take more unpaid time off using the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) and work fewer overtime hours than men. When overtime hours are scheduled three months in advance, men and women work a similar number of hours; but when those hours are offered at the last minute, men work nearly twice as many overtime hours. When selecting work schedules, women try to avoid weekend, holiday, and split shifts more than men. To avoid unfavorable work times, women prioritize their schedules over route safety and select routes with a higher probability of accidents. Women are less likely than men to game the scheduling system by trading off work hours at regular wages for overtime hours at premium wages.

In other words, women value different things than men, and they act on it, and it results in lower earnings. But that's their prerogative. And, quite frankly, so much the worse for men. 

 

This is actually good news: knowing that women still make the right choices about what things are the most valuable, even if it costs them a little in their paychecks.

 

--

 

[Image Credit: Good Free Photos]

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DOJ Inadvertently Confirms Sealed Indictment Awaits Julian Assange if Extradited to the US

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WASHINGTON — A U.S. prosecutor has inadvertently revealed that Julian Assange, the founder and former editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, has been secretly charged by the U.S. government, confirming long-held suspicions that the U.S. has had criminal charges waiting for Assange should he be extradited to the United States.

The revelation comes just hours after a report in the Wall Street Journal revealed that the U.S. Department of Justice is preparing to indict Assange in such a way that it would trigger his extradition to the United States to stand trial, following sensitive negotiations with foreign governments, most likely the governments of the United Kingdom and Ecuador.

Assange, a citizen of Australia and Ecuador, is currently living in Ecuador’s embassy in London as a political asylee. He has remained in the embassy for over six years in order to protect himself from extradition to the United States. However, the current Ecuadorian government led by Lenín Moreno has been eager to restore close ties to the United States and has had a tense relationship with Assange, which analysts have warned could threaten the journalist’s asylum.

A report published last night in The Washington Post detailed how the fact that the U.S. government has sealed charges awaiting Assange in the United States was inadvertently revealed by a “copy-paste error” made by assistant U.S. Attorney Kellen Dwyer.

In an indictment unrelated to Assange, Dwyer wrote that “due to the sophistication of the defendant and the publicity surrounding the case, no other procedure is likely to keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged.” Dwyer later wrote that the charges “need to remain sealed until Assange is arrested.”

Dwyer had been urging a judge to keep the unrelated matter detailed in the indictment sealed but the language used to request that action from the judge had apparently been lifted from a document requesting that charges targeting Assange be sealed. The indictment in question pertained instead to the case of Seitu Sulayman Kokayi, who is accused of sex trafficking a minor and of having “substantial interest in terrorist acts.”

SCOOP: US Department of Justice "accidentally" reveals existence of sealed charges (or a draft for them) against WikiLeaks' publisher Julian Assange in apparent cut-and-paste error in an unrelated case also at the Eastern District of Virginia. https://t.co/wrjlAbXk5Z pic.twitter.com/4UlB0c1SAX

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) November 16, 2018

 

U.S. attorney’s office confirms “error”

A spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Virginia, Joshua Steve, confirmed to the Post that the “filing was made in error. That was not the intended name for this filing.” Other sources familiar with the matter that were cited by the Post stated that what Dwyer had disclosed was true but unintentional.

Notably, Dwyer is also assigned to the U.S.’ case against WikiLeaks, which was opened in 2010 after the transparency organization published leaks exposing U.S. government wrongdoing in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

It is unclear what charges Assange faces within the sealed indictment. Past reports have indicated that U.S. prosecutors were seeking charges related to conspiracy, theft of government property or violating the Espionage Act. However, these efforts have been complicated, not for lack of effort on the part of the government but because Assange was merely the publisher, not the procurer, of the leaked classified documents.

NOTE: The US case against WikiLeaks started in 2010 and was expanded over Snowden and the largest leak in CIA history "Vault 7". The prosecutor on the order is not from Mr. Mueller's team and WikiLeaks has never been contacted by anyone from his office. https://t.co/hGuxp0Jos4

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) November 16, 2018

The charges had long been suspected after emails from the U.S.-based private intelligence company Stratfor — which were released by WikiLeaks in 2012 — had revealed that the U.S. has had a sealed indictment against Assange since 2011. However, the charges had not been “officially” confirmed until the recent error in the unrelated indictment.

In regard to the apparently inadvertent revelation in the recent indictment, Barry Pollack – one of Assange’s attorneys – told the Post in a statement:

The only thing more irresponsible than charging a person for publishing truthful information would be to put in a public filing information that clearly was not intended for the public and without any notice to Mr. Assange. Obviously, I have no idea if he has actually been charged or for what, but the notion that the federal criminal charges could be brought based on the publication of truthful information is an incredibly dangerous precedent to set.”

 

A chilling precedent

Indeed, many journalists and analysts have long noted that charging Assange for his role in publishing leaked but truthful information sets a truly troubling precedent.

For instance, the director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s Speech, Privacy and Technology Project, Ben Wizner, stated:

Any prosecution of Mr. Assange for WikiLeaks’ publishing operations would be unprecedented and unconstitutional, and would open the door to criminal investigations of other news organizations. Moreover, prosecuting a foreign publisher for violating U.S. secrecy laws would set an especially dangerous precedent for U.S. journalists, who routinely violate foreign secrecy laws to deliver information vital to the public’s interest.”

Journalist Glenn Greenwald, writing at the Intercept, similarly pointed out the grave threat the U.S.’ case against Assange would pose to press freedoms. Greenwald noted that “reporting on the secret acts of government officials or powerful financial actors – including by publishing documents taken without authorization – is at the core of investigative journalism,” adding that “some of the most important journalism over the last several decades has occurred because it is legal and constitutional to publish secret documents even if the sources of those documents obtained them through illicit or even illegal means.”

Top Photo | WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange leaves after greeting supporters outside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, May 19, 2017 Frank Augstein | AP

Whitney Webb is a staff writer for MintPress News and a contributor to Ben Swann’s Truth in Media. Her work has appeared on Global Research, the Ron Paul Institute and 21st Century Wire, among others. She has also made radio and TV appearances on RT and Sputnik. She currently lives with her family in southern Chile.

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