Project Veritas with help from Sputnik is spreading around audio of a reported exchange with Assange and the State Department in regard to unredacted cables. I have written about WikiLeaks' tradecraft, plausible deniability, and strategic surprise. https://alexaobrien.com/archives/4835 

First, WikiLeaks arguably uses encounters with the US under guise of harm minimization to collect intel for an upcoming release. Second, its stage-crafted redactions then provide the org with plausible deniability, but do not minimize harm.

These methods, in turn, support the organization's objective towards strategic surprise. In fact, it was only after the US . determined what material the org had in its possession that the org approached the Def Dept. under guise of harm minimization for a subsequent release.

In other words, WikiLeaks approached the U.S. once the government knew what to expect. It was also after WikiLeaks published raw unredacted Afghanistan SIGACTS, which contained the names of cooperative military sources, that the FBI officially joined the multi-agency probe.

The FBI also concurrently obtained credible investigative information that Manning's associates were WikiLeaks volunteers or staff and may have aided the soldier in her theft of material.

The organization's theatrical ploys, to include: not showing up to scheduled meetings, password mishaps, and voluntary self-described occasional redactions, which left names of cooperative U.S. military sources in its releases, provides WikiLeaks with plausible deniability.

In 2007, WikiLeaks published lists of all the military equipment deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq by U.S. forces. In 2008, an army signals technician notified WikiLeaks that the Iraq related material contained sensitive information.

That is, one of the thousands of web pages that WikiLeaks published in that release needed to be removed. WikiLeaks denied the request and published the email, identifying the sensitive information for all to see.

The publication of lists of deployed equipment is what triggered the 2008 army counterintelligence report on the organization that Manning eventually leaked to Assange in 2010. The identification of the military vehicles of U.S. forces "could be used to select specific types

of emplacements for IEDs," according to testimony at Manning's court-martial by a person who tasked that report. At the time that WikiLeaks published the lists of deployed equipment used by U.S. forces, the vast majority of causalities or maimings of soldiers in Iraq were

from IEDs. These devices were planted on equipment and vehicles intended for shorter deployments and especially vulnerable to such attacks. It wasn't until late 2007 that the Defense Department began deploying the first mine-resistant, ambush-protected vehicles (or MRAPs)

in Iraq and later Afghanistan, which would eventually reduced both fatal and non-fatal injuries of U.S. armed service members. After Manning leaked the 2008 army counterintelligence report, WikiLeaks published it as the "U.S. Intelligence planned to destroy WikiLeaks."

The report, however, primarily identified intelligence gaps with regard to the organization from a counter-intelligence perspective, as evidenced by the question mark in its actual title: (U) Wikileaks [dot] org -- An Online Reference to Foreign Intelligence Services, Insurgents,

or Terrorist Groups? One in every six deaths of U.S. troops in Iraq were the result of Iranian back militias using means that included explosively formed penetrators (EFP) and other IEDs.

In the first half of WikiLeaks existence, its publications were heavily focused on U.S. military intelligence, especially the CENTCOM and SOUTHCOM areas of responsibility. In its second-half, WikiLeaks' operations and publications have been similarly focused on U.S. SIGINT

capabilities. This may be in part due to the skill sets and expertise of its staff members on whom the organization increasingly relies for its operations. WikiLeaks' submission system is arguably a cover of sorts for the organization. Even when WikiLeaks has had a

publicly facing collection apparatus, much of the material published by the organization has been collected (that is, transmitted to the organization) by other means, based on a review of court filings from the prosecutions of WikiLeaks sources and other open-source material.

Nevertheless, during the period when the organization lacked an anonymous submission system (that is, between June 2010 and May 2015) WikiLeaks was instrumental in Edward Snowden's evasion from U.S. law enforcement, advising and abetting him in his escape to Russia.

Snowden then leak NSA SIGINT capabilities to two journalists, who were trusted by the organization. One of them lived with WikiLeaks staff (see my own disclaimer) six months before Snowden reportedly made his first contact with her; while she was filming a documentary about

surveillance. She later admitted to having a romantic relationship with one of WikiLeaks' long-term staff member and volunteers. It was during this period, a time when the Intelligence Community was facing Shadowbrokers' dump of NSA SIGINT and in the wake of WikiLeaks

publication of COMINT hacked from the servers of a major U.S. political party by Russia, that Assange attempted to parlay his favor with the new administration to ostensibly seek a pardon. WikiLeaks signaled that it was already in possession of NSA cyber-exploits that

Shadowbrokers began releasing in August 2016. And, Shadowbrokers signaled back in January 2017 that it wanted the Intelligence Community to know that WikiLeaks had made that claim to possess Shadowbroker NSA exploits. This happened right before WikiLeaks published its own

CIA SIGINT tasking orders related to France. All of this happened right before Assange's U.S. approach. The parlay for a pardon could arguably be viewed as an opportunity for WikiLeaks, an aspirant intelligence agency for the public

(one that does not possess legitimate authority, as I have discussed elsewhere) to collect intelligence on its quasi-counterpart, the U.S. government, about a yet unknown release of CIA cyber-tools the organization had acquired, which were eventually published in March 2017.

Official reporting indicates that the CIA was unaware of the theft of its own cyber-tools until March 7, 2017, when Vault 7 appeared on the WikiLeaks' website. Other reporting suggests that the CIA became aware, because Assange told them.

WikiLeaks also made much about its redactions related to the Vault 7 cyber-exploits. Yet, while redacting or withholding the names of individuals minimizes potential harm, holding onto cyber-tools does not.

WikiLeaks not only continues to sit on CIA material, it has not engaged with partners in either civil society or the private section regarding consensus as to how to handle that material.