Just hours after Hillary Clinton proposed to top aides killing Wikileaks founder Julian Assange with a military drone, the then-Secretary of State attended a stealth White House meeting of the country’s top intelligence brass assembled to nominate potential human targets for execution by drone, according to State Department and U.S. intelligence sources.
Dubbed “Terror Tuesday” and “Killer Tuesday” by U.S. intelligence agency insiders, Clinton met with President Obama and National Security Council members, among other diplomats, on Tuesday, November 23, 2010 in the Situation Room to specifically hand-select the next so-called national security threats to die via the U.S. drone strike program, sources confirmed. Assange, largely considered internationally as a trouble-making journalist and muckraker, was part of that Tuesday’s proceedings and debate, sources familiar with the meeting have confirmed to True Pundit.
Terror Tuesday was the day at the White House every few weeks during President Barack Obama’s first term when the highest ranking members of the U.S. government conveyed to nominate what human targets were going to die and which other targets were likely to be spared from deadly U.S. military drone strikes on the international landscape. If the Terror Tuesday hierarchy lobbied for a certain assassination, President Obama could be swayed to add that individual to a stealth government “kill list” and target them for drone execution, sources confirmed. It was that simple: This enemy of the U.S. lives. That enemy of the U.S. dies. There was never any Congressional oversight of the meetings or Senate input to confirm or deny the fate of individual human drone strike targets. Therefore, actors thousands of miles away, including Assange and even U.S citizens located abroad, had zero clue that their terror target value was being debated and their fates decided in a crowded White House conference room filled with bureaucrats on a regular and arbitrary basis.
President Obama alone decided who died via drone strike, sources said. The largely secret initiative granted President Obama sweeping and chilling power to kill at will anyone, including Americans, whom he considered a threat to national security, absent accountability and seemingly valid legal precedent. And at least two Americans so far — Anwar al-Awlaki and fellow propagandist Samir Khan (who wasn’t on the kill list but was traveling with Awlaki) — have proven fatalities. Hundreds of other foreign nationals nominated on Terror Tuesday have likewise been targeted and killed. What about a person’s constitutional rights under U.S law or human rights safeguards under international law and weighed by impartial judges and juries? These rights weren’t considered as part of the quiet Terror Tuesday initiative. President Obama ultimately served as judge, jury and executioner.
“Given the contentious discussions, it can take five or six sessions for a name to be approved, and names go off the list if a suspect no longer appears to pose an imminent threat, the official said …
“The nominations go to the White House, where by his own insistence and guided by Mr. (John) Brennan, Mr. Obama must approve any name. He signs off on every strike … and also on the more complex and risky strikes …”
“Asked what surprised him most about Mr. Obama, Mr. (Thomas) Donilon, the national security adviser, answered immediately: ‘He’s a president who is quite comfortable with the use of force on behalf of the United States.’ ” –Excerpt for the New York Times
Considered the daily news bible by liberals, the New York Times quietly revealed the stealth “Terror Tuesday” meetings in May 2012, writing specifically about such macabre meetings which began in December 2009. So much for following the Constitution and general rule of law that governed the United States for 233 years prior to the inception of the Terror Tuesday and Killer Tuesday counterterrorism program. Donilon’s characterization of Obama’s penchant for droning problematic foes rivals that of Clinton’s philosophies, according to the summary of the FBI’s recent Clinton interview. The FBI’s 302 report from Clinton’s email investigation interview, again, specified that Clinton likewise had “many discussions” related to “nominating” drone strikes on individuals.
On this particular Tuesday in Nov. 2010 — two days prior to Thanksgiving — Assange along with his whistle-blowing pedigree and a threatened looming CableGate release of 250,000 U.S. intelligence communications would be discussed at the Terror Tuesday conclave, sources said. Intelligence sources characterize this type of potential targeting as a “signature” drone strike or a Terrorist Attack Disruption Strikes (TADS) which focuses on neutralizing individual enemies of the United States instead of factions or organizations. Sources already confirmed Clinton believed Assange met the criteria for a signature strike, based on her comments to State top aides. Likewise, the Secretary shunned the notion that Wikileaks was a journalistic outlet, but more of a journalism front for terror-related behavior aimed at damaging the United States’ intelligence infrastructure and global standing. But was Assange a ripe and deserved candidate to have his death warrant stamped by President Obama?
Predictably, Clinton advocates will label the exposure of “Terror Tuesday” and Assange’s potential nomination to be a possible drone target as nothing more than a partisan concoction ginned up by right-wing conspirators trying to do whatever they can to hammer Clinton with false propaganda during an election year. That trusted left-wing knee-jerk rationalization, in this instance however, simply cannot hold any political water. None whatsoever, based on the New York Times’ conclusions alone:
“It is the strangest of bureaucratic rituals: Every week or so, more than 100 members of the government’s sprawling national security apparatus gather, by secure video teleconference, to pore over terrorist suspects’ biographies and recommend to the president who should be the next to die.
“This secret “nominations” process is an invention of the Obama administration, a grim debating society that vets the PowerPoint slides bearing the names, aliases and life stories of suspected members of Al Qaeda’s branch in Yemen or its allies in Somalia’s Shabab militia.
“The video conferences are run by the Pentagon, which oversees strikes in those countries, and participants do not hesitate to call out a challenge, pressing for the evidence behind accusations …”
The Times report skewered the number of attendees, however. The Situation Room cannot house “hundreds.” According to intelligence and sources, these meetings consisted of groups of approximately 20 to 30 high-level decision makers and policy aides in the White House debating the resumes of terrorists with other high-ranking U.S. officials linked in via secure video conference to comb, compare and debate terror stats much like teenagers swapping baseball cards. The time frame deciphered by the New York Times, however was accurate and encompassed the November 2010 meeting where Clinton came armed with a classified State Department memo outlining “nonlegal strategies” to quash Assange and his trouble-making web site.
In 2010, Clinton’s State Department was getting pressure from President Obama and his White House inner circle, as well as heads of state internationally, to try and cutoff Assange’s delivery of the cables and if that effort failed, then to forge a strategy to minimize the administration’s public embarrassment over the contents of the cables. On November 23, about 10 hours before her White House meeting with the “Terror Tuesday” cabal, Clinton conducted an early morning meeting of State’s top brass who floated various proposals to stop, slow or spin the Wikileaks contamination. That is when a frustrated Clinton, sources said, at some point blurted out a controversial query.
“Can’t we just drone this guy?” Clinton openly inquired, offering a simple remedy to silence Assange and smother Wikileaks via a planned military drone strike, according to State Department sources. The statement drew laughter from the room which quickly died off when the Secretary kept talking in a terse manner, sources said. Clinton said Assange, after all, was a relatively soft target, “walking around” freely and thumbing his nose without any fear of reprisals from the United States. Clinton was upset about Assange’s previous 2010 records releases, divulging secret U.S. documents about the war in Afghanistan in July and the war in Iraq just a month earlier in October, sources said. At that time in 2010, Assange was relatively free and not living cloistered in in the embassy of Ecuador in London.
Following Clinton’s alleged drone proposal and the conclusion of the wild brainstorming session, one of Clinton’s top aides, State Department Director of Policy Planning Ann-Marie Slaughter, penned an email to Clinton, Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills, and aides Huma Abebin and Jacob Sullivan at 10:29 a.m. entitled “an SP memo on possible legal and nonlegal strategies re Wikileaks.”
Slaughter’s cryptic email also contained an attached document called “SP Wikileaks doc final11.23.10.docx.” That attachment portion of Slaughter’s “nonlegal strategies” email has yet to be recovered by federal investigators and House committee investigators probing Clinton’s email practices while at State. Even Wikileaks does not have the document. Attempts to obtain the document through the Freedom of Information Act have been declined under stipulation of dealing with classified intelligence linked to national security. Slaughter’s email wasn’t just about State’s public relations spin to the looming Wikileaks’ Cablegate tsunami, it also contained classified and perhaps even top secret national security intelligence, likely dealing with “nonlegal strategies” to squelch Assange.
Sources confirm Clinton shared the email and attachment at the Terror Tuesday meeting with Secretary of Defense Bob Gates, National Security Advisor Donilon, President Obama, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral “Mike” Mullen, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. James Cartwright as well as a half dozen or more various policy aides. On Tuesday, two days after it published its exclusive story on the Clinton and Assange drone controversy, True Pundit obtained an internal White House photo of the Nov. 23, 2010 Terror Tuesday sit down this expose is based on. See below.
Terror Tuesday Participants Confirmed: 1. Hillary Clinton; 2. President Obama; 3. Secretary of Defense Bob Gates; 4. Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy; 5. Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. James Cartwright; 6. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral “Mike” Mullen; 7. National Security Advisor Donilon; 8. Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg; 9. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper
When asked directly Tuesday whether she called for Assange’s assassination by drone in 2010, a bewildered and unemotional Clinton stammered but did not deny the exclusive intelligence first reported by True Pundit. Clinton said she didn’t “recall” nominating the London-based whistle blower for a drone strike.
“It would have been a joke if it had been said,” Clinton responded. “But I don’t recall that.”
Media critics, especially Democratic strategists, quickly panned Clinton on television, social media and in print for not definitively denying the allegations that she wanted to assassinate Assange. Clinton’s answer was no doubt guarded and rehearsed. Normally such a question would be laughed off or vehemently excoriated. If it were untrue, simply state that the report is 100 percent false and concocted. But Clinton’s response appeared to leave much wiggle room for potential future maneuvering to insulate her from likely new revelations, like today’s True Pundit report and whatever Assange may likewise have hiding in the Wikileaks weeds.
With mere weeks before the November election, especially given the latest alarming intelligence revelations, Clinton was likely trying to shield her campaign from a larger and more damning scandal that stretches far beyond one controversial comment during a State Department meeting with top aides: The strong likelihood that the hierarchy governing the entire intelligence apparatus of the United States, led by President Obama’s Terror Tuesday cabal, debated the merits of executing Julian Assange.
—Thomas Paine
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Related True Pundit stories to Clinton Droning Wikileaks’ Assange:
- Under Intense Pressure to Silence Wikileaks, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Proposed Drone Strike on Julian Assange
- United Nations: Targeting Wikileaks Founder With Drone Strike Criminal Violation of Human Rights
- Internal White House Intel Corroborates Details of Hillary Clinton’s Proposed Drone Strike on Julian Assange
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