US military propaganda team bustedDesperate disinformation from GitmoBy Egan Orion: Thursday, 13 December 2007, 2:54 PMWIKILEAKS, the website that published manuals leaked from the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, has caught US armed forces personnel there conducting propaganda attacks over the Internet.The activities uncovered by Wikileaks include deleting Guantanamo detainees' ID numbers from Wikipedia, posting of self-praising comments on news websites in response to negative articles, promoting pro-Guantanamo stories on the Internet news focus website Digg, and even altering Wikipedia's entry on Cuban President Fidel Castro to describe him as "an admitted transexual" [sic].The proof Wikeleaks assembled includes the IP address and whois ownership record for public.jtfgtmo.southcom.mil, which is Guantanamo's Internet gateway server, google hits on that IP address, a traceroute through a satellite downlink, the whois ownership record for that downlink, links to the defaced Wikipedia entries, links to comments posted at news websites, records of approximately 140 promotions of news articles at Digg, links and quotes about three alleged US military propagandists who are stationed at Guantanamo, and fourteen links to other Wikileaks articles about Guantanamo.Shayana Kadidal, Managing Attorney for the Center for Constitutional Rights Guantanamo Global Justice Initiative, is quoted in response to Wikileaks' report as having said:"The military's efforts to alter the record by vandalizing Wikipedia are of a piece with the amateurism of their other public relations efforts: [such as] their ridiculous claims that released detainees who criticize the United States in the media have 'returned to the battlefield'."The Wikileaks entry also quotes a recent Associated Press story on its findings. µ
