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The File Cryptome Wouldn't Host: Picture of US Army Informant John Towery

rkamens's picture
Submitted by rkamens on Sat, 2009-08-01 07:32.

from https://hackbloc.org/node/1991

Cryptome.org, the site run by crypto-anarchist John Young that publishes thousands of censored, classified, and secret documents seems to have tried to sweep an issue under the rug: that of informant John Towery infiltrating anti-war groups in Olympia/Tacoma, WA. This story has been covered by major media outlets including Democracy Now! and the New York Times, so what is Cryptome so afraid of?

According to the Cryptome website, “Cryptome welcomes documents for publication that are prohibited by governments worldwide, in particular material on freedom of expression, privacy, cryptology, dual-use technologies, national security, intelligence, and secret governance—open, secret and classified documents—but not limited to those”. The John Towery story certainly sounds like it fits within these guidelines. Furthermore, the Cryptome website states that content will only be removed if forced by a US Court Order.

One could speculate that the feds paid a visit to Young’s residence, but in the past these types of encounters have been widely publicized and haven’t resulted in content being taken down. Furthermore, the administrator of the website JohnTowery.com, which has acted as a clearinghouse for information published on the US Army informant that was undercover for over two years, states that they haven’t received any visits from anybody in law enforcement, let alone somebody who could force them to take down content. On the same token, nobody in Olympia has received any visits from three letter agencies. Seattle Indymedia, Democracy Now, Portland Indymedia, JohnTowery.com, and numerous other websites host the pictures of the informant that have disappeared off of Cryptome as well as a lot of other information on the story itself.

But the story gets deeper. After the pictures and information about the informant disappeared from Cryptome, a few days later a news clipping and a link to the johntowery.com website appeared only to disappear yet again today.

So what does this tell us about Cryptome? Not much, but it might tell us something about the John Towery story that we already knew: it’s a huge fucking deal.

If you want to ask cryptome about this incident, you can contact them at cryptome{at}earthlink.net

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