BU Now » Wikileaks

Whistleblower to turn over files to WikiLeaks

Jo Breiner — Mon, 17 Jan 2011 12:58:33 +0000

Rudolf Elmer, a former Swiss banker, is set to hand over files to WikiLeaks that show offshore bank accounts of high net worth individuals and corporations to evade tax payments. Law professor Cornelius Hurley, director of the Morin Center for Banking and Financial Law, offers the following comment:

“Rudolf Elmer has demonstrated that the ‘shadow banking system’ is not just about complex financial instruments that hide risk and the casino in which those instruments are traded. It is also about a dark corner of the banking system that hides personal and corporate wealth for a host of purposes, especially tax evasion.

As Elmer does his WikiLeaks dump in London, one issue for federal prosecutors to focus on is whether the banks and their officers filed suspicious activity reports, so-called ‘SARS’, as is required by the Bank Secrecy Act whenever an institution or its employees know or have reason to suspect illegal activity.”

Contact Cornelius Hurley, 617-353-5427, ckhurley@bu.edu

Experts available on WikiLeaks scandal

Jo Breiner — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 15:39:28 +0000

The following Boston University experts are available to give expert commentary and analysis on the current Wikileaks scandal:

Arthur Hulnick, International Relations professor; a 35-year veteran of the intelligence profession, mostly with the CIA

Contact 617-353-8978, ahulnick@bu.edu

Joseph Wippl, International Relations professor; a 30-year CIA veteran

Contact 617-353-8992, jwippl@bu.edu

Tom Fiedler, Dean of the College of Communication; Expert on American politics; a regular contributor to Politico “The Arena”

Contact 617-353-3488, tfiedler@bu.edu

Robert Zelnick, Journalism professor; Former ABC News foreign correspondent

Contact 617-353-5007, bzelnick@bu.edu

WikiLeaks and classified information

Dick Taffe — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 13:22:40 +0000

The massive unauthorized leak by WikiLeaks to three newspapers, including The New York Times, of 91,000 classified documents related to the war in Afghanistan may cause a reassessment of the war effort by the Obama administration. It already has shown how times have changed in the Internet age since the leak of the Pentagon Papers by government insider Daniel Ellsberg in the ’70s. College of Communication Dean Tom Fiedler, a former executive editor of the Miami Herald, says in a BU Today interview that the source of such a leak is less important than the vigilance of the newspaper publishing it.

“When a mainstream news organization gets information, the organization doesn’t say, ‘Are you a good person?’ The organization says, ‘Is that information verifiable?’ It doesn’t matter who WikiLeaks is.”

Contact Tom Fiedler, 617-353-3488, tfiedler@bu.edu