Wikileaks Julian Assange **** accuser is CIA Operative
Dok:
Assange claims 'smear campaign'
Julian Assange, founder of the whistle-blowing website Wikileaks, has said the now-dropped charge of **** levelled against him in Sweden was "a smear campaign".
Assange told Al Jazeera on Sunday that while he had been forewarned by Australian intelligence on August 11 to expect a campaign against him, it was unclear who was behind it.
"It is clearly a smear campaign ... the only question is who was involved.
"We can have some suspicions about who would benefit, but without direct evidence I would not be willing to make a direct allegation."
'No mistake'
Swedish authorities had initially issued a warrant for Assange's arrest on Friday night, but dropped the warrant and the **** charge the next day.
Eva Finne, the country's chief prosecutor, reviewed the evidence and withdrew the warrant for his arrest,deciding there was "no longer reason to believe" Assange had committed ****, Karin Rosander, a spokeswoman for Finne, said.
"You can't call it a mistake because the prosecutor in question has to make a decision based on the information available at the moment of the decision," Rosander told Al Jazeera on Sunday.
Finne's office has not contacted Assange and is not searching for him and will make a decision whether to pursue the molestation charge later this week, Rosander said.
The charges against Assange, which come around a month after Wikileaks incensed the US government by releasing a trove of American military informationabout the war in Afghanistan, quickly spread around the internet.
Leaked US documents
After the Swedish tabloid Expressen first published reportsthat the arrest warrant had been issued for Assange, Wikileaks responded on Twitter:"We were warned to expect 'dirty tricks.' Now we have the first one.
"No one here has been contacted by Swedish police. Needless to say this will prove hugely distracting."
Assange's organisation caused controversy in Julywhen it released 75,000 classified US military reports containing information about the Nato war effort in Afghanistan.
The US government condemned the release of the documents, saying the website had "blood on its hands" for naming people who had helped its military against groups such as the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and ordered Wikileaks to return the files.
Wikileaks, meanwhile, has said it is plans to reveal more of the remaining 15,000 classified documents it holds, possibly this month or next month.
Two alleged victims
Two women in their twenties made the allegations against Assange, according to Al Jazeera's Paul Brennan, reporting from London.
One woman claimed Assange raped her last weekend in Stockholm, while another alleged he molested her on Tuesday in a separate town in Sweden, Brennan said.
"I think it's quite natural that these rumors happen in a very famous case like this, and I'm not surprised at all," Rosander, the prosecutor's spokeswoman, told Al Jazeera.
She said she could not give any details on the allegations.
Assange was in Sweden last week partly to apply for a publishing certificate to maintain the advantages it receives from the country's whistle-blowing protection laws. Wikileaks also has many of its servers in Sweden.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2010/08/2010822135529927326.html
Brocke:
Quote from: Dok on August 22, 2010, 11:56:37 am
Assange told Al Jazeera on Sunday that while he had been forewarned by Australian intelligence on August 11 to expect a campaign against him, it was unclear who was behind it.
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2010/08/2010822135529927326.html
Say what! :o
EvadingGrid:
Quote from: Brocke on August 22, 2010, 05:41:24 pm
Say what! :o
Hey well spotted....
Blimey...
* cat looks stunned
Dok:
i think we all know who is behind it.
Dok:
in related news:
Prosecutors Eye WikiLeaks Charges
WASHINGTON—Pentagon lawyers believe that online whistleblower group WikiLeaks acted illegally in disclosing thousands of classified Afghanistan war reports and other material, and federal prosecutors are exploring possible criminal charges, officials familiar with the matter said.
A joint investigation by the Army and the Federal Bureau of Investigation is still in its early stages and it is unclear what course the Department of Justice will decide to take, according to a U.S. law-enforcement official.
He said WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange had not been identified by the FBI as a target of the probe.
WikiLeaks in late July posted on its website some 76,000 classified military documents, the largest such disclosure since the release of the Pentagon Papers in 1971. It has promised to publish another 15,000 documents from the cache it obtained. The disclosure infuriated the Pentagon, which warned that the release could endanger allies in Afghanistan and undercut the war effort.
Several officials said the Defense and Justice departments were now exploring legal options for prosecuting Mr. Assange and others involved on grounds they encouraged the theft of government property.
Bringing a case against WikiLeaks would be controversial and complicated, and would expose the Obama administration to criticism for pursuing not just government leakers, but organizations that disseminate their information.
The increasingly confrontational tone could be part of Pentagon efforts to dissuade WikiLeaks from posting online the yet-to-be-published documents in its possession.
"It is the view of the Department of Defense that WikiLeaks obtained this material in circumstances that constitute a violation of United States law, and that as long as WikiLeaks holds this material, the violation of the law is ongoing," Defense Department General Counsel Jeh Charles Johnson wrote in a letter this week to a WikiLeaks lawyer.
The letter did not spell out what those circumstances were.
People familiar with the matter said investigators and government lawyers were looking at whether WikiLeaks pressed or encouraged army intelligence analyst Pfc. Bradley Manning to leak the Afghan war logs after the army private provided the group with a classified Iraq video.
Such a finding could increase the chances that prosecutors will pursue charges against WikiLeaks, legal experts said.
Steven Aftergood, head of the project on government secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, said U.S. law gives prosecutors a number of tools they could use to prosecute WikiLeaks, such as alleging the group was an accessory to a crime or had unlawfully taken possession of stolen property. If WikiLeaks actively encouraged the transfer of classified documents, the government could allege the group was part of a conspiracy, he said.
At issue is whether WikiLeaks should be afforded the same legal protections as a traditional media outlet.
Legal experts said the government may view WikiLeaks differently because of the way it gathers and publishes information. Its website actively solicits classified material and promises leaking is "safe, easy and protected by law."
When established news organizations obtain classified information, they rarely publish it wholesale or without first consulting the government to authenticate the information and to ensure it doesn't compromise national security. WikiLeaks' model eschews that step.
"If WikiLeaks thought it would make the last move and the government would not respond, they may be mistaken," said Mr. Aftergood. "But it would be a terrible new precedent if these legal options were actually employed against a publisher, even a disreputable one. Once such measures were used against WikiLeaks, it would only be a matter of time until they are used against other media outlets and individuals."
Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell declined to comment on the investigation but said, "We believe at a minimum that WikiLeaks has behaved in a reckless and irresponsible manner."
The Army unit conducting the investigation and the FBI declined to comment.
The lawyer working with WikiLeaks, Timothy Matusheski, said he had been told by a member of the Army Criminal Investigative Division unit investigating the case that Mr. Assange—an Australian national —"was not a subject or target of any investigation."
The U.S. law-enforcement official said that Mr. Assange was not a target, but Mr. Johnson's letter may signal a shift, at least in terms of the Pentagon's thinking, Mr. Matusheski said. "They accuse him of breaking the law," he said of Mr. Assange. "But they haven't said what law."
Pfc. Manning, a 22-year-old private, worked in intelligence operations in Baghdad. He was supposed to be examining intelligence relevant to Iraq, but defense officials said Pfc. Manning used his "Top Secret/SCI" clearance to tap into documents around the world.
Pfc. Manning was charged by the military in July with illegally taking secret State Department files and disseminating the classified video, later released by WikiLeaks, showing a U.S. military helicopter firing on a group of people in Baghdad. Two Reuters journalists and seven other people were killed in the 2007 incident.
Going after WikiLeaks or Mr. Assange personally would be complicated. Not only is Mr. Assange not an American, but "I don't know WikiLeaks has a presence in the United States except for a website," Mr. Matusheski said.
The classified documents cover the Afghan war from 2004 through 2009. The Pentagon this week rebuffed a WikiLeaks request for help reviewing the remaining documents, demanding that the group instead return all of the logs to the U.S. government.
The Pentagon said the 15,000 additional documents, like the initial batch, contained the names of Afghans who have helped the U.S. war effort and who could be targeted by the Taliban if their identities were made public. But officials have played down the impact of the leak on military strategy, saying they revealed little new.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704488404575441673460880204.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_news
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
[*] Previous page