Julian Assange – hero or heel?

Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, made the news yesterday. The Home Office of the United Kingdom ruled him subject to extradition to the United States. That decision is not final; Assange has 14 days to appeal it. But it puts him one step closer to a peril that the Home Secretary might or might not appreciate. Indeed, American authorities could lock him up and throw away the key. Does he rate that? Or should people celebrate him as a hero of anti-establishment resistance? You decide.

Who is Julian Assange?

Sources and background for this story come mainly from three sources: the Beeb, CNN, and an NPR affiliate station. (And also from CNAV itself.) Julian Assange, in 2006, founded Wikileaks, which advertises itself as a library of “censored or otherwise restricted official materials.” These are no ordinary materials, but all have to do with “war, spying and corruption.” According to their “What is” page, they make every effort to authenticate any document they receive or hear about. In an interview with Der Spiegel, Julian Assange said this of his creation:

WikiLeaks is a giant library of the world’s most persecuted documents. We give asylum to these documents, we analyze them, we promote them and we obtain more.

The case at hand involves the infamous Bradley Manning – who since opted for surgical and hormonal “transition” and now goes by the name Chelsea Manning. Manning served as an Army intelligence analyst. In that capacity Manning handled many classified communications and other documents relating to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2010 Manning stole a large trove of these documents and furnished them to Wikileaks. They, after authenticating them, released them to the public.

The charges against Julian Assange specify that he:

1. Helped Manning crack the password to gain unauthorized access in order to obtain the material, and
2. Published material he knew was classified, and in so doing, put lives at risk.

An equal-opportunity gadfly

Julian Assange seems to be no respecter of persons or political affiliations. For though the official charges against him arise out of his publishing sensitive Iraq and Afghanistan material, his real problem stems from his publishing sensitive emails from Hillary Clinton’s bathroom server. Several conservative commentators – including some of CNAV’s contributors – have used this information to embarrass Hillary Clinton.

Joan Swirsky and Paul Eidelberg both cited Wikileaks in connection with the Hillary Clinton emails. A source at the now-defunct Examiner.com site found a different document in connection with Operation Fast and Furious.

In point of fact, the Justice Department has never charged Assange with anything relating to the Hillary emails. Nor have they charged him in connection with revelations about any government program other than the Iraq/Afghanistan War. But they still want to charge him for how he got those Iraq and Afghanistan documents. In the latest charge, they allege that he

recruited hackers from groups such as Anonymous, LulzSec and Gnosis to launch cyberattacks against government agencies, cybersecurity firms and other entities, hoping to compromise internal databases and gather sensitive documents.

In fact Julian Assange faces 18 different charges. But those charges do not include accessory to murder, or anything relating to the death of a U.S. intelligence source. They allege that he risked other people’s lives, but do not so far allege that he cost lives.

Truth is a complete defense…

Your editor remembers the drama surrounding the first Wikileaks publication. At first he was inclined to believe the government’s case. A nation-state must keep some things secret, because revealing those secrets can get people killed. Furthermore, Bradley/Chelsea Manning does not impress anyone as a hero(ine), but as an opportunist.

Aside from that, Julian Assange strikes one as an anarchist. The site Hollowverse confirms that he gives that impression universally. He also is an atheist.

But then your editor waited for the reports of the first recovery of a body, perhaps bound hand and foot, and throat cut. And waited. And waited. He is still waiting. Meanwhile, the revelations all turned out to be things Americans had a right to know, and are worth knowing.

His entry in Conservapedia perhaps gives the most honest and balanced account about him.

Assange was a hero of the American left when he published documents which discredited the Bush administration and aided the election of Barack Obama, but became a villain after the murder of Seth Rich. Assange published documents about the Obama administration‘s lies in the Benghazi massacre and exposed the Hillary Clinton email scandal. The American left then called him a tool of Russia.

Julian Assange is a worse enemy of the Democrats

He also figures in Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation:

U.S. Attorney John Durham investigated Brennan, Clapper, Comey, and Strzok’s motives. All of the downstream claims about Russian activity, including the Russian indictments promoted by Rosenstein and the Mueller team, are centered around origination claims of illicit Russian activity outlined in the ICA. This is exactly why actors within the DOJ, FBI and Intelligence Community needed to throw a bag over Julian Assange.

For these and other reasons, Donald J. Trump could and should have vacated the charges against Julian Assange. He then could bring him to this country as a material witness against Hillary Clinton and other Deep State players. His failure to do so is part of Trump’s larger lack of imagination into how deep the corruption goes, and who can bear effective witness to it.

Today, Julian Assange, in the opinion of CNAV, has every reason to fear for his life. Material witnesses to corruption do not survive long in American prisons today. Jeffrey Epstein did not. (That Ghislaine Maxwell, his former associate, still survives, surprises CNAV.)

If his appeal fails – or perhaps even before the time expires – then the next we hear of Julian Assange is likely to read that he hanged himself in his cell.

About the image

This snapshot of Julian Assange at a press conference in London in 2014 comes from the Ecuadorean Chancellery in London. It carries a Creative Commons Attribution/Share-alike 2.0 Generic License.