If it were just dumb luck that landed WikiLeaks in the Trump camp, then the only question would be how Republicans became so unprincipled that they would welcome the political help of avowed enemies of American democracy. But its always a mistake to explain Trumps motives as sheer opportunism. In fact, the lift from WikiLeaks wasnt dumb luck, and more than self-interest led to the embrace between Trump and Assange. For years, WikiLeaks was considered politically on the left, the darling of Western progressives. Then why did it organize its releases to inflict the greatest damage on Hillary Clinton? Why not go after Trump instead? Or, at least, Trump too? What made WikiLeaks a hero to Fox News and the American right?

The answer lies in one of the weirdest inversions of the past few years: Trump and Assange turned out to be second cousins. WikiLeaks and the Republican Party are distant ideological allies. They have common enemies. They use similarly nihilistic tactics toward similarly antidemocratic ends. In that dark place where the extremes meet, they benefit by undermining the same institutions. They despise the same mainstream press and the same nefarious deep state. Their supporters hate the same people. They hate liberals, and liberalism.

Read: A timeline of Trump associates asking for dirt on Clinton

Four or five years ago, a few writers looked into the politics of Assange and two other famous radical leakers, Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald, and made a strange discovery: Many of their views shaded toward the farther reaches of the right. Their greatest animus seemed to be reserved for the Democratic Party and The New York Times. They had friendly things to say about the ultraconservative libertarian Ron Paul and the Republican Liberty Caucus. Assange eventually became an open mouthpiece of Vladimir Putins foreign policy. Snowden, after leaking thousands of secret documents to Greenwald and Laura Poitras, became the ward of and occasional apologist for the autocratic regime in Moscow. After the 2016 election, when reporters began to uncover interference by Russian intelligence, in concert with WikiLeaks, on Trumps behalf, Greenwald used his wide influence to denounce and mock the very idea.

Defenders of the radical leakers said that their politics didnt matterwhat mattered was the dirty doings of the surveillance state that the leakers exposed. It turned out that both things mattered. And now that were living in Trumps America, in what looks more and more like Putins world, its possible that the politics matters more.

We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.

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What Julian Assange and Donald Trump Have in Common

Russian diplomats held secret talks in London last year with people close to Julian Assange to assess whether they could help him flee the UK, the Guardian has learned.

A tentative plan was devised that would have seen the WikiLeaks founder smuggled out of Ecuadors London embassy in a diplomatic vehicle and transported to another country.

One ultimate destination, multiple sources have said, was Russia, where Assange would not be at risk of extradition to the US. The plan was abandoned after it was deemed too risky.

The operation to extract Assange was provisionally scheduled for Christmas Eve in 2017, one source claimed, and was linked to an unsuccessful attempt by Ecuador to give Assange formal diplomatic status.

The involvement of Russian officials in hatching what was described as a basic plan raises new questions about Assanges ties to the Kremlin. The WikiLeaks editor is a key figure in the ongoing US criminal investigation into Russias attempts to sway the outcome of the 2016 presidential election.

Robert Mueller, the special counsel conducting the investigation, filed criminal charges in July against a dozen Russian GRU military intelligence officers who allegedly hacked Democratic party servers during the presidential campaign. The indictment claims the hackers sent emails that embarrassed Hillary Clinton to WikiLeaks. The circumstances of the handover are still under investigation.

According to Mueller, WikiLeaks published over 50,000 documents stolen by Russian spies. The first tranche arrived on 14 July 2016 as an encrypted attachment.

Assange has denied receiving the stolen emails from Russia.

Details of the Assange escape plan are sketchy. Two sources familiar with the inner workings of the Ecuadorian embassy said that Fidel Narvez, a close confidant of Assange who until recently served as Ecuadors London consul, served as a point of contact with Moscow.

In an interview with the Guardian, Narvez denied having been involved in discussions with Russia about extracting Assange from the embassy.

Narvez said he visited Russias embassy in Kensington twice this year as part of a group of 20-30 more diplomats from different countries. These were open-public meetings, he said, that took place during the UK-Russian crisis a reference to the aftermath of the novichok poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in March.

Sources said the escape plot involved giving Assange diplomatic documents so that Ecuador would be able to claim he enjoyed diplomatic immunity. As part of the operation, Assange was to be collected from the embassy in a diplomatic vehicle.

Four separate sources said the Kremlin was willing to offer support for the plan including the possibility of allowing Assange to travel to Russia and live there. One of them said that an unidentified Russian businessman served as an intermediary in these discussions.

The possibility that Assange could travel to Ecuador by boat was also considered.

Narvez previously played a role in trying to secure Edward Snowdens safe passage following his leak of secret NSA material in 2013. Narvez gave the former NSA contractor a so-called safe-conduct pass when he left Hong Kong for Moscow, where Snowden eventually found asylum. At the time, the then president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa, said Narvez had issued the pass without the governments knowledge. The Spanish-language broadcaster Univision reported that Narvez travelled to Moscow the same day that he issued the safe passage document to Snowden; other sources have corroborated this report.

Assanges Christmas Eve escape was aborted with just days to go, one source claimed. Rommy Vallejo, the head of Ecuadors intelligence agency, allegedly travelled to the UK on or around 15 December 2017 to oversee the operation and left London when it was called off.

In February Vallejo quit his job and is believed to be in Nicaragua. He is under investigation for the alleged kidnapping in 2012 of a political rival to Correa.

Ecuadors new president, Lenn Moreno, has said he wants Assange to quit the embassy. In March the government in Quito cut off his internet access and restricted his visitors.

Melinda Taylor, a lawyer specialising in human rights and international criminal law who represents Assange, has denounced his confinement in the embassy.

I think it is shocking that Assange has been detained arbitrarily for approximately eight years for publishing evidence of war crimes and human rights violations. The UK could end this situation today, by providing assurances that Assange will not be extradited to the United States.

Sources offered conflicting accounts of who cancelled the Assange operation, but all agreed it was deemed to be too risky. The stumbling block was the UKs refusal to grant Assange diplomatic protection.

Under UK law, diplomats are immune from criminal prosecution if their diplomatic credentials have been accepted by the British government, and if the Foreign Office has been alerted to the diplomats status.

This is not the first time Assange has apparently considered seeking refuge in Russia. The Associated Press reported this week that the WikiLeaks founder tried to obtain a Russian visa. He signed a letter in November 2010 granting power of attorney to my friend Israel Shamir a controversial supporter who passed leaked US state department cables from Assange to journalists in Moscow. Shamir would deliver Assanges passport to the Russian consulate, and collect it afterwards, Assange wrote.

At the time Assange was facing allegations of rape and sexual assault made by two women in Sweden. In 2012 he sought asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy after he lost a battle against extradition in the supreme court. Assange denies the womens claims. Swedish authorities eventually dropped both cases after the statute of limitations expired. Assange faces arrest for breaching his bail conditions.

During the US presidential campaign, Donald Trump praised WikiLeaks for releasing the emails that damaged Clinton. Confidential visitor logs obtained by the Guardian reveal that Assange received several Russian nationals during the summer of 2016, including senior figures from RT, the Kremlins international propaganda channel.

In March 2017 WikiLeaks published confidential CIA documents. Assange believes a grand jury indicted him over this and other leaks, with the charges filed under seal. Were he to leave the embassy the US would seek his extradition, his lawyers say.

The Ecuadorian government declined to comment. The Russian embassy in London tweeted on Friday that the Guardian story was another example of disinformation and fake news from the British media.

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Revealed: Russias secret plan to help Julian Assange escape ...

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18:37 13.01.2019Get short URL

As Cassandra Fairbanks, Assanges friend and colleague, came to see him in his London confinement, they attempted to change location, which was heavily equipped with cameras, for a different one. However, an embassy staffer immediately butted in and demanded that the pair return, amid sounds of microphones picking up conversations in the building.

US political commentator Cassandra Fairbanks came tovisit Julian Assange inthe Ecuadorian Embassy inLondon, where he has been staying since2012 and shortly afterwards commented onhis living conditions as akin toa political dissident inStasi-era Germany.

She claimed that she had had her phone checked and all oftheir conversations recorded duringher visit, notably not the first one tothe embassy, withthe surreal conditions being more invasive thanvisiting someone ina federal penitentiary. According toFairbanks, fears that their talk would be recorded under pressure fromthe US made them try exchanging written notes.

Unable tospeak privately, even witha noise machine attempting tomuffle the microphones frompicking upconversations, we resorted topassing notes.

She took note ofan increased number ofcameras around, ascompared toher previous visit. The pair, she said, tried tochange location toone which they thought housed less surveillance equipment, butmoments later were asked toreturn tothe initial room, which they did passing throughthe hall, every single angle ofwhich was recorded by a forest ofmenacingly Orwellian black cameras.

READ MORE:Ecuadorian Court Dismisses Assange's Appeal onEmbassy 'Living Restrictions'

Fairbanks pointed outthat Assange was surprisingly in good spirits despitebeing monitored by some shadowy state actor alongwith a string of efforts fromthe US and Ecuador tomake his life a living hell. Its likea scene fromthe Stasi spy drama The Lives ofOthers, Fairbanks noted, adding that inthe age of fake news, the work ofWikiLeaks should be celebrated, not persecuted.

If we value the principle ofthe freedom ofspeech we must do something tostop this madness, she called her readers.

Assanges supporters, including acting diva and now avid social activist Pamela Anderson, have publicly stood upin the WikiLeaks founders defence lately, asking forhis safe return toAustralia, afterreports emerged ofthe deteriorating conditions he has tolive in. Even a legal defence fund was launched forAssange amidfears that his life is under increasingly serious threat and media reports ofAssanges extremely dire living conditions.

REUTERS / Peter Nicholls

Ecuador has denied reports that the WikiLeaks publisher had been made tosleep onthe floor and even deprived ofheating inthe premises he lives in. In a statement, the president's communication secretary dismissed the claims as "totally false" and said that the embassy's heating system "is working normally". Meanwhile, the WikiLeaks founder was restricted both withregard topersonal visits and internet access in2018 overalleged violations ofhis terms ofasylum. Following repeated demands fromhis supporters and lawyers, his internet access was partially restored.

Last month, Ecuador said conditions had been met forthe embassy's guest toleave, asBritain had issued guarantees that it wouldn't extradite him toany country where his life would be indanger. In a parallel development, WikiLeaks reported oninsights inNovember that there is some type ofa sealed indictment againstAssange back inthe US, which suggested that Washington might ultimately seek his extradition if he leaves the embassy.

READ MORE:'Assange is a Hero': Wikileaks Revealed US Crimes inConflict Zones Campaigner

Julian Assange, now 47 years old, requested asylum inthe Ecuadorian Embassy inLondon soil in2012 afterit emerged that Britain could extradite him toSweden, where he was wanted overallegations ofsexual offences, which he stated were part ofa ruse todeliver him tothe US.

Sweden dropped its charges inMay 2017, butAssange feared atthe time that he would instead be extradited tothe United States toface prosecution overWikiLeaks publication ofhighly-classified leaked US military and diplomatic cables, including those related tothe Iraq War.

Originally posted here:
Julian Assange's Living Conditions 'Akin to Stasi-Era ...

Consortium News broadcast the 12th Unity4J online vigil for WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange on Friday, hosted by Consortium News Editor Joe Lauria.

Julian Assange is a wanted man because he published classified information that revealed the crimes and corruption of government officials around the world, not just in the United States.

But it is the U.S., the supposed beacon of freedom and democracy (and press freedom) around the world that has indicted him and wants him extradited to the United States for the crime of publishing.

Thats why Julian Assange has been a refugee in the Ecuadorian embassy in London for the past six years. He knows that the second he steps back onto British territory he will be arrested and sent to the U.S. where he is unlikely to receive a fair trial and would likely spend the rest of his life in prison.

Discussing the following headlines from the past week were former U.S. Senator Mike Gravel from Monterrey, California; journalist Cassandra Fairbanks in Washington; Greg Barns, a member of Assanges legal team speaking from Cape Town, South Africa and former Australian Broadcasting Corporation correspondent Andrew Fowler from Sydney:

1. Nobel Peace Laureate Mairead Maguire on Mondaynominated JA for the 2019 Nobel Peace Prize.

2. Former Australian ambassador Tony Kevin has reiterated his support for Julian Assange. He tweeted on Dec. 31: I have always called for #Assanges release and his safely escorted return home to Australia in RAAF aircraft. This innocent man is being treated so badly by Ecuador, UK and US govts.We hope to have Amb. Kevin join us later in the program.

3. Cassandra Fairbanks, a frequent guest on these vigils, visited Julian Assange last Monday and reports that his Living Conditions are More Akin to a Dissident in Stasi-Era Germany Than an Award-Winning Publisher With Asylum

4. On Wednesday, WikiLeaks issued official denialof Trump election contacts, saying thatthe organization never provided election information to Donald Trumpcampaign adviser Roger Stone or to Jerome Corsi, a conservative authorand conspiracy advocate.

5. Yanis Varoufakis DiEM25 on Jan 4 launched a petition calling on governments of Ecuador and the UK to prevent the extradition of Julian Assange to the US.It has more than 8,000 signatures.

6. Greg Barnes a member of the JAs Australian legal team spoke to the Unity4J vigil yesterday in a pre-recorded interview that was aired at the start of the program.

You can watch the recorded broadcast here. There is a musical break from 00.38 minute mark to 1:12, when the discussion resumes with an interview of Australian journalist Andrew Fowler about the state of the media and its impact on Assange.

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Watch the 12th Vigil for Julian Assange Here

WASHINGTON -- WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will not willingly travel to the United States to face charges filed under seal against him, one of his lawyers said, foreshadowing a possible fight over extradition for a central figure in the U.S. special counsel's Russia-Trump investigation.

Assange, who has taken cover in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he has been granted asylum, has speculated publicly for years that the Justice Department had brought secret criminal charges against him for revealing highly sensitive government information on his website.

That hypothesis appeared closer to reality after prosecutors, in an errant court filing in an unrelated case, inadvertently revealed the existence of sealed charges. The filing, discovered Thursday night, said the charges and arrest warrant "would need to remain sealed until Assange is arrested in connection with the charges in the criminal complaint and can therefore no longer evade or avoid arrest and extradition in this matter."

As CBS News correspondent Jonathan Vigliotti reports, Assange remains holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in large part out of fear that if he leaves he'll be extradited to the U.S., and this latest revelation could be an indication that his fear is well founded.

The exact charges Assange faces and when they might be unsealed remained uncertain Friday.

Any charges against him could help illuminate whether Russia coordinated with the Trump campaign to sway the 2016 presidential election. They also would suggest that, after years of internal Justice Department wrangling, prosecutors have decided to take a more aggressive tack against WikiLeaks.

A criminal case also holds the potential to expose the practices of a radical transparency activist who has been under U.S. government scrutiny for years and at the center of some of the most explosive disclosures of stolen information in the last decade. Those include thousands of military and State Department cables from Army Pvt. Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning, secret CIA hacking tools, and most recently and notoriously, Democratic emails that were published in the weeks before the 2016 presidential election and that U.S. intelligence officials say had been hacked by Russia.

Federal special counsel Robert Mueller, who has already charged 12 Russian military intelligence officers with hacking, has been investigating whether any Trump associates had advance knowledge of the stolen emails.

Assange could be an important link for Mueller as he looks to establish exactly how WikiLeaks came to receive the emails, and why its release of the communications -- on the same day a highly damaging video of Mr. Trump from a decade earlier surfaced publicly -- appeared timed to boost his campaign.

Assange, 47, has resided in the Ecuadorian Embassy under a grant of asylum for more than six years to avoid being extradited to Sweden, where he was accused of sex crimes, or to the United States, whose government he has repeatedly humbled with mass disclosures of classified information.

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Lawyer for WikiLeaks' Assange says he would fight charges ...

By Oscar Grenfell 11 January 2019

A number of corporate media outlets have begun the year by publishing scurrilous and derisive attacks against WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange.

The coverage has the character of a coordinated political campaign, with the most sinister motives. Its aim is to legitimise the stepped-up persecution of Assange by the US and British governments, which are pursuing the journalist and publisher because of WikiLeaks exposures of their war crimes, diplomatic intrigues and illegal spying on the American and world population.

Virtually identical articles were featured this week in some of the most prominent publications around the world, including the London Times, the Washington Post and the Australian. All of them centred on personal smears against Assange and attempts to downplay the immense threat to democratic rights posed by the US-led vendetta against him.

The pretext for the venomous outpouring was the publication of a confidential email sent by WikiLeaks to media organisations, rebutting 140 falsehoods about Assange that have appeared in the press. The document demanded that the recipients of the email refrain from presenting the defamatory statements as facts.

A version of the email was first published online on January 7 by Emma Best, a self-styled transparency activist. Bests activism has included numerous denunciations of WikiLeaks that echo the talking points of the US government and its intelligence agencies. She came to media prominence by leaking private online discussions between WikiLeaks supporters last year.

The tenor of the coverage that followed Bests blog post is summed up by a sampling of media headlines: Julian Assange fails the smell test (Washington Post), WikiLeaks Doesnt Want Reporters Covering Julian Assanges Poor Personal Hygiene (Observer), WikiLeaks wants people to stop saying Julian Assange bleaches his hair, eats with his hands, or has bad hygiene (Business Insider Australia), and WikiLeaks doesnt want you to say Julian Assange lives in a cupboard under the stairs (Mashable).

In other words, a raft of publications seized upon the email as the opportunity to trumpet some of the most demeaning lies they have previously circulated about Assange to undermine the mass popular support he enjoys.

One would have no idea from the articles that their subject is one of the worlds foremost political prisoners, whose claim for asylum has been upheld by the United Nations. Or that doctors have repeatedly warned that Assanges ongoing involuntary detention in the small Ecuadorian embassy in London poses grave risks to his rapidly deteriorating health.

Nor do the individuals who affixed their bylines to slandering Assange care that the US attempts to prosecute him are aimed at doing away with press freedom and creating a legal precedent for locking-up any journalist or whistle-blower who challenges the powers that be.

They are representatives of what world-respected journalist and filmmaker John Pilger aptly described as Vichy journalism, after the French regime that collaborated with the Nazi occupation of the country during World War II. Their aim is to suppress the truth, smear those who expose government crimes and defend the status quo.

The attitude of the establishment media to WikiLeaks was summed up by the article in the Times, which was prominently republished in the Australian. It denounced Assange for his long career leaking other peoples secrets. The Observerlikewise condemned government transparency absolutists.

The articles authors, and the organisations who publish their filth, make no attempt to conceal the fact that they identify wholeheartedly with the intelligence agencies, governments and corporations whose corruption and crimes were exposed by WikiLeaks. They are aggrieved that WikiLeaks publications have documented US-led war crimes of an historic magnitude in Iraq and Afghanistan, US imperialist meddling all over the world and CIA spying, to name only some of its most notable revelations.

The WikiLeaks email itself pointed to the relationship between government interests and the circulation of smears against Assange.

WikiLeaks, the document stated, has published: The largest, most accurate leaks in the history of the CIA, State Department, Pentagon, US politics, and Saudi Arabia, among many others. Predictably, given the nature of some of these entities, numerous falsehoods have been subsequently spread about WikiLeaks and its publisher.

The email noted that media lies against Assange have escalated since March last year, when Ecuador cut off his communications, internet access and right to receive most visitors. WikiLeaks observed that the scale of attacks against its founder was perhaps because there is an incorrect view that Mr. Assange has no means to defend his reputation from falsehoods in such grave circumstances.

WikiLeaks particularly highlighted a Guardian article last November which claimed that Assange met with American political lobbyist and consultant Paul Manafort at the Ecuadorian embassy in 2013, 2015 and early 2016. The allegation was aimed at tying the WikiLeaks founder to Manafort, who later served as a Trump campaign advisor and has been a central target of a US Special Counsel investigation into purported collusion between Trump and the Russian government.

Since November, the article has been utterly discredited. The Guardians editor Kath Viner and the authors of the piecemost notably the anti-WikiLeaks hack Luke Hardinghave evaded all questions about the fraudulent character of their allegations and made no attempt to substantiate them.

Despite this, many of the comments on the WikiLeaks email repeated the Guardian lies, only noting in passing that they had been contested. Many of the articles asserted, without any substantiation, a relationship between WikiLeaks and Russia. Business Insider Australia blithely stated: Some view WikiLeaks as a tool of Russian intelligence, given Russias interference in the United States 2016 presidential election and WikiLeaks role in releasing private emails from Hillary Clinton aide John Podesta.

In reality, WikiLeaks published leaked documents in 2016 that revealed that the Democratic National Committee sought to rig the partys primaries against Senator Bernie Sanders on behalf of war-monger and big business operative Hillary Clinton. WikiLeaks also published secret speeches delivered by Clinton to Wall Street banks, in which she pledged to do their bidding.

None of the slanderous articles against Assange bothered to mention that WikiLeaks has published hundreds of thousands of documents from Russia, many of which exposed the authoritarian regime of Vladimir Putin.

That the latest smears against Assange were prominently featured by the Australian and the Sydney Morning Herald only highlights the shameful role of the Australian media in the attacks against the WikiLeaks publisher, who is an Australian citizen.

The complicity of the Australian political and media establishment underscores the importance of demonstrations called by the Socialist Equality Party in Sydney and Melbourne in March. The SEP will fight to mobilise the working class around the demand that the Australian government use its diplomatic powers and legal discretion to secure Assanges safe passage to Australia, with an unconditional guarantee against extradition to the US.

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Corporate media smears WikiLeaks and Julian Assange - World ...

Ecuador has begun a Special Examination of Julian Assanges asylum and citizenship as it looks to the IMF for a bailout, the whistleblowing site reports, with conditions including handing over the WikiLeaks founder.

Former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa tweeted an image of the letter he received from the State Comptroller General on December 19, which outlines the upcoming examination by the Direction National de Auditoria.

The audit will determine whether the procedures for granting asylum and naturalization to Julian Assange were carried out in accordance with national and international law, and will cover the period between January 1, 2012 and September 20, 2018.

Assange has been in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since he sought asylum there in 2012. He was granted Ecuadorian citizenship last December in a bid to protect him from being extradited to the US where he fears he faces secret charges for publishing US government cables and documents.

READ MORE: US secretly charged Assange, prosecutor accidentally reveals WikiLeaks

Because of their hatred and persecution, we are the laughingstock of the world, Correa said of the audit.

WikiLeaks tweeted the news on Wednesday, joining the dots between the audit and Ecuadors consideration of an International Monetary Fund bailout. The country owes China more than $6.5 billion in debt and falling oil prices have affected its repayment abilities.

According to WikiLeaks, Ecuador is considering a $10 billion bailout which would allegedly come with conditions such as the US government demanded handing over Assange and dropping environmental claims against Chevron, for its role in polluting the Amazon rainforest.

Assanges position has increasingly been under threat under Correas successor, President Lenin Moreno, with Ecuadorian authorities restricting his internet access and visitors.

I believe they are going to turn over Assange to the US government, Correa told RT in October.

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Ecuador to audit Julian Assanges asylum & citizenship as ...

LONDON (Reuters) - WikiLeaks on Sunday advised journalists not to report 140 different false and defamatory statements about its founder Julian Assange, who has been holed up in the Ecuadorean embassy in London since June 2012.

FILE PHOTO - WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is seen on the balcony of the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, Britain, May 19, 2017. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls

It was not immediately clear what prompted the advice to media organizations, but WikiLeaks singled out Britains Guardian newspaper for publishing what it said was a false report about Assange. The Guardian did not immediately respond late on Sunday to a Reuters request for comment.

The Australian set up WikiLeaks as a channel for publishing confidential information from anonymous sources. He is a hero to some for exposing what supporters cast as government abuse of power and for championing free speech, but to others he is a rebel who has undermined the security of the United States.

WikiLeaks angered Washington by publishing hundreds of thousands of secret U.S. diplomatic cables that laid bare often highly critical U.S. appraisals of world leaders from Russian President Vladimir Putin to members of the Saudi royal family.

There is a pervasive climate of inaccurate claims about WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, including purposeful fabrications planted in large and otherwise reputable media outlets, Wikileaks said an email sent to media organizations and marked Confidential legal communication. Notfor publication.

Consequently journalists and publishers have a clear responsibility to carefully fact-check from primary sources and to consult the following list to ensure they are not spreading, and have not spread, defamatory falsehoods about WikiLeaks or Julian Assange.

WikiLeaks did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

The 5,000-word email included 140 statements that WikiLeaks said were false and defamatory, such as the assertion that Assange had ever been an agent or officer of any intelligence service.

WikiLeaks also said it was false and defamatory to suggest that Assange, 47, had ever been employed by the Russian government or that he is, or has ever been, close to the Russian state, the Kremlin or Putin.

Other items listed as false and defamatory included more personal claims including that Assange bleaches his hair, that he is a hacker, that he has ever neglected an animal or that he has poor personal hygiene.

Assange made international headlines in early 2010 when WikiLeaks published a classified U.S. military video showing a 2007 attack by Apache helicopters that killed a dozen people in Baghdad, including two Reuters news staff.

Later that year, the group released over 90,000 secret documents detailing the U.S.-led military campaign in Afghanistan, followed by almost 400,000 internal U.S. military reports detailing operations in Iraq.

More than 250,000 classified cables from U.S. embassies followed, then almost 3 million dating back to 1973.

Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Kevin Liffey

Continue reading here:
WikiLeaks tells reporters 140 things not to say about Julian ...

Either Julian Assange is the least self-aware person in the British Isles (currently), or Wikileaks is playing some sort of weird joke on the press. The organization, whose entire reason for being is publishing documents whose authors don't wish them to be published has bizarrely sent a list of 140 things reporters are not supposed to say about Assange (if this is a troll by Assange, you have to wonder if the 140 -- Twitter's original character limit -- is somehow on purpose). We'll get to the list in a moment, but first, the list included this hilarious statement:

CONFIDENTIAL LEGAL COMMUNICATIONNOT FOR PUBLICATION.

Ha, ha. Good one, Julian. Very funny. First of all, you don't send "confidential legal communications" to the media. That's not how it works. Second, unless there's already a pre-agreed upon deal not to publish certain materials, you don't get to email reporters willy nilly and insist that they can't report on it. That is also not how it works. Finally, this is Wikileaks we're talking about. I mean, come on.

Incredibly, Reuters, who first wrote about the existence of this list did not publish the list. Instead, that was initially left to FOIA/transparency/national security guru Emma Best who published the full list on her site. A few other publications followed later.

It is entirely possible that this is some sort of reverse Streisand Effect attempt, in which Assange purposefully put the idiotic "not for publication" line atop the email knowing that would make it more likely that the document would get attention, but no matter where you sit, for reporters, this now seems like a list of 140 things that Julian Assange is now calling for everyone to investigate. Of course, some of them are really just silly. For example:

It is false and defamatory to suggest that Julian Assange stinks.It is false and defamatory to suggest that Julian Assange has ever tortured a cat or dog.It is false and defamatory to suggest that Julian Assange does not use cutlery or does not wash his hands.It is false and defamatory to suggest that Julian Assange lives, or has ever lived, in a basement, cupboard or under the stairs.

Um... what? Why even bring up any of these? Of course, much of the list involves some of the more serious claims that people have made against Assange over the years, especially regarding any connection with Russian Intelligence and or any attempt to influence the US election. And, while these don't necessarily break new ground, for investigative reporters, it seems like there could be some interesting breadcrumbs in the list of things Julian Assange really, really doesn't want the press to say about him.

Also, it appears that in a later version of the list that was posted to Pastebin, Wikileaks removed the line about Assange stinking and living in a cupboard under the stairs (that was Harry Potter, you see...). Emma Best set up a comparison of the two "leaked" copies of the list, if you're interested in delving into the details of what I guess is now up for discussion (does Assange have a scar in the shape of lightening bolt?).

Separately, each of the items on the list begin "it is false and defamatory to...." At the very least, this suggests that Assange has a fairly limited understanding of what "defamatory" actually means. Defamation requires a bit more than saying that Julian Assange stinks. Others may be false, but would hardly be "defamatory." For example:

It is false and defamatory to deny that Julian Assange co-founded the Freedom of the Press Foundation with John Perry Barlow.

I mean, it is a false statement since Assange did not co-found the Freedom of the Press Foundation with JPB (he was just one of their first beneficiaries). But, what is possibly "defamatory" about that sentence?

Either this is all an elaborate troll by Assange, or he's so freaking full of himself that he doesn't realize how petty and immature this whole thing looks (oops, is that on the list of things we can't say?).

Excerpt from:
Irony Alert: Wikileaks Sends Reporters A List Of 140 Things ...

WikiLeaks director Julian Assange said on Monday that his anti-secrecy organization never provided election information to Donald Trump campaign adviser Roger Stone or to Jerome Corsi, a conservative author and conspiracy advocate.

He made the claims in a paper posted on his official Twitter account.

Wikileaks during the campaign posted thousands of emails the U.S. said were stolen by Russian intelligence officers who now stand indicted by a grand jury on evidence presented by special counsel Robert Mueller.

Both Mr. Stone and Mr. Corsi have taken to TV and social media to proclaim their innocence as Mr. Muller investigates them in his Trump-Russia collusion probe.

The suspicion is that both got information from Wikileaks before it dispensed emails from Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, beginning Oct. 7, 2016.

The WikiLeaks document seeks to rebut what it calls false and defamatory charges, many of which appeared in mainstream media publications such as the U.K.s Guardian newspaper.

It is clear that there is a pervasive climate of inaccurate claims about WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, including purposeful fabrications planted in otherwise reputable media outlets, Wikileaks states. In several instances these fabrications appear to have the intent of creating political cover for his censorship, isolation, expulsion, arrest, extradition and imprisonment.

Each rebuttal begins with the phrase, It is false and defamatory to suggest that Julian Assange or Wikileaks

For example, Mr. Assange rejects reports that he has been contacted by the Mueller team. Likewise, the Guardian report that he met with former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort is false.

It was that story that kicked Mr. Assange into a higher gear in denying scores of false stories about him. He vowed to file a libel lawsuit against The Guardian.

The Wikileaks paper cites Mr. Stone and Mr. Corsi in a section that also denies the group ever provided information prior to release to Donald Trump Jr. and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn.

It is false and defamatory to suggest that WikiLeaks or Julian Assange privately provided information about its then pending 2016 U.S. election-related publications to any outside party, the document states before naming names.

On Mr. Stone, a flamboyant Republican political operative known for hardball tactics, Mr. Assange also says, It is false and defamatory to suggest that Julian Assange was in communication with Roger J. Stone during, or prior to, the U.S. 2016 presidential election [in fact, the only message sent from WikiLeaks was a demand that Mr. Stone cease falsely stating that he had communicated with Julian Assange].

It is false and defamatory to suggest that there was a back channel between Julian Assange and Roger J. Stone during, or prior to, the U.S. 2016 presidential election.

Mr. Stone has said in interviews that he bragged about meeting Mr. Assange when in fact he had not.

He said his Aug. 21, 2016, tweet about impending the Podestas time in the barrel wasnt a prediction on the Wikileaks October 2016 email dump, but a reference to the Ukraine.

Mr. Manafort had left the campaign Aug. 19 after reports of suspicious payments from a Ukraine pro-Russian party. Mr. Podestas brother, Tony, ran a now-defunct consulting firm that also represented Ukrainian politicians.

Mr. Corsi, a non-campaign Trump supporter, also denies prior knowledge from WikiLeaks. He said he accurately guessed on his own that Mr. Assanges next release, after a July 22 email mass posting, would be Mr. Podestas.

The WikiLeaks official paper doesnt mention Randy Credico, a Stone acquaintance.

NBC News reported on a text exchange on Oct. 1, 2016, between the two that suggested Mr. Credico had a contact with someone close to Mr. Assange and knew an email posting was coming.

Mr. Credico told NBC, Theres absolutely nothing there that I had any knowledge of anything that Assange was going to do because I didnt. Wheres the smoking gun?

Mr. Stones attorney, Grant Smith, told NBC, The texts provided to NBC News demonstrate that my client, Roger Stone, has been consistent for the past two years in his assertion that Randy Credico was the person who was providing him what limited information Mr. Stone had regarding WikiLeaks.

Mr. Stone provided a statement to The Washington Times:

This is entirely consistent with what I have said publicly and under oath before the House Intelligence Committee. I released 30 pages of text Messages that proved that Randy Credico was the source who tipped me as to the significance and the October release of the WikiLeaks material on Hillary. These text messages also prove the Credicos source was a lawyer working for WikiLeaks and not Assange or anyone else. I had no advance knowledge of the source or content of any of the published material including allegedly hacked emails or allegedly stolen emails. The communication referred to in the WikiLeaks communiqu in which they brushed me off was supplied to the house intelligence committee last September and was promptly leaked To the Atlantic. The text has been widely reported and it most certainly demonstrates no collusion or collaboration with WikiLeaks in fact it demonstrates the opposite.

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Julian Assange: Wikileaks never provided election info to ...