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Assange Asks For New Lawyer, Denies Blaming CIA
Tootech writes "Julian Assange has requested a new lawyer to represent him during a rape investigation in Sweden because his previous brief, Leif Silbersky, was not engaged enough with the case. Assange wants Bjorn Hurtig to represent him as authorities continue to investigate the allegations, according to AP.
Assange told Sweden's TV4 that he had never blamed the CIA for the 'smears.'"
From TFA: "Assange wants Bjorn Hurtig to represent him as authorities continue to investigate the allegations, according to AP"
Why not link the AP's FA?
Free Martian Whores!
Leif Silbersky, for those not familiar with Swedish media and Swedish courts, should know that he is a high profile defense attorney who often works on cases where there is lot of media interest. Silbersky knows how to deal with journalists better than most lawyers in Sweden. His track record in court seems no worse or better than anyone else's though. Björn Hurtig is a TV celebrity lawyer, he also knows media but that is all I know about the guy.
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I wish Slashdot would fix clipboard paste not working in Chrome, this is getting really annoying...
I agree that there's a significant chance that this whole thing is a CIA smear campaign. But there's also a significant chance that he's actually guilty. Or that it's a smear campaign unrelated to the CIA. You know what they say about assumptions.
Clearly, the CIA got to him and has convinced him it would be in his best interest to quit saying that they were trying to smear him with rape allegations. Isn't it obvious?
You know what they say about assumptions.
That they make you a famous, filthy rich political pundit overnight? I'm not sure how that applies to this situation...
Too high profile to assassinate? Oh come now. A man is an enemy of Agency X; a man is found dead or dying. Who is ever to connect the two facts with an assassination authoritatively? It's one thing to have suspicion, but it's completely another thing to have proof. The guilty party for the assassination of Georgi Markov in 1969 was never held to account. There is no antidote for ricin, and the stuff is damn near impossible to detect in the body because of the phenomenally small amount necessary to kill. The KGB was never proved to have been responsible.
See here and here.
You CANNOT be serious.
He's never claimed it was the CIA in much the same way that Fox News "never claims" stuff - you say it in every way you can except the one you want to be able to deny, and then you try to shift the argument so it's about your "word choice" rather than the intent of your statements.
"We were warned on the 11th by Australian intelligence that we should expect this sort of thing. We were warned about dirty tricks and specifically that they would be of a type like this.”
"Assange, who is Australian by birth, told WikiLeaks' Twitter page the charges were 'without basis' and that their timing was 'deeply disturbing.'"
"We were warned to expect 'dirty tricks'. Now we have the first one."
What conclusion does he expect everybody to draw with these statements, issued in the context of the news coverage over wikileaks' publication of the Afghan War Diaries? Obviously, that these charges are part of a smear campaign against him, orchestrated by the US government, and that these allegations were the first "dirty trick" to be used as part of that campaign.
To now backpedal and shift the focus onto a question of word choice is disingenuous at best, and absolutely intellectually dishonest. He never specifically uttered the word "CIA," no. But every single statement he's issued since the charges came up has screamed "It's a smear campaign by the US government."
A guy goes 39 years without a criminal record with anything more significant than a hacking charge on it. And then he suddenly decides to become a rapist 2 weeks after releasing a cache of documents that embarrasses the world's most powerful government and threatening to release more? Are you kidding me?
Do you REALLY think that's just a coincidence? Come on. Even I knew this was coming. Or maybe you think I'm just psychic.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
If our government is behind his rape allegations then I hope he is convicted. Seems to me it would be pretty easy to bribe some women to seduce a man and then get evidence to file for rape. If we cannot do that right, then it's a sad state of affairs for the CIA.
If Assange is no longer claiming "cia!" why are people still claiming diversion and conspiracy.
Even if he did nothing he may have just ticked off the wrong woman!
Because it made the news too fast.
Because Assange never "claimed CIA" but you say that he did (I claimed CIA, but he just said he was 'warned of dirty tricks').
Because if I google...
Wikileaks rape
About 2,730,000 results (0.41 seconds)
Search Results
1.
News for wikileaks rape
2. Icelandic WikiLeaks associate says founder should step aside - 17 hours ago
You can't take the sky from me...
Obviously, that these charges are part of a smear campaign against him, orchestrated by the US government,
intellectually dishonest, indeed. You just tacked on the "orchestrated by the US government" part yourself there, didn't you?! If your so convinced that he directly implied it was the CIA/US government and not just you following propaganda talking points - then [CITATION NEEDED]. I'll make it easy: Wikileaks twitter feed links all Assange interviews for you to find a reference. From the interviews I have watched at no place did he imply directly or indirectly that it was the CIA/US Gov. He did say that the Aussie government warned him of dirty tricks - whether you believe that or not, or that they meant "The CIA is going to use dirty tricks" is upto your imagination, and little else.
Sure, it could be a CIA plot, but he's specifically disavowing making that allegation, so clearly he has no evidence that it is.
Lacking evidence that it's a CIA plot, it's just as likely the story plays out like this:
A guy goes 39 years without amounting to much more than a hacking charge. And then suddenly he gets his 15 minutes of fame by embarrassing the world's most powerful government, and has his face plastered all over newspapers around the world. Suddenly he starts feeling pretty powerful - people say he's a hero, people want to hear him talk, people care about what he has to say - hell, some girls are even throwing themselves at him! So maybe he gets a little overzealous, or starts feeling overly entitled, because after all, he's *important* - and behaves like a jerk and pressures a girl into doing something she didn't really want to do. Or maybe he just pisses off the wrong girl by not calling her, and she decides to start a little smear campaign of her own.
I mean, since we're speculating without evidence, that story reads as far more likely to me than it being a CIA smear campaign, since the smear campaign would require:
-- the 2 girls to be in the service of the CIA;
-- Most of the world media to be dupes of the CIA;
-- The entire criminal justice system of Sweden to be easily manipulated by the US;
-- an Icelandic MP (and ardent supporter of Wikileaks) to suddenly be in the employ of the CIA;
AND, the kicker:
-- That the bumbling organization that can't keep PFC Manning from stealing all its data is simultaneously capable of pulling off a black op of this scope just to discredit the guy, rather than simply making him have an accident, and eliminating the problem.
I think when Saddam said the US Government wanted him dead, he wasn't being paranoid.
You bet your ass.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
In the 1920s, we created a serious and well designed strategy to invade Canada as part of an assault on Great Britain. It seems pretty wild that we'd do that, but it's important to be prepared. It increases our level of understanding of other nations, and allows people pursuing studies at the Naval War College a means of flexing strategic muscles without killing people en masse.
I can say with absolute certainty that today we have very similar strategies for every country on the planet. Very few have probably made it nearly as far as War Plan Red, but that's one of my favorite examples, and it's fairly well known.
Planning to attack one of our closest allies might seem dishonest to people outside of the military sector, but not planning to is simply irresponsible. Don't expect any of that to pan out, though. Especially if the Marines are talking about it. I remember hearing serious talk about an atmosphere skimming system to deploy Marines from space anywhere on Earth within 30 minutes. Where's that?
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
-- That the bumbling organization that can't keep PFC Manning from stealing all its data is simultaneously capable of pulling off a black op of this scope just to discredit the guy, rather than simply making him have an accident, and eliminating the problem.
Because clearly PFC Manning was the subect of the entire agency's scutiny, and "preventing" him would not have meant spreading resources to prevent all of the other PFCs that were doing similar work. A regular Joe off the street can pay a woman to sleep with a guy and cry rape. It doesn't require a conspiracy, but that doesn't mean that a conspiracy couldn't have ordered the regular Joe to pay her.
This is kind of a red herring to me, because the US government knows that Assange would just be replaced in WikiLeaks if he were thrown in jail. What Bush and Rove used to do was instead play the discredit game; deny, deny, deny, then attack the patriotism of those reporting (NYTimes) and claim those parties leaking were helping the terrorists instead of America. "Poison the well"
Let's look at the other ways the CIA and Pentagon could (and likely will) try to stop WikiLeaks. When someone in the 1990s leaked that the NSA has submarines specifically for the purpose of tapping undersea phone cables, I heard the NSA calmly put out conflicting leaks that the government was using those subs to covertly dump nuclear waste, making activists fight over which version of the story made sense.
If I were the CIA, I'd do some false flag operations on Assange, and then poison the well. Feed him a delicious leak of embarrassing stuff, followed by a real big accusation of something bogus yet plausible, and then when WikiLeaks gives it to the media, the CIA can step forward and show that WikiLeaks is dead wrong and show the media video and photographic proof eg "No, we never executed that Taliban prisoner in front of children, look he's alive in Supermax prison!" One or two of those would "poison the well" and make sure that mainstream media would pay less and less attention as the track record of WikiLeaks went sour.
Slashdot is no longer a US centric news site, but hijacked by anti-american individuals in communistic states (or states of mind).
What you call anti-american, I call pro-american. We need our great nation to be what it is supposed to be. This requires action on our part.
I always find it hilarious that people assume the government (CIA, military, etc.) is capable of this type of sophisticated organization. Have you never gone to the DMV? Have you never worked with a government employee?
Advice: on VPS providers
It's because he has an agenda. He's not about making society transparent. He's about exposing those he views as political opponents.