The Deceptions of Julian Assange, WikiLeaks, and Ron Paul

By: Cliff Kincaid
Accuracy in Media

A May 24 Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) Frontline program quoted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as saying he’d never had any contact with Bradley Manning and that he had no information indicating that the former Army intelligence analyst was the source of the classified U.S. intelligence information released by WikiLeaks.

On December 19, Frontline posted this follow-up information, “New Evidence of Assange-Manning Link,” and came clean in acknowledging that the new evidence in the case casts the statements by Assange in serious doubt:

“In an interview last April with Frontline correspondent Martin Smith, Julian Assange flatly denied that he’d ever had any contact with Bradley Manning, the young Army private accused of leaking half a million classified documents to Assange’s WikiLeaks. Asked about the implication in online conversations apparently between Manning and ex-hacker Adrian Lamo that Manning had gone around WikiLeaks’ normal protocols and established a personal relationship with Assange, Assange was adamant, even suggesting that Manning might have been inflating himself to others by claiming a relationship that did not exist. ‘We don’t have sources that we know about. And I had never heard the name Bradley Manning before. I never heard the name Bradass87 before.’”

Manning had used the name “Bradass87” in online chats and bragged about engineering “possibly the largest data spillage in American history.”

The new evidence in the case, disclosed in Manning’s preliminary hearing, established a direct connection between Assange and Manning. Frontline noted that Army digital forensics contractor Mark Johnson, testifying in Manning’s pretrial hearing, “says that he found communications between Manning and a chat user named ‘Julian Assange’ on Manning’s personal computer and a phone number for Assange in Iceland…”

The evidence puts Manning and Assange “in a precarious legal position,” Frontline now acknowledges. In effect, the evidence demonstrates that they were engaged in what amounts to a conspiracy to steal classified information from U.S. Army computers. This is espionage.

As such, Assange may have been lying about his contact with Manning in order to avoid implicating himself in a conspiracy to violate the Espionage Act. The WikiLeaks founder, an Australian and convicted computer hacker, is facing deportation from Britain to Sweden on sex crimes charges. He could eventually face deportation to the U.S., if he is ever indicted by the Obama/Holder Justice Department.

Meanwhile, more statements from Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul defending WikiLeaks, the recipient of the largest release of classified information in American history, are starting to get media attention. These appearances included:

• On the Fox Business Network Paul said, “This whole notion that Assange, who’s an Australian, that we want to prosecute him for treason. I mean, aren’t they jumping to a wild conclusion? This is media, isn’t it? I mean, why don’t we prosecute The New York Times or anybody that releases this?”
• On the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives he said, “Is there not a huge difference between releasing secret information to help the enemy in a time of declared war, which is treason, and the releasing of information to expose our government lies that promote secret wars, death and corruption?”
• Paul went on Twitter to declare that WikiLeaks was providing “truth.”   More >>