Assange Asks For New Lawyer, Denies Blaming CIA 274
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.'"
Re:Might as well get used to it (Score:3, Interesting)
Yea or this guy could just be a shuck with an ego the size of Sweden.
Re:Might as well get used to it (Score:4, Interesting)
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 [life.com] and here [wikipedia.org].
Re:Just because hes pro-freedom doesnt (Score:1, Interesting)
...make him a nice guy.
Now hes saying the claims are personal vendettas not CIA plots. 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!
As a Scandinavian following this locally, this seemed to me from the very beginning quite clearly a beef between him and the two women. The CIA conspiracy theory that went worldwide seemed not only.. unrealistic.., but the supporting arguments and beliefs often disconnected from known facts (like how many seemed to believe these women didn't even exist, while local newspapers were interviewing :). And how people think the off and on about the rape charges must mean something sinister going on, when the details about the claims from these woman easily explains that).
If Assange is no longer claiming "cia!" why are people still claiming diversion and conspiracy.
Some people will always want to belive that, regardless (even bringing back 800+ pounds of moon rocks, and having them available for both University studies and public isn't convincing some people that the moon landing was just a CIA movie :-)
Re:I hope he is convicted. (Score:1, Interesting)
Seems to me that anyone in Assange's position should have seen a honey trap coming from a mile away. If he cannot do that right (read: and still has sex with someone, even though he should know damn well that anyone in his social circle could have been compromised by CIA), then it's a sad state of affairs for Wikileaks.
So if our government is behind his rape allegations then I also hope he is convicted. I enjoy his audacity, and can even begrudge a glimmer of respect for his overweening self-importance and arrogance, but I draw the line at incompetence.
Spurious relationship (Score:3, Interesting)
But I agree, this story has an huge impact. But there are many factors involved, that make an intelligence involvement unplausible or unneccessary. One very important factor was: Assange made this political in an instant with his "dirty tricks" statement. And Wikileaks published their first official statement ever calling Assange the site's "founder" - until then they had maintained Assange was just a spokesperson.
Re:Might as well get used to it (Score:3, Interesting)
I call BS on that one. The guy who made that claim also makes a number of other absurd claims. For example: he claims to know who really planned the Portuguese revolution, Che Guevara's last words, who assassinated Kennedy, the truth about Lockerbie (whatever that is) and how Timothy McVeigh was merely a pawn. Oh yeah, and the truth behind Princess Diana's death.
But, sharing the same country of origin as yourself, I know full well that Europeans love conspiracy theories even more than Americans do. I'm amused and awestruck by the utterly absurd conspiracies my otherwise rational family members believe.
Red Herring (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
Re:Might as well get used to it (Score:3, Interesting)
Obviously you missed his statements that he has a number of even more confidential documents to release. And the point isn't just to threaten, it's also to discredit. And a sex crime charge is a great way to discredit (everybody hates rapists and molesters, right?). The Scientologists have been known to do this [wikipedia.org] when they want to get really nasty.
Re:I hope he is convicted. (Score:3, Interesting)