The Pale Hacker Ends His Ecuadorean Interlude: Time for Assange to Face Justice
Before...and...After
I'll readily admit that I have a personal grudge against Julian Assange. Among the mega-trove of classified U.S. government documents he purloined in 2010 in cahoots with misfit Bradley/Chelsea Manning, are many with my name on them, either as approver or as drafter. These have nothing to do with misguided drone strikes or torture of Iraqi prisoners. Rather, they are the humdrum stuff of typical diplomatic reporting - discussions of esoteric aspects of bilateral relations with foreign ministry officials, meetings between U.S. congresspeople and host country officials, latest rumors and reports of ruling party machinations, etc., etc. Stuff so boring it will make your teeth hurt. But valuable to Washington analysts and policymakers. Assange and his cronies indiscriminately released a mega-dump of such cables in a malicious effort to damage the U.S. government. Pure and simple. And for this, he needs to pay the piper with years in prison.
Extract from one of my cables dumped by Wikileaks:
I'll confess watching Assange being dragged out of lilliputian Ecuador's London embassy by British police infused in me a warm and glowing sense of schadenfreude. And I know I speak on behalf of many colleagues who serve, or have served, in our national security agencies selflessly defending the country from foreign enemies.
Assange has aged markedly and gone downhill physically from his seven years holing up in the tiny Ecuadorean mission. He now looks like Rip Van Winkle on meth, a fitting trajectory for a twisted character whose troubled upbringing instilled in him a drive toward malice and a quasi-anarchistic attacks on the very concept of organized society. He dressed up his actions in guileful claims of "press freedom" and "whistleblowing." But, sorry, flooding cyberspace with upwards of a million classified government documents absent filters and a unifying theme bespeaks blind destructiveness rather than a coherent mission. Certainly, Assange, a life-long loser, is driven by ego - in fact, it is likely the overriding motivation for his constant grandstanding.
Ecuador's previous, anti-American, president did his country a huge disservice by giving Assange harbor and Quito paid a price in sour relations with London and Washington, not to mention liberal Sweden. Current President Lenin Moreno finally did the right thing (even with that first name!) Now let's get on with normal relations with Ecuador's traditional friends.
The now revealed U.S. court indictment of Assange and the UK's statements upon his arrest give hope to Assange appearing in U.S. Eastern District Court soon. Ahh! More schadenfreude!
But there's also a fly in the ointment. Remember, "I love Wikileaks!" by a certain GOP presidential candidate in 2016? And, "Russia, if you're listening..."? And then there is a video of Roger Stone from October 2016 in which he states his "friend in London" recently met with Assange and reported a "mother lode" is coming from WikiLeaks and that there is "reason to believe that it is devastating." "Assange has all of the emails," Stone reported. How the Feds will deal with the mass theft of emails from Hillary Clinton and the DNC with Donald "No Collusion" Trump in the Oval will be very interesting to observe in the coming weeks. And let's not forget Mike Pompeo's assertion as CIA director that "WikiLeaks is "a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia."
Anyway, I'm breaking open a bottle of ice cold champagne today. Seeing Assange finally nabbed is the best birthday present a proud veteran of America's diplomatic ranks can hope for!
See also ~
Will Julian Assange Leap From Ecuador Embassy's Balcony?
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