When Laura Poitras and her crew were filming their documentary “Risk,” I doubt they had any idea that they were filming the evidence that may very well save Julian Assange’s life. Even though she redid the film in attempt to make Assange look like a bad guy, the proof is still in there that he actually tried to save lives. Assange has been accused of recklessly risking lives by publishing U.S. cables given to him. In the following video, Sarah Harrison and Assange attempt to contact Hillary Clinton’s office after David Leigh, publisher of the Guardian, and Luke Harding also of the Guardian, published the password to the cables. Once Der Freitag announced they had the cables, Assange immediately placed an urgent call to the United States government as seen in the following video:
During the conversation with the State Department, Assange passes a note to Harrison when the person on the other end of the line does not take Harrison seriously. Pic seen below:
The U.S. prosecuting attorneys, in this case, insist Assange be extradited based on “endangering lives”, but they have no evidence of this. The prosecution has little to no evidence of any crime committed unless journalism and trying to save lives is a crime now.
According to the Canary, (article in entirety can be seen here):
In 2011 WikiLeaks also issued a statement about the phone call to the State Department:
Cliff Johnson (a legal advisor at the Department of State) spoke to Julian Assange for 75 minutes, but the State Department decided not to meet in person to receive further information, which could not, at that stage, be safely transmitted over the telephone.Murray observed how the evidence submitted to the extradition hearing about that phone call to the State Department:
utterly undermined the US government’s case and proved bad faith in omitting extremely relevant fact.But the controversy about the unredacted US cables and where blame lies doesn’t end there.
In 2011 Guardian journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding published a book, WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange’s War on Secrecy. The book provided a passphrase to the unredacted US cables.
The passphrase Leigh and Harding disclosed featured prominently in a chapter heading of the book:
It’s worth mentioning that Harding was also co-author of a Guardian article that claimed Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s former campaign manager, met with Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. In an exclusive, The Canary went on to report the claim that the story was false.
Denial
In response to our last article on the Assange extradition case, Leigh has insisted that allegations the defence had made against him at the extradition hearing in regard to the publication of the password were “complete invention”.
He told The Canary:
Unfortunately, the allegations you (quite accurately) report the defence making about
me are a complete invention. The Guardian put out a statement at the time explaining this. The hoax about the alleged effect of the “password” does not help Assange’s cause. Other media have run my or the Guardian’s statement. In fairness, maybe you should do the same?
The Guardianstatement he referred to was penned by former WikiLeaks journalist turned critic James Ball. It denied that Leigh and Harding bore any responsibility for the security breach:
It’s nonsense to suggest the Guardian’s WikiLeaks book has compromised security in any way. Our book about WikiLeaks was published last February. It contained a password, but no details of the location of the files, and we were told it was a temporary password which would expire and be deleted in a matter of hours.
It was a meaningless piece of information to anyone except the person(s) who created the database.
No concerns were expressed when the book was published and if anyone at WikiLeaks had thought this compromised security they have had seven months to remove the files. That they didn’t do so clearly shows the problem was not caused by the Guardian’s book.
Denial challenged
However, in a 25 February 2020 tweet WikiLeaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson made it clear that he strongly disagreed with those claims:
Murray also observed that during the extradition hearing the defence:
described at great length the efforts of Wikileaks with media partners over more than a year to set up a massive redaction campaign on the cables. He explained that the unredacted cables only became available after Luke Harding and David Leigh of the Guardian published the password to the cache as the heading to Chapter XI of their book Wikileaks, published in February 2011.
The defence further pointed out that WikiLeaks had a comprehensive ‘harm mitigation program’, used to redact names from leaked documents prior to publication.
The question is, who should be on trial here? Evidence points to Luke Harding and David Leigh of the Guardian. Yet, the U.S. is going after Wikileaks founder Julian Assange with an iron fist and possibly the gallows. Why is the Guardian exempt from being charged? Could it be that they are on the government’s payroll like so many other publications?
Julian Assange showed the world that by thinking for yourself you can change it. Many governments view him and his followers as dissidents and threats. By silencing Assange, they think they can silence us all. However, many of us would rather die than let them destroy this man. Are you one of us?
Angel Fox Media 