Dirty Tricks: Julian Assange Smear Campaign Reaches New Low

Justin Raimondo
AntiWar

The smear campaign targeting Julian Assange and WikiLeaks isn’t very subtle, nor is it very effective. First the Pentagon refuses Assange’s request to vet the tens of thousands of secret files WikiLeaks put online, expunging material that might cost American or Afghan lives – and then turns around and declares Assange and his organization have “blood on their hands.” In a similar act of self-refutation, they announce there will be no negotiations with the WikiLeakers, and then denounce WikiLeaks’ American lawyer for not keeping a 10 a.m. appointment to … negotiate.

All this was preceded by a smear campaign against Pfc. Bradley Manning, the 23-year-old intelligence analyst suspected of leaking the “Collateral Murder” video, posted by WikiLeaks (Manning is also suspected of leaking the Afghan logs database, consisting of some 75,000 internal US Army communications, the so-called Afghan war logs). A whispering campaign was launched which targeted Manning’s sexuality: links to his Facebook page detailing his opposition to “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” were accompanied by wildly speculative assertions that he might be a transsexual. Then it was asserted that his alleged boyfriend is a drag queen – an odd relationship for a transsexual to have, but then I don’t keep up with these things.


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