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And for more on Assanges roller coster year I'm joined by Paul Craig Roberts, former Reagan administration official.

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Hey there Paul, you know we're looking back at the past year. As Julian Assange has really gone from

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celebrity and now to alleged criminal, what have been your observations about this man,

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who's really become quite a character on the American landscape?

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Well, he's a great threat, because he does publish documents from the government which reveals

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how sordid the government is. It's not like a pundit or commentator speaking about the government,

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it's the governments own documents revealing its sordid behavior. So he is very much a threat, and not

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just to the American government, but to the British government, to any number of governments.

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And so there is a consorted effort to nail him, to shut him up. In my opinion, if legal attempt,

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which I'm certain the United States government is behind, if this fails he'll simply be assassinated

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by a CIA assassination team.

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It's common practice for the CIA to do that, it's nothing unusual about it.

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The Congress had many hearings in the mid 70s, and it's in the public record that they're always

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assassinating people.

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I guess you like to think, as an American, that you don't live in a country where

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that goes on, but perhaps that's a little ignorant, but..

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I try to be realistic and aware.

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I wanna move on now, this ruling today that came down in the British court, not a surprise really to

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most people. He plans to appeal according to his lawyers, but a lot of people say that the US might try

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to get in there now, that they might try to request his extradition to the United States.

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How can this happen? There's not even been any charges filed against him. These charges in Sweden are

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sort of, you know. Sexual assault, yes, but they're with consenting partners who sort of have changed

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their stories a little. I wonder what you think about the attempt that could happen to get him to the

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United States where there's not even charges against him yet?

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Well, I think that's the purpose of all this. You see, the fact of the matter is that the Swedish prosecutors

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did look in to the charges, and they dismissed them as not credible. And of course one reason it's not

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credible is that both of the women who seduced him are all lying, bragging about their conquests.

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They had e-mails, there's some Twitter and Facebook, I believe, and many of their friends reported

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that the two women where bragging that they had seduced Julian Assange. So what his real mistake was

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was getting in bed with two women he didn't know. [chuckle] Somebody who is a boat rocker like him can't

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possibly let that happen, because it's now cooked him, you see. And the prosecutor which reopened the case,

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no one knows really why, because the charges are merely misdemeanors. He's not accused of rape, despite

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all the headlines. He's accused, after the event, by the two women of having sex with them in ways that

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they didn't want, or something to that effect.

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Yeah. One of them said she was asleep, and an other says she was hoping he would be wearing a condom

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and he wasn't. But let's move away from the case itself and talk about this attempt to paint him as a rapist.

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This is really taking a lot of focus off of WikiLeaks itself, in this attempt by various people,

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various governments to paint him as sort of a villain. Talk about that.

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Well this is common practice. When you have someone you regard as dangerous to you, and you

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don't really have a case against them, you slander them. And this is the way the United States Department

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of Justice generally works. It produces, it uses the media to slander the victim so that the victim is

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guilty before he ever gets into a court. So in some sense they would achieve their purpose, even if he

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wins the appeal, because he is now slandered. And the real questions will not get investigated. You see,

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what really needs to be investigated is why did this prosecutor reopen the case the Swedish prosecutors

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had already closed? Because there was no new evidence. [chuckles] In fact, the evidence that came out

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really didn't support the claims of the two women. And the other question is how do you extradite somebody

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when there's no crime? What the Swedish prosecutor is demanding is extradition so that she can interview him.

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She could do that here

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The bottom line here seems to be, you know, where there's a will, there's a way.

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Sorry, we are out of time. Paul Craig Roberts, former Reagan administration official.