WEBVTT 00:00:00.441 --> 00:00:06.197 And for more on Assanges roller coster year I'm joined by Paul Craig Roberts, former Reagan administration official. 00:00:06.197 --> 00:00:12.725 Hey there Paul, you know we're looking back at the past year. As Julian Assange has really gone from 00:00:12.725 --> 00:00:18.088 celebrity and now to alleged criminal, what have been your observations about this man, 00:00:18.088 --> 00:00:20.898 who's really become quite a character on the American landscape? 00:00:20.898 --> 00:00:30.348 Well, he's a great threat, because he does publish documents from the government which reveals 00:00:30.348 --> 00:00:37.570 how sordid the government is. It's not like a pundit or commentator speaking about the government, 00:00:37.570 --> 00:00:45.674 it's the governments own documents revealing its sordid behavior. So he is very much a threat, and not 00:00:45.674 --> 00:00:50.132 just to the American government, but to the British government, to any number of governments. 00:00:50.132 --> 00:00:59.072 And so there is a consorted effort to nail him, to shut him up. In my opinion, if legal attempt, 00:00:59.072 --> 00:01:06.432 which I'm certain the United States government is behind, if this fails he'll simply be assassinated 00:01:06.432 --> 00:01:09.010 by a CIA assassination team. 00:01:09.010 --> 00:01:16.324 It's common practice for the CIA to do that, it's nothing unusual about it. 00:01:16.324 --> 00:01:23.569 The Congress had many hearings in the mid 70s, and it's in the public record that they're always 00:01:23.569 --> 00:01:25.403 assassinating people. 00:01:25.403 --> 00:01:28.236 I guess you like to think, as an American, that you don't live in a country where 00:01:28.236 --> 00:01:31.463 that goes on, but perhaps that's a little ignorant, but.. 00:01:31.463 --> 00:01:34.227 I try to be realistic and aware. 00:01:34.227 --> 00:01:38.801 I wanna move on now, this ruling today that came down in the British court, not a surprise really to 00:01:38.801 --> 00:01:45.349 most people. He plans to appeal according to his lawyers, but a lot of people say that the US might try 00:01:45.349 --> 00:01:49.668 to get in there now, that they might try to request his extradition to the United States. 00:01:49.668 --> 00:01:55.357 How can this happen? There's not even been any charges filed against him. These charges in Sweden are 00:01:55.357 --> 00:02:01.394 sort of, you know. Sexual assault, yes, but they're with consenting partners who sort of have changed 00:02:01.394 --> 00:02:07.361 their stories a little. I wonder what you think about the attempt that could happen to get him to the 00:02:07.361 --> 00:02:10.891 United States where there's not even charges against him yet? 00:02:10.891 --> 00:02:18.670 Well, I think that's the purpose of all this. You see, the fact of the matter is that the Swedish prosecutors 00:02:18.670 --> 00:02:24.776 did look in to the charges, and they dismissed them as not credible. And of course one reason it's not 00:02:24.776 --> 00:02:30.999 credible is that both of the women who seduced him are all lying, bragging about their conquests. 00:02:30.999 --> 00:02:37.083 They had e-mails, there's some Twitter and Facebook, I believe, and many of their friends reported 00:02:37.083 --> 00:02:46.162 that the two women where bragging that they had seduced Julian Assange. So what his real mistake was 00:02:46.162 --> 00:02:56.356 was getting in bed with two women he didn't know. [chuckle] Somebody who is a boat rocker like him can't 00:02:56.356 --> 00:03:06.642 possibly let that happen, because it's now cooked him, you see. And the prosecutor which reopened the case, 00:03:06.642 --> 00:03:14.560 no one knows really why, because the charges are merely misdemeanors. He's not accused of rape, despite 00:03:14.560 --> 00:03:22.687 all the headlines. He's accused, after the event, by the two women of having sex with them in ways that 00:03:22.687 --> 00:03:25.589 they didn't want, or something to that effect. 00:03:25.589 --> 00:03:29.908 Yeah. One of them said she was asleep, and an other says she was hoping he would be wearing a condom 00:03:29.908 --> 00:03:34.994 and he wasn't. But let's move away from the case itself and talk about this attempt to paint him as a rapist. 00:03:34.994 --> 00:03:42.099 This is really taking a lot of focus off of WikiLeaks itself, in this attempt by various people, 00:03:42.099 --> 00:03:46.000 various governments to paint him as sort of a villain. Talk about that. 00:03:46.000 --> 00:03:54.800 Well this is common practice. When you have someone you regard as dangerous to you, and you 00:03:54.800 --> 00:04:00.953 don't really have a case against them, you slander them. And this is the way the United States Department 00:04:00.953 --> 00:04:12.192 of Justice generally works. It produces, it uses the media to slander the victim so that the victim is 00:04:12.192 --> 00:04:20.412 guilty before he ever gets into a court. So in some sense they would achieve their purpose, even if he 00:04:20.412 --> 00:04:29.166 wins the appeal, because he is now slandered. And the real questions will not get investigated. You see, 00:04:29.166 --> 00:04:36.526 what really needs to be investigated is why did this prosecutor reopen the case the Swedish prosecutors 00:04:36.526 --> 00:04:42.958 had already closed? Because there was no new evidence. [chuckles] In fact, the evidence that came out 00:04:42.958 --> 00:04:50.714 really didn't support the claims of the two women. And the other question is how do you extradite somebody 00:04:50.714 --> 00:04:59.212 when there's no crime? What the Swedish prosecutor is demanding is extradition so that she can interview him. 00:04:59.212 --> 00:05:01.256 She could do that here 00:05:01.256 --> 00:05:04.669 The bottom line here seems to be, you know, where there's a will, there's a way. 00:05:04.669 --> 99:59:59.999 Sorry, we are out of time. Paul Craig Roberts, former Reagan administration official.