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