The FBI-concocted accusation against Julian Assange seems to be falling apart on the move. No evidence. No paperwork. No guaranteed confirmations. Just overlapping conventions.
But in no case should you underestimate the legal acrobatics abilities of functionaries from the United States government. In view of the fact that Assange cannot be portrayed as a journalist and publisher, the main emphasis in the accusations is made on his intent to commit espionage.
In fact, the accusation is not even that Assange hacked into the computer of the US government and obtained classified information, that he could discuss it with Chelsea Manning and may have intent to go into the hack. An Orwellian thought-crime charge is no better. The only thing missing is artificial intelligence (AI) to detect crime.
Assange's legal advisor Jeffrey Robertson - who appears to represent another prominent political prisoner, Lula (Brazil) - gets down to business (at 19.22 minutes):
It's not over yet. Hence the inevitable consequence: in a British court, Assange's team is preparing to legally prove, without hesitation in the means, that the accusation made by the American government about plotting to commit a computer hacking is just a snack before the subsequent accusation of espionage in the event of Assange's extradition to the United States.
It's all about Vault 7 (Basement 7)
Promotional video:
John Pilger, among others, has already indicated that the plan to destroy WikiLeaks and Julian Assange was drawn up back in 2008 - at the very end of his stay in the corridors of Cheney's power - and was drawn up by the Center for Counterintelligence Operations on Computer Networks, the shadow department of the Pentagon.
The plan was to criminalize WikiLeaks and personally slander Assange using "shock troops recruited by the media - those who are designed to prevent distortion and tell us the truth."
This plan remains valid given how Assange's arrest was covered by the mainstream US / UK media.
By 2012, in the Obama era, WikiLeaks detailed the mind-boggling "scale of investigations by a US federal grand jury." The US government has always denied the existence of such.
But it wasn't until 2017, in the Trump era, that the Deep State went wild; this happened when WikiLeaks released the Basement 7 files - detailing the CIA's vast repertoire of hacking / cyber-espionage.
The CIA appeared as a kind of "naked king", which had never happened before - including clever surveillance operations of the Center for Electronic and Electronic Intelligence, a top-secret duplicate of the NSA, were uncovered.
WikiLeaks received the Basement 7 dossier in early 2017. At the time, WikiLeaks had already released files from the Democratic National Committee (DNC), which the impeccable Veterans of Professional Intelligence for Common Sense (VIPS) systematically confirmed was a leak and not a hack.
The monolithic scenario of the Deep State, coupled with the Clinton machine, was that the Russians hacked into the servers of the Democratic National Committee. Assange has always been categorical: there was no work of a state subject, and he can technically prove it.
Some steps were taken to conclude a deal, one of Assange's lawyers was negotiating that WikiLeaks would not publish the most damning information "Basement 7" in exchange for Assange's safe passage for an interview with the US Department of Justice.
The ministry wanted the deal - and made such an offer to WikiLeaks, but then FBI Director James Comey thwarted the deal. The question is why.
This is a leak, not a hack
A certain theoretical reconstruction of Komi's actions is still available. But the key fact is this: Comey already knew - from his close ties to the top DNC - that this was not a hack, but a leak.
Ambassador Craig Murray has emphasized over and over (here) that the DNC / Podesta documents published by WikiLeaks came from two different sources: one from the DNC and the other from US intelligence.
Komi had nothing to "investigate" there. Or something would have happened if Comey had ordered the FBI to take care of the DNC servers. So what to talk to Julian Assange about?
The April 2017 WikiLeaks publication of a new batch of Grasshopper and Marble documents about CIA embedded malware was a bombshell. The CIA inserts foreign language lines into the source code to represent them as coming from Russia, Iran or China. Ray McGovern, a VIPS member, emphasized that Marble "destroys the whole story of the Russian hacking."
Unsurprisingly, then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo accused WikiLeaks of being a "non-state hostile intelligence agency" typically manipulated by Russia.
Joshua Schulte, who allegedly leaked Basement 7, has yet to appear in US courts. There is no doubt that he will be offered a deal if he agrees to testify against Julian Assange.
It is a long and difficult process that will take at least a couple of years if Julian Assange is extradited to the United States. At this point, two things are crystal clear. The US government has an obsession with shutting down WikiLeaks once and for all. And so Julian Assange will never get a fair trial in the so-called "Spy Court" in the Eastern District of Virginia, as former CIA counter-terrorism officer and informant John Kyriacou explained in detail.
In the meantime, Julian Assange's never-ending demonization will continue unabated, in accordance with guidelines established more than a decade ago. Assange is already accused of even conducting an American intelligence operation, and WikiLeaks is part of a deep cover operation for the Deep State.
Perhaps President Trump will be nimble in getting the dominant Deep State to testify against corruption in the Democratic National Committee, or perhaps Trump surrendered entirely to Pompeo's “hostile intelligence agency” and his blood-hungry CIA gang. This is a shadow theater with extremely high stakes - and the show hasn't even started yet.
Author: Pepe Escobar