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You are here: Home / Elections / Election 2016 / AP News Open Thread: Julian Assange, the Biter Bit?

AP News Open Thread: Julian Assange, the Biter Bit?

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This is the AP, not some blog with a history of overreaction, so… cui bono, at this particular moment?

LONDON (AP) — Julian Assange had just pulled off one of the biggest scoops in journalistic history, splaying the innards of American diplomacy across the web. But technology firms were cutting ties to his WikiLeaks website, cable news pundits were calling for his head and a Swedish sex crime case was threatening to put him behind bars.

Caught in a vise, the silver-haired Australian wrote to the Russian Consulate in London.

“I, Julian Assange, hereby grant full authority to my friend, Israel Shamir, to both drop off and collect my passport, in order to get a visa,” said the letter, which was obtained exclusively by The Associated Press.

The Nov. 30, 2010, missive is part of a much larger trove of WikiLeaks emails, chat logs, financial records, secretly recorded footage and other documents leaked to the AP. The files provide both an intimate look at the radical transparency organization and an early hint of Assange’s budding relationship with Moscow.…

WikiLeaks has repeatedly been hit by unauthorized disclosures, but the tens of thousands of files obtained by the AP may be the biggest leak yet.

The AP has confirmed the authenticity of many of the documents by running them by five former WikiLeaks associates or by verifying non-public details such as bank accounts, telephone numbers or airline tickets.

One of the former associates, an ex-employee, identified two of the names that frequently appeared in the documents’ metadata, “Jessica Longley” and “Jim Evans Mowing,” as pseudonyms assigned to two WikiLeaks laptops.

All five former associates spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity, in some cases because they didn’t want their past association with WikiLeaks to become public, and in others because they feared legal retaliation or harassment from the group’s supporters…

Metadata suggests that it was on Nov. 29, the day after the release of the first batch of U.S. State Department files, that the letter to the Russian Consulate was drafted on the Jessica Longley computer…

Reader Interactions

135Comments

  3. 3.

    gwangung

    All five former associates spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity, in some cases because they didn’t want their past association with WikiLeaks to become public, and in others because they feared legal retaliation or harassment from the group’s supporters…

    Hrm. That has NEVER struck me as sign of a healthy, above board organization….

  4. 4.

    Viva BrisVegas

    Maybe Assange’s usefulness to the GRU has run its course, and now they find it useful to discredit him before cutting him loose.

  8. 8.

    different-church-lady

    Hey, everyone in Left-Blogistan who got sucked in by this charlatan, stand up and do The Mea Culpa!

  9. 9.

    Dog Dawg Damn

    WTF is Trump thinking with these tariffs? They are going to hit consumer goods in a big year, beginning at the beginning of the year.

  13. 13.

    TenguPhule

    @Dog Dawg Damn:

    WTF is Trump thinking with these tariffs? They are going to hit consumer goods in a big year, beginning at the beginning of the year.

    End of Sept actually. Just in time for the Christmas shopping season.

  21. 21.

    rachel

    @Matt McIrvin: Yeah, there were people trying to blame the Dems in ’08 because they had the House. They even tried to blame Obama. (The prospect of his presidence scared the previously fantastic economy into collapse!)

    Nobody bought it. They blamed W and the party that had supported his policies.

  22. 22.

    Elizabelle

    @Dog Dawg Damn: My condolences on being without your beautiful Rosie the sheltie. She had a good life with you, and a peaceful end (on a car ride, yet). Glad to hear you will be adopting another lucky pet before too long.

  23. 23.

    Roger Moore

    the radical transparency organization

    Can people stop calling them that? Transparency is about deliberately letting people know how things work as a way of increasing confidence in your processes. Any organization that actually cares about radical transparency ought to start with itself, which Wikileaks has never done. They’re as opaque as they can possibly be, while at the same time working to weaponize leaked or hacked information to damage their target as much as possible.

  24. 24.

    Elizabelle

    @Schlemazel: A lot of the MAGAts are unreachable, true, but some are. Can’t do anything about those among us who support fascists and would have been early-adopting Nazis. But that’s not most people, and we certainly outnumber them. Now, to get out the vote. And I think we will.

  25. 25.

    Brachiator

    O/T Trump must think that slapping China (and the US economy) around is good campaign strategy going into the mid-terms. His Twitter message makes him sound very full of himself.

    Tariffs have put the U.S. in a very strong bargaining position, with Billions of Dollars, and Jobs, flowing into our Country – and yet cost increases have thus far been almost unnoticeable. If countries will not make fair deals with us, they will be “Tariffed!”

    Also, more infliction of misery to prove that he is “protecting the country.”

    State Department to cap admissions of refugees fleeing war, violence and persecution at lowest point ever: 30,000

    Make America Cowardly Again.

  26. 26.

    Elizabelle

    @Roger Moore: Thank you. WikiLeaks is NOT what its fans pretend it to be. Bit of a personality cult there, too. And, somehow, it benefits fascists and other rightwingers. Funny, that.

  27. 27.

    Dog Dawg Damn

    @Elizabelle: Thank you. :-)

    So word on Twitter is that Ronan Farrow has the apprentice tapes….I don’t want to be naive, but after Access Hollywood, I’m sure there’s some awful stuff in them.

  28. 28.

    debbie

    @Dog Dawg Damn:

    Trump’s channeling his inner Lee Iacocca, who agitated for these same kinds of tariffs against Japan in the 1970s and 1980s. Cooler heads prevailed back then; now, there really aren’t any (or many) in D.C.

  30. 30.

    debbie

    @Dog Dawg Damn:

    Tom Arnold’s doing his bit, Farrow or no:

    Sitting in West LAPD filing charges against your best bud Apprentice Outtakes Mark Burnett who lost his mind, attacted & chocked me last nite at Katzenberg’s Night Before The Emmy’s Party. Last fight I got into there was with Harvey Weinstein. Mark Burnett is scared:) #TrumpTapes— Tom Arnold (@TomArnold) September 17, 2018

    I kid. Ronan’s been absolutely heroic. How long till pervs everywhere tear Woody limb from limb for what he created back when he was busy destroying the Farrow family.

  31. 31.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @Schlemazel:
    And would they be better off if the US were destabilized due to Russian fuckery? I mean, yeah, we’ve done bad shit to them but can’t they see the bigger picture?

  32. 32.

    Schlemazel

    @Elizabelle:
    I have been phone banking & I have to say the level of enthusiasm I am hearing tops even 2008. I was hoping for 28 pickups in Congress & 1 in the Senate. I read where 538 thinks 63 is possible in the House & I believe it if what I am hearing is common. I would kill for 3 Senate seats on top of that but that would be a miracle.

  33. 33.

    Brachiator

    @Schlemazel:

    I really think Americans do not understand how much Central & SOuth America wants to get even for all the shit we have done to them

    Central and South America are doing far more to hurt themselves than they are hurting the US.

  34. 34.

    cain

    @Dog Dawg Damn:

    WTF is Trump thinking with these tariffs? They are going to hit consumer goods in a big year, beginning at the beginning of the year.

    What is up with congress not stopping him? Seriously? Fucking republicans is all about trade and giving their paymasters good deals. These tariffs will fuck over everyone. I don’t understand why they don’t push back if just to keep their party alive. Jeesus.

  35. 35.

    Miss Bianca

    @Gemina13:

    Hark! Is that the siren song of chickens coming home to roost?

    I’ll say yes…if only because “the siren cluck” sounds so…clucky.

    And yeah…BOOM! To all the dudebros who told me I was “hysterical” for making such a big deal out of rapey JA’s apparent coziness with Mother Russia…or at least, Russian-inspired shenanigans…may I just say, “BOOM!”

  38. 38.

    Schlemazel

    @Brachiator:
    Nose? Meet face

    We may see it that way, I am betting they see it differently. I really think AMericans do not understand the depth of their anger at us

  39. 39.

    germy

    Ronan Farrow has the apprentice tapes…

    according to Tom Arnold, who often bullshits and twists the truth.

    I’ll believe it when Ronan announces it.

    I think it was something Arnold blurted out while scuffling with Mark Burnett.

  41. 41.

    Miss Bianca

    @different-church-lady:

    Hey, everyone in Left-Blogistan who got sucked in by this charlatan, stand up and do The Mea Culpa!

    More like the “Mea Coffee Boy”, I’m thinking…because I’d hate to have to bet on whether any of those guys are self-aware enough to remember or acknowledge just how bad they were had. “Julian Assange? Did I know him?”

  42. 42.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @Schlemazel:
    That’s kind of my point. And this seques into another hobby horse of mine; Putin’s actions couldn’t have come at a worse time because the world needs stability and to work together to solve climate change, not return to the 1930s. Shortsighted, evil people are dooming the human race

  44. 44.

    Brachiator

    @Dog Dawg Damn:

    So word on Twitter is that Ronan Farrow has the apprentice tapes….

    Oh please, oh please, oh please….

    I don’t think the release of any tapes will have a tremendous impact right now, but it would drive Trump up a wall, and unleash a category 5 Tweet storm.

  47. 47.

    TenguPhule

    @??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??:

    Putin’s actions couldn’t have come at a worse time because the world needs stability and to work together to solve climate change,

    But Putin doesn’t give a shit because the bad things will happen after he is safely dead. So fuck everyone.

  50. 50.

    The Midnight Lurker

    @germy: How would Ronan Farrow come into possession of ‘The Apprentice’ tapes?
    And that stupid business between Mark Burnett and Tom Arnold? I make it even money the whole thing was staged to use as a promo for Arnold new show Lost— er, I mean, The Search for the Trump Tapes or whatever the hell they’re calling it. I won’t watch it.
    And is anyone else here dog tired hearing about fuckin’ tapes?!

  62. 62.

    TenguPhule

    The Trump administration is disowning a plan presented by U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley for Trump to hold a meeting at the United Nations next week focused on Iran, according to diplomats familiar with the planning.

    Haley had announced that Trump would chair a meeting on the world’s biggest diplomatic stage to “address Iran’s violations of international law and the general instability Iran sows throughout the entire Middle East region.”

    The United States will decide the agenda for the Security Council meeting, a centerpiece of the annual United Nations General Assembly, because it holds the council’s rotating chair for the month of September. It will be Trump’s first time brandishing the U.N. gavel at a table of officials representing the world’s most powerful nations.

    Dodged a bullet there.

    Instead of leading a meeting on Iran, Trump will chair a debate on nonproliferation, constitutionalism and sovereignty, said the diplomats, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss plans.

    oh. well shit.

  65. 65.

    HalfAssedHomesteader

    Shamir told the AP he was plagued by memory problems…

    That is some high amperage irony.

  75. 75.

    Schlemazel

    SCOTT LEMIEUX over at LG&M had a great line I intend to use when discussing the Dumps

    Apparently the road apples don’t fall far from the horse’s ass

  82. 82.

    TenguPhule

    @Steve in the ATL:

    how about a meeting to discuss how Saudi Arabia sows discord in the middle east through its funding of Wahhabism?

    Saudis have played the Orb of Osuvox which renders them immune to all criticism until a level 99 lawyer casts the counterspell of “Fuck your sovereign immunity”.

  84. 84.

    TenguPhule

    @Amir Khalid:

    … And the price of kids’ clothing, and of household items, and of all kinds of goods that ordinary Americans need.

    You can’t make a soylent green omelet without people. And corporations are people, my friend.

  86. 86.

    James E Powell

    @Amir Khalid:

    They spread that Wahabbist shit everywhere in the Muslim world, including among Muslim communities in the West.

    I’m curious about this. Do they do it because it keeps their version of the rubes in line? Like the way Republicans do with the worst features of Christianity? Or do they actually believe that the Wahabbist way is how the whole world really ought to be?

  87. 87.

    Schlemazel

    @raven:
    I grew up in a Catholic neighborhood & clearly remember Vat-II. My friends mostly stopped telling me I was going to hell.

  91. 91.

    Thoughtful David

    @TenguPhule: That’s a perfect thing to have him serve as chairman of. Something he knows nothing about, can’t comprehend, and can’t even pronounce the multi-syllable words. He’ll sit there and look like a fool, and all of the other world leaders can mock the shit out of him. But it’s a “debate,” which means that no actual outcome or product is expected of the meeting, so no matter what shit he does or says, no harm is done. But the world gets to point and laugh.
    They’ve put him in the most harmless, ineffective place they possibly could have put him.

  92. 92.

    TenguPhule

    @Mike in NC:

    But Trump’s reading and speaking comprehension is limited to two syllable words.

    They didn’t say it was going to be a pleasant meeting.

  93. 93.

    TenguPhule

    @Thoughtful David:

    He’ll sit there and look like a fool, and all of the other world leaders can mock the shit out of him.

    You presume he’d act in a civilized manner and follow the rules of the UN.

  94. 94.

    Amir Khalid

    @James E Powell:

    Do they do it because it keeps their version of the rubes in line? Like the way Republicans do with the worst features of Christianity? Or do they actually believe that the Wahabbist way is how the whole world really ought to be?

    The first is why they do it at home. The second is why they do it everywhere.

  96. 96.

    TenguPhule

    Everyone Trump nominates is a shitty crook, part eleventy.

    William “Brock” Long, the top official at the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is facing a potential criminal probe related to his use of government vehicles, after an internal investigation into his travel was referred to U.S. attorneys for prosecution, according to administration officials and others familiar with the matter.

    The development intensifies pressure on Long to step down, and comes as he leads FEMA’s response to Hurricane Florence.

    Long has been under scrutiny by the Department of Homeland Security’s Inspector General for using the vehicles to travel between Washington and his home in Hickory, N.C., where his wife and children live.

  97. 97.

    TenguPhule

    @TenguPhule:

    Long frequently left Washington to spend three-day weekends in North Carolina, driving hundreds of miles with aides who stayed in hotels at taxpayer expense, the Wall Street Journal reported, citing people familiar with the investigation.

    Because Trump set the standard.

  98. 98.

    TenguPhule

    @TenguPhule: And in case you thought I was joking about part eleventy…..

    FEMA’s deputy administrator job has been unfilled for nearly two years, and the current nominee for the position, Peter Gaynor, has yet to be confirmed by the Senate.

    Trump’s original nominee for the post, Daniel Craig, withdrew from consideration a year ago after reports surfaced that the DHS inspector general found he had falsified work and travel records while working for the George W. Bush administration.

    If Long were to be forced out, FEMA’s acting deputy administrator Daniel Kaniewski, would likely take over. Kaniewski is a close friend and former housemate of DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

  99. 99.

    Schlemazel

    @raven:
    Because of Vat II?

    At the time (late 50s – early 60s) the CHurch still held a lot of power in the daily lives of a lot of families in my hood. They really were more important than life

  101. 101.

    chopper

    @TenguPhule:

    funny, that. long was basically the only person in the whole admin with a solid background in the area of his position. of course, that was only because a background is congressionally mandated, otherwise trump would have stuck his show pony in the job.

  106. 106.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Schlemazel: Not to stomp on raven’s story, sometimes there is little choice. My great-grandmother took her family out of the Church in the 1900s. One of my grandfather’s brothers was ill and she could not afford both medicine and tithing. The priest came by her house and told her not to come back to church until she paid up. She never went back. She was also someone who, when one of her kids complained about the food he was served, said, “Eat that or eat shit.”

  107. 107.

    raven

    @Schlemazel: Yea, I’m not really sure what the deal was, part of the family was Irish and the other Norwegian. It was a big deal to my old man but I never got the whole story.

  108. 108.

    Schlemazel

    @Omnes Omnibus:
    I think I could like that woman a lot!

    My sister married a Catholic boy. Shortly after the wedding the priest showed u & told them they needed to start paying school tuition or he would not be able to provide any future kids they might have with a space at the church school. For all his faults (many -none of which were his religion) he told the priest to f off.

  109. 109.

    karen marie

    @rachel: Yeah, about that …

    The American public has an extraordinarily short attention span. Hence, the current Republican majorities in the House and Senate, not to mention the shitwhistle spreading his disgusting skin cell flakes all over the White House..

  113. 113.

    MisterForkbeard

    @Miss Bianca: Oh, I’ll totally admit that I liked Assange when WikiLeaks first popped up on the scene. Guardedly, as I didn’t like a lot of what they were doing and thought they were slightly hypocritical, but I thought they were trying to do good.

    I haven’t held that opinion for years, but I’ll totally cop to having it at one point. But then, I’m not a DudeBro and I wasn’t shitting on people pointing out the obvious about Assange back in 2016. Quite the opposite.

  114. 114.

    Gravenstone

    @TenguPhule: There’s thought the human population may have been reduced to less than 50k individuals. So we’ve come perilously close. Granted, that was a very long time ago and circumstances were quite different.

  115. 115.

    oldgold

    On the Rachel Maddow Show they played extensive footage of Anita Hill’s testimony in the Thomas confirmation hearing.

    I had forgotten what a compelling witness she was. She spoke the truth.

    What a damn tragedy Thomas was confirmed.

  122. 122.

    Barbara

    @schrodingers_cat: 50/50. There are at least 3 senators who would prefer at this point not to vote at all and two who have nothing to lose. Chances are that Trump’s ego and expectation that Kavanaugh will protect him probably gets him to a vote one way or another.

  125. 125.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Barbara: I am calling no on confirmation. More is going to come out. BK is a creep, and the people who are trying to normalize thing by saying that what he and judge did is like that time you were making out with a girl and you tried to put your hand up her shirt and she said no are fucking monsters. They are trying to make it seem like all guys go through a rapey phase. DK is a rapey shit, and there is more to come.

    I did some ranting earlier, so I kept this one short of short.

  127. 127.

    Mnemosyne

    @schrodingers_cat:

    Chelsea Manning got pardoned by Obama and immediately started palling around with white supremacists, so now she’s persona non grata in progressive circles.

    By a strange coincidence, Julian Assange also has a history of making common cause with white supremacists, ?

  131. 131.

    Bill Arnold

    @Omnes Omnibus:
    I just tried using lynx (ancient command line browser) and it does an OK job of previewing comments, at least for making sure tags are closed etc. Copy draft comment text to file, then “lynx filename”. No javascript, but not needed.
    Since our Balloon Juice Overlords insist on perfect comments. :-)

  133. 133.

    MomSense

    She’s not the most exciting Senator and I differ with her on many issues, but Diane Feinstein is masterful at working the committee process.

    Knowing how to work the levers is a highly underrated skill in politics.

  134. 134.

    Mnemosyne

    @MomSense:

    Dianne Feinstein is kicking ass right now because the Republicans are fucking with two things she cares deeply about: women’s rights and gun violence. Despite her myriad faults in other areas of politics, she has never and will never compromise on those two things.

    As I was saying the other day, her Democratic opponent in November, Kevin De Léon, has unfortunately picked the wrong year to be a younger man trying to push an older, more experienced woman out of office.

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