Assange: Our Source Is Not the Russian Government

by Jason Ditz, January 03, 2017

Interviewed by Sean Hannity on Fox News, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange reiterated that his organization did not get any of the documents they leaked on Hillary Clinton’s campaign from any state actor, adding that “our source is not the Russian government and is not a state party.”

Assange said that protection of sources was of vital importance, and that he was loathe to provide any information that might identify them, adding that he didn’t want to say they were within the United States, nor that it was someone within the DNC, or that it was some vendor working for the DNC.

Rather, Assange said the only reason they’d gone so far as to confirm it was not a state actor was an attempt to try to ensure that the information was given the attention it deserved, and that the allegations about the sources were not a distraction.

Noting that the most recent administration report didn’t even mention WikiLeaks by name, Assange said he believes that the attempt is to “conflate our organization with hacking of US voting machines” by saying the Russians “hacked the vote,” adding that the voting machines weren’t hacked in the first place.

Assange went on to say he believed this selective mentioning of WikiLeaks in the course of constructing a narrative was because they “don’t have the evidence,” saying President Obama is “playing games” and speaking like a lawyer on the matter on the issue.

This, he said, was why the reports so often didn’t mention WikiLeaks, that the insinuation of them being involved in a Russian plot couldn’t be substantiated in any way. Rather, the efforts centered on insinuating that such a plot existed while avoiding direct accusations.

He went on to reiterate that everything WikiLeaks has published was “true information,” and while it is impossible to know whether or not it changed the outcome of the election, if it did it would be true information which changed the election. He added it would be unconscionable for WikiLeaks to get such information and deliberately withhold it.

Asked whether this was “political,” Assange said that WikiLeaks’ agenda is not party-specific, but that they do have a strong agenda of interest in free information.

This was described as his “philosophical agenda,” saying he believes that the best government is one which is constantly scrutinized and for which factual information on their activities is available.

Assange noted in WikiLeaks’ 10 years there has never been even a serious allegation that any of its information was wrong, and that they’d never outed one of their sources. He also said there was not a single instance of anyone coming to harm on the basis of any of the information leaked

Addressing the question of withholding information to protect people, Assange insisted that WikiLeaks is different from most media outlets in this regard because they make it clear what is being withheld and why, and only temporarily in cases where someone’s safety might be at risk.

Assange insisted that redaction was inherently corrupting, and that a lot of media outlets end up using safety as an excuse for wholesale redaction of information to protect political figures.