On the show, Chris Hedges talks to documentary filmmaker and investigative journalist John Pilger about the upcoming appeals hearing in London for the Julian Assange case.
On Sept. 26, Yahoo! News published ‘Kidnapping, assassination and a London shoot-out: Inside the CIA’s secret war plans against WikiLeaks’. The article detailed discussions within the CIA to kidnap or assassinate Julian Assange. The revelations came a month before a hearing in Britain’s High Court that will see the US government appeal a decision that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange cannot be sent to the United States to face espionage charges. These revelations also coincided with the arrest of an Icelandic man who played a major role in the FBI’s case against Assange and who has now admitted he lied in his testimony about Assange to US federal investigators. The most recent revelations, coupled with the numerous legal anomalies of the Assange case, including leaks that show that the Spanish security firm at Ecuador’s Embassy in London, where Assange sought refuge for seven years, turned over recordings of his meetings with his lawyers to the CIA, amply illustrate that the judicial pantomime carried out against Assange is a political persecution led by the US government and the CIA because of embarrassing and damaging revelations about the inner workings of the US military, intelligence agencies, and the political class repeatedly exposed by Assange and WikiLeaks. The goal of the US government is to shut down WikiLeaks and organizations like it, and to make an example of Assange, who, if he is extradited to the United States, faces 175 years in prison, to dissuade others who might consider replicating his courageous reporting. The upcoming appeals hearing is on October 27 and 28 at Britain’s High Court, London.
