Some of the comments following the article are worth reading, taking the Guardian's role in the campaign against Assange to task. Someinteresting insights alrighty!

David Leigh's article
 http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/sep/26/julian-assange-unauthorised-autobiography-review

* Wikileak
26 September 2011 5:35PM

This review falls down pretty much from the off. A fair attempt in some respects, as you are clearly trying to present yourself as an honest broker of historically accurate truths, but the problem is, David, that you are far too close and indeed cinstitute events in the book, and it is the opinion of many, if not most (going by the recommendations of the responses arguing counter to you) that you are at least 50% culpable for Cablegate. Rather than engaging in the impartial, objective task of book reviewing, the fairly obvious logical goes, you are merely dissembling and using the exercise of a review, to further your own defence and distance yourself from Assange and the possible, though remote, chance of facing espionage charges in the USA.

Certainly Assange's version of events is that this is a factor in the thinking of the few high-profile journalists from the two media partners - of the 90 or so his organisation works with - who turned on him. He argues that you did so, not because of the reasons the Guardian editorial would have us believe - for truth, justice and all that - but because you acted underhandedly and decided to try and cut Assange out of the picture once you had your hands on the cables, contraveneing all three of the very simple sentences in the memorandum of understanding signed by Guardian Editor and your brother-in-law Alan Rusbridger.

Your paper in the form of Nick Davies, actively sought out Assange, courted him, got the goods and then after a few months, according to Assange, because Keller and the NYT started panicking about possible espionage charges, turned on him to distance yourself from this possibility, and you and Keller wrote articles and books on him for this very purpose, as well as to profit from, as he sees it, betraying him.

He claims that the last time he saw you with his lawyers in tow, you turned 'white as a ghost' and that you are responsible for the release of the cables into the public realm because you, contrary to all rules of cryptography, published the top-secret passphrase and salt that you begged him to give you to access the files he had stored online. You claiming you were led to believe by him that the passphrase was temporary and that the files would only be online for a short while, belie the truth of the matter, that the passphrase to an encrypted file cannot be changed. Why would he tell you lies on this? Or is it the case that you simply made a mistake, a schoolboy howler of epic proportions, and were unaware of it, not because Assange didn't, as you claim, take sensible precautions in safegurading this data, but because your own hubris and lack of technological nous led you to blunder in making an appalling mess of things and rather than own up to it, with all the attendant responsibility admitting something so globally and historically significant suggests, you choose instead to behave as you do, blaming anyone but yourself?


*CiaronX
26 September 2011 7:56PM
Julian Assange has not been charged with anything. Yet, he has at least three well resourced prosecutors circling him
- Brisitsh
- Swedish
- servicing the most significant third - the U.S. Grand Jury.

None of these prosecutions involve a jury trial. So it seems all bets are off in terms of subjudice restrictions on the media.

For the last 10 months we have been treated to a trial by media of the character of Julian Assange. If such powers were arraigned against any of our "poisonalities"...cherry picking flippant comments to isolated actions, none of us would stand a chance.

Sensible legal advice, with these three prosecuters cricling, would be
- don't be provoked by the slander.
- and don't release an autobiography.

The Guardian has been most significant in undermining political support for Julian Assange as it has directed its liberal-left constitency to avert its gaze as the empire deals with one who has revealed it's naked barbarism in the Iraq & Afghan wars.

Whoever released these cables - Bradley Manning in chains is pleading "not guilty" - and Julian Assange have risked their life's liberty on the premise if we only knew the nature of these wars we would at least talk about them if not resist them. As Leigh points out that maybe a false premise.

Some of us, both anti-war activists and military veterans, have refused to abandon Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, Michael Lyons and others electronically tagged or jailed for nonviolently resisting the wars on the peoples of Iraq and Afghanistan. They're in trouble for us, we're on the streets for them!

YOUTUBE (6 mins) 'Assange Subterranean Homesick Blues'
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGb9pqcz3_Y