Assange to White House staff: ‘Leak drone killing rules’

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Published time: February 09, 2013 13:25

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Assange, Court, Crime, Human rights, Middle East, Obama, Politics, Scandal, Security, Terrorism, UK, USA, Vehicles

In the first appearance in a long time by Julian Assange on a major American TV channel, the founder of WikiLeaks lashed out at the re-elected President Barack Obama and his administration, which gave the go-ahead to elimination of the American citizens abroad using military Unmanned Automatic Vehicles (UAVs).

An unclassified document from the US Justice Department, revealed by NBC News this week, exposed that US authorities consider the elimination of senior Al-Qaeda members lawful and ethical, even if they are American citizens and plotting no crime. The Obama administration promised to provide American lawmakers with access to classified documents giving the legal basis for such drone strikes.

The first known assassination of Americans by a US UAV occurred in September 2011, when a US drone strike in Yemen killed radical preacher Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan, editor of an Al-Qaeda magazine. Both were US citizens who had never been charged with a crime.

“I cannot see a greater collapse when the [American] executive can kill its own citizens arbitrarily, at will, in secret, without any of the decision-making becoming public,” Assange said during his appearance in the HBO talk show ‘Real Time with Bill Maher’.

“That's why we need organizations like WikiLeaks. I encourage anyone in the White House who has access to those rules and procedures, work them on over to us. We'll keep you secret and reveal [the drone killing rules] to the public,” Assange promised.

Julian Assange remains at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has been since June 2012. He was granted asylum to avoid extradition to Sweden on sex crimes allegations. He has consistently maintained his innocence.

Assange’s lawyers believe that if Assange is extradited to Sweden, he would be automatically extradited further to the US, where he has been declared an enemy of state after publishing hundreds of thousands of classified diplomatic and military memos on the WikiLeaks website.

So far Britain has refused Julian Assange safe passage to Ecuador.

HBO, which gave Julian Assange the platform to speak out, has approximately 41 million subscribers in the US alone.

Comments (44)

Anonymous user 10.04.2013 06:48

Drone killings,the last throes of a sick,perverted empire.

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Codename Taco 20.02.2013 10:13

And now comes the opportunity to dispense misinformation. Fabricate some documents and make it seem like the process is 90% rainbows and unicorns with a smear of dirt to give it a believable patina. Wikileaks is a tool, it can be used in more ways than for what it was originally intended. Who's to say Assange isn't on payroll anyway? If there's going to be conflict and debate anyway, the goal should be to control all sides until it becomes nothing but theater for the masses.

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D'artagnan 11.02.2013 22:05

Divulgement of drone killing decisions and qualifications would cause a major panic as 10s of millions of citizens would now be confronted with the fact that they are possible candidates for elimination. Basically if you pose a security threat (such as protestors) you could be here today and toast tomorrow.

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