A Closer Look at that E-Mail Leak

Published: July 27, 2016

By Jim Lichtman
Image
Read More

The day before the Democratic National Convention convened in Philadelphia, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, announced that she will resign after the release of thousands of internal e-mail exchanges among Democratic insiders that demonstrated a clear bias towards Clinton during the primaries.

assange

“Many of the most damaging e-mails,” The Washington Post writes (July 25), “suggest the committee was actively trying to undermine Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign. Basically all of these examples came late in the primary — after Hillary Clinton was clearly headed for victory — but they belie the national party committee’s stated neutrality in the race even at that late stage.”

But there’s more to the story than DNC officials trying to chip away at the Sanders’ campaign.

The release came via WikiLeaks, the online organization that has made a name and habit of releasing secret information such as the 2010 Iraq war documents via leaker US Army Private Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning, currently serving a 35-year prison sentence.

In the case of the DNC e-mails, however, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, made it clear that the release of the e-mails, allegedly hacked by Russian “actors,” was timed to damage Hillary Clinton’s chance of becoming president.

The New York Times reports (July 26), “In the interview, Mr. Assange told a British television host, Robert Peston of the ITV network, that his organization had obtained ‘e-mails related to Hillary Clinton which are pending publication,’ which he pronounced ‘great.’ He also suggested that he not only opposed her candidacy on policy grounds, but also saw her as a personal foe.

“At one point, Mr. Peston said: ‘Plainly, what you are saying, what you are publishing, hurts Hillary Clinton. Would you prefer Trump to be president?’

“Mr. Assange replied that what Mr. Trump would do as president was ‘completely unpredictable.’ By contrast, he thought it was predictable that Mrs. Clinton would wield power in two ways he found problematic. First, citing his ‘personal perspective,’ Mr. Assange accused Mrs. Clinton of having been among those pushing to indict him after WikiLeaks disseminated a quarter of a million diplomatic cables during her tenure as secretary of state.

“ ‘We do see her as a bit of a problem for freedom of the press more generally,’ Mr. Assange said. … ‘She has a long history of being a liberal war hawk,’ Assange said, ‘and we presume she is going to proceed’ with that approach if elected president.”

In an online essay that appeared on the WikiLeaks site last February, Assange writes, “Hillary’s problem is not just that she’s war hawk. She’s a war hawk with bad judgment who gets an unseemly emotional rush out of killing people. She shouldn’t be let near a gun shop, let alone an army. And she certainly should not become president of the United States.”

Don’t you like people with a personal axe to grind who hide under the rationale of performing a public service?

The Times writes, “After the Democratic chairwoman, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz, resigned Monday when Sanders supporters reacted angrily to revelations in the e-mails that party officials had privately rooted for Mrs. Clinton to win the presidential nomination, Mr. Assange told the news program ‘Democracy Now!’ that he timed their release to coincide with the Democratic convention.

“ ‘Often it’s the case that we have to do a lot of exploration and marketing of the material we publish ourselves to get a big political impact for it,’ he said. ‘But in this case, we knew, because of the pending D.N.C., because of the degree of interest in the U.S. election, we didn’t need to establish partnerships with The New York Times or The Washington Post.’

“Asked on that program whether the Russian government gave him the e-mails, Mr. Assange said he never reveals sources but also that ‘no one knows who our source is.’ He also said the Democratic National Committee might have been hacked on multiple occasions by different intruders.”

I’m not going to pretend that the DNC e-mails aren’t shameful. They are, but Assange has long seen himself as the Lone Ranger who rides to the rescue of all in the name of honesty and transparency. However, Assange’s own transparency reveals that it’s all about revenge; revenge for not only being criticized for leaking 250,000 secret cables (deserved), but because Clinton has called for his indictment (also deserved).

Comments

Leave a Comment



Read More Articles
The Latest... And Sometimes Greatest
We Remember
On this anniversary of 9/11, let’s take a moment to remember those we lost and honor the heroes who ran toward danger. It was a...
September 11, 2024
The Enemy Within
In 63 BCE, Rome was facing an internal crisis that threatened to destroy the Republic. Roman senator Lucius Sergius Catilina, known as Catiline, was conspiring...
September 10, 2024
This is Why I Have Lost All Faith in the Ability of Republicans to Govern
This is Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia addressing his Senate colleagues regarding the proposed Senate Border Security Bill. Share this… Facebook Pinterest Twitter Linkedin...
September 8, 2024
A New Pearl of Great Price: Blind Faith in Trump
Legend has it that a man once approached the Jewish sage Hillel the Elder with a challenge: if he could sum up the principles of...
September 6, 2024
Our Better Angels Better Show Up
A good friend and I have what we call our “Best Friends Thursday” lunches, where we catch up on the events of the day, primarily...
September 3, 2024
NY Times: More than 200 Bush, McCain and Romney Staffers Endorse Harris
Bush, McCain, and Romney Alumni for Harris Statement “Four years ago, President George W. Bush, the late Sen. John McCain, and then-Gov. Mitt Romney alumni...
August 27, 2024