Assange vows WikiLeaks strength despite new threats

First Published: 2010-12-20

US seeks legal pursuit of Assange as Biden calls founder of whistleblowing website 'hi-tech terrorist'.

Middle East Online

WEF head: 'WikiLeaks is the expression of a new reality' LONDON - US vice president Joe Biden on Sunday blasted Julian Assange as a dangerous "hi-tech terrorist" and said Washington was exploring a legal pursuit of the WikiLeaks founder, while the Australian vowed the site will stay strong. Biden made the comments as Assange spent his third full day under "mansion arrest" at a friend's house in eastern England while he fights extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over allegations of sex crimes. The Australian has enraged the United States by obtaining a cache of some 250,000 US diplomatic cables and slowly releasing the documents through his whistleblowing website, often causing huge embarrassment in Washington. Assange voiced fears last week that the US would try to extradite him on charges related to the leaked cables, and Biden said the US Justice Department was examining how to take legal action against Assange. "We're looking at that right now," the vice president told NBC's Sunday talk show "Meet the Press", without elaborating on just how the administration could act against the WikiLeaks chief. "I'm not going to comment on that process." When asked whether he thought Assange was a hi-tech terrorist or a whistleblower akin to those who released the Pentagon Papers -- a series of top-secret documents revealing US military policy in Vietnam -- Biden said: "I would argue that it's closer to being hi-tech terrorist." As he savoured his first day of freedom Friday after a British court released him on bail, Assange said his lawyers believed a secret US grand jury investigation had been started into his role in the diplomatic cable leak. Media reports suggest that US prosecutors are trying to build a case against him on the grounds that he encouraged a US soldier, Bradley Manning, to steal US cables from a government computer and pass them to WikiLeaks. Assange has denied knowing Manning. A report by congressional researchers said the Espionage Act and other US laws could be used to prosecute Assange, but there is no known precedent for prosecuting publishers in such a case. Assange is staying at Ellingham Hall, the mansion in eastern England of journalist friend Vaughan Smith, as part of the conditions of bail, which he was granted by London's High Court on Thursday. He must also report daily to a nearby police station and wear an electronic tag. On Saturday, WikiLeaks was dealt another blow when Bank of America, the largest US bank, became the latest institution to halt financial transactions for the site after MasterCard, PayPal, Visa Europe and others. The bank said its decision was "based upon our reasonable belief that WikiLeaks may be engaged in activities that are, among other things, inconsistent with our internal policies for processing payments." But Assange lashed out at the move, saying "It's a new type of business McCarthyism in the US to deprive this organisation of the funds that it needs to survive, to deprive me personally of the funds that my lawyers need to protect me against extradition to the US or to Sweden." The term was coined to describe the anti-communist pursuits of former US senator Joseph McCarthy from the late 1940s to the 1950s. Assange claimed earlier in an interview with Forbes magazine that a "megaleak" by the website will target a major US bank "early next year". New information about the allegations Assange faces in Sweden also emerged at the weekend. Several British newspapers published lurid new details of the claims of sexual assault against two women, over which Swedish prosecutors want to question him. The 39-year-old denies the charges. The Guardian newspaper -- which has cooperated with WikiLeaks on the publication of the US documents -- and the Mail on Sunday both reported that the two women with whom he had sex in Sweden had gone to police after he refused to take an HIV test. Assange hit out at Swedish handling of the case, accusing authorities there of leaking fresh details about the case that even he and his defence lawyers have not had access to. The former computer hacker also reiterated that there were threats against his life and those of the website's staff, but he vowed that WikiLeaks would continue publishing the cables. "We are a robust organisation. During my time in solitary confinement we continued to publish every day and it's not going to change," he said. WikiLeaks founder sought as guest at Davos forum The head of the Davos economic forum said Sunday he would have liked Assange to attend next month's summit of world political and business elites in the Swiss ski resort. "I should invite him," Klaus Schwab, head of the World Economic Forum (WEF), told Sunday newspaper SonntagsZeitung. "But it is not possible as he is not allowed to leave Britain." "I will wait until Swedish justice clears him," Schwab said. "WikiLeaks is the expression of a new reality," Schwab said. "The balance between the private sphere and transparency has been radically altered. Governments, companies and decision-makers must accept to find themselves permanently in a glass room," he said. "We will discuss this in Davos but our priority will be to draw the lessons and consequences of the financial crisis and debt," he added. Schwab said 27 world leaders, including Russian President Dmitry Medvedev who will make the opening address, will take part in the forum which runs from January 26 to 30. The annual meeting in the Swiss mountains was first held four decades ago and aims to bring leaders together to discuss the most pressing issues facing the world.