Assange : If something happens to WikiLeaks, key cables will be released

More than 100,000 people now have "encrypted" copies of the State Department diplomatic cables in WikiLeaks’ latest disclosures, founder Julian Assange claimed today in an online exchange with readers of The Guardian.

So, he said, "if something happens to us, the key parts will be released automatically." In other words, if authorities shut down his website, the information will still be public.

On whether his site’s leaks have endangered lives, Assange wrote that "there has been no credible allegation, even by organizations like the Pentagon that even a single person has come to harm as a result of our activities."

As for Assange’s whereabouts, the Swedish arrest warrant stemming from an alleged rape case (he says he’s innocent) or the prospect that he may soon be put in custody, those subjects didn’t get much time in the online forum. The one indirect mention : A reader asked about the "personal" nature of the reactions to the leaks - " ’Julian Assange leaked documents’, ’Julian Assange is a terrorist’, ’Julian Assange alledgedly raped a woman’, ’Julian Assange should be assassinated’ " - and whether Assange should not have made himself the "face" of WikiLeaks.

From Assange’s response :

"This is an interesting question. I originally tried hard for the organisation to have no face, because I wanted egos to play no part in our activities. ... (But) in the end, someone must be responsible to the public and only a leadership that is willing to be publicly courageous can genuinely suggest that sources take risks for the greater good. In that process, I have become the lightening rod. I get undue attacks on every aspect of my life, but then I also get undue credit as some kind of balancing force."

It is to be recalled also that terrorist gang FSB is also threatening to kill Assange. A renowned American magazine, The National Examiner, specializing in disclosing materials, reported about it. The website reports in an article by its journalist Bill Belew :

"The latest round of Wikileaks materials has embarrassed the Obama Administration, creating a diplomatic crisis. However, their next target, Russia might not play as nicely as the US.

National security officials say that the National Security Agency, the U.S. government’s eavesdropping agency, has already picked up tell-tale electronic evidence that WikiLeaks is under close surveillance by the Russian FSB, that country’s domestic spy network, out of fear in Moscow that WikiLeaks is prepared to release damaging personal information about Kremlin leaders.

Maybe Wikileaks leader Julian Assange missed this memo, the Russians play for keeps. They are very good at taking out people who say too much. Perhaps this is one reason he is on the move so much.

The National Examiner provides a link to the U.S. portal Hot Air, which first citing the following first 3 paragraphs from the American newspaper The Daily Beast, and then, starting from the 4^th paragraph, is written on their own, in a message dated 30 November :

"American intelligence and law-enforcement agencies, outraged by their inability to stop WikiLeaks and its release this week of hundreds of thousands of sensitive U.S. diplomatic cables, are convinced that the whistle-blowing website is about to come up against an adversary that will stop at nothing to shut it down it (obviously to kill Assange - KC) : The Russian government.

"We may not have been able to stop WikiLeaks so far, and it’s been frustrating," a U.S. law-enforcement official tells The Daily Beast. "The Russians play by different rules."

He said that if WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange, follow through on threats to post highly embarrassing information about the Russian government and what is assumed to be massive corruption among its leaders, "the Russians will be ruthless in stopping WikiLeaks."

The Russians, under the leadership of former KGB (now FSB) officer Vladimir Putin, have not blanched at, well, much of anything. The death of Alexander Litvinenko from a slow-acting poison is widely believed to have been an assassination conducted by the FSB. 

The poisoning of Ukrainian leader Viktor Yushchenko in the Orange Revolution was similarly suspicious, and dissident Boris Berezovsky survived at least one attempt on his life as well.

That problem may be more acute for the people who supplied Assange with the data rather than Assange himself. The FSB has restrained itself mainly to attacking Russian expatriates (and what about a murder of Kaczynski ? - KC) rather than Westerners, but as the DB reports, Wikileaks almost certainly got whatever they have through that route, especially from the super-rich Russian industrialists that had to flee after Putin took power.

Given Assange’s predilection for releasing information in its raw form, the FSB will likely have little problem finding the sources of the data and making sure that they won’t give Assange anything else ever".

It is to be noted that this information by American media outlets is confirmed from an independent source, unknown by these media outlets at the time of publication. Therefore, by the standards of American journalism (Russian journalism have no rules, they are simply branches of the KGB/FSB), it is a reliable information.

We are talking about a threat to Assange from another Russian terrorist gang, the SVR. As for the Russian terrorist gang FSB, it operates in this case without drawing attention to it with new threats. Previous threats have been openly made 2 weeks ago