DECEMBER 7, 2018
“This is going to be one of
the most infamous news disasters since Stern published the ‘Hitler Diaries.’”
– WikiLeaks, Twitter, Nov 27, 2018
Those at The Guardian
certainly felt they were onto something. It would be a scoop that would have
consequences on a range of fronts featuring President Donald Trump’s former
campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Julian Assange and the eponymous Russian
connection with the 2016 US elections.
If they could tie the ribbon
of Manafort over the Assage package, one linked to the release of hacked
Democratic National Committee emails in the summer of 2016, they could strike
journalistic gold. At one stroke, they could achieve a trifecta: an exposé on
WikiLeaks, Russian involvement, and the tie-in with the Trump campaign.
The virally charged story,
when run towards the leg end of November, claimed that Manafort had visited
Assange in the embassy “in 2013, 2015 and in spring 2016.” Speculation happily
followed in an account untroubled by heavy documentation. “It is unclear why
Manafort would have wanted to see Assange and what was discussed. But the last
apparent meeting is likely to come under scrutiny and could interest Robert
Mueller, the special prosecutor who is investigating alleged collusion between
the Trump campaign and Russia.”
It was a strikingly shoddy
effort. An “internal document” supposedly garnered from the Ecuadorean
intelligence agency named a certain “Paul Manaford [sic]” as a guest while also
noting the presence of “Russians”. No document or individual names were supplied.
The enterprise was supposedly
to come with an added satisfaction: getting one over the prickly Assange, a
person with whom the paper has yet a frosty association with since things went
pear shaped after Cablegate in 2010. Luke Harding, the lead behind this latest
packaging effort, has received his fair share of pasting in the past, with
Assange accusing him of “minimal additional research” and mere reiteration in
the shabby cobbling The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World’s Most
Wanted Man (2014). “The Guardian,” Assange observed in reviewing the work, “is
a curiously inward-looking beast.” Harding, for his part, is whistling the
promotional tune of his unmistakably titled book Collusion: How Russia Helped
Trump Win the White House. The feud persists with much fuel.
Unfortunately for those coup
seekers attempting a framed symmetry, the bomb has yet to detonate, an inert
creature finding its ways into placid waters. WikiLeaks was, understandably,
the first out of the stables with an irate tweet. “Remember this day when the
Guardian permitted a serial fabricator to totally destroy the paper’s
reputation. @WikiLeaks is willing to bet the Guardian a million dollars and its
editor’s head that Manafort never met Assange.”
Manafort himself denied ever
meeting Assange. “I have never met Julian Assange or anyone connected to him. I
have never been contacted by anyone connected to WikiLeaks, either directly or
indirectly. I have never reached out to Assange or WikiLeaks on any matter.”
WikiLeaks has also pointed to
a certain busy bee fabricator as a possible source for Harding et al, an
Ecuadorean journalist by the name of Fernando Villavicencio. Villavicencio cut
his teeth digging into the record of Moreno’s predecessor and somewhat Assange
friendly, Rafael Correa.
Glenn Greenwald, himself
having had a stint – and a fruitful one covering the Snowden revelations on the
National Security Agency – had also been relentless on the inconsistencies. If
Manafort did visit Assange, why the vagueness and absence of evidence? London,
he points out, “is one of the world’s most surveilled, if not the most
surveilled, cities.” The Ecuadorean embassy is, in turn, “one of the most
scrutinized, surveilled, monitored and filmed locations on the planet.” Yet no
photographic or video evidence has been found linking Manafort to Assange.
The grey-haired establishment
types are also wondering about the lack of fizz and bubble. Paul Farhi at The
Washington Post furnishes an example: “No other news organization has been able
to corroborate the Guardian’s reporting to substantiate its central claim of a
meeting. News organizations typically do such independent reporting to confirm
important stories.”
Another distorting aspect to
this squalid matter is the Manafort-Ecuadorean link, which does little to help
Harding’s account. A debt-ridden Manafort, according to the New York Times,
ventured his way to Ecuador in mid-May last year to proffer his services to the
newly elected president, Lenín Moreno. Moreno could not have been flattered:
this was a man’s swansong and rescue bid, desperate to ingratiate himself with
governments as varied as Iraqi Kurdistan and Puerto Rico.
In two meetings (the number
might be more) between Manafort and his Ecuadorean interlocutor, various issues
were canvassed. Eyes remained on China but there was also interest in finding
some workable solution to debt relief from the United States. Then came that
issue of a certain Australian, and now also Ecuadorean national, holed up in
the Ecuadorean embassy in Knightsbridge, London.
Moreno has been courting
several options, none of which seem to have grown wings. A possibility of
getting a diplomatic post for Assange in Russia did not take off. (British
authorities still threatened the prospect of arrest.) The issue of removing the
thorniest dissident publisher in modern memory remains furiously alive.
As ever, accounts of the
Moreno-Manafort tête-à-tête vary. A spokesman for Manafort, one Jason Maloni,
suggests a different account. Manafort was not the instigator, but merely the
recipient, of a query from Moreno about “his desire to remove Julian Assange
from Ecuador’s embassy.” Manafort listened impassively, “but made no promises
as this was ancillary to the purpose of the meeting.” Russia, he sought to
clarify, did not crop up.
Fraud might run through
Manafort’s blood (convictions on eight counts of bank-and tax-fraud is fairly
convincing proof of that), but the case assembled against Assange seems very
much one of enthusiastic botch-up masquerading as a stitch-up. So far, the paper
has batten down the hatches, and Harding has referred any queries through The
Guardian’s spokesman, Brendan O’Grady. Zeal can be punishing. O’Grady will have
to earn his keep.
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