The
Guardian did not make a mistake in vilifying Assange without a shred
of evidence. It did what it is designed to do, says Jonathan Cook.
by
Jonathan Cook
Part
3 - Heavy Surveillance
The
problem for The Guardian, which should have been obvious to
its editors from the outset, is that any visits by Manafort would be
easily verifiable without relying on unnamed “sources”.
Glenn
Greenwald is far from alone in noting that London is possibly the
most surveilled city in the world, with CCTV cameras everywhere. The
environs of the Ecuadorian embassy are monitored especially heavily,
with continuous filming by the UK and Ecuadorian authorities and most
likely by the US and other actors with an interest in Assange’s
fate.
The
idea that Manafort or “Russians” could have wandered into the
embassy to meet Assange even once without their trail, entry and
meeting being intimately scrutinized and recorded is simply
preposterous.
According
to Greenwald: “If Paul Manafort … visited Assange at the
Embassy, there would be ample amounts of video and other photographic
proof demonstrating that this happened. The Guardian provides none of
that.”
Former
British ambassador Craig Murray also points out the extensive
security checks insisted on by the embassy to which any visitor to
Assange must submit. Any visits by Manafort would have been logged.
In fact,
The Guardian obtained the embassy’s logs in
May, and has never made any mention of either Manafort or “Russians”
being identified in them. It did not refer to the logs in its latest
story.
Murray:
“The problem with this latest fabrication is that [Ecuador’s
President] Moreno had already released the visitor logs to the
Mueller inquiry. Neither Manafort nor these ‘Russians’ are in the
visitor logs … What possible motive would the Ecuadorean government
have for facilitating secret unrecorded visits by Paul Manafort?
Furthermore it is impossible that the intelligence agency – who
were in charge of the security – would not know the identity of
these alleged ‘Russians’.”
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