Assange accuses U.S. of death threats

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange accused highest American officials, vice president Joe Biden and congresswoman Sarah Palin, on calling for his assassination. In an interview in CBS’s 60 Minutes on Sunday evening, Assange estimated that American officials’’ accusations against WikiLeaks are “completely outrageous”, adding that is “the worst form of censorship we have seen since the 1950s, since the McCarthy era”. Assange accuses U.S. of death threats “The statements by the Vice President Joe Biden saying that I was a high tech terrorist... Sarah Palin calling for me to be treated like the Taliban, to be hunted down. These are calls for my assassination or for the assassination of my staff,” Assange said. WikiLeaks founder gained international fame in November 2010 when his website began publishing over 250,000 leaked U.S. diplomatic cables. Investigators in the U.S. tried, and reportedly so far failed, to establish a link between Assange and U.S. Army soldier Bradley Manning, who is accused of illegally downloading tens of thousands of government documents and passing them to an authorized person. It has been widely reported that person is Assange, something the 39-year-old Australian resolutely denied. “We’ve actually played inside the rules," Assange said to CBS. "We didn’t go out to get the material. We operated just like any other publisher in the USA operated. There’s a special set of rules for soldiers, for members of the State Department for disclosing sets of classified information. Prosecuting a publisher... that is just not done”, Assange pointed out. Assange declined to comment when he was asked about reports that WikiLeaks was in possession of a 5GB hard drive which belongs to a Bank of America executive. Bank of America's stock dropped by more than three percent in November 2010, due to a speculation that WikiLeaks would soon release their internal documents. The interview with Assange was conducted in a private home in East Sussex, about 72 kilometers south of London, where he must reside under bail conditions during a court process regarding his extradition him to Sweden, where he is accused of sexual assault – accusations he repeatedly denied. He denied he was motivated by anti-Americanism or other political intentional, and he described his group as "free press activists". Assange also said there is no way to stop WikiLeaks, as well as that the U.S. government does not have the technology to take the site down and to prevent future documentation leaks. “We have a system of distributing encrypted backups of things we have yet to publish," he explained. “There are backups distributed amongst many, many people, 100,000 people, and all we need to do is to give them an encrypted key and they will be able to continue on their own. If a number of people were imprisoned or assassinated we would feel we could not go on and other people would have to take over our work and we would release those keys.” Meanwhile, extracts from a his biography reveal that Assange disguised himself as an old woman in order to elude some US intelligence officers for whom he believed were following him, AFP reported. In the biography written by Guardian newspaper journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding, it is also written that the hacker did not know his biological father until the age of 27. Julian Assange (Beta/AP, file)

Assange accuses U.S. of death threats

“The statements by the Vice President Joe Biden saying that I was a high tech terrorist... Sarah Palin calling for me to be treated like the Taliban, to be hunted down. These are calls for my assassination or for the assassination of my staff,” Assange said.

WikiLeaks founder gained international fame in November 2010 when his website began publishing over 250,000 leaked U.S. diplomatic cables.

Investigators in the U.S. tried, and reportedly so far failed, to establish a link between Assange and U.S. Army soldier Bradley Manning, who is accused of illegally downloading tens of thousands of government documents and passing them to an authorized person.

It has been widely reported that person is Assange, something the 39-year-old Australian resolutely denied.

“We’ve actually played inside the rules," Assange said to CBS. "We didn’t go out to get the material. We operated just like any other publisher in the USA operated. There’s a special set of rules for soldiers, for members of the State Department for disclosing sets of classified information. Prosecuting a publisher... that is just not done”, Assange pointed out.

Assange declined to comment when he was asked about reports that WikiLeaks was in possession of a 5GB hard drive which belongs to a Bank of America executive. Bank of America's stock dropped by more than three percent in November 2010, due to a speculation that WikiLeaks would soon release their internal documents.

The interview with Assange was conducted in a private home in East Sussex, about 72 kilometers south of London, where he must reside under bail conditions during a court process regarding his extradition him to Sweden, where he is accused of sexual assault – accusations he repeatedly denied.

He denied he was motivated by anti-Americanism or other political intentional, and he described his group as "free press activists".

Assange also said there is no way to stop WikiLeaks, as well as that the U.S. government does not have the technology to take the site down and to prevent future documentation leaks.

“We have a system of distributing encrypted backups of things we have yet to publish," he explained. “There are backups distributed amongst many, many people, 100,000 people, and all we need to do is to give them an encrypted key and they will be able to continue on their own. If a number of people were imprisoned or assassinated we would feel we could not go on and other people would have to take over our work and we would release those keys.”

Meanwhile, extracts from a his biography reveal that Assange disguised himself as an old woman in order to elude some US intelligence officers for whom he believed were following him, AFP reported.

In the biography written by Guardian newspaper journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding, it is also written that the hacker did not know his biological father until the age of 27.