Featured Opinion

Roger Stone rips WikiLeaks ‘smear’!

By Roger Stone;

Although it was not intended to exonerate me, the incomplete and selectively edited direct message exchanges between a spokesman for WikiLeaks and myself – cited by the Atlantic –  actually prove that I had no advance knowledge of the content or the source of WikiLeaks disclosures regarding Hillary Clinton.

It proves only that I had confirmed Julian Assange’s public claim that he had information on Hillary Clinton and he would publish it.

The exchange provided to the Atlantic is incomplete and ridiculously out of context. The true, complete copy of this exchange, provided months ago to the House Intelligence Committee, clearly demonstrates I had no ‘collaboration’ with WikiLeaks.

Assange himself said as much in an interview with Amy Goodman. He said I never tweeted anything he or WikiLeaks hadn’t said or written publicly. I never claimed otherwise.

As John Podhoretz of the New York Post said this morning on Morning Joe, even the truncated direct mail exchange obtained and published by the Atlantic clears me. Podhoretz said it was exculpatory.

To clarify: My mention in a Florida speech of a ‘back channel to Assange” is merely a reference to confirming a source, who told me, consistent with Assange’s public statements, that WikiLeaks did indeed have material embarrassing to Hillary and would publish it.

While, initially, I declined to identify this confirming source to the House Committee – because I feared professional reprisals against him –  I ultimately provided his name to the Committee at the urging of Rep. Trey Gowdy.

It was Randy Credico, then of WBAI in New York, who confirmed that WikiLeaks did have material devastating to Hillary and that WikiLeaks would publish it in October.

Assange had previously said this publicly.

Credico’s claim that this predates his first on-air interview with Assange is irrelevant, since Credico had other contacts at WikiLeaks.

Credico was, just as I feared, terminated from his job at the legendary progressive radio station.

To be clear: Credico, with whom I have worked with in the struggle for drug law reform, never said who confirmed this at WikiLeaks or indicated he knew the source or content of the material. When Assange scheduled a press conference on October 4, 2016, Credico told me Assange’s lawyers, including Daniel Ellsberg, urged him to delay the release of the material.

I consider Assange to be a journalist, and WikiLeaks to be a news organization, and a repository of information. I reject unproven claims that they are Russian assets. Thus, there would be nothing illegal about Credico’s communication with them, however limited.

I note that I addressed these issues extensively under oath before the House Intelligence Committee, while Mr. Credico elected to assert his Fifth Amendment right not to testify.

The reporter for the Atlantic, Natasha Bertrand, said in a text message that she was told I gave a screenshot of this exchange in particular to a friend.

This is false. I shared the true exchange only with my lawyers and the House Committee.

The content of the exchange with WikiLeaks shows neither any claim by me to have any information beyond what Assange himself had said publicly, and reiterates the statement by WikiLeaks that I had not communicated with them prior to the release of the DNC emails, that were both accurate and damaging to Hillary.

My frustration that whoever is manning the WikiLeaks Twitter direct messages is unaware that I had confirmed Assange’s claim to have Clinton material is also reflected.

That was what I meant when I said WikiLeaks “leaks.”

All of this is evocative of a similar limited exchange I had over Twitter direct message function with someone claiming to be Guccifer 2.0. I once believed his public claim that he had hacked the DNC and provided the hacked material to WikiLeaks. I no longer believe that he did so, or that he is, in fact, a Russian asset – as I testified before the Committee.

More importantly, the complete Twitter exchange, which is now public, is banal, benign, and innocuous, and takes place four weeks after WikiLeaks already published the DNC material.  This proves that charges that I colluded with Guccifer 2.0 to obtain those documents, and give them to WikiLeaks are false.

This is also true of claims that I knew about the hacking of John Podesta’s email and their publication in advance. I never claimed anything of the kind.

I predicted on Twitter that “John Podesta’s time in the barrel” would come. That prediction was based on the January 2016 Panama Papers’ exposure of the Podesta brothers’ Russian business dealings with oligarchs close to Putin in banking, gas, and uranium.

I had also seen a summary memo regarding Podesta’s business dealings by Dr. Jerome Corsi – all culled from public sources. There is no evidence that I learned anything about Podesta or his emails from Wikileaks.

How my Twitter direct messages, which are private, were obtained and leaked to the media raises questions of whether I was hacked, or under secret FISA warrant surveillance, as reported by the New York Times on January 20th, 2016.

Several reporters have insisted that I visited and met with Assange in London in 2016. This too is false. My passport proves I never left the country in 2016.

In 2018, I did drop my card off at the Ecuadorian Embassy when I was in London to address the Oxford Union in February. I did this to punk the British media and protest the continued persecution of Julian Assange.

Julian Assange, I believe, is an honest journalist with a stunning record for accuracy.

 

About the author

Roger Stone

Roger Jason Stone Jr. (born August 27, 1952) is an American political consultant, lobbyist, and strategist, noted for his use of opposition research usually for candidates of the Republican Party.

12 Comments

Click here to post a comment