The irony of this one is so delicious it should be on the menu at the Four Seasons: Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder who declared his life’s mission to be spilling the world’s beans, is seeing red over the latest secret to be revealed — his.
Assange is furious that a Scottish publisher has just released his “unauthorized autobiography,” based on a manuscript he’d submitted.
The publishing firm, Canongate, said it decided to publish the book because Assange was trying to break a contract to write his memoir without repaying a $1 million-plus advance — which he’d already spent on legal fees.
Assange disowned the ghostwritten book last March, one month after he threatened to take legal action to quash a tell-all book about WikiLeaks by a former staffer.
Which itself came a couple of months after he complained about government leaks of a probe involving his alleged sex crimes. (He’s now under partial house arrest in London while fighting extradition to Sweden.)
But now, he wrote in an online statement, “I will have to buy ‘my autobiography’ in order to learn the extent of the errors and inaccuracies … but the damage is done.”
Actually, for Assange to be whining about damage from unauthorized disclosures isn’t irony — it’s colossal nerve.
Though he claims to be practicing journalism, Assange is an activist whose real mission is to damage America.
And he’s been pretty good at it.
He’s done incalculable harm — even admitting that he released classified military field reports so as to sabotage the troop surge in Afghanistan.
US officials say his document dumps have jeopardized military operations, sensitive diplomatic relations — and lives.
It is to the Obama administration’s discredit that criminal charges were never filed against him.
Which means that there’s precious little else to be done but relish his ironic embarrassments — and hope that Swedish officials get their hands on him soon and put him away for a long time.