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Michael Moore Offers to Post $20K Bond for Assange
As readers are no doubt aware by now, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange appeared in a British court today, and was granted bail.
Many celebrities and public figures reportedly offered to post bail on Assange's behalf when the request was first considered last week, including British heiress Jemima Khan. On this go-around, one of the people who offered to contribute to Assange's freedom was filmmaker Michael Moore.
Moore released his statement to the court explaining the reasons he was willing to pony up $20,000 of his own cash on Asssange's behalf, and explained his decision further at the Huffington Post.
The Huffington Post piece is, well, classic Moore. He ain't shy about his motivations:
I ask you to imagine how much different our world would be if WikiLeaks had existed 10 years ago. Take a look at this photo. That's Mr. Bush about to be handed a "secret" document on August 6th, 2001. Its heading read: "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US." And on those pages it said the FBI had discovered "patterns of suspicious activity in this country consistent with preparations for hijackings." Mr. Bush decided to ignore it and went fishing for the next four weeks.
But if that document had been leaked, how would you or I have reacted? What would Congress or the FAA have done? Was there not a greater chance that someone, somewhere would have done something if all of us knew about bin Laden's impending attack using hijacked planes?
But back then only a few people had access to that document. Because the secret was kept, a flight school instructor in San Diego who noticed that two Saudi students took no interest in takeoffs or landings, did nothing. Had he read about the bin Laden threat in the paper, might he have called the FBI? (Please read this essay by former FBI Agent Coleen Rowley, Time's 2002 co-Person of the Year, about her belief that had WikiLeaks been around in 2001, 9/11 might have been prevented.)
Moore also suggests that the allegations of sexual assault Assange is facing in Sweden may be nothing short of bogus, urging that readers "not be naive about how the government works when it decides to go after its prey."
Odds on a release date for "WikiLeaks: The Movie," anyone?
Posted by Eric Lipman on December 14, 2010 at 01:01 PM | Permalink
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