Whistleblower wants Hillary to quit; ridiculous, says US
AGENCIES, Dec 2, 2010, 05.54am IST
LONDON: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange believes that US secretary of state Hillary Clinton should resign if it is proved that she was responsible for ordering US diplomatic figures to engage in espionage in the United Nations, in violation of the international covenants to which the US has signed up.
"Yes, she should resign over that," The Times and Politico quoted him, as saying. Assange spoke from an undisclosed location via Skype with Richard Stengel, Time's managing editor. Assange said he doesn't think his project is breaking US law. He said, "We have now in our 4-year history and over one hundred legal attacks of various kinds and have been victorious in all of those matters.
"It's very important to remember the law is not what, not simply what powerful people would want others to believe it is. The law is not what a general says it is. The law is not what Hillary Clinton says it is," he added.
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said on Wednesday that Assange's statements "are both ridiculous and absurd." Hillary, he said, has done nothing wrong, and US diplomats do not engage in spying. He spoke in an interview on NBC television.
State department officials said that secret instructions to American diplomats to gather sensitive personal information about foreign leaders originated from the US intelligence community but did not require diplomats to spy. Requests for DNA and biometric data on foreign officials were contained in leaked classified cables published by WikiLeaks. "Secretary Clinton is doing a great job," Gibbs said. "The president has great confidence in and admires the work that secretary Clinton has done."
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