Dr. Brian Palmer of Uppsala University in Sweden provided an illuminating interview on the Jan.13 edition of my Washington Update radio show regarding the influence of Karl Rove on Swedish politics as an advisor to the governing Moderate Party.

Sweden is leading a global manhunt to question WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange on claims of sex misconduct filed by a politically connected lawyer at the same time the United States has launched an investigation of Assange and WikiLeaks volunteers for possession of secret diplomatic cables.

Palmer described why he co-authored a Swedish-language book about political parties were attracting voters, “George W. Reinfeldt: The art of making a political extreme makeover.” The book describes  how  Sweden’s political right, including Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, were creating an image of moderation, much as did U.S. President George W. Bush during his 2000 campaign.

The interview with my co-host Scott Draughon may be heard worldwide by archive via the My Technology Lawyer Radio Network.  Earlier in the week, I published evidence that Swedish sex probes of Assange and United States spy probes are suspect.

One column published by Connecticut Watchdog was headlined, “Partner at Firm Counseling Assange's Accusers Helped the CIA In Rendition for Torture.”  I amplify these comments Jan. 16 on the Connecticut Watchdog News Hour at 6 p.m. (ET), a video show available  globally.

Palmer and his co-author and Per-Anders Forstorp wrote a 2008 newspaper column describing a visit by Rove to Sweden that year. They said the trip’s purpose was to help conservatives reconfigure their public image in ways predicted by George Orwell and implemented successfully, in Palmer’s view, by President Bush.

“The method was the same as previously used by Bush and now John McCain: taking advantage of workers' anger against the elites,” they wrote.” If there were a prize named the George Orwell Award for linguistic innovations, Reinfeldt would be an obvious winner.”

Best-selling spy thriller author Thomas Bodström ─ an attorney whose firm represents the two Swedish women making the notorious sex charges against WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange ─ knows better than most people that truth is stranger than fiction.  As Sweden's Minister of Justice,

Bodström, shown at right in a photo via Wikipedia, helped his nation in 2001 secretly turn over to the Central Intelligence Agency two asylum-seekers suspected by the CIA of terror, according to materials recently obtained by the Justice Integrity Project and by the Legal Schnauzer blogger Roger Shuler, who  broke the story Jan. 11.

The CIA flew the terror suspects to Egypt for torture as part of the decade's rendition effort requiring secret, high-level Swedish cooperation. Assange is the subject of a recent global manhunt by the Swedes seeking him for sex questioning. The United States is investigating him intensely, but has not filed charges. But Assange can take only cold comfort that Sweden, under international pressure, eventually awarded the 2001 asylum seekers damages for torture.

On Jan. 11, Assange's attorneys spoke of their fears that if Great Britain sends their client to Sweden for an inquiry on sex charges he could end up being sent by Sweden to the United States on spy charges. There, the defense lawyers said,

Assange could face death or imprisonment at Guantanamo in Cuba, where the Bush and Obama administrations can hold so-called terrorists almost indefinitely with minimal due process.

As a parallel development, the Obama administration has used the disclosures as rationale for a wide-ranging crackdown not simply against WikiLeaks but against anyone in government or the media, particularly the web-based media, who might disclose secrets that the government regards as threatening national security.

Our project summarized these developments this week in a column, "Whistleblower Says: Obama's DoJ Declares War on Whistleblowers."

By Andrew Kreig /Project Director's Blog

Best-selling spy thriller author Thomas Bodström ─ an attorney who represents the two Swedish women making the notorious sex charges against WikiLeaks leader Julian Assange ─ knows better than most people that truth is stranger than fiction.

As Sweden’s Minister of Justice, Bodström helped his nation in 2001 secretly turn over to the Central Intelligence Agency two asylum-seekers suspected by the CIA of terror, according to materials recently obtained by the Justice Integrity Project that I lead and the Legal Schnauzer blog of Roger Shuler.  Shuler broke this story this morning in a blog headlined, ”Lawyer for Assange Accusers Has Apparent Ties to CIA and Torture.”

The CIA flew the terror suspects to Egypt for torture as part of the decade’s rendition effort requiring secret, high-level Swedish cooperation. Assange, the subject of a recent global manhunt by the Swedes seeking him for sex questioning and by the United States for spy charges, can take only cold comfort that Sweden eventually welcomed back the 2001 asylum seekers and awarded them damages for their torture. On Jan. 11, Assange’s attorneys spoke of their fears that if Great Britain sends their client to Sweden to Sweden for an inquiry on sex charges he could end up being sent by Sweden to the United States on spy charges. There, the defense lawyers said, Assange could face death or imprisonment at Guantanamo in Cuba, where the Bush and Obama administrations hold so-called terrorists almost indefinitely with minimal due process protections.

As a parallel development, the Obama administration has used the disclosures as rationale for a wide-ranging crackdown not simply against WikiLeaks but against anyone in government or the media, particularly the web-based, who might disclose secrets that the government regards as threatening national security. Our project summarized these developments this week in a column, “Whistleblower Says: Obama's DoJ Declares War on Whistleblowers.”

WikiLeaks Questions
Bodström is sometimes described as “The John Grisham of Sweden.”  He left his Social Democratic Party and his Parliament seat last fall to move to the United States for six months, citing a need for family time and to write another book, a curious posture for a lawyer at the center of one of the world’s most controversial cases.

Is Bodström again cooperating with U.S. authorities in their all-out effort to save the United States, Sweden – and perhaps Bodström himself – from further embarrassment caused by cables WikiLeaks might release from its still secret trove? Or are Swedish authorities proceeding normally, as they claim, in launching a global Interpol manhunt to capture Assange to question him about precisely how and why he engaged in sex-without-a-condom last summer with two women who invited him separately to stay with him in their beds while he was on a speaking tour? 

By Andrew Kreig

Dana Jill Simpson, the Alabama attorney who stepped forward in 2007 to provide sworn evidence on how her fellow Republicans were framing Democratic former Gov. Don Siegelman on corruption charges, today released a statement saying that President Obama’s Department of Justice has declared a “war on whistleblowers.”

Simpson gave her statement to our Justice Integrity Project and OpEd News contributor Roger Shuler of Alabama’s Legal Schnauzer for release first to OpEd News, the main outlet for several previous opinion columns she has written. “We are getting dangerously close to becoming a “Dictator Democracy’ where even our thoughts can get us in trouble,” wrote Simpson, “and anything we do to bring truth to our citizens can get us thrown in jail.”

Aside from CBS 60 Minutes and MSNBC interviews broadcast in 2008 about the Siegelman case, Simpson rarely speaks in public despite what she describes as more than 100 broadcast and cable invitations.  Similarly, she has written only a few opinion columns. Most notable were those for OpEd News last year when she concluded that Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan was not likely to protect civil rights as much as most Democrats imagined, given Kagan’s advocacy of more imprisonment for Siegelman and similar indications excessive deference to secrecy and executive power.

Simpson’s strong words now are prompted by the Obama administration’s failure to follow up on whistleblower complaints such as hers nationally about the justice system. Instead, she denounces the Obama DoJ’s coddling of corrupt office holders from past administrations and its retributions against whistleblowers and investigative journalists.

A prominent Swedish political commentator dismissed as unpersuasive my column last week suggesting that Karl Rove’s Swedish consulting work might play a role in ongoing law enforcement probes of WikiLeaks on both sides of the Atlantic.

Timbro Media Institute Executive Director Roland P. Martinsson, at left, called also for the United States government to prosecute WikiLeaks for hurting Western security and embarrassing government officials.

Further, he expressed confidence that the Swedish justice system is investigating WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange fairly for potential misconduct in unprotected sex with two women. Critics describe the manhunt as a gimmick to smear the defendant and bring him to Sweden for extradition to the United States.

The Connecticut Watchdog column published last week, “Rove Suspected of Role In Swedish WikiLeaks Probe,” attracted a large number of domestic and international readers as well as several conservative critics. I provided the conservative author and commentator Martinsson the opportunity on my “Washington Update” radio show Jan. 6 to respond.

But other national security and WikiLeaks-related developments have exploded worldwide since then, capturing public attention and holding potentially important implications for voters and Internet consumers.

Most dramatic and horrifying, a gunman shot Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords during a rampage that killed Bush-appointed federal trial judge John Roll and five others at the congresswoman’s voter forum in Arizona. The shooting already is raising fears that members of Congress will curtail public access. Rightists had opposed Giffords and 19 other Democrats during this year’s mid-term elections with some printed materials suggesting them as “targets.”