Noted Swedish Journalist, Assange Critic Exposed As Police Agent

A prize-winning Swedish journalist noted for his left-wing, pro-NATO and anti-WikiLeaks commentary was revealed this month to have been a paid agent of Säpo, his nation's security service.

Martin Fredriksson, shown in a file photo and a winner of a major investigative reporting prize in 2014 for his work exposing right-wing groups opposed to NATO, has been secretly paid for years by Säpo, the Swedish Security Service, according to news reports based on his own admissions.

In deep intrigue that resembles a spy novel, Fredriksson's story undermines conventional wisdom on both sides of the Atlantic that journalists work independently from power centers, including government agencies.

Also, the tale is timely, especially because of Sweden's ongoing persecution of Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange and new revelations by that transparency advocacy group involving Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration.

Authorities have targeted Assange (shown in a file photo) for what appears to be a trumped up sex scandal probe that has extended for nearly six years, apparently in reprisal for massive and ongoing disclosures by WikiLeaks of Western governments' dark secrets.

More generally, United States and NATO pressures upon European leaders are tainting the latter's carefully nurtured images of independence.

Sweden, which has long boasted of an official position of neutrality in world affairs and close adherence to humanitarian and democratic principles under a rule of law, has already hurt its image by its pursuit of Assange. The fallout includes a ruling last month by a United Nations panel that Assange's political asylum in Ecuador's embassy in London since June 2012 to avoid extradition amounts to “arbitrary detention” under international law. 

The Indicter, a start-up global human rights commentary site, underscored in columns March 6 and 13 the sinister implications of the revelations, especially the seemingly odd mixture of Fredriksson's advocacy against Assange and in favor of NATO. The Indicter revealed, for example, that Fredriksson used his clout to lobby for Amnesty International opposition to Assange.

The Indicter's editor is Marcello Ferrada de Noli, Ph.D., shown at left, and a longtime Swedish medical school professor and leader of Swedish Doctors for Human Rights. He drew on disclosures March 2 about Fredriksson in SVD (Svenska Dagbladet, or Swedish Daily) to illustrate a broader theme: that Swedish officials and thought leaders defer far more to the United States and authoritarian policies than commonly understood in liberal democracies, including Sweden.

Sweden's highly irregular investigation of Assange illustrates his thesis.

Ecuador granted Assange political asylum in its London embassy three and half years ago to protect him from a relentless effort by Swedish authorities to extradite him for questioning over rape and sexual assault allegations arising from two affairs he undertook from invitations by women attending his featured speech at an August 2010 conference in Sweden.

Assange submitted to questioning about the claims from the two women, who had separately invited him to stay with them. Authorities have never charged him with a crime but they have mounted an extraordinary campaign to extradite him to Sweden for further questioning after he left the country.

Assange has denied any criminal violation. Also, he has argued unsuccessfully in British courts that the investigation has been a ruse to extradite him to Sweden so he could then be extradited to the United States to face reported but still-secret U.S. charges. Assange is not subject to extradition directly from Britain to the United States. U.S. charges are reported to arise from WikiLeaks disclosures that severely embarrassed officials in the United States, Britain, Sweden and elsewhere in Western governments and private power centers.

Assange Case Background

Today's column summarizes the latest developments in a case that the Justice Integrity Project has covered closely for years, including with major scoops in late 2010 and early 2011 re-reported internationally.

These showed, among other things, that U.S. Republican strategist Karl Rove (shown below in a Bush White House photo) included among his consultant clients Sweden's governing Moderate Party (a confusing name since it is the country's leading conservative party). Also, Rove urged in 2010 on Fox News that Assange be executed for his Wikileaks leadership.

Another of reports was Partner at Firm Counseling Assange's Accusers Helped the CIA In Rendition for Torture. It revealed that Thomas Bodström, a former Justice Minister and name partner in the law firm that has used the two women to level sexual misconduct allegations against Assange, had previously cooperated with the CIA when he was Sweden's top justice official to send at the CIA's request an asylum seeker from Sweden to Egypt, where the man was tortured by Egyptian authorities. Bodström later moved to the United States and wrote spy thrillers.

In future columns soon, we shall explore for the first time here the suspicious history of the two female accusers against Assange. Others, including noted American feminist Naomi Wolf, for years have described Sweden's relentless investigation as highly unusual for activities that began as consensual sex.

Also, we shall explore new disclosures by Wikileaks showing that the State Department under then Secretary Hillary Clinton worked secretly with Google to overthrow Syria's government, as reported in a column March 19, Clinton email reveals: Google sought overthrow of Syria's Assad.

The more general background of the recent disclosures includes mention of Sweden's history of neutrality, including during World War II, as well as its more recent reputation for sinister activities fostered by the assassination of Prime Minister Olof Palme and the sensational literary and film success of the characters created by the late novelist Stieg Larsson in the Millennium Trilogy of crime novels.

Earlier this month, the Indicter published a column headlined Olof Palme and Julian Assange subjected in Sweden to same hate campaign by the same political forces and with the same purpose: to defend U.S. geopolitical interests. The column commemorated the 30th anniversary of Palme, a left-wing politician who had antagonized rightist and NATO by criticizing the Vietnam War years earlier. This editor is on the Indicter's board of directors, whose other members are primarily European.

The specific circumstances of the Palme death remain controversial, albeit beyond the scope of today's column. Perhaps most relevant now is that the Indictor's editor, Ferrada de Noli, was a torture victim of the Chile's late U.S.-supported dictator, Gen. Augusto Pinochet, and has long worked in Europe with kindred spirits to expose and prevent similar human rights abuses.

Pinochet, who succeeded the murdered Chilean President Salvatore Allende in a coup and ruled Chile from 1974 to 1990, is shown meeting in 1976 with U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger.

Aside from his medical school work, two of his most frequent topics as an editor and commentator have been legal irregularities connected with the Assange case and the complacency of Sweden's conventional thought leaders in the media and legal systems. In a 2011 column The “Duck Pond” Theses: Explaining Swedish journalism and the anti-Assange smear campaign. the professor accused many in the media of succumbing to group-think like so many ducks in a pond. 

Another such myth-shatterer was Larsson (below left), who died in 2004 just after his 50th birthday. He was a Swedish journalist who researched right-wing extremism, experiences he drew upon for his breakthrough first novel, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo.

It and two sequels, all published after Larsson's death, chronicled the gripping adventures of fictional heroes Lisbeth Salander, a brilliant and much-abused computer hacker, and  journalist Mikael Blomkvist, her friend and fellow researcher into sinister fascists and their allies lurking behind respectable fronts in Sweden.

The journalist Blomkvist and Salander are featured also in films and Larsson's novels The Girl Who Played with Fire and The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest. At left is a poster showing actress Noomi Rapace as star in The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.

The kind of murder, terror and intrigue fueling hit spy novels and movies inevitably exceeds that in real life, at least as far as most of us can read in the newspapers or reliably know.

Nonetheless, there are at least some parallels between the Swedish world of Salander/Blomkvst and that of the more sedate journalist Martin Fredriksson, the award-winning investigative report and paid police asset.

This Month's Martin Fredriksson Revelations

That background brings us to Fredriksson, who achieved honor in Swedish media circles primarily by investigating right-wing organizations. The account below is from a news report March 2 in Svenska Dagbladet (SVD), one of Sweden's leading daily newspapers, under the headline, When the real Salander sold out to Säpo.

Reporter Sam Sundberg described how Fredriksson had just release a "bomb" on Twitter by revealing his status for many years as a paid Säpo informant during a time when he was active in the Antifascist Action and Research Group. The following translation from Swedish to English is primarily via the Google automatic translation tool, with slight revisions by a non-Swedish-speaking editor to comport with more standard English 

Fredriksson is best known as co-founder in the journalist community of the Research Group, which conducted an extensive digging job of the right-wing's digital activities. In cooperation with the Expressen and Aftonbladet newspapers, he revealed the anonymous authors of racist sites Exposed, Free Times and Avpixlat and hateful writers on the web forum Flashback.

For a collaboration with Expressen, Fredriksson, along with five colleagues in the Research Group, has been awarded the guldspaden, one of Sweden's greatest prizes for investigative journalism. He has also worked as a researcher for Robert Aschberg TV show "Insider."

During the 2000s, Fredriksson spied on the extreme right as a part of the left group Antifascist Action Intelligence. In other words, he is one of those who had the best insight into the activity on both the political front flanks of the past decade. By his own account, it was only the investigations of violent right-wing that he handed over to the Security Service. But it is clear from the comments in social media that even his former allies now shivering.

In the activist groups where Martin Fredriksson thrived, there is a general revulsion against the idea of collaborating with the security police, but also a nervousness that Fredriksson may have leaked information about their own activities. Several of Fredriksson's old colleagues have now hurried to distance themselves from him, including the Research Group. On their website, they write that Säpo-cooperation took place before the group was formed.

But that is not consistent with Fredriksson's own Twitter confession, in which he writes that the second period of the collaboration occurred in 2009 - 2010. The Research Group was formed in autumn 2009.

Journalist and government spy Martin Fredriksson, center, received Sweden's "Golden Spade" investigative journalism award in 2014 (Bertil Ericson Photo TT)

The Indicter then followed up March 6 with a Ferrada de Noli column, Former paid agent of Swedish Security Police dictated Amnesty Sweden’s stance against Assange, placing the story into a broader context.

One finding involved efforts by Foreign Minister Carl Bildt to steer Sweden's foreign policy toward the views of the United States and NATO. Bildt, shown in a photo with Bush Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, was foreign minister from 2006-2014, and previously served as both prime minister and leader of the Moderate Party (which, despite its name, is the nation's most important conservative party).

Also, the Indicter showed how authorities wanted to crack down hard on Assange Affair because the WikiLeaks he founded had released so many secret cables embarrassing Western officials and enlightening the public about diplomatic chatter that is normally secret.

The article focused in detail on Fredriksson's use of his reputation as a left-leaning journalist to persuade Sweden's Amnesty International chapter to disdain Assange, whose court case might normally be expected to attract sympathy from a human rights group.

The Indicter published a second follow up on March 13, Paid agent of Swedish security services implicated in second disinformation campaign against Assange. The column analyzed a radio/podcast series created by a research group that Fredriksson founded in 2007 with funding that is secret and identified a systematic anti-Assange and fierce anti-Russia bias, "particularly targeting Russia’s president Vladimir Putin."

Journalist Reactions

The last word goes to Swedish journalists, including Fredriksson and Sundberg, author of the SVD column March 2. Sundberg quotes leftish activist, Peter Sunde, co-founder of The Pirate Bay, as asking on Twitter why he should trust that Fredriksson has not leaked chat logs to the Security Service.

Sunde served a year in prison after convictions for copyright violations. The Pirate Bay was a controversial file-sharing search engine developed in Sweden in 2003. It is different (albeit with some overlapping support) from the Pirate Party, founded in 2006, and now Sweden's third largest political party with affiliates elsewhere in Europe.

Sunde, shown in a photo via Flickr following his release from prison, also wrote on Twitter to his onetime Pirate Bay colleague Fredriksson: "Good luck with the loneliness."

Fredriksson, however, has described himself as a former Security Service agent, saying he wants to get rid of his past and live more normally. "I am transparent about this," he was quoted as saying, "and tell you now, even though I did not directly profit from it."

"On the other hand," the SVD reporter Sundberg wrote of Fredriksson, "he is writing a book about its history: The thrilling documentary thriller about the struggle between left and right violence, and when the real Salander sold out to Säpo."

"With the right agent (a literary one)," the reporter continued, "it will be a bestseller."

See Part II of this series: Clinton Emails Show Zeal For Syrian War By Google, Israel, Team Hillary, March 22, 2016.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Google and Israeli intelligence enthusiastically cooperated in hopes of overthrowing Syria’s government in efforts that have led to hundreds of thousands of deaths and millions of refugees, according to a trove of emails recently organized for release by WikiLeaks.

Alternate Version, With Reader Comments Invited

OpEdNews, Noted Swedish Journalist, Assange Critic Exposed As Sapo Agent, Andrew Kreig, March 20, 2016. Editor's Note: This version of the column above has a readers comment feature section facilitating discussion. 

Related News Coverage

UN Ruling On Assange

Guardian, Julian Assange is in arbitrary detention, UN panel finds, Esther Addley, Owen Bowcott, Jessica Elgot, Paul Farrell, and David Crouch, Feb. 4, 2016. A United Nations panel has decided that Julian Assange’s three-and-a-half years in the Ecuadorian embassy amount to “arbitrary detention,” leading his lawyers to call for the Swedish extradition request to be dropped immediately. A Swedish foreign ministry spokeswoman confirmed that the UN panel, due to publish its findings on Friday, had concluded that Assange was “arbitrarily detained.” The WikiLeaks founder sought asylum from Ecuador in June 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden to face questioning over rape and sexual assault allegations, which he denies.

Martin Fredriksson

Svenska Dagbladet (SVD) (Swedish daily newspaper), When the real Salander sold out to Sapo, Sam Sundberg, March 2, 2016. (Translated by Google, with JIP editorial revisions). Have you heard rustling in powerful stereo from the political perimeter? It is the sound of quivering extremists. Outer Edge Rabulist Erna has every reason to be nervous, because one of the more nationally famous left activists, Martin Fredriksson, released this day a bomb in social media. In a groovy Twitter, he reveals that he was for many years a paid Sapo informant during a time when he has been active in the Antifascist Action and Research Group.

Fredriksson is best known as co-founder in the journalist community of the Research Group, which conducted an extensive digging job of the right-wing's digital activities. In cooperation with the Expressen and Aftonbladet newspapers, he revealed the anonymous authors of racist sites Exposed, Free Times and Avpixlat and hateful writers on the web forum Flashback.

For a collaboration with Expressen, Fredriksson, along with five colleagues in the Research Group, has been awarded the guldspaden, one of Sweden's greatest prizes for investigative journalism. He has also worked as a researcher for Robert Aschberg TV show "Insider."

During the 2000s, Fredriksson spied on the extreme right as a part of the left group Antifascist Action Intelligence. In other words, he is one of those who had the best insight into the activity on both the political front flanks of the past decade. By his own account, it was only the investigations of violent right-wing that he handed over to the Security Service. But it is clear from the comments in social media that even his former allies now shivering.

In the activist groups where Martin Fredriksson thrived, there is a general revulsion against the idea of collaborating with the security police, but also a nervousness that Fredriksson may have leaked information about their own activities. Several of Fredriksson's old colleagues have now hurried to distance themselves from him, including the Research Group. On their website ,they write that SAPO-cooperation took place before the group was formed. But that is not consistent with Fredriksson's own Twitter confession, in which he writes that the second period of the collaboration occurred in 2009 - 2010. The Research Group was formed in autumn 2009.

Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde asks on Twitter openly why he should trust that Fredriksson has not leaked chat logs to the Security Service. (Fredriksson was also active in the early Piracy Bay effort) and follows up with an allusion to the saying "Golare has no buddies."

"Golare etc. Good luck with the loneliness. "

According to Martin Fredriksson, this is why he describes himself as a former Security Service agent, saying he wants to do away with his past and get a more normal life: "I am transparent about this and tell you now, even though I did not directly profit from it."

It is true that he hardly makes up with friends with this, he says. On the other hand, he is writing a book about its history: The thrilling documentary thriller about the struggle between violence left and right violence, and when the real Salander sold out to SAPO.

With the right agent (a literary one), it will be a bestseller.

The Indicter, Former paid agent of Swedish Security Police dictated Amnesty Sweden’s stance against Assange, Professor Marcello Ferrada de Noli, PhD. (Chairman of Swedish Doctors for Human Rights), March 6, 2016. Svenska Dagbladet (SVD), one of Sweden’s leading newspapers, has now revealed that a well-known journalist and ‘left activist’ – who, among other things, exerted considerable influence with Amnesty International Sweden – was a paid agent of Sweden’s Security Police (SÄPO).

The government security agent, Martin Fredriksson, was mainly active during the years that former Foreign Minister Carl Bildt was dictating Sweden’s foreign policy, when the “Assange Affair” was widely publicized on the home page of Sweden’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. According to statements Fredriksson posted on Twitter, his “work” at SÄPO covered different periods between 2004 and 2010, the year Sweden opened its ‘investigation’ against the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

The Swedish media establishment awarded this SÄPO secret agent its highest investigative journalism prize, ‘Guldspaden’ (Golden Spade), in 2014. The rationale on which the award was given to Fredriksson referred precisely to the work he had implemented as a paid agent of Sweden’s Secret Police.

The Indicter, Olof Palme and Julian Assange subjected in Sweden to same hate campaign by the same political forces and with the same purpose: to defend U.S. geopolitical interests, Professor Marcello Ferrada de Noli, March edition (released Feb. 28, 2016). Today, the 28th of February 2016, the world is mourning the 30th anniversary of the assassination of Olof Palme, the honourable PM of Sweden. The Swedish media and a variety of early authorities and representatives of Sweden’s power and cultural elites have been during the last weeks unanimous on this: The assassination took place in the frame of a hate campaign against him, and where Olof Palme (shown in a file photo) was constantly subjected to libelous personal attacks.

However, what that media and politicians who professed frank animosity against Palme’s anti-imperialist stances do not say is that it was they who promoted and/or echoed such a hate campaign. Months ago, a politician of name Jörgen Olsen and belonging of the same organization as Carl Bildt and Ulf Adelsohn wrote in Facebook, “Palme was a repulsive person.” That is the terms used by former Social Minister Göran Haglund when referring to Assange.

Martin Klepke, a reporter formerly working at the Swedish newspaper Expressen, told in 2014 that he heard colleagues at his working place in Expressen discussing in serious terms whether Olof Palme “should go voluntarily or forced out by means of military power.” That was the time when Olof Palme had in unambiguous terms denounced the bombing of Hanoi civilian population by the U.S. and criticized the occupation war in Vietnam.

Nevertheless, the Swedish police disregarded eyewitness reports from the very same evening of the murder of Palme which identified a U.S. agent at the time working for Pinochet’s infamous DINA – the secret security agency set up to assassinate opposition leaders abroad. Olof Palme was the only foreign dignitary who was listed in the death list of Operation Condor.

The Indicter, Paid agent of Swedish security services implicated in second disinformation campaign against Assange, Marcello Ferrada de Noli (shown in a file photo), March 13, 2016. In the first part of this series, The Indicter exposed that a former paid agent of Sweden’s Security Police had intervened with Amnesty Sweden (the Swedish section of Amnesty International), directly dictating its negative stance towards Julian Assange.

In this article, I analyze whether Swedish government security agents, or ‘former agents,’ have been further involved in a disinformation campaign against the founder of WikiLeaks and its whistleblower publishing. An important source here is the activity of Researchgruppen (aka Research Group), the journalist-collective organization led by Martin Fredriksson, a former paid agent of the Swedish Security Police – or, as it’s better known by its Swedish acronym, SÄPO.

Researchgruppen is an organization founded by Martin Fredriksson (shown in a portrait via Wikimedia) and others in 2010 (while he was still a paid agent of SÄPO) that claims to target extreme right-wing or right-conservative parties, organizations that, however, all share a staunch opposition to the incorporation of Sweden into NATO. Researchgruppen has also received support and assignments from Expressen, one of the main Swedish evening newspapers, well-known for leading an earlier campaign against WikiLeaks and Assange on behalf of the previous Foreign Minister, Carl Bildt.

The funding of Researchgruppen is secret as it is registered as part of Seppuku Media Ekonomisk Förening, whose nominal owner is Martin Fredriksson. This company was founded in 2007 at a time when Martin Fredriksson was working as an agent for SÄPO. Fredriksson’s Researchgruppen, now led by Mathias Wåg, runs a broadcasting program called “My Special Interests” (Mina Specialintressen).

The "My Special Interests" programs are podcasts in which the ex-SÄPO agent and guests – occasionally including other collaborators working as SÄPO agents, besides Fredriksson – share opinions on topics built around the political and geopolitical stances of Researchgruppen. Many of these stances are, in fact, very similar to the views held by prominent Swedish politicians who have been exposed by WikiLeaks as having provided information to U.S. intelligence services, such as in the case of former Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt.

A prominent characteristic of the podcasts is their harsh criticism of Julian Assange, combined with a fierce anti-Russian bias – particularly targeting Russia’s president Vladimir Putin. The podcasts – so far 22 programs have been produced – are each about one hour long. I have therefore randomized a sample, which gave the following findings.....

Assange Coverage, Including By Justice Integrity Project, Professors Blogg and Naomi Wolf (Chronological Order, Beginning in 2010)

Guardian, 10 days in Sweden: the full allegations against Julian Assange, Nick Davies, Dec. 17, 2010. Unseen police documents provide the first complete account of the allegations against the WikiLeaks founder Documents seen by the Guardian reveal for the first time the full details of the allegations of rape and sexual assault that have led to extradition hearings against the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange.

The case against Assange, which has been the subject of intense speculation and dispute in mainstream media and on the internet, is laid out in police material held in Stockholm to which the Guardian received unauthorised access.

Assange, who was released on bail on Thursday, denies the Swedish allegations and has not formally been charged with any offense. The two Swedish women behind the charges have been accused by his supporters of making malicious complaints or being "honeytraps" in a wider conspiracy to discredit him. Assange's UK lawyer, Mark Stephens, attributed the allegations to "dark forces", saying: "The honeytrap has been sprung ... After what we've seen so far you can reasonably conclude this is part of a greater plan." The journalist John Pilger dismissed the case as a "political stunt" and in an interview with ABC news, Assange said Swedish prosecutors were withholding evidence which suggested he had been "set up."

However, unredacted statements held by prosecutors in Stockholm, along with interviews with some of the central characters, shed fresh light on the hotly disputed sequence of events that has become the center of a global storm.

Stephens has repeatedly complained that Assange has not been allowed to see the full allegations against him, but it is understood his Swedish defense team have copies of all the documents seen by the Guardian. He maintains that other potentially exculpatory evidence has not been made available to his team and may not have been seen by the Guardian.

The allegations center on a 10-day period after Assange flew into Stockholm on Wednesday 11 August. One of the women, named in court as Miss A, told police that she had arranged Assange's trip to Sweden, and let him stay in her flat because she was due to be away. She returned early, on Friday 13 August, after which the pair went for a meal and then returned to her flat.

Her account to police, which Assange disputes, stated that he began stroking her leg as they drank tea, before he pulled off her clothes and snapped a necklace that she was wearing. According to her statement she "tried to put on some articles of clothing as it was going too quickly and uncomfortably but Assange ripped them off again." Miss A told police that she didn't want to go any further "but that it was too late to stop Assange as she had gone along with it so far", and so she allowed him to undress her.

Huffington Post, Rove Suspected In Swedish-U.S. Political Prosecution of WikiLeaks, Andrew Kreig, Dec. 19, 2010.

Connecticut Watchdog, Swedish Pundit Assails WikiLeaks, Downplays Rove Ties, Andrew Kreig, Jan. 9, 2011. See also, Swedish Wire, Karl Rove key player in Swedish WikiLeaks probe, Andrew Kreig, Jan 24, 2011.

Justice Integrity Project via OpEd News, Whistleblower Says: Obama's DoJ Declares War on Whistleblowers, Andrew Kreig, Jan. 10, 2011, 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."

Connecticut Watchdog, Partner at Firm Counseling Assange's Accusers Helped the CIA In Rendition for Torture, Andrew Kreig, Jan. 11, 2011. 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. He is shown giving a lecture in a file photo courtesy of Wikipedia. See also, Swedish Wire, Partner at Swedish law firm counseling WikiLeaks boss' accusers helped in CIA torture rendition, Jan. 20, 2011.

Justice Integrity Project, PM’s Biographer Sees Rove Influence in Swedish Politics, Andrew Kreig, Jan. 17, 2011. Brian Palmer of Uppsala University in Sweden provided an illuminating interview on my Washington Update radio show regarding the influence of Karl Rove on Swedish politics as an advisor to the governing Moderate Party. 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, created an image of moderation, much as did U.S. President George W. Bush during his 2000 campaign.

Swedish Wire, Partner at Swedish law firm counseling WikiLeaks boss' accusers helped in CIA torture rendition, Andrew Kreig, Jan. 20, 2011. 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 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 researched via Google by my Justice Integrity Project and by the Legal Schnauzer blog of Roger Shuler. Shuler broke the story Jan. 11 on his blog, ”Lawyer for Assange Accusers Has Apparent Ties to CIA and Torture.”

Professor’s Blog, Swedish PM Reinfeldt lies in London on Assange extradition, Marcello Vittorio Ferrada de Noli (Italy), Jan. 21, 2011. According to a breaking AP news 21/01 2001, Swedish PM Reinfeldt told reporters Thursday (in London) that "Sweden's policy is not to extradite people to nations with the death penalty. But he said Sweden's courts, not its government, would decide that."

This is utterly untrue. Everybody in Sweden with some insight in domestic political affairs, knows that the Swedish government has collaborated in the rendition of political prisoners labeled in the USA as terrorists to countries in which the death penalty is in use. Decisions of this kind taken in recent years by the Swedish government had absolutely nothing to do with the Swedish courts, which have been in the best case overruled or simply -- like in the most notorious cases -- not even engaged.

Professors Blogg, Karl Rove, Sweden and the Eight Major Aberrations in the Police Sex Crime Reporting Process in the Assange Case, Naomi Wolf (shown in file photo), Feb. 9, 2011. Best-selling author Naomi Wolf, shown at left, is the author of eight books. Based on my 23 years of reporting on global rape law and my five years of supporting women at rape crisis centers and battered women's shelters, this case is not being treated as a normal rape or sexual assault case. [Published also in News from Underground, Blogosfären (Sweden), (Sweden's Bloggers on Julian Assange) and Makthavare (Sweden), all by Naomi Wolf.].

Huffington Post, Spy vs. Spy As Hackers Square Off Over DC Dirty Tricks, Andrew Kreig, Feb.11. 2011. The mainstream media are paying increasing attention to a shocking scandal arising from retribution by pro-WikiLeaks hackers against government contractors apparently trying to sell political dirty tricks services to hurt critics of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Bank of America.

Justice Integrity Project, Rove’s Swedish Connections: The Controversy And The Facts, Andrew Kreig, Feb. 14, 2011. My Huffington Post column in December describing links between Karl Rove and Sweden’s governing party continues to generate controversy. Sweden’s all-out effort to capture WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange illustrates how the Assange law enforcement scandal is similar to many Rove-style political prosecutions in the United States. Among the tell-tale signs are using the media to smear a defendant with pre-trial leaks. These foster an anti-defendant climate in the courts and public, helping to ensure that unfair court procedures will not generate effective protest by legislators, the media or general public.

Professors Blogg, WikiLeaks Claims Secret U.S. Charges Against Assange, Andrew Kreig, Feb. 29, 2012, citing:

Rolling Stone, WikiLeaks Stratfor Emails: A Secret Indictment Against Julian Assange? Michael Hastings, Feb. 28, 2012. On January 26, 2011, Fred Burton, the vice president of Stratfor, a leading private intelligence firm which bills itself as a kind of shadow CIA, sent an excited email to his colleagues. "Text Not for Pub," he wrote. "We" – meaning the U.S. government – "have a sealed indictment on Assange. Pls protect."

The news, if true, was a bombshell. At the time, the Justice Department was ramping up its investigation of Julian Assange, the founder of the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks, which over the past few years has released hundreds of thousands of sensitive government documents. An indictment under the 1917 Espionage Act would be the most serious action taken to date against Assange, possibly paving the way for his extradition to the U.S.

Telegraph, The (United Kingdom), Stratfor: executive boasted of 'trusted former CIA cronies,' Alex Spillius, Feb. 28, 2012. A senior executive with the private intelligence firm Stratfor boasted to colleagues about his "trusted former CIA cronies" and promised to "see what I can uncover" about a classified FBI investigation, according to emails released by the WikiLeaks.

Fred Burton, vice president of intelligence at the Texas firm, also informed members of staff that he had a copy of the confidential indictment on Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks. The second batch of five million internal Stratfor emails obtained by the Anonymous computer hacking group revealed that the company has high level sources within the United States and other governments, runs a network of paid informants that includes embassy staff and journalists and planned a hedge fund, Stratcap, based on its secret intelligence. It operates something of an employment revolving door with branches of the Washington establishment. Burton was previously deputy chief of the counter-terrorism division in the state department's diplomatic security service. 

WikiLeaks, Global intelligence files in relation to Sam Kent and Halliburton from Wikileaks, Press release, Feb. 27, 2012. Today, WikiLeaks began publishing The Global Intelligence Files – more than five million emails from the Texas-headquartered "global intelligence" company Stratfor. The emails date from between July 2004 and late December 2011. They reveal the inner workings of a company that fronts as an intelligence publisher, but provides confidential intelligence services to large corporations, such as Bhopal’s Dow Chemical Co., Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and government agencies, including the US Department of Homeland Security, the US Marines and the US Defense Intelligence Agency.

The emails show Stratfor’s web of informers, pay-off structure, payment-laundering techniques and psychological methods....The material contains privileged information about the US government’s attacks against Julian Assange and WikiLeaks and Stratfor’s own attempts to subvert WikiLeaks. There are more than 4,000 emails mentioning WikiLeaks or Julian Assange.

Business Insider, New WikiLeaks Drop Alleges That Sweden’s Foreign Minister Has Been a U.S. Spy, Adam Taylor, Feb. 22, 2012. WikiLeaks is said to be preparing a release that will allege Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt has been a US informant since the 1970s.  The news was broken by Swedish newspaper Expressen, who have access to an internal Wikileaks memo.

The memo says that the allegations are supposedly based on a US diplomat's report, and will be politically explosive. "He will be forced to resign", one source told the paper. Bildt is alleged to have reported to Karl Rove, the former advisor to George W. Bush, in the document. Bildt (shown in a file photo) has publicly admitted he meets with Rove but in an informal manner.

However, the document reportedly reveals he has acted as an "informer" to the US government since 1973.

Rixstep Industry Watch, Where in the world is Sofia Wilén? Staff report, Jan. 11, 2014. Who knows where she's come from or where she's gone to now? It's been over three years since anyone's heard from or seen Sofia Wilén, the individual behind the embassy stalemate for Julian Assange. Assange stays in the Ecuador embassy in Knightsbridge, fearful he'll be shipped off to the US if he sets foot outside to clear up the allegations.

Sofia turned up on several occasions for interrogations with the police, always assisted by her attorney Claes Borgström, but it's not known if she turned up in person or was merely interrogated by telephone as many of the other witnesses. Sofia recently changed attorneys, expressing dissatisfaction with Claes Borgström. Sofia's new attorney Elisabeth Massi Fritz came out with guns blazing but chiefly made a mess of things, forging and fudging official documents, and revealing a weakness for unprofessional bombast.

But since then all's been quiet. Sofia's no longer in Swedish public records. Her official address changed shortly after the events of August 2010, and since then no one's been able to find her. Although it's possible she simply got her personal details hidden by the tax authority, too many people connected with her have, just as she did back in 2010, scrubbed their Internet presence.

It was the thoroughness of this 'web scrubbing' that made people wonder. Her website was completely gone by 27 August, the only date for which the Wayback machine has anything at all, a mere week after her visit to the Stockholm Klara police station.

Craig Murray, Why I am Convinced that Anna Ardin is a Liar, Craig Murray (former ambassador for the United Kingdom to Uzbekistan, shown in a file photo), Feb. 7, 2016 (first published Sept. 11, 2012). I am slightly updating and reposting this from 2012 because the mainstream media have ensured very few people know the detail of the “case” against Julian Assange in Sweden. The UN Working Group ruled that Assange ought never to have been arrested in the UK in the first place because there is no case, and no genuine investigation. Read this and you will know why.

The other thing not widely understood is there is NO JURY in a rape trial in Sweden and it is a SECRET TRIAL. All of the evidence, all of the witnesses, are heard in secret.

No public, no jury, no media. The only public part is the charging and the verdict. There is a judge and two advisers directly appointed by political parties. So you never would get to understand how plainly the case is a stitch-up. Unless you read this.

There are so many inconsistencies in Anna Ardin’s accusation of sexual assault against Julian Assange. But the key question which leaps out at me – and which strangely I have not seen asked anywhere else – is this:

Why did Anna Ardin not warn Sofia Wilen?

New York Times, WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange Denies Rape in Detailed Account of Encounter, Dan Bilefsky, Dec. 7, 2016. Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks founder, offered his most detailed and public account on Wednesday of events that led to a rape accusation against him in Sweden, saying he was innocent and had engaged in “consensual and enjoyable sex” with the accuser.

Last month, questions prepared by Swedish prosecutors were posed to Mr. Assange at the Ecuadorean Embassy, where he has been living since 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden over the rape accusation. The questions were asked by an Ecuadorean prosecutor under an agreement made by the two countries in August.

But in a move that is likely to irk Swedish prosecutors, whom Mr. Assange has denounced for forcing him to remain confined in the embassy for the past six years, the WikiLeaks founder on Wednesday released the answers he gave during the interview. In the 19-page statement, which reads alternately like a legal defense brief and an emotional airing of personal grievances, he writes that he is “entirely innocent” and had engaged in “consensual and enjoyable” sex with the woman who accused him of rape.

WikiLeaks has courted controversy by publishing confidential and damaging information from the United States and other countries. During the American presidential election, WikiLeaks came under renewed scrutiny for distributing hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee, and Mr. Assange acknowledged that he was timing their release to do maximum harm to the White House prospects of Hillary Clinton.

Mr. Assange, 45, an Australian, has refused to go to Sweden to face the rape accusation for fear, he says, of being extradited to the United States and being jailed for life, even though the Swedish authorities have sought to allay such concerns. No formal charges have been filed against him.

In the statement detailing his account of his relationship with his accuser, referred to as “SW,” whom he met in August 2010, Mr. Assange railed against the Swedish authorities, saying that he had been forced to endure “six years of unlawful, politicized detention without charge.”

Update: Justice Integrity Project Editor Andrew Kreig was scheduled to appear on RT America's "The News with Ed Schultz" on Dec. 7 live to discuss the case, based on years of the project's cutting-edge reporting on the case. These include: Noted Swedish Journalist, Assange Critic Exposed As Sapo Agent, subtitled, "Secret police agency cash for a journalist," in which we reported: A prize-winning Swedish journalist noted for his left-wing, pro-NATO and anti-WikiLeaks commentary was revealed this month to have been a paid agent of Säpo, his nation's security service. Martin Fredriksson, winner of a major investigative reporting prize in 2014 for his work exposing right-wing groups opposed to NATO, has been secretly paid for years by Säpo, the Swedish Security Service, according to news reports based on his own admissions.

In deep intrigue that resembles a spy novel, Fredriksson's story undermines conventional wisdom on both sides of the Atlantic that journalists work independently from power centers, including government agencies. The matter is especially timely because of Sweden's ongoing persecution of WikiLeaks Founder Julian Assange for what appears to be a trumped up sex scandal probe extending nearly six years in reprisal for massive and ongoing disclosures by WikiLeaks of Western governments' darkest secrets.

Guardian, Julian Assange defies Swedish prosecutors by releasing rape statement, David Crouch, Dec. 7, 2016. WikiLeaks founder publishes answers he gave during questioning in Ecuador’s London embassy over rape allegationJulian Assange has thumbed his nose at Swedish investigators, who he says have robbed him of his freedom for six years, by releasing the answers he gave to them under questioning in Ecuador’s London embassy last month.

The decision to issue the statement, which contains for the first time a detailed account by the WikiLeaks founder of his encounter with a woman in August 2010 who made rape allegations against him, marks a fresh twist in a case in which Assange claims an early leak of information from the Swedish police has shaped opinion.