Assange accuses his detractors of conducting smear campaign to destroy his reputation

PanARMENIAN.Net - WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is accusing his detractors of conducting a successful smear campaign to destroy his reputation, but says his organization will "work around it." "This has been a very successful smear campaign so far," Assange said Friday from Bungay, England, where he is currently out on bail.

"But I think its days are numbered, and I think people are starting to wonder, 'Is what is claimed really true? And if it is true, where's the evidence?'" He said his whistleblowing website would soon release sensitive information about banks, including the Bank of America.

The 39-year-old Australian is fighting extradition to Sweden, where police want to question him on allegations of sexual assault. The United States also has legal interests in Assange. The New York Times reported Friday that federal prosecutors hope to determine if there is sufficient evidence to charge Assange as a conspirator in the leak of classified U.S. diplomatic documents. Until now, he has been viewed "just as a passive recipient of the documents who then published them," the Times reported in the article, for which justice officials declined to discuss grand jury activity.

"Something is wrong in the United States that such an investigation against me and, in effect, my organization … is to be conducted in secret."

On Thursday, Assange told BBC's Newsnight he did not know "precisely who is behind" the smear campaign. "My feeling at the moment is that a number of different interests — personal, domestic and international — are all sort of feeding from this process, and encouraging it and pushing it along," he said.

Assange was arrested in Britain on Dec. 7 on an arrest warrant issued by Sweden after two women alleged they were sexually assaulted by the founder of the whistleblowing website. He has denied the allegations.

Assange's arrest followed WikiLeaks's publishing last month of 250,000 secret U.S. diplomatic cables, and his supporters suspect the sexual assault claims are politically motivated — a charge Sweden denies, CBC News reported.