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Tuesday, December 21, 2010

The Death of the CIA “Honeypot” Theory of the Julian Assange Rape Allegations « Student Activism

The Death of the CIA “Honeypot” Theory of the Julian Assange Rape Allegations « Student Activism

The Death of the CIA “Honeypot” Theory of the Julian Assange Rape Allegations

The “honeypot” explanation for the rape allegations against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange — the theory that his accusers had been CIA plants, recruited for the purpose of seducing him and crying rape — was always a weird one.

The whole thing had a bit of an Ian Fleming vibe, for starters. The one accuser’s supposed links to the CIA turned out to be embarrassingly tenuous. And then there was the problem of the scripting — if these women had been sent to lie, why wouldn’t they have been sent with a simpler, cleaner lie? Why not claim rape that would be immediately understood by all as rapes, rather than assaults that would themselves become the subject of