Newly Published Clinton Email Reveals How Government Manipulates Media
A Hillary Clinton staffer planted questionsin a CBS 60 Minutes interview with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, according to email records released this week. At the time of the interview in early 2011, Assange had already leaked sensitive, embarrassing information from the State Department. The unclassified staff email to Clinton, released amid her ongoing email scandal, demonstrates not only that the former Secretary of State and her staff were out to discredit Assange, but that the government manipulates media and wields heavy influence over it.
In an email from January 28, 2011, Philip J. Crowley, then Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, alerted Hillary Clinton that 60 Minutes conducted an interview with Assange set to air on the 30th. As Crowley informed her, “We had made a number of suggestions for outside experts and former diplomats to interview to ‘balance’ the piece.” This statement alone shows the access to media that powerful government agents enjoy.
He goes on to further reveal that influence: “60 Minutes assures me that they raised a number of questions and concerns we planted with themduring the course of the interview,” Crowley said, suggesting the interview would not be embarrassing to Clinton or the State Department: “We will be prepared to respond to the narrative Assange presents during the program.”
The 2011 interview features a younger looking Assange with interviewer Steve Kroft.
Several minutes into the conversation, Kroft asks Assange point-blank if he is a “subversive.” Interestingly, the only politician Assange names directly in his response is Clinton herself: “I’m sure there are certain views among Hillary Clinton and her lot that we are subverting their authority. But you’re right, we are subverting illegitimate authority. The question is whether the authority is legitimate or whether it is illegitimate.”
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