In the second excerpt from the John Pilger Special, to be exclusively broadcast by RT on Saturday, Julian Assange accuses Hillary Clinton of misleading Americans about the true scope of Daesh’s support from Washington’s Middle East allies.
In a 2014 email made public by Assange’s WikiLeaks last month, Hillary Clinton, who had served as secretary of state until the year before, urges John Podesta, then an advisor to Barack Obama, to “bring pressure” on Qatar and Saudi Arabia, “which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to Daesh and other radical Sunni groups.”
“I think this is the most significant email in the whole collection,” Assange, whose whistleblowing site released three tranches of Clinton-related emails over the past year, said.
“All serious analysts know, and even the US government has agreed, that some Saudi figures have been supporting Daesh and funding Daesh, but the dodge has always been that it is some “rogue” princes using their oil money to do whatever they like, but actually the government disapproves. But that email says that it is the government of Saudi Arabia, and the government of Qatar that have been funding Daesh.”
Assange and Pilger, who sat down for their 25-minute interview at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where the whistleblower has been a refugee since 2012, then talk about the conflict of interest between Clinton’s official post, which held throughout Obama’s first term, her husband’s nonprofit, and the Middle East officials, whose stated desire to fight terrorism may not have been sincere.
Pilger also questioned Assange over increasingly frequent accusations from the Clinton camp, and Western media, that WikiLeaks is looking to swing next week’s US presidential election in favor of Donald Trump – perhaps at Russia’s behest.
But Assange dismissed the prospect of Trump, who is behind in the polls, winning as unlikely – and not necessarily due to his standing with the electorate.
“My analysis is that Trump would not be permitted to win. Why do I say that? Because he has had every establishment off his side. Trump does not have one establishment, maybe with the exception of the Evangelicals, if you can call them an establishment,” said Assange. “Banks, intelligence, arms companies, foreign money, etc. are all united behind Hillary Clinton. And the media as well. Media owners, and the journalists themselves.”