Tuesday 14 August 2018
Regarding my banishment from the Courage Foundation at the behest of Julian Assange.
This is the full statement I provided to The Daily Beast on the matter of the board of Courage terminating my “beneficiary” status with that organization, along with the text of the board’s e-mail to me on Sunday. Naomi Colvin’s statement in which she explains why she resigned rather than follow an order to get rid of me may be found here:
Since getting out of prison in late 2016, I have been increasingly vocal about my growing distaste for Wikileaks in general and Julian Assange in particular, largely due to his close and ongoing involvement with fascist entities, his outright lies about his role in the last U.S. election, and his willingness to have others tell similar lies on his behalf. I have also continued to support his rights against the state and private organizations that have pursued him from the very beginning, when his original mission of ethical transparency was still in play.
Given that the original FBI investigation into me stemmed directly from my involvement in defending Wikileaks from firms like HBGary, Booz Allen Hamilton, and Palantir, as made clear by the FBI’s own search warrant that may be found at Buzzfeed; and given that the charges I ultimately plead to were directly related to my efforts to ensure that the Stratfor leak was handled properly;
- and given that Assange himself refrained from even mentioning my name in public until it became a clear that I was to become a cause celebre;
- and given that the entirety of the legal defense fund that actually kept me from going away for decades was handled by the FreeBB organization, not Wikileaks or anyone associated with it; and given that Courage, though a fine organization staffed by extraordinary people, has provided me with something along the lines of $3500 out of the total $14,000 that has been donated for my benefit since FreeBB was incorporated into that organization;
- and given that I voluntarily allowed the rest to go into a pool for other beneficiaries that would seem to include Assange himself; and given that Assange and close associates have nonetheless chosen to publicly imply that I am somehow indebted to Assange for having made me a beneficiary after I’d already been sentenced;
- and given how much I’ve learned since my release about the degree of dishonesty and outright fabrication that Assange has engaged in along with those associates, much of which is already public record;
- and given that Assange himself has repeatedly reached out through intermediaries to “explain” himself to me but has in each case failed to actually do so — given all of this,
I’m afraid I cannot agree with the stance, presented by the Courage board to me yesterday via a poorly-written e-mail, that I am somehow obligated to not only defend Assange’s rights — which I’m happy to do - but also to refrain from speaking out about the problems facing a movement that I risked a hundred years of prison time in order to defend.
- Barrett Brown.
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