The Guardian's Reputation In Tatters After Forger Revealed To Have Co-Authored Assange Smear
6
December, 2018
Authored
by Elizabeth Vos, via Disobedient
Media,
Regular
followers of WikiLeaks-related news are at this point familiar with
the multiple serious infractions of journalistic ethics by Luke
Harding and the Guardian, especially (though not exclusively) when it
comes to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. However,
another individual at the heart of this matter is far less familiar
to the public. That man is Fernando Villavicencio, a prominent
Ecuadorian political activist and journalist, director of the
USAID-funded NGO Fundamedios and editor of online
publication FocusEcuador.
Most
readers are also aware of the Guardian's recent publication of claims
that Julian Assange met with former Trump campaign manager Paul
Manafort on three occasions. This
has now been definitively
debunked by Fidel Narvaez, the former Consul at Ecuador's London
embassy between
2010 and 2018, who says Paul Manafort has never visited the embassy
during the time he was in charge there.But
this was hardly the first time the outlet published a dishonest smear
authored by Luke Harding against Assange. The paper is also no
stranger to publishing stories based on fabricated documents.
In
May, Disobedient
Media reported
on the Guardian's hatchet-job relating to 'Operation Hotel,' or
rather, the normal
security operations of
the embassy under former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa.
That hit-piece,
co-authored by Harding and Dan Collyns, asserted among other things
that (according to an anonymous source) Assange hacked the embassy's
security system. The allegation was promptly refuted by Correa as
"absurd" in an interview with The
Intercept,
and also by WikiLeaks as
an "anonymous libel" with which the Guardian had "gone
too far this time. We're suing."
A
shared element of The
Guardian’s ‘Operation
Hotel’ fabrications and the latest libel attempting to link Julian
Assange to Paul Manafort is none other than Fernando
Villavicencio of FocusEcuador. In
2014 Villavicencio was caught
passing a forged document to the Guardian,
which published it without verifying it. When the forgery was
revealed, the Guardian hurriedly took the document down but
then tried
to cover up that it had been tampered with by Villavicencio when
it re-posted it a few days later.
How
is Villavicencio tied to The Guardian's latest smear of Assange?
Intimately, it turns out.
Who is Fernando Villavicencio?
Earlier
this year, an independent journalist writing under the pseudonym
Jimmyslama penned a comprehensive
report detailing
Villavicencio's relationships with pro-US actors within Ecuador and
the US. She sums up her findings, which are worth reading
in full:
"...The information in this post alone should make everyone question why in the world the Guardian would continue to use a source like Villavicencio who is obviously tied to the U.S. government, the CIA, individuals like Thor Halvorssen and Bill Browder, and opponents of both Julian Assange and former President Rafael Correa."
As
most readers recall, it was Correa who granted Assange asylum in the
Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Villavicencio was so vehemently opposed
to Rafael Correa's socialist government that during the failed 2010
coup against Correa he falsely accused the President of "crimes
against humanity" by ordering police to fire on the crowds (it
was actually Correa who was being shot at). Correa sued him for
libel, and won, but pardoned Villavicencio for the damages awarded by
the court.
Assange
legal analyst Hanna
Jonasson recently
made the link between the Ecuadorian forger Villavicencio and Luke
Harding's Guardian stories based on dubious documents explicit.
She Tweeted: 2014
Ecuador's Foreign Ministry accused the Guardian of publishing a story
based on a document it says was fabricated by Fernando Villavicencio,
pictured below with the authors of the fake Manafort-Assange 'secret
meeting' story, Harding and Collyns."
2014: Ecuador's Foreign Ministry accuses The Guardian of publishing a story based on a document it says was fabricated by Fernando Villavicencio, pictured below with the authors of the fake Manafort-Assange 'secret meeting' story, Harding and Collyns. web.archive.org/save/http://re…
Jonasson
included a link to a 2014 official Ecuadorian government statement which
reads in part:
"There is also evidence that the author of this falsified document is Fernando Villavicencio, a convicted slanderer and opponent of Ecuador’s current government. This can be seen from the file properties of the document that the Guardian had originally posted (but which it has since taken down and replaced with a version with this evidence removed)."
The
statement also notes that Villavicencio had fled the country after
his conviction for libeling Correa during the 2010 coup and was at
that time living as a fugitive in the United States.
It
is incredibly significant, as Jonasson argues, that the authors of
the Guardian's latest libelous article were photographed
with Villavicencio in Ecuador shortly
before publication of the Guardian's claim that Assange had conducted
meetings with Manafort.
Jonasson's
Twitter thread also states: "This
video from the news wire Andes alleges
that Villavicencio's name appeared in the metadata of the document
originally uploaded alongside The Guardian's story." The
2014 Guardian piece, which aimed a falsified shot at then-President
Rafael Correa, would not be the last time Villavicencio's name would
appear on a controversial Guardian story before being scrubbed from
existence.
Just
days after the backlash against the Guardian reached fever-pitch,
Villavicencio had the gall to publish
another image of himself with
Harding and Collyns, gloating : "One
of my greatest journalistic experiences was working for months on
Assange's research with colleagues from the British newspaper the
Guardian, Luke Harding, Dan Collins and the young journalist Cristina
Solórzano from @ somos_lafuente" [Translated
from Spanish]
Una de mis mayores experiencias periodísticas fue trabajar durante meses la investigación sobre Assange con los colegas del diario británico The Guardian, Luke Harding, Dan Collins y con la joven periodista Cristina Solórzano de @somos_lafuente
The
tweet suggests, but does not specifically state, that Villavicencio
worked with the disastrous duo on the Assange-Manafort piece. Given
the history and associations of all involved, this statement alone
should cause extreme skepticism in any unsubstantiated claims, or
'anonymously sourced' claims, the Guardian makes concerning Julian
Assange and Ecuador.
Astoundingly,
and counter to Villavicencio's uncharacteristic coyness, a recent
video posted by WikiLeaks
via Twitter does
show that Villavicencio
was originally listed as a co-author of the Guardian's
Manafort-Assange allegations,
before his name was edited out of the online article. The original
version can be viewed, however, thanks to archive services.
Video: Guardian mysteriously hid third author of fabricated front page story "Manafort Held Secret Meetings With Assange" -- as revealed by direct digital archive library. Compare to the Guardian's online version the world saw. Villavicencio background:.twitter.com/search?f=tweet…
The
two photographs of Villavicencio with Harding and Collyns as well as
the evidence showing he co-authored the piece doesn't just capture a
trio of terrible journalists, it documents the involvement of
multiple actors associated with intelligence agencies and fabricated
stories.
All
of this provoke the question: did Villavicencio provide more bogus
documents to Harding and Collyns - Harding said he'd seen a document,
though he didn't publish one (or even quote from it) so readers might
judge its veracity for themselves - or perhaps these three invented
the accusations out of whole-cloth?
Either
way, to quote WikiLeaks, the Guardian has "gone too far this
time" and its already-tattered reputation is in total shambles.
Successful Propaganda, Failed Journalism
Craig
Murray calls Harding an "MI6
tool",
but to this writer, Harding seems worse than an MI6 stooge: He's a
wannabe-spook, hanging from the coat-tails of anonymous intelligence
officers and publishing their drivel as fact without so much as a
skeptical blink. His
lack of self-awareness and conflation of anecdote with evidence sets
him apart as either one of the most blatant, fumbling propagandists
of our era, or the most hapless hack journalist to stain the pages of
printed news.
To
provide important context on Harding’s previous journalistic
irresponsibility, we again recall that he co-authored the infamous
book containing the encryption password of the entire Cablegate
archive, leading to a leak of the unredacted
State Department Cables across
the internet. Although the guilty Guardian journalists tried to blame
Assange for the debacle, it was they themselves who ended up on the
receiving end of some well-deserved scorn.
In
addition to continuing the Guardian's and Villavicencio's vendetta
against Assange and WikiLeaks, it is clearly in Harding's financial
interests to conflate the pending
prosecution of Assange with
Russiagate. As
this writer previously
noted,
Harding penned a book on the subject, titled: "Collusion:
Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump
Win." Tying
Assange to Russiagate is good for business, as it stokes public
interest in the self-evidently faulty narrative his book supports.
Even
more concerning is the claim amongst publishing circles, fueled by
recent events, that Harding may be writing another book on Assange,
with publication presumably timed for his pending arrest and
extradition and designed to cash in on the trial. If that is in fact
the case, the specter arises that Harding is working to push for
Assange's arrest, not just on behalf of US, UK or Ecuadorian
intelligence interests, but also to increase his own book sales.
That
Harding and Collyns worked intensively with Villavicencio for
"months" on the "Assange story," the fact that
Villavicencio was initially listed as a co-author on the original
version of the Guardian's article, and the recent denial by Fidel
Narvaez, raises
the likelihood that Harding and the Guardian were not simply the
victims of bad sources who duped them, as claimed by some.
It
indicates that the fake story was constructed deliberately on behalf
of the very same intelligence establishment that the Guardian is
nowadays only too happy to take the knee for.
In
summary, one of the most visible establishment media outlets
published a fake story on its front page, in an attempt to
manufacture a crucial cross-over between the pending prosecution of
Assange and the Russiagate saga. This represents the latest example
in an onslaught of fake news directed at Julian Assange and WikiLeaks
ever since they published the largest CIA leak in history in the form
of Vault 7, an onslaught which appears to be building in both
intensity and absurdity as time goes on.
The
Guardian has destroyed its reputation, and in the process, revealed
the desperation of the establishment when it comes to Assange.
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