Interesting: If these documents (scribd.com/user/433220695…) are authentic:
* UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office has funded 'Integrity Project' influence campaign
* Integrity project "circulated privately" material to "key influencers" at El Pais & academic institutions in Spain
* According to the documents, 'Integrity Project' "Spain Cluster" coordinators are Mira Milosevich-Juaristi of the Elcano think tank, and Borja Lasheras, of ECFR, among others.
* They appeared together with David Alandete of El Pais before UK parliament:
* Testimony by 'Integrity Project' coordinators and David Alandete (since fired from El Pais) before the UK Parliament unsuccessfully attempted to implicate Assange in an alleged Russian influence campaign in relation to the Catalan referendum of 2017: parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/e8…
* The arguments and research methodology used to attempt to implicate Assange by Lasheras, Milosevich-Jauresti and Alandete were thoroughly debunked in subsequente written testimony to the Committee. data.parliament.uk/writtenevidenc…
If authentic, "Integrity Initiative" docs raise important issues: UK public funding of "influence" campaigns, the latter's relationships with media, thinktanks and academic institutions, and in this instance, the feedback loop into the UK public parliamentary inquiry on fake news
There appears to be reason for skepticism about the authenticity of at least some of these documents.
Some journalists keenly cite FBI informer Marcy Wheeler's wild & eager speculations on EDVA's #Assange indictment. But indications so far in fact point to the indictment relating to @xychelsea's case & @WikiLeaks revelations of US wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Cablegate, GITMO.
First of all, the document indicates that the indictment is in the Eastern District of Virginia (EDVA). This is where the WikiLeaks Grand Jury (Ref:10GJ3793) has been empanelled since 2010 in order to indict Assange over the publications that Chelsea Manning was convicted over.
The @WikiLeaks Grand Jury was headed at the time by Neil MacBride (who was also responsible for the prosecution of CIA whistleblower @JohnKiriakou). MacBride is an aggressive proponent of the extraterritorial application of US criminal jurisdiction. washingtonpost.com/world/national…
@lawfareblog@hilary_hurd Hi there! It's great you are taking interest in this complex case -- there is a lot of inaccurate information out there and some have informed some parts of your piece. For example, The asylum was granted from US extradition & cooperation with Swedish authorities...
@lawfareblog@Hilary_Hurd ...led to his finally being questioned at the embassy in November 2016 (the prosecutor had refused until finally compelled by Sweden's Court of Appeal in 2015, which reprimanded her for failing to progress the preliminary investigation). Assange's statement included exculpatory..
@lawfareblog@Hilary_Hurd ...SMS messages from the women's phones. The prosecutor dropped not only the arrest warrant, but the entire investigation, and the prosecution office has destroyed the records, according to FOI request replies. The prosecutor's statements which you make reference to were a ...