The Solomon Scandals A Washington newspaper novel by David Rothman

The new question: How did the false rape allegations happen against WikiLeaker? Any governments responsible?

Update, 11:41 a.m. and after: Well, that was fast. The Swedes have with­drawn the war­rant for Julian Assange, say­ing the rape alle­ga­tions are false. MSNBC says a Swedish pros­e­cu­tor “did not address the sta­tus of the molesta­tion case, a less seri­ous charge that would not lead to an arrest war­rant.” Also see CNN story with a few details about the alleged inci­dents. One way or another, the real story ought to be, “How did the rape accu­sa­tions come about in the first place? And were any gov­ern­ments respon­si­ble?” Below is the orig­i­nal post where I won­dered if media would cut Assange less slack than they did Al Gore.

Al Gore was the vic­tim of a smear job. I’ll be curi­ous to see how the sex-crime alle­ga­tions against Wik­iLeaks editor-in-chief Julian Assange turn out—it’s too early to say, other than to won­der about the tim­ing of the accu­sa­tions and some other oddities.

In The Solomon Scan­dals novel, the so-called respecta­bles smear a Wash­ing­ton, D.C., gos­sip colum­nist to cre­ate a diver­sion­ary scan­dal to help turn atten­tion away from mas­sive cor­rup­tion and a related build­ing col­lapse. The Gore case wasn’t quite the same: the ex-VP was and is infi­nitely more respectable than his accuser.

But what of Assange? Among U.S. estab­lish­men­tar­i­ans he would be regarded as a dis­rep­utable trou­ble­maker, and in fact all kinds of issues arise about the leak of the names of intel­li­gence sources for the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary and its allies in Afghanistan. But is this wor­thy of a smear, assum­ing there is one?

“What are the bets,” asks Rob Beschizza in the Boing­Bo­ing blog, “that some­one under con­stant sur­veil­lance, pub­lisher of pow­er­ful people’s secrets, would find time (while on a ubiquitously-covered trip to Swe­den to legit­imize the jour­nal­is­tic sta­tus of his orga­ni­za­tion and attend a pub­lic con­fer­ence) to fit in some rape and molestation?”

If noth­ing else, I won­der how much slack the press will cut Assange com­pared to the han­dling of the Gore case. Actu­ally I felt that jour­nal­ists were a bit too char­i­ta­ble toward Gore’s accuser, but will this be far more of a prob­lem in the Assange cov­er­age, given that his respectable quo­tient is far less than Gore’s? How many news orga­ni­za­tions will ask the same clue­ful ques­tion, about the Swedish accu­sa­tions’ valid­ity, that Boing­Bo­ing is?

Update: Assange is edi­tor in chief of Wik­iLeaks but says he is not founder. I’ve changed the copy.

Related: Assange team­ing up with Ice­land on global press haven (via AFP). Also see Meme­o­ran­dum roundup and BBC story.

Update: And for fun, check out ‘Jour­nal­is­tic warn­ing labels.’

NYT Times story, spot­ted at 3:22 p.m.: Here. The Times says AP has reported that the Swedes are still look­ing into the molesta­tion accu­sa­tions. It also says: “Two Swedish news­pa­pers said the alle­ga­tions were made by two women who worked with Wik­iLeaks in Swe­den.” Staff? Or free­lancers? And any con­nec­tions with any gov­ern­ments? I have no idea, one way or another. But the issue cer­tainly is worth raising.

• Oil-enriched pols vs. a green Al Gore: New York Times story unfair to ex-VP?
• Al Gore’s ‘scandal’: Sex attack claims from Oregon masseuse are dodgy so far
• Gore sex probe dropped in Oregon: A NONscandal, without sufficient follow-up in the Washington Post and Politico
• ‘Journalism warning labels’: Helpful in Assange case?
• The Sally Quinn post