Extract from WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy reveals twists and turns in the fraught lead-up to the publication of US embassy cables Buy WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy here Three men were in the Belgian hotel courtyard cafe, ordering coffee after coffee. They had been arguing for six hours through the summer afternoon, with a break to eat a little pasta, and evening had fallen. Eventually, the tallest of the three picked up a cheap yellow napkin, laid it on the flimsy modern cafe table and started to scribble. Ian Traynor, the Guardian's European editor, recalls: "Julian [Assange] whipped out this mini-laptop, opened it up and did something on his computer. He picked up a napkin and said, 'OK you've got it.' "We said: 'Got what?' "He said: 'You've got the whole file. The password is this napkin.'" Traynor adds: "I was stunned. We were expecting further, very long negotiations and ...
A copy of a 19th century cartoon shows Boy Jones (L), the stalker of Britains Queen Victoria, spying on he. Reuters file picLONDON, Feb 3 A 19th Century intruder sat on Queen Victorias throne, slept in one of her servants beds, hid under her sofa, read her private letters and even stole a pair of her voluminous silk knickers.Yet he was just an ordinary 14-year-old boy one of Britains first celebrity stalkers.The story of Edward Jones, known to Londons Victorian police as Boy Jones, has been pieced together using contemporary newspaper reports of the monarchs early reign.According to Jan Bondeson of Cardiff University, who spent five years writing a book on the lads fascination with the Royal Family, he broke into Buckingham Palace at least three times between 1838 and 1841.Jones, who, according to Bondesons book Queen Victoria and the Stalker, managed to get within a few feet of the young monarch, alarmed authorities who tried to keep accounts of his break-ins secret.On one occasion...
Donald Rumsfeld during a tour of the notorious Abu Ghraib prison in May 2004, just after a scandal erupted over the mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners. Photograph: David Hume Kennerly/Getty Images The former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld believes the war in Iraq has been worth the cost and remains largely unapologetic about his handling of the conflict, according to his new autobiography.Had the government of Saddam Hussein remained in power the Middle East would be "far more perilous than it is today," Rumsfeld wrote in his 800-page memoir, scheduled for release on Tuesday but reported in today's Washington Post.Rumsfeld and other US officials cited the threat posed by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction as justification for the 2003 US-led invasion. No such weapons were found.The former defence chief was a leading architect of the Iraq war. He was fired by President George Bush in 2006 with US troops bogged down after three and half years of fighting.Rumsfeld...
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