'Unauthorized' Assange Autobiography to Be Released Today
BY Nick Judd | Thursday, September 22 2011
NPR.org has this story on Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, whose autobiography, NPR reports, was released on Thursday in Britain — without his say-so:
British publisher Canongate decided to go ahead and release Julian Assange: The Unauthorized Autobiography because it said Assange received a six-figure advance but then changed his mind and [then] kept the money.
In the memoir, ghostwritten from 50 hours of interviews, Assange says he did not sexually assault two Swedish women who have accused him of rape, and claims he was warned the U.S government was trying to entrap him.
NPR leads with the sexy bits, I imagine because, well, that's the done thing. But Assange — who has in the past deflected media attention on those allegations by asking why newspapers focus on that instead of, you know, the kind of leaked information that may have led the Qatar-financed Al Jazeera to let go its longtime news director in favor of a member of the Qatari royal family — lashes out in a lengthy statement, seeming to anticipate that the book will focus on more of the same. The statement also addresses the question of fees — Assange paints a complex picture in which that payment to him from his would-be publisher was frozen — and here's how he backs into that story:
This book was meant to be about my life’s struggle for justice through access to knowledge. It has turned into something else. The events surrounding its unauthorised publication by Canongate are not about freedom of information — they are about old-fashioned opportunism and duplicity—screwing people over to make a buck.