Julian Assange claims Libya was Hillary Clinton's war, FBI out for payback over her resistance

Julian Assange has said that Hillary Clinton's initial "conspicuous" resistance to the FBI's investigation, sparked "anger" within the agency. The WikiLeaks' founder claimed that the Democratic presidential nominee's resistance has led to the FBI's recent renewed vigour into its probe of Clinton's use of a private server while serving as the Secretary of the State.

"If you go to history of the FBI, it has become effectively America's political police. And the FBI demonstrated with taking down the former head of the CIA [David Petraeus in 2012] over classified information given to his mistress that almost no one was untouchable. The FBI is always trying to demonstrate that. 'No one can resist us,'" Assange said, Russian state media RT reported. "But Hillary Clinton very conspicuously resisted the FBI's investigation. So, there is anger within the FBI because it made the FBI look weak."

In a 25-minute long exclusive interview with John Pilger, Assange claimed that the recent wave of documents published by WikiLeaks reveal that despite President Barack Obama's initial opposition, the Libyan war was "championed" by Clinton.

"Libya more that anyone else's war was Hillary Clinton's war. Barack Obama initially opposed it. Who was the person who was championing it? Hillary Clinton. That's documented throughout her emails," Assange said.

He added, "There's more than 1,700 emails out of the 33,000 of Hillary Clinton's emails we published just about Libya. It's not about that Libya has cheap oil. She perceived the removal of Gaddafi and the overthrow of the Libyan state something that she would use to run in the general election for president. So late 2011, there's an internal document called the "Libya Tick Tock" that is produced for Hillary Clinton, and it's all the... it's a chronological description of how Hillary Clinton was the central figure in the destruction of the Libyan state."

Assange also slammed Clinton for her role in plunging Libya into civil war, leaving it vulnerable for extremists to exploit. "As a result, there [have been] around 40,000 deaths within Libya. Jihadists moved in, ISIS moved in. That led to the European refugee and migrant crisis, because not only did you have people fleeing Libya, people then fleeing Syria, destabilization of other African countries as a result of arms flows," said Assange.

Clinton is a 'centralised cog'

Speaking from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has been residing under asylum since 2012, Assange claimed that Clinton played a key role in various issues that have not been highlighted to the American public. Regardless of whether the presidential candidate ever faces charges, Assange stressed that her connection to various corporate and political entities can be considered cause for the FBI to investigate Clinton.

The whistle-blower said, "There's a thread that runs through all of these emails. There is quite a lot of "pay-to-play," as they call it — taking... giving access in exchange for money for many individual states, individuals and corporations. Combined with the cover-up of Hillary Clinton's emails while she was Secretary of State this has led to an environment where the pressure on the FBI [to investigate] increases."

"She's this centralizing cog, so that you've got a lot of different gears in operation from the big banks like Goldman Sachs, and major elements of Wall Street, and intelligence, and people in the State Department, and the Saudis, and so on. She's is the, if you like, the centralizer that interconnects all these different cogs. She's smooth central representation of all that, and all that is more or less what is in power now in the United States."

Meanwhile, WikiLeaks has released the 30<sup>th batch of Podesta emails, bringing the total number of documents published to over 47,000. The whistle-blowing platform previously vowed to publish over 50,000 documents relating to the US election, exposing the inner workings of the Clinton campaign.