Assange looked at her directly and started to feed her.

Assange looked at her directly and started to feed her.

Funny, even Reason’s Michael Moynihan, I has had it in for Assange from the start, concedes that “that such dirty tricks have a long pedigree in American intelligence circles,” but he can’t, however, bring himself to imagine the government might be targeting Assange with one right now. He concentrates solely on “Woman A,” pointing out that she is a known quantity, a radical Swedish feminist with a long history of left-wing positions on sexual power and gender politics — implying that whatever went wrong (refusal to wear a condom? Broken condom? Refusing to take an STD test?) in the reportedly brief, consensual affair, ignited all the reflexive impulses of a longtime “equality watchdog,” “operating off of a very broad (Swedish legal) definition of rape and ‘sexual molestation.’” In other words, a woman scorned. Moynihan says nothing of “strange” “Woman B,” and instead concludes “even a cursory look at the case would suggest that while it appears that Assange’s name is being dragged through the mud, it isn’t by the CIA.”

But what about Woman B? An ex-CIA source of mine says the agency employed the paid use of “honeypots,” to trap targets all the time. While on the face it looks like Assange tangled with the wrong woman (Woman A) and some seriously elastic Swedish sex laws, there is no reason to automatically discount the strange coincidences raised by Fabius Maximus and others. If we are going to look at Woman A’s motives, why not focus on Woman B’s strange story as something more complex than just a geek groupie with a crush?