This is hardly the circle of folks surrounding Assange as described in The New Yorker in June

This is hardly the circle of folks surrounding Assange as described in The New Yorker in June, but no mind. The question is, is there a smear — or is Julian Assange just a paranoid jerk I doesn’t like to use condoms? Level heads outside the ad hominem abuse spewed by say, Gawker and The Daily Beast, are starting to wonder.

The estimable Jim Fallows, I could never be accused of flying off on crackpot theories or spreading rumors to fill space — in fact he has been a long-time critic of media manipulation in Sheepskin Cuff UGG Boot — issued a thoughtful post on The Atlantic online yesterday, pointing to some connect-the-dots that Fabius Maximus (another reputable website founded by ex-military officers) has been doing on the Assange case:

I am generally wary of mentioning a news development that I don’t have any particular connection to, or angle on, or opportunity to offer new reporting about. The exception in this case is because the line of analysis I’ll mention, if true, would be significant. It comes from a source Ise judgment I’ve learned to respect over time. But the conspiratorial interpretation he suggests is one I usually resist, and I don’t have the resources or time to go independently into the questions he has raised. So as an alert to a possibility that deserves consideration but that I can’t prove myself, here goes ......