The Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton allegedly wanted to use drones to target Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in the months leading up to the whistle-blower’s controversial leaks.
According to an unidentified source, Mrs Clinton asked ‘why can’t we just drone the guy’ when she was Secretary of State and was reportedly furious that a ‘soft target’ was thumbing his nose at the U.S, Russia Today reports.
Apparently, both Clinton and the state department were under pressure from the White House to silence Assange and Wikileaks in the lead up to ‘CableGate’, an incident which saw 250,000 diplomatic cables from 1966 – 2010 leaked.
Those in the State department reportedly believed that Clinton was joking about her plans to assassinate Assange but it soon became clear that she was being serious.
After Clinton’s suggestion the the State Department supposedly considered offering a $10 million reward to anyone who could help capture the Australian journalist’s and bring him back to the U.S.
It’s also been alleged that Assange wasn’t the first time Hillary had suggested ‘droning’ someone and she reportedly had a penchant for talking about using the automated planes on America’s enemies.
The FBI’s investigation into Hillary’s emails from the time refer to Mrs Clinton as having had ‘many discussions’ about ‘nominating’ individuals to drone.
They read:
Clinton could not recall a specific process for nominating a target for a drone strike and recalled much debate pertaining to the concurrence process.
Clinton knew there was a role for DOD, State and the CIA but could not provide specifics as to what it was. Due to a disagreement between these agencies, Clinton recalled having many discussions related to nominating an individual for a drone strike.
Mrs Clinton is currently campaigning hard to be elected the next President of the United States and despite leading in several polls she doesn’t have a significant lead over her rival Donald Trump.
