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“Can’t we just drone this guy?” Clinton openly inquired, offering a simple remedy to silence Assange and smother Wikileaks via a planned military drone strike, according to State Department sources.

http://truepundit.com/under-intense-pressure-to-silence-wikileaks-secretary-of-state-hillary-clinton-proposed-drone-strike-on-julian-assange/

Andrew Grimm
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Curious
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    What sort of answer would you find convincing in either direction? – Oddthinking Oct 04 '16 at 12:30
  • This is in reference to a news story 2 days ago. There's not been enough time for anything to be verified. As such I'm voting to close for now though in a few weeks it may be possible to answer. – Murphy Oct 04 '16 at 14:21
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    @Oddthinking - can't speak for the OP, but an independent confirmation by someone who overheard and can confirm the statemet - either publicly, or to a journalist (shielded by source confidentiality), would definitely be convincing in the direction of "yes" answer. Proving a negative is as usual harder, but the article (at least at first skimming, I didn't read in depth yet) mentions a **specific meeting**, so statements by meeting participants that this was never said would point to a "no" answer. The scope is luckily much less than "everything Clinton ever said". – user5341 Oct 04 '16 at 18:21
  • @user5341 how could someone who was there confirm the statement, unless he or she has access to audio recordings of the meeting (s)he is able to put online in such a way that they can be verified to not have been tampered with? Even meeting notes (if they were taken, not destroyed, and not classified such that they'd never be released) are unreliable in that it can always be said they were tampered with. I've seen several places where this claim was repeated, none of which would be acceptable to those on the political left because they're conservative blogs and websites... – jwenting Oct 07 '16 at 12:18
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    @jwenting - valid points, but some confirmation is better than just an unconfirmed rumour – user5341 Oct 07 '16 at 15:35
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    According to Snopes the only source for this claims is "unnamed State Department sources," which is about as unattributed as you get. If it was said (and I doubt it), I would imagine it would have been a joke. I doubt that a) the State dept. can order drone strikes, b) she would actually consider bombing a foreign embassy. http://www.snopes.com/julian-assange-drone-strike/ – rougon Oct 08 '16 at 19:16

1 Answers1

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Probably not

The claim has never been independently made outside of True Pundit, and it cited anonymous State Department sources.

Clinton claims not remembering saying that.

I don't recall any joke. It would have been a joke if it had been said, but I don't recall that.

It very unlikely that killing Assange with a drone was a serious suggestion, as he was residing in non-hostile countries and embassies that that were unwilling to extradite; they would probably be very upset by a drone kill. Other more conventional methods of killing or capturing seem more plausible.

It could have been said as a rhetorical question for taking decisive (possible lethal) action. There's really no verifiable way to know. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."

Paul Draper
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