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On 2 October 2016, the web site True Pundit published an article reporting that Hillary Clinton had supposedly attempted to order a drone strike on WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in order to silence that organization's efforts: The claim might not have seemed so incredible to some readers, as Assange himself had previously voiced the possibility of his being assassinated by drone, although even in his imaginings the chances of such an action (initiated by the CIA, not by Hillary Clinton) were not likely: First of all, the only cited source documenting that Hillary Clinton had ever suggested (even in jest) that a drone strike could take out Julian Assange was sources at the State Department, a vague and anonymous reference that does not yield to verification. Second, the claim that Hillary Clinton or her aides had either hinted or directly ordered remote assassination of Assange in November 2010 focused on a questionable interpretation of the terms legal and nonlegal strategies that appeared in the subject line of e-mails sent by Anne-Marie Slaughter, Director of Policy Planning at the U.S. Department of State and released via WikiLeaks' first searchable Hillary Clinton e-mail archive in March 2016. The e-mails in question purportedly followed Clinton's proposing that Julian Assange be targeted by a drone strike: However, the text of those e-mails (located here and here) neither said nor implied anything of the sort: The thrust of True Pundit's article hinged almost entirely on claiming that the term nonlegal essentially means the same thing as illegal, and much of the article's content delved into discussing why illegal methods for dealing with a WikiLeaks issue would be improper. However, nonlegal also bears a distinctly different meaning than illegal; the former can be used to distinguish discussions dealing with the law and legalities from discussions that don't involve legal matters: Moreover, Anne-Marie Slaughter's only reference to nonlegal methods were some very good suggestions about how to handle our public diplomacy (included in an unavailable appended memo). Unless public diplomacy is reasonable code for drone strike, the most logical reading of the e-mail chain would be that the meeting referenced in the e-mail explored what legal actions could be taken to minimize damage from WikiLeaks, with a secondary focus on nonlegal (i.e., not related to law enforcement or litigation) approaches such as diplomacy and public relations. On 4 October 2016 Clinton answered a question about whether the rumor was accurate, responding that she didn't recall any joke ... [reference to targeting Assange with a drone] would have been a joke
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