Assange fails to block controversial memoirs

JULIAN ASSANGE has complained he will have to buy a copy of his own newly-published autobiography to find out its contents after he failed to block its release.

The WikiLeaks founder tried to cancel his contract for the memoir after reading a first draft, but publishers Canongate Books went ahead with its publication yesterday against his wishes.

In the book, Assange, 40, suggests that rape allegations against him could have been concocted by the US government and says he knew that “forces” would eventually trap him.

He dismisses claims he sexually assaulted two women in Sweden last year, writing: “I may be a chauvinist pig of some sort but I am no rapist.”

Assange condemned Canongate’s publication of the book, describing it as a case of “screwing people over to make a buck”.

He said it was a “work in progress” written by his Scottish ghostwriter Andrew O’Hagan, based on interviews and stressed it was “entirely uncorrected or fact-checked by me”.

He added: “I will have to buy ‘my autobiography’ in order to learn the extent of the errors and inaccuracies of the content of the book, but the damage is done.”

Canongate issued a statement in which it accused Assange of offering a “distorted version of events”, adding: “We believe in the book and maintain we were right to publish it.”

Spokesman Jon Howells said: “I’ve never heard of somebody writing an autobiography and then asking for it not to be published, but for it to be published anyway. I think it’s unprecedented.”

Assange claims in the book that a contact in a Western intelligence agency told him just before the rape allegations emerged that the US government was considering dealing with him “illegally”.

The source allegedly said Washington officials were discussing everything from planting drugs or child pornography to embroiling him in “allegations of immoral conduct”.

Assange also admits he had consensual sex with the two women in Sweden and that he “wasn’t a reliable boyfriend, or even a very courteous sleeping partner”.

But he stresses: “I did not rape those women and cannot imagine anything that happened between us that would make them think so, except malice after the fact, a joint plan to entrap me, or a terrible misunderstanding that was stoked up between them.”

He said he knew he was not safe after the arrest in May last year of US army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning, 23, on suspicion of leaking classified information to WikiLeaks.

He writes: “I recognised, even then, that forces would always be after me, and they would trap me in some way or another before long.”

But Assange does not confirm Manning provided the army leaks.