I should maybe elaborate. You claim for weeks that you fear being the target of a smear campaign.

How better to protect yourself from one, than to vaccinate the entire public? Find two accolytes to report the alleged rape and molestation on just barely credible terms, and then either have them withdraw them or bring to light certain facts that mean that the charges HAVE to be dropped (factual inconsistencies, for example, or a previous record of crying wolf; etc).

Do this quickly on a saturday morning when newsrooms are too understaffed to do much reporting and will probably not have much time between the issuing of the charges and the withdrawal to actually spread the uncorrected, daaging rumours; just the retraction.

Result? CNN runs a front page headline next to not-negative press about you (charges withdrawn) suggesting to all its viewers that you might well be the target of a smear campaign. Future journalists AND readers will be immunised and healthily sceptical the next time something like this is attempted.

If this was a wikileaks taskforce's test balloon, wouldn't they have done it in a normal newsday?