They /can/ shoot him though. All it takes is an angry war widow who feels their life is forfeit without their partner. A little encouragement and the means to

They /can/ shoot him though. All it takes is an angry war widow who feels their life is forfeit without their partner. A little encouragement and the means to enact the murder and you have an assassin who cannot be traced back to you. But, he's simply not important enough to be assassinated. While the media coverage of him may make it seem like he is the bane of the American government, they have much more important things to worry about. This approach was perfected by the CIA during the cold war, but it has been a long time since someone in the public eye was important or dangerous enough to warrant an assassination. The other problem I have with this is that rape is an awful way to frame someone. You need to condition someone to stand up to extreme amounts of interrogation and cross-examination. A single slip-up in memorization of facts can cost the entire case. It is not nearly as simple as "pay someone 10 million and have them say he raped them", we're talking about world class psychiatrists and world class lawyers, the victim needs an incredible amount of practice to be able to convince them that they are telling the truth. The American government has the NSA at their disposal, they could frame him a million ways and make it stick, they would not use a random swedish woman. That is not to say that the American government isn't happy about it, nor that they aren't encouraging this story, nor that Assange did it, but this certainly isn't the work of the American government.