It was the sort of comment designed to deflect, with irony or humour, the stories that have swirled around the woman who has levelled three charges of sexual misconduct at Assange.

But her attempt to disarm her critics - referring, perhaps jokingly, to the Central Intelligence Agency - has only provoked further questions. Could Ardin, 31, really be a spy and the charges against Assange part of a conspiracy to discredit him after he began publishing on WikiLeaks 250,000 classified documents from the US State Department? We know from Ardin's own words that, at various times, she has been infatuated and infuriated with Assange.

According to a timeline compiled by Australian journalist Guy Rundle in London, the day after Ardin's mid-August assignation with Assange - the assignation she later said involved rape - she tweeted that she wanted to take him to a ''crayfish party'', a popular summer social activity in Sweden.

Another tweet has her being with ''the world's coolest, smartest people, it's amazing!''

At the same time as Assange was enjoying her company, he became involved with another Swedish woman, Sofia Wilen, 26, a photographer whom he met at a public meeting he addressed and Ardin organised.

When Ardin learnt of Assange's encounter with Wilen - after Wilen approached her worried she may have become pregnant after unprotected sex - both women complained to the Swedish police.

Ardin alleged three counts of misconduct, while Wilen laid one charge.

The Swedish laws define rape broadly, so that pressing an erect penis against a woman's back the morning after consensual sex and not wearing a condom can count as sexual offences.

Nevertheless, any charge of rape is serious.

In 2006, Assange, using the pseudonym Harry Harrison, wrote on the OKCupid website: ''Passionate, and often pig headed activist intellectual seeks siren for love affair, children and occasional criminal conspiracy.'' He also admitted to being ''87% slut''. It would appear that he is a man with adventurous tastes.

But rumours suggesting an ulterior motive for the charges, which Swedish prosecutors initially dismissed, then revived, have ricocheted around the internet.

The rumours focus principally on Ardin. In September, the left-wing online magazine Counterpunch hinted that she could be a spy, especially considering her connections with Cuba and the Cuban emigre community in Miami that is fanatically opposed to former president Fidel Castro.

''Anna Ardin … is often described by the media as a 'leftist','' wrote Israel Shamir and Paul Bennett. ''She has ties to the US-financed anti-Castro and anti-communist groups.''

Ardin is, indeed, a political activist but her views would appear to run counter to the idea that she was an anti-communist zealot in the pay of the CIA.

She is a member of Sweden's Social Democratic Party and secretary of the Swedish Association of Christian Social Democrats, known colloquially as ''the Brotherhood''. As a Christian socialist organisation, it draws much of its inspiration from the left-wing gospel theology that inspired many Latin American revolutionaries.

But Ardin, who also goes by the name Anna Bernardin, has also evinced strong anti-Castro views. The articles in 2008, translated by Google, are not ''diatribes'', as Shamir and Bennett argue, but they do speculate on Cuba's future after Castro dies and push the idea of an anti-Castro Left.

The Miami Herald reported that Ardin had ''ties to Cuban dissidents'' and had visited the country on four occasions between 2002 and 2006, while representing the Swedish Social Democrats. But the paper disputed Counterpunch claims that she was linked to militant anti-Castro figures and groups, such as Carlos Alberto Montaner and the Ladies in White.

Rundle reported that she had interned with the Swedish embassy in Washington, DC, wrote her thesis on Cuban opposition groups and was advised to leave Cuba. ''The reports,'' he wrote last week, ''have helped fuel wider conspiracy theories about the nature of Ardin's involvement with WikiLeaks and Assange''.

The swift and efficient disappearance of many of her Twitter and blog posts (some were cached) also led to suggestions that any material that was incriminating - or complicating to her case - had been professionally cleansed.

Australian journalist and expert on espionage Philip Knightley, who is backing Assange in his battle with the British courts, does not believe Ardin is a CIA agent.

''There's no direct evidence,'' he told The Sun-Herald. But he said that decades of dealing with spy agencies had led him to suspect that she fitted the model of someone who could be useful to intelligence agencies.

''She's someone they would consider an asset. I do not think she has been recruited for this mission but once she realised she was in this position, she might have known the right people to contact.''

The essence of Knightley's theory is that Ardin is someone whose high-level political activity inside Sweden's historically dominant party - and her ability to travel to contentious destinations such as Cuba and make connections with hostile emigre communities as part of her academic research - would make her a valuable source for Sweden's boutique spy agency.

''They are always on the lookout for people with what you might call 'interesting friends','' he said. ''The Swedes have a small but very active intelligence agency that was energetic during the Cold War.

''Sweden was a major site for anti-Russian activities during the Cold War and there was certainly considerable contact with the CIA.''

Ardin's family is also involved with the military and NATO forces in Afghanistan, adding another layer to the conspiracy theory.

Yet another factor, reported by Crikey, is that Ardin was in the Palestinian border town of Yumoun, working on a project for the ''Brotherhood''. While such news may undermine the alleged CIA relationship, the history of espionage suggests it could be a cover.

The theory that Ardin may be an active spy - or even just a naive participant in a conspiracy involving a Swedish intelligence agency trying to get close to its American counterpart - could obscure a more simple proposition: that she is a spurned lover who has seized the chance to go after a man who has made himself the No.1 enemy of the US.

In January this year, well before WikiLeaks began dumping US diplomatic cables on the web and long before she had ever met Assange, she published a manual on how to ''systematically take revenge'' on ''someone who cheated or who dumped you''.

She wrote: ''Do a brainstorm of appropriate measures for the category of revenge you're after … You can sabotage your victim's current relationship, such as getting his new partner to be unfaithful or ensure that he gets a madman after him.''

Assange may not be the prey of a ''madman'', such as an aggrieved husband or boyfriend, but the WikiLeaks founder is certainly the target of an angry superpower.