Julian Assange is an Australian journalist who founded WikiLeaks in 2006. Julian was the editor of WikiLeaks until September 2018: six months of his effective incommunicado detention in the Ecuadorian embassy in London then prompted Julian to appoint Kristin Hrafnsson as WikiLeaks editor-in-chief. Julian remains WikiLeaks publisher.

Wikileaks publications have had enormous impact. They have changed many peoples views of governments, enabling them to see their secrets. They have changed journalism as a practice, as debates have raged over the ethics of secrecy, transparency and reporting on stolen documents. WikiLeaks has gained the admiration of people and organisations all over the world, as evidenced in the numerous awards it has won.

At the same time, Julian and WikiLeaks have incurred the wrath of several governments exposed in the releases, notably the United States. US public officials have threatened to prosecute Julian and WikiLeaks: these threats are outlined here. Probably no organisation in the world undertaking legitimate activity is the subject of such intense scrutiny, vilification and threats by the US government as WikiLeaks.

Julian has been living in the Ecuadorian embassy in London since June 2012, after seeking and gaining political asylum by the Ecuadorian government. Julian sought protection from US political persecution and attempts to imprison him over his work as the publisher of WikiLeaks. He was granted political asylum after the UK and Swedish governments refused to give an assurance that they would not extradite him to the US over WikiLeaks publications.

The UK government refuses to confirm or deny whether it has received a US extradition warrant. Human Rights Watch has called on the UK to issue an assurance that it will not extradite Julian to the US as a way toresolve the situation.

Julians life in embassy is difficult and would probably be unbearable for most people. He is in a small space and has had no access to sunlight for over six years.

This has had serious effects on his physical and mental health. But Julian has even been prevented by the British authorities from being able to get necessary medical treatment including an MRI for shoulder pain and dental care: those authorities have stated that Julian will be arrested as soon as he leaves the embassy. Medical assessments concerning the deterioration of Julians health can be read here and here.

In March 2018, the new government in Ecuador unilaterally imposed new conditions on Julian that prevent him from having visitors and receiving telephone calls and other electronic communications, permitting him only to meet with his lawyers.

But then in October, Ecuador unilaterally imposed further restrictions in a new Protocol. This includes explicit threats to revoke Julians asylum if he, or any visitors, breach or are perceived to breach, any of the 28 rules in the protocol. The protocol forbids Julian from undertaking journalism and expressing his opinions, under threat of losing his asylum. The rules also state that the embassy can seize Julians property or his visitors property and hand these to the UK police, and report visitors to the UK authorities. The protocol also requires visitors to provide the IMEI codes and serial numbers of electronic devices used inside the embassy, and states that this private information may be shared with undisclosed agencies.

The Ecuadorian government has falsely stated that Julians protection from political persecution is contingent on his censorship. There is no legal basis for this claim, and in fact, the interference with his basic rights that has been imposed violates both the Ecuadorian Constitution and binding international legal instruments.

There have been reportsthat the UK and Ecuador are seeking to reach a high level agreement to breach Julians asylum by handing him over to the UK police to be arrested. The US government is increasing its military cooperation with Ecuador and providing other inducements, apparently to press Ecuador to hand over Julian. Any such action by Ecuador would be in defiance a strong, supportiveruling(see para 178 and following) by the Inter-American Court on Human Rights, setting out Ecuadors obligations in relation to Julian.

The United Nations considers Julian to be held in a situation of arbitrary detention. In December 2015, the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD), having reviewed Julians case, determined that he has been held in a state of arbitrary detention since his voluntary arrest in London in December 2010.

In its statement announcing its decision, the UN group said,

The Working Group considered that Mr. Assange has been subjected to different forms of deprivation of liberty: initial detention in Wandsworth prison which was followed by house arrest and his confinement at the Ecuadorian Embassy. Having concluded that there was a continuous deprivation of liberty, the Working Group also found that the detention was arbitrary because he was held in isolation during the first stage of detention and because of the lack of diligence by the Swedish Prosecutor in its investigations, which resulted in the lengthy detention of Mr. Assange.

The WGAD called for Julians immediate release and stated that he was entitled to compensation. In response to the announcement, Julians legal team asked Sweden to withdraw its arrest warrant (see below).

However, the UK and Swedish governments rejected the ruling and have refused to acknowledge the WGADs requests. Incredibly, the UK government tried to dismiss the WGAD ruling which is the worlds leading body addressing matters concerning arbitrary detention as ridiculous. The government requested a review but in November 2016, the WGAD rejected this request stating that it did not meet the threshold of a review. The UK government reiterated that it completely rejects the ruling of the WGAD.

In December 2010, the Swedish authorities issued an arrest warrant for Julian seeking his extradition (see Swedish allegations below). Julian then voluntarily visited a police station in London, following which he was arrested and placed in solitary confinement in a maximum security prison for 10 days. The day after Julian was imprisoned, the media reported that Sweden and the US had entered into talks over extraditing Assange to the United States in connection with the WikiLeaks disclosures.

After 10 days in prison, the UK courts found that Julian Assange could be released on bail. He was moved to house arrest and required to meet the police every day, which he did for 551 days in a row.

In May 2012, Julian lost an appeal at the UK Supreme Court over his extradition to Sweden. Fearing that the Swedish authorities would make good on reports of his being extradited to the US, in the context of the ongoing US investigation into him (see threats to WL), on 19 June 2012, Julian Assange entered the Ecuadorian Embassy in order to seek asylum.

On 16 August 2012, Ecuador granted political asylum to Julian. It cited a threat to his life, personal safety and freedom as the basis for granting his request. The Ecuadorian government added:

There is a certainty of the Ecuadorian authorities that an extradition to a third country outside the European Union is feasible without the proper guarantees for his safety and personal integrity. The judicial evidence shows clearly that, given an extradition to the United States, Mr. Assange would not have a fair trial, he could be judged by a special or military court, and it is not unlikely that he would receive cruel and demeaning treatment and he would be condemned to a life sentence or the death penalty, which would not respect his human rights If Mr. Assange is reduced to preventive prison in Sweden (as it is usual in that country), it would initiate a chain of events that will prevent the adoption of preventive measures to avoid his extradition to a third country.

Asylum was granted under the 1951 Refugee Convention and 1954 Caracas Convention owing to Julians well-founded fear of political persecution if extradited to the US in circumstances where the UK and Sweden refused to provide (or even seek) diplomatic assurances against his extradition to the US. Ecuador requested this assurance from the UK and Sweden before deciding to grant Julian protection: its protection was granted when the UK government did not do so.

A key myth about why Julian was forced into the Ecuadorian embassy

Despite numerous false media reports, Julians concern was never to avoid extradition to Sweden, but to avoid extradition to the United States where he would be imprisoned, and, as Ecuador noted in granting asylum, could even face the death penalty. Julian would have accepted extradition to Sweden had the UK provided an assurance against onward extradition to the US.

Despite false media reporting, Julian has also always been willing to present himself to the British police over the bail issue from 2012, again provided that the UK authorities give assurances that he would not be extradited to the US.

Neither the UK nor Swedish governments have ever provided such assurances against extradition.

The UK government has not recognised that it has an obligation to recognise that Julians refugee status prevents the UK extraditing him to the persecuting state, in this case, the United States.

The case could have been resolved many years ago.

The Swedish case is now closed. The Swedish allegations derived from August 2010, when Julian was in Sweden three weeks after the publication of the Afghan Warlogs, following which the US described WikiLeaks as a very real and potential threat.

Two women went to the Swedish police after having separate sexual encounters with Julian in order to request he undergo an STD test. The police filed these reports as one case of rape and another of molestation. However, the Chief Prosecutor of Stockholm, Eva Finn, reviewed and then dropped the preliminary investigation into the rape case, stating that no crime at all had been committed and that the evidence did not disclose any evidence of rape; the Chief Prosecutor then cancelled the arrest warrant for Julian, who remained in Sweden in order to cooperate in the investigation. However, seven days later, another prosecutor, Marianne Ny, reopened the preliminary investigation.

Text messages between the two women, which were later revealed, do not complain of rape. Rather, they show that the women did not want to put any charges on JA but that the police were keen on getting a grip on him and that they only wanted him to take a test. One wrote that it was the police who made up the charges and told a friend that she felt that she had been railroaded by police and others around her.

Julian provided several affidavits professing innocence of any allegations and always made himself available for questioning by the Swedish authorities. Despite numerous false media reports asserting that Julian faced charges by the Swedish police, no charges were ever brought.

Emails released under a tribunal challenge following a Freedom of Information Act request revealed that the Swedish authorities wanted to drop the arrest warrant for Julian in 2013 it was the British government that insisted it continue. UK prosecutors admitted todeleting key emails and engaged in elaborate attempts to keep correspondence from the public record.

After initially stating that it was illegal to question him in the UK, the Swedish prosecutor finally took Julians statement on 14 November 2016. It began:

You have subjected me to six years of unlawful, politicized detention without charge in prison, under house arrest and four and a half years at this embassy. You should have asked me this question six years ago. Your actions in refusing to take my statement for the last six years have been found to be unlawful by the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention and by the Swedish Court of Appeal. You have been found to have subjected me to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. You have denied me effective legal representation in this process. Despite this, I feel compelled to cooperate even though you are not safeguarding my rights.

Six months later, in May 2017, Swedish prosecutors announced that they were withdrawing their arrest warrant for Julian and the investigation was halted. The London Metropolitan Police released a statement confirming it would arrest Julian if he left the embassy over the bail issue in 2012.

On ConspiracyThese two essays, State and Terror Conspiracies and Conspiracy as Government were authored by Julian in 2006, shortly after the founding of WikiLeaks.

UndergroundJulian contributed research data to Suelette Dreyfus 1997 book Underground: Tales of hacking, madness and obsession on the electronic frontier.

Cypherpunks: Freedom and the Future of the InternetThis book is primarily a transcription of a conversation between Julian and cyber activists Jacob Appelbaum, Andy Mller-Maguhn, and Jrmie Zimmermann about the current state of the internet and what can be expected in the future.

When Google Met WikiLeaksThis book is primarily a transcription of a conversation between Julian Assange and then-Google chairman Eric Schmidt about politics, technology, and the intertwining of the two.

The WikiLeaks Files: The World According to US EmpireThis book is a compendium of essays detailing specific aspects of WikiLeaks released of 250,000 US State Department cables, known as Cablegate. Introduction by Julian.

Hillary Clinton: The Goldman Sachs SpeechesThis book contains transcripts of Hillary Clintons speeches given to multinational finance company Goldman Sachs, which were released as part of WikiLeaks DNC Leaks. Introduction by Julian.

In 2012, Julian Assange hosted a political interview show, entitled The World Tomorrow, featuring discussions on transparency, surveillance and world events with a variety of major public figures, activists and academics. Guests included linguist Noam Chomsky, then Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, former Guantanamo prisoner Moazzam Begg, and Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah. The show comprised twelve 26-minute episodes and was sold to a number of TV stations around the world.

Continued here:
Julian - Defend WikiLeaks

Welcome to the WL Research Community. We are a group of volunteers who compile summarized information from data published by WikiLeaks. Join us as we bring truth to light on some of the most powerful political and corporate entities in the world. Interested in joining? Checkout our Getting Started guide.

Mar 31, 2017 - continues the Vault 7 series with Marble 676 source code files for the CIA's secret anti-forensic Marble Framework. Marble is used to hamper forensic investigators and anti-virus companies from attributing viruses, trojans and hacking attacks to the CIA.

Marble does this by hiding ("obfuscating") text fragments used in CIA malware from visual inspection. This is the digital equivallent of a specalized CIA tool to place covers over the english language text on U.S. produced weapons systems before giving them to insurgents secretly backed by the CIA.

Nov 29, 2016 - WikiLeaks publishes in searchable format more than 60 thousand emails from private intelligence firm HBGary. The publication today marks the early release of US political prisoner Barrett Brown, who was detained in 2012 and sentenced to 63 months in prison in connection with his journalism on Stratfor and HBGary.

Browse All Investigations

More here:
our.wikileaks.org

WikiLeaks has become a political game changer for the entire world.

Secrets, we now realize, are no longer possible even for those with diplomatic pouches, encrypted security measures and the most powerful safeguards for supposedly securing total privacy.

Thanks to WikiLeaks the whole world now knows the content of many of the most intimate conversations between heads of state as well as reports of ambassadors to their governments. Some of the material was so explosive that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton spent much of the past week preparing foreign leaders for the fallout what the Guardian described as a meltdown of the U.S. diplomatic corps.

In addition to giving support to many of Israel's positions, especially regarding the threat of Iran, several revelations are deeply embarrassing. They provide off-the-cuff assessments by American diplomats of world leaders, critiques that were expected to be released only decades from now. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is compared to Hitler, French President Nicolas Sarkozy is called an emperor with no clothes," Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai is "driven by paranoia," according to the cables, while German Chancellor Angela Merkel earns high marks as a "Teflon" politician.

The explosive nature of what has now become public knowledge was perhaps best summed up by Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini who referred to the public release of the WikiLeaks information as the "Sept. 11 of world diplomacy."

Related Article: Stopping Lashon Hara

WikiLeaks has introduced a new concept into the political arena: Truth trumps all else. If it is true that a head of state spoke ill of another government's leader it is not only justifiable but even mandatory to reveal the insult. After all, it is true, and what can be more exemplary than to publicize truth? If there is information that guides foreign policy which our enemies are unaware of but strategically important to us, the only question that needs to be answered before making it public is whether it is indeed fact; WikiLeaks is proud to present itself as fearless spokesman for truth, no matter the fallout or negative consequences.

I will leave it to the political analysts to discuss the merits of this position as it relates to the relationships between nations and the real-politique necessary to assure peace between peoples with differing ideologies and aspirations. What I'm more interested in is whether the guiding rule of WikiLeaks ought to be an ethical principle for our private lives.

Does the truth really supersede every other value? Does the fact that something is true always justify its being made public?

Before we make up our minds about the morality of WikiLeaks laying bare every governmental indiscretion or secret to the world's press, it might be relevant for us to put this into the perspective of our own moral choices on a daily basis.

Judaism is quite clear about the severity of lashon hara speaking ill of others. Very often those who are guilty of this sin attempt to justify their behavior with the words But it's true. According to Jewish law, this defense is totally irrelevant. Lashon hara, which literally means 'evil talk,' has no right for expression because of its motivation; its truthfulness does not override its hurtfulness. If what is being said is a slanderous lie in addition to being hurtful, it would be an even greater sin.

Rabbi Israel Salanter, founder of the Mussar movement that stressed the importance of developing personal integrity, put it beautifully: Before we speak of another person we must always ask ourselves two questions is it kind and is it true? And if the answer to the first is no, then the second no longer matters; our ethical imperative demands silence.

It often comes as a surprise to many people to learn that Jewish law sometimes not only permits but actually encourages the suppression of truth.

What if the family and the doctor are certain that a critically ill patient wouldn't be able to cope with a dire prognosis? Compassion, codified by Jewish law, dictates that we may hide the truth from the clinically condemned sufferer, even if we have to lie when he asks whether we are optimistic about his fate.

There are many moments in life when unvarnished truth comes with a price too costly to bear. The Talmud points out that God himself did not hesitate to tell a lie in the cause of a kinder and greater good. When the angels came to Sarah to inform her that she would be blessed with a child, her response mocked the prophecy on the grounds that her husband Abraham was too old to be a father. But when God repeated her words to Abraham he changed them; in God's version Sarah supposedly put the onus on herself I am too old to bear a child. That wasn't true. But it was kind. And it is from this very story that the sages posit the principle that a lie in the interest of peace in this case peace between husband and wife is far preferable to a hurtful truth.

The WikiLeaks philosophy has no place in our personal lives. Judaism long ago warned us that the malicious does not become any more acceptable simply by virtue of its veracity, nor does truth enjoy an unquestioned right to be disseminated in spite of any negative consequences.

After all, as William Blake so profoundly pointed out,

A truth that's told with bad intentbeats all the lies you can invent.

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WikiLeaks - aish.com

WikiLeaks (es); WikiLeaks (is); WikiLeaks (ms); WikiLeaks (bcl); WikiLeaks (rw); WikiLeaks (en-gb); (mzn); (bg); (pnb); WikiLeaks (ur); WikiLeaks (mg); WikiLeaks (sk); WikiLeaks (uk); (zh-hant); WikiLeaks (gsw); (ko); WikiLeaks (kk); WikiLeaks (eo); (mk); WikiLeaks (bs); (bn); WikiLeaks (fr); WikiLeaks (jv); (cv); (mr); WikiLeaks (vi); WikiLeaks (lv); WikiLeaks (af); (sr); WikiLeaks (hr); WikiLeaks (el); WikiLeaks (pt-br); WikiLeaks (sco); WikiLeaks (lb); WikiLeaks (nan); WikiLeaks (nb); WikiLeaks (az); WikiLeaks (da); WikiLeaks (oc); (kn); (ckb); WikiLeaks (en); (ar); WikiLeaks (br); (ml); WikiLeaks (my); WikiLeaks (yue); WikiLeaks (hu); WikiLeaks (bar); WikiLeaks (tt); WikiLeaks (eu); WikiLeaks (ca); WikiLeaks (ast); WikiLeaks (nds); WikiLeaks (de-ch); WikiLeaks (de); WikiLeaks (lmo); WikiLeaks (be); (hy); (zh); WikiLeaks (ku); (ne); (ja); WikiLeaks (nl); (te); WikiLeaks (fi); WikiLeaks (id); (he); WikiLeaks (la); WikiLeaks (fy); (hi); WikiLeaks (wuu); (pa); (fa); WikiLeaks (en-ca); WikiLeaks (ga); (ta); WikiLeaks (it); WikiLeaks (pam); (si); WikiLeaks (cy); WikiLeaks (be-tarask); WikiLeaks (diq); WikiLeaks (ka); WikiLeaks (cs); WikiLeaks (ru); WikiLeaks (ro); WikiLeaks (scn); WikiLeaks (pt); (ps); WikiLeaks (sh); WikiLeaks (et); WikiLeaks (lt); WikiLeaks (sl); WikiLeaks (sq); WikiLeaks (sv); WikiLeaks (tr); WikiLeaks (war); WikiLeaks (pl); WikiLeaks (gd); (zh-tw); WikiLeaks (vec); WikiLeaks (sah); (xmf); (th); WikiLeaks (gl); WikiLeaks (sc); (zh-hans); WikiLeaks (nn) organizacin que publica informes annimos y documentos filtrados (es); nonprofit szervezet, amely titkos informcikat szivrogtat ki (hu); , (ru); Enthllungsplattform (de); organisasjon som publiserer lekkede hemmelige dokumenter (nb); (zh); (sr); (ne); (ja); organizao internacional que divulga informaes secretas (pt-br); (zh-hans); webov strnka (sk); retejo (eo); , (he); internationale organisatie met website (nl); organizzazione internazionale senza scopo di lucro (it); site internet diffusant des informations confidentielles (fr); organitzaci internacional que publica informaci secreta (ca); sivusto salaisten asiakirjojen vuotamiseen (fi); international organization which publishes secret information (en); (ar); mezinrodn organizace zveejujc utajovan informace (cs); , (uk) (ru); wikileaks.org (en); , , , , , (zh); , (zh-hans); , (zh-hant)

Wikipedia article about WikiLeaks

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Category:WikiLeaks - Wikimedia Commons

How WikiLeaks works

WikiLeaks is a transparency organisation and online publisher founded in 2006 by Julian Assange. It reveals censored and restricted materials, specialising in large data sets and has published over 10 million documents with a perfect record of authenticity.

WikiLeaks receives censored and restricted documents anonymously after Julian created the first anonymous secure online submission system for documents from journalistic sources. For years it was the only such system of its kind, but such a dropbox is now a staple of many major news and human rights organisations, with versions such as SecureDrop. The documents released by WikiLeaks have shown the inner workings of governments, corporations, trade deals, wars, and much more.

Julian Assange founded WikiLeaks to:

bring important news and information to the public One of our most important activities is to publish original source material alongside our news stories so readers and historians alike can see evidence of the truth.

Key points about WikiLeaks:

WikiLeaks first began publishing source documents in December 2006 when it released documents on Somalia. One of its first major releases was the a copy of the Guantanamo Bay prison camps 2003 Standard Operating Procedures for the US Army. WikiLeaks soon released allegations of illegality by the Swiss Bank Julius Baer, Sarah Palins Yahoo emails, the secret bibles of Scientology and the membership list of the far-right British National Party.

In 2010, WikiLeaks came to global attention by publishing tens of thousands of classified documents from the United States, from the US Armys helicopter gunners in Collateral Murder to the Afghan War Diaries, the Iraq War Logs to Cablegate, the State Department diplomatic cables. This was followed in 2011 by the Gitmo Files documents on 767 of the 779 prisoners in Guantanamo Bay.

From 2012-15, WikiLeaks published the Global Intelligence Files (5 million emails from intelligence contractor Stratfor), two million files from Syrian political elites, the Saudi Cables (500,000 files from the Saudi Foreign Ministry) as well as material on Trans-Pacific Partnership and Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnerships trade deals.

In 2016, WikiLeaks published the DNC Leaks over 50,000 emails and attachments from the US Democratic National Committee and the Podesta Emails 58,660 emails from Hillary Clinton campaign Chairman John Podesta.

This was followed in 2017 by the publication of Spy Files: Russia and, most notably the Vault 7 series which exposes CIA hacking tools in the biggest leak in the CIAs history. In 2018, WikiLeaks released files on Amazon and on a secret arms deal in the Middle East

This is a snapshot of some WikiLeaks releases. A full list can be viewed here.

WikiLeaks, its publisher and its journalists have won many awards, including:

WikiLeaks has also been nominated for the UN Mandela Prize (2015) and, in six consecutive years, for the Nobel Peace Prize (2010-2015).

More here:
WikiLeaks - Defend WikiLeaks

Julian Assange, the founder and head of WikiLeaks, has laid his cards on the table: He views it as his mission to do what he can to prevent Hillary Clinton from becoming president of the United States of America. And his reasons arent just political, as Charlie Savage wrote earlier this week in the New York Times: In an interview with Robert Peston of ITV on June 12, Savage wrote, Assange suggested that he not only opposed her candidacy on policy grounds, but also saw her as a personalfoe.

Recently, the internet rumor mill has been circulating an enticing possibility for those rooting for an Assange takedown of Clinton: Assange says that he has, in his possession, an email or emails that will offer enough evidence thats the simple, two-word quote that is repeated over and over and over, everywhere for authorities to indict Clinton. If youGoogle Clinton Assange indictment,the headlines scream off the screen, each more excitable than the last:Democrat Scandal: Julian Assange Claims New Leaks Will Send Hillary Clinton to Prison Over Campaign to Destroy Bernie Sanders,BREAKING: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says his next leak will virtually guarantee an indictment of Hillary Clinton,Julian Assange: My Next Leak Will Ensure Hillarys Arrest,and so on. (Disclosure: My brother does data analysis for the Clintoncampaign.)

Suffice it to say, this would be a big deal. If Hillary Clinton got indicted, it would virtually hand the election to Donald Trump. But after the millions of dollars Republican members of Congress spent investigating the Benghazi attacks, the yearlong FBI inquiry into Clintons use of a private, non-secure server for emails that led to that agencys director, James Comey,publicly reprimanding Clinton as extremely carelessbut declining to press charges, and the endless scrutiny of the Clinton Foundations finances, what could such an email possiblycontain?

Or maybe thats the wrong question to be asking. Based on my attempt to verify the quote in question, Assange may have never actually claimed to have such materials. Rather, this may have all been an out-of-control game of internet telephone, of rumormongering at its worst and least responsible, propagated by outlets hostile to Clinton and eventually reaching the pages of the top newspaper in the United States, theTimes, and one of the top papers in Canada, theNational Post. At the very least it appears that the most popular version of the blockbuster-emails story that Assange told ITV a future release will contain enough evidence to indict Clinton is false, despite having been endlessly echoed online. Assange did not make that claim in that interview, and while its hard to prove the total nonexistence of a two-word quote, theres no clear evidence he uttered that phrase in an interview atall.

Before explaining whats going on here, its important to make clear that Assangehassaid that WikiLeaks will be dumping juicy Clinton-related documentsin the future. But this is different, and less surprising, from the idea of Assanges explicitly mentioning a specific email or emails that could lead to a Clinton indictment. Its one thing to sayWere going to release emails that will make Hillary Clinton look bad, which WikiLeaks has done and will undoubtedly continue to do whenever it can, and its quite another to sayWere going to release emails that will land Hillary Clinton inprison.

The confusion that gave rise to the enough evidence rumor might stem from the fact that the ITV spot was a bit of a train wreck. Mostly, the interview has been spread around online viathis linkto a shortened version, but what appears to be the full, start-to-finish interview is here, with the Clinton portion coming in the last 3:30 orso:

As Savage notes in hisTimeswriteup, part of the reason this interview slipped under the radar when it first aired was because Mr. Peston appeared to mistakenly assume that WikiLeaks had obtained still-undisclosed emails from the private server Mrs. Clinton had used while secretary of state and kept cutting Mr. Assange off to ask about it. But those emails had actually already been published by the State Department as a result of the FBIs investigation into Clintons cybersecurity (or lack thereof) practices WikiLeaks just compiled them into an easy-to-search database. Thats why the interview is a bit hard to fully follow: As Savage writes, it now seems clearer that Mr. Assange was trying to talk about the Democratic National Committee emails, even as Peston was pressing him about server emails. He was giving a hint about the big reveals to come the emails that led to afair amount of Democratic embarrassment, and to the ouster of Debbie Wasserman Schultz as chair of theDNC.

But on the question of whether Assange mentioned the possibility of a Clinton indictment in that interview, the answer is clear: Yes, he did, but in a very specific and not particularly explosive way. It comes at around the five-minute mark of the fullvideo:

We have accumulated a lot of material about Hillary Clinton we could proceed to an indictment. But because Loretta Lynch is the DoJ, head of the DoJ in the United States, appointed by Obama, Loretta Lynch is the person in charge of our case [meaning the governments investigation of WikiLeaks dissemination of classified government documents]. Shes not going to indict Hillary Clinton, thats not possible that could happen, but the FBI can push for concessions from the new Clinton government in exchange for its lack of indictment. But theres very strong material, both in the emails and in relation to the Clinton Foundation. For example, we published an email where Hillary Clinton is instructing her staff to remove the Classified header of a classified document and send it by a non-classified fax. So that just requires one more thing, which is to show that the document was actually sent. But she instructed her staff to violate those classification procedures in the United States.

Assange is claiming that one of the emails WikiLeaks had already published at that time (via the State Department releases) could potentially be indictment-worthy in the context of future evidence that hasnt yet emerged but that he finds that extremely unlikely. Hes making the common-sense observation that the Democrat-appointed attorney general is probably not looking to go out of her way to indict a Democratic former secretary of State who is running for President during the peak of a presidentialcampaign.

(Update: On Twitter, Savage points out that when you include Assanges words from immediately prior to what I excerpted, it sounds like hes saying something a bit different, though some interpretation is required with regard to the placement of the quotationmarks:

The FBI is going to go, We have accumulated a lot of material about Hillary Clinton we could proceed to an indictment. But because Loretta Lynch is the DoJ head of the DoJ in the United States, appointed by Obama Loretta Lynch is the person in charge of our case. Shes not going to indict Hillary Clinton, thats not possible that could happen. But the FBI can push for concessions from the new Clinton government in exchange for its lack of indictment.But theres very strong material, both in the emails and in relation to the Clinton Foundation

In this reading, our case again, per Savage on Twitter refers to the governments hypothetical case against Clinton, not against WikiLeaks. In listening to the interview, I had processed a pause in Assanges speech as him trailing off and switching his train of thought: The FBI is going to go We have accumulated I actually think Savages interpretation is more likely. If hes right, then it gets even harder to interpret this segment as Assange claiming there is still-unreleased material that will lead to Clintons indictment rather, hes imagining that the FBI believes it already has enough evidence to indict, but that investigators there realize that Lynchs allegiances make that a politicalimpossibility.)

Now, the full story of Clintons asking for the header to be removed is a bit murky, and there are potentially nonincriminating explanations. But setting aside the merits of Assanges legal analysis, there is no point in this clip, or the ITV segment on the whole, when he claims specifically that he is sitting on unreleased material that will likely lead to Clintons indictment, or when he uses the phrase enough evidence to describe the contents of a leak-to-come. Plus, that claim makes no sense in the full context of the clip: If he was anticipating an indictment, why would he be talking about his hopes for the FBI to extract concessions from a new Clinton government? Yet the interview has been presented, thousands of times now if you factor in the internets bottom-feeders, as proof that Assange is going to be releasing some bombshell materials that pose a serious legal threat to Clinton. (An email to WikiLeaks seeking comment bouncedback.)

The enough evidence quote turns out to be rather ghostly almost every time it is mentioned online, its either attributed to the ITV interview or disconnected from any sourcing whatsoever. Trying to track it down leads deep down a dark internet rabbit hole. In a Russia Today segment posted to YouTube Wednesday, for example, the host leads off by saying that Julian Assange is now preparing to release more leaked emails, and this time he says they will, quote, provide enough evidence to indict Hillary Clinton. The host doesnt provide the source of the quote (or make it clear where it leaves off). If you then Google Assange and the exact phrase enough evidence, one top Google News result the top result for me is a National Post article from Tuesday which references a Democracy Now interview. Quoting from that interview, the Post articlenotes:

In relation to sourcing, I can say some things, Assange told the host. (A), we never reveal our sources, obviously. Thats what we pride ourselves on. And we wont in this case, either. But no one knows who our source is. Assange has said the release Friday was the first in a series and the new emails would provide enough evidence to indict Clinton. In a June interview with Britains ITV, Assange said the same, warning there was enough evidence to indict Clinton if the U.S. government had the courage to do so. [emphasis mine]

What does has said mean here? To which interview is it referring? Again, we have the unusual situation of a direct quote being provided with no specific attribution. As the slippery phrasing hints, enough evidence didnt come from the Democracy Now segment that transcript doesnt contain the words enough, evidence, or indict, and only mentions arrested in the context of the as-yet-unresolved sexual-assault charges leveled against Assange in 2010. The quote is just floating there, alone andmysterious.

Theres a similar issue with an article by David Sanger, the Times chief Washington correspondent, which was publishedMonday:

Julian Assange, who founded WikiLeaks, argued to Richard Engel of NBC in an interview broadcast Monday that there is no proof of that whatsoever that Russia was behind the original hacking. We have not disclosed our source, and of course, this is a diversion thats being pushed by the Hillary Clinton campaign.

Mr. Assange also said another round of emails to be released would provide enough evidence to indict her, but her campaign manager, Robby Mook, said, He says a lot of things, so Im not, Im not going to pay attention to that.

The attribution isnt totally clear, but the simplest interpretation, based on the also said phrasing, is that Assange made the enough evidence comment to Engel. But if you watch the full interview posted on NBC.com, theres no such moment.(I emailed with Sanger about this yesterday, and he said that quote came from the articles contributing reporter and that he would ask her about it. If I hear more, Ill update thisstory.)

Other mainstream outlets picked up the quote as well: Julian Assange has pronounced that there are more hacked emails to come from his group, including ones that willprovide enough evidenceto see Hillary Clinton arrested,wrote Reasons Nick Gillespieon Tuesday, linking to the ITV spot. (I took it from a headline that linked to the interview, but I had not watched the interview, which is not good journalism, to be sure, said Gillespie when I asked him about his post.)A New YorkNewsdayeditorial published Mondayhad it slightly differently and got the date of the interview wrong: in an interview with Britains ITV earlier this month, Assange predicted that [the private-server emails] would provide enough evidence to derail hercampaign.

So where did this two-word quote ostensibly uttered by Assange originate? It appears, but cant be definitively proven, that it first popped up the day after the ITV interview in June, in blog posts covering that interview published by Zero Hedge and Russia Today. Zero Hedge, a popular economics- and finance-focused conservative blog that is very Clinton-averse and, to phrase it diplomatically, has not always had an intensely intimate relationship with the concept of careful fact-checking, published an item headlined Julian Assange Warns WikiLeaks Will Publish Enough Evidence To Indict Hillary Clinton. The post in question didnt actually show where in the ITV interview Assange said that, because he didnt say that. (Wednesday, Zero Hedge followed up with a post which noted that One month ago, when Wikileaks Julian Assange told ITVs Richard Peston that he would publish enough evidence to indict Hillary Clinton, few took him seriously. If people didnt take the quote seriously, there was good reason for it.) As for Russia Today, its article about the ITV interview had the very similar headline Wikileaks will publish enough evidence to indict Hillary Clinton, warns Assange, and like the Zero Hedge article it provided no evidence of that actualquote.

The RT and Zero Hedge posts exploded across the internet shortly after they went up, gaining traction via typically high-share-count sites like U.S. Uncut (In a recent interview with ITV, Assange said the whistleblowing website will soon be leaking documents that will provide enough evidence for the Department of Justice to indict the presumptive Democratic nominee) and TruthDig, and were also posted to popular conservative forums like FreeRepublic and Lucianne.com, helping the rumor to spread still further. One YouTube video on the subject got more than 260,000 views. The original article and almost all the follow-up postings all made the same error: They all claimed that Assange said in the ITV interview that a future WikiLeaks release would provide enough evidence direct quote to indictClinton.

The case that RT and/or Zero Hedge launched this rumor isnt bulletproof, but its fairly strong. If you do a Google search over a date range that only goes to June 10, 2016 a couple days before the ITV interview theres no sign of anyone reporting this direct quote before then. Technically, there are some hits, but all the links I clicked on pointed to content which was indexed incorrectly and had actually been published later, or which was otherwiseirrelevant.

Again: Its very, very hard to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that a given person never used a given two-word phrase in reference to a particular situation. But typically, if a public figure makes a remark and news outlets snip a couple words from it, it takes about ten seconds, thanks to Google, to determine the context and read the full sentence in question. As far as I can tell, having checked both Google and Nexis, no one seems to have posted the full sentence from which Assanges enough evidence remark was plucked, and over and over and over, those writing about or reporting on that quote have linked to an interview in which it simply doesnt occur. This is extremely unusual.

If this is, in fact, a false rumor, it isnt hard to see why it went viral. One of the many reasons people spread rumors without fact-checking them is wish-fulfillment: people who hate Clinton really, really want to see her indicted (if not shot for the supposed treason she has committed). But its still strange and disturbing, even by circa-2016 standards of viral rumors, that a direct quote that doesnt show up anywhere could so effortlessly penetrate the Clinton/WikiLeaks conversation, from the webs most tin-foil-hatted blogs all the way up to the New York Times.

Read more from the original source:
Does Julian Assange Really Have an Email That Will Get ...

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who was behind a massive dump of classified US documents in 2010, has been charged in the United States, WikiLeaks said on Thursday.

Prosecutors revealed the existence of the sealed indictment inadvertently in a court filing in an unrelated case, WikiLeaks said. The exact nature of the charges against Assange was not immediately known.

SCOOP: US Department of Justice accidentally reveals existence of sealed charges (or a draft for them) against WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange in apparent cut-and-paste error in an unrelated case also at the Eastern District of Virginia, Wikileaks wrote on Twitter.

The still unsealed charges against Assange were disclosed by Assistant US Attorney Kellen Dwyer as she made a filing in the unrelated case and urged a judge to keep that filing sealed. Dwyer wrote, due to the sophistication of the defendant and the publicity surrounding the case, no other procedure is likely to keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged, according to The Washington Post.

Later, Dwyer wrote the charges would need to remain sealed until Assange is arrested. US media were alerted late Thursday to the inadvertent disclosure thanks to a tweet from Seamus Hughes, deputy director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. He is known to follow court filings closely.

Read the original here:
Julian Assange charged in US: WikiLeaks - The Hindu BusinessLine

But Assange has a long, if enigmatic, relationship with Russia, and shares a contempt for the U.S. government, and especially Hillary Clinton, with the Kremlin. While Russias authoritarianism and suppression of free expression are at odds with WikiLeakss stated principles, Raffi Khatchadourian noted in a 2017 New Yorker profile that Assange has tended to view Russia as an important counterweight to the American empire, and has perhaps thus tended to overlook its flaws. The New York Times concluded in August 2016 that WikiLeaks actions often seemed to benefit Russia, and Assange also briefly hosted a show on RT, the Kremlin-affiliated propaganda network. On Tuesday, The Guardian reported that Manafort had visited Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in March 2016, around the time he joined the Trump campaign. But the article was opaquely sourced, and hasnt been confirmed by other outlets.

Assange originally entered the Ecuadorian embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden on sex-crimes charges, but since those charges were dropped he has refused to leave, saying he is worried that the U.S. would have him arrested and extradited. Over the more than six years of his residency, Assanges relationship with Ecuador has frayed. The country cut off his internet access late in the 2016 election due to his alleged interference in American politics. More recently, he has sued Ecuador for violating his rights by cutting off communications.

But a recent development in the U.S. buttresses Assanges fears. In an apparently inadvertent disclosure in an unrelated case, a federal prosecutor wrote that Assange had been indicted under seal. The U.S. government said Assanges name was incorrectly placed in the filing. It is not yet clear what Assange might be charged with, or whether the charges would stem from Muellers probe or something else.

Read: Collusion happened

The more consequential questions are what Trump knew about the back channel to WikiLeaks and when he knew it. As my colleague Natasha Bertrand has reported, Stone has repeatedly changed his story to authorities about his communications with both WikiLeaks and Trump campaign officials. Stone also pushed the Seth Rich conspiracy theory. But while Stone was believed to be in touch with people in the Trump campaign, its not clear whether the candidate himself was aware of those communications.

CNN reports that Trump told Mueller, in written answers to questions, that Stone never told him about the talks with WikiLeaks. Of course, there were other channels: George Papadopoulos, a Trump campaign foreign-policy aide, was told that Russia possessed emails that would be damaging to the Clinton campaign. Manafort, Donald Trump Jr., and Jared Kushner met with a Russian lawyer in June 2016 after being told that Vladimir Putin backed Trump Sr. and that they could expect dirt on Clinton, though all parties say no information was ultimately exchanged. CNN reports that Trump also told Mueller he did not know about that meeting, though the White House has repeatedly changed its story about it.

Continue reading here:
Is WikiLeaks a Russian Front?

WASHINGTON (AP) WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange will not willingly travel to the United States to face charges filed under seal against him, one of his lawyers said Friday, foreshadowing a possible fight over extradition for a central figure in the U.S. special counsels Russia-Trump investigation.

Assange, who has taken cover in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he has been granted asylum, has speculated publicly for years that the Justice Department had brought secret criminal charges against him for revealing highly sensitive government information on his website.

That hypothesis appeared closer to reality after prosecutors, in an errant court filing in an unrelated case, inadvertently revealed the existence of sealed charges. The filing, discovered Thursday night, said the charges and arrest warrant would need to remain sealed until Assange is arrested in connection with the charges in the criminal complaint and can therefore no longer evade or avoid arrest and extradition in this matter.

A person familiar with the matter, speaking on condition of anonymity because the case had not been made public, confirmed that charges had been filed under seal. The exact charges Assange faces and when they might be unsealed remained uncertain Friday.

The DOJ inadvertently named Julian Assange in a court filing in an unrelated case, suggesting they have prepared charges against the WikiLeaks founder under seal. Any charges could shed light on whether Russia coordinated with Trump's campaign.(Nov. 16)

Any charges against him could help illuminate whether Russia coordinated with the Trump campaign to sway the 2016 presidential election. They also would suggest that, after years of internal Justice Department wrangling, prosecutors have decided to take a more aggressive tack against WikiLeaks.

A criminal case also holds the potential to expose the practices of a radical transparency activist who has been under U.S. government scrutiny for years and at the center of some of the most explosive disclosures of stolen information in the last decade.

Those include thousands of diplomatic cables from Army Pvt. Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning, secret CIA hacking tools, and most recently and notoriously, Democratic emails that were published in the weeks before the 2016 presidential election and that U.S. intelligence officials say had been hacked by Russia.

Special counsel Robert Mueller, who has already charged 12 Russian military intelligence officers with hacking, has been investigating whether any Trump associates had advance knowledge of the stolen emails.

Assange could be an important link for Mueller as he looks to establish exactly how WikiLeaks came to receive the emails, and why its dump of stolen communications from Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta beginning just after a damaging video of Trump from a decade earlier publicly surfaced appeared timed to boost the Trump campaign.

Assange, 47, has resided in the Ecuadorian Embassy under a grant of asylum for more than six years to avoid being extradited to Sweden, where he was accused of sex crimes, or to the United States, whose government he has repeatedly humbled with mass disclosures of classified information.

The Australian was once a welcome guest at the embassy, which takes up part of the ground floor of a stucco-fronted apartment in Londons posh Knightsbridge neighborhood. But his relationship with his hosts has soured over the years amid reports of espionage, erratic behavior and diplomatic unease.

Barry Pollack, a Washington lawyer for Assange, said he expected Ecuador to comply with its obligations to preserve asylum for him, though he acknowledged a concern that the county could revoke his asylum, expel him from the embassy and facilitate an extradition to the U.S.

The burden should not shift to Mr. Assange to have to defend against criminal charges when what he has been accused of doing is what journalists do every day, Pollack said. They publish truthful information because the public has a right to know and consider that information and understand what its government and institutions are doing.

The charges came to light in an unrelated court filing from a federal prosecutor in Virginia, who was attempting to keep sealed a separate case involving a man accused of coercing a minor for sex.

The three-page filing contained two references to Assange, including one sentence that said due to the sophistication of the defendant and the publicity surrounding the case, no other procedure is likely to keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged.

It was not immediately clear why Assanges name was included in the document. Joshua Stueve, a spokesman for the Justice Departments Eastern District of Virginia said, The court filing was made in error. That was not the intended name for this filing.

The filing was discovered by Seamus Hughes, a terrorism expert at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, who posted it on Twitter hours after The Wall Street Journal reported that the Justice Department was preparing to prosecute Assange.

The case at issue concerns a defendant named Seitu Sulayman Kokayi, a 29-year-old teacher who has since been indicted on charges of enticing a 15-year-old girl to commit sex acts and to produce child pornography. There doesnt appear to be any connection between Assange and Kokayi.

The since-unsealed document, a motion filed in late August, mentions Assange in two boilerplate sections, suggesting a copy-and-paste error or that his name was inadvertently left in a template used for the common filings.

The filing suggests prosecutors have reason to believe they will be able to arrest and extradite Assange.

Ecuadorian officials say they have cut off his high-speed internet access and will restore it only if he agrees to stop interfering in the affairs of Ecuadors partners, such as the U.S. and Spain. He is allowed to use the embassys WiFi, though it is unclear if he doing so. Officials have also imposed a series of other restrictions on Assanges activities and visitors, and ordered him to clean after his cat.

Carlos Poveda, Assanges lawyer in Ecuador, said he suspects Ecuador has been maneuvering to kick Assange out of the embassy through the stricter new living requirements it recently imposed.

He said possible U.S. charges, however, are proof his client remains under threat, and he called on Ecuadors government to uphold Assanges asylum protections. He said Ecuador would be responsible if anything happened to Assange.

With shrinking options an Ecuadorian lawsuit seeking to reverse the restrictions was recently turned down WikiLeaks announced in September that former spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson, an Icelandic journalist who has long served as one of Assanges lieutenants, would take over as editor-in-chief.

In a brief interview in Reykjavik, Iceland, Hrafnsson called the U.S. news a very black day for journalism.

___

Associated Press writer Raphael Satter in Paris, Chad Day in Washington and Egill Bjarnason in Iceland contributed to this report.

Link to court filing: http://apne.ws/Me9YxB9

Read the original here:
WikiLeaks' Assange faces charges; lawyer says he'd fight

Prosecutors revealed the existence of the sealed indictment inadvertently in a court filing in an unrelated case, WikiLeaks said.

The exact nature of the charges against Assange was not immediately known.

SCOOP: US Department of Justice accidentally reveals existence of sealed charges (or a draft for them) against WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange in apparent cut-and-paste error in an unrelated case also at the Eastern District of Virginia, Wikileaks wrote on Twitter.

The still unsealed charges against Assange were disclosed by Assistant US Attorney Kellen Dwyer as she made a filing in the unrelated case and urged a judge to keep that filing sealed.

Dwyer wrote, due to the sophistication of the defendant and the publicity surrounding the case, no other procedure is likely to keep confidential the fact that Assange has been charged, according to The Washington Post.

Later, Dwyer wrote the charges would need to remain sealed until Assange is arrested.

US media were alerted late Thursday to the inadvertent disclosure thanks to a tweet from Seamus Hughes, deputy director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. He is known to follow court filings closely.

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WikiLeaks: Julian Assange Charged in U.S. | Breitbart