CIA discussed killing and kidnapping Wikileaks founder Julian Assange
The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) in the United States
of America (USA) considered kidnapping and assassinating Wikileaks founder
Julian Assange, a report published on Yahoo News says. The discussions occurred
in 2017 after Donald Trump took oath as the president of USA.
There was significant debate regarding the legality of the
operation with senior officials requesting ‘sketches’ and ‘options’ regarding
how Julian Assange could be murdered. A senior counterintelligence official
said that the possibility was discussed at the highest levels of the Trump
administration.
The discussions were part of a larger CIA operation against
Wikileaks that included spying extensively, spurring quarrel among associates
and ‘stealing their electronic devices’, the report says. The ‘War’ against
Assange was sparked by his publication of ‘Vault 7’, which contained
information about CIA’s hacking tools, described by the agency as “the largest
data loss in CIA history.”
Mike Pompeo, who was the CIA director back then, and other
top honchos “were completely detached from reality because they were so
embarrassed about Vault 7.” “They were seeing blood,” a national security
official under the Trump administration said.
Vault 7 sparked “a brand-new mindset with the administration
for rethinking how to look at WikiLeaks as an adversarial actor,” another top
counterintelligence official said. “That was new, and it was refreshing for the
intelligence community and the law enforcement community.”
After Wikileaks was designated a “non-state hostile
intelligence service”, numerous Wikileaks personnel had their communications
and movements monitored while Assange was subjected to audio and visual
surveillance, while he was lodged at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.
“There were serious intel oversight concerns that were being
raised through this escapade,” one Trump official is reported to have said
about the entire series of events. The US also believed that Russian agents
were planning to sneak Julian Assange out of the United Kingdom to Moscow.
Consequently, for the US, their job was to prevent it from happening.
“It was beyond comical. It got to the point where every
human being in a three-block radius was working for one of the intelligence
services — whether they were street sweepers or police officers or security
guards,” one former official said.
There were concerns in the Trump White House that the
campaign against Wikileaks could serve as a precedent to target mainstream news
organisations. Mike Pompeo’s animosity towards Wikileaks was not a secret.
In April, 2017, in an address at the Center for Strategic
and International Studies (CSIS), Pompeo said, “WikiLeaks walks like a hostile
intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service and has
encouraged its followers to find jobs at the CIA in order to obtain
intelligence.”
“It’s time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is: a
non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like
Russia,” he added. There is no evidence to suggest that Wikileaks is backed by
Russia and Pompeo’s allegations appear particularly contentious as it is
precisely the argument used by Trump’s opponents to claim that he won the 2016
presidential election due to Russian interference.
Pompeo is reported to have told officials, ‘Nothing’s off
limits, don’t self-censor yourself. I need operational ideas from you. I’ll
worry about the lawyers in Washington.’ He and others proposed abducting Julian
Assange and bringing him to USA, a process dubbed rendition. The idea,
apparently, was to “break into the embassy, drag [Assange] out and bring him to
where we want.”
A senior official said of the matter, “Trying to seize
Assange from an embassy in the British capital struck some as ‘ridiculous’.
This isn’t Pakistan or Egypt- we are talking about London.” “There was a
discussion with the Brits about turning the other cheek or looking the other
way when a team of guys went inside and did a rendition. But the British said,
‘No way, you’re not doing that on our territory, that ain’t happening’,”
another official recounted.
“You can’t throw people in a car and kidnap them,” said
another. A former official said that there were conversations “on whether
killing Assange was possible and whether it was legal.” One person also
reportedly said that the possibility of poisoning Assange was discussed as
well.
It is not clear how much Donald Trump knew about all of
this. There is a loophole that allows CIA to conduct counterintelligence
operations without the US President’s consent, or even his knowledge. On his
part, Trump denies ever considering Assange’s assassination.
“It’s totally false, it never happened. In fact, I think
he’s been treated very badly,” he said. According to one official, the proposal
to kill Julian Assange did not gain “serious traction”.
According to the report, US officials also wanted to label
Glenn Gleenwald and Laura Poitras, who had helped Edward Snowden expose the
American surveillance state, as “information brokers” so that more ‘investigation
tools’ could be used against them with the possibility of the two being
prosecuted.
“As an American citizen, I find it absolutely outrageous
that our government would be contemplating kidnapping or assassinating somebody
without any judicial process simply because he had published truthful
information,” Assange’s US lawyer told Yahoo News.
Assange is currently under imprisonment at one of the
harshest jails in the United Kingdom for exposing US war crimes and their
undercover secrets. He has been lodged in prison since 2019 and a British judge
has previously blocked US requests for his extradition.
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