It has been 10 years since Assange arrived at the Ecuadorian Embassy. While at the Embassy, we watched John Pilger and Sean Hannity visit and heard about Pamela Anderson visiting him (x 2 was it)? and a Julian balcony appearance.
He was whisked off off to a maximum security prison in May 2019, placed in a tiny cell, 23 hours/day solitary confinement, 1 hr/day allowed out of his tiny cell, but he managed to get married in 2022 to a woman named Stella. There are many online pics of her in a white wedding gown and veil and holding flowers with a large crowd gathered around her on her wedding day which took place on the grounds of the maximum security prison, but no Julian was in sight.
We have essentially learned little to nothing of real value over the years about Assange, however, there is a very informative and lengthy Yahoo News article dated 09/06/2021 (link is at the very bottom). The following is as short a summary as I can make from it.
In the summer of 2016 at the height of the presidential election, an event occurred with the US government's approach to WikiLeaks when WikiLeaks started publishing Democratic Party emails. The US intelligence community concluded the Russian military intelligence agency, known as the GRU, had hacked the emails. Assange denied it. Regardless, US intelligence officials believed that Assange was acting in collusion with people who were using him to hurt the interests of the United States. Now, the CIA was put into high gear.
Then the NSA began surveiling Twitter accounts of suspected Russian intelligence operatives who were disseminating the leaked emails. This collection revealed direct messages between the operatives who went by the moniker Guccifer 2.0 and Wikileaks' Twitter account. Assange continued to deny that Russia was the source for the emails which were published by mainstream news.
On April 13, 2017, Pompeo comes to the podium at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSS), a Washington think tank, to deliver a standing-room-only crowd his first public remarks as CIA Director. Much of his speech was about WikiLeaks.
"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."
After the speech, Pompeo asked a small group of senior CIA officers to figure out "the art of the possible" when it came to WikiLeaks. Pompeo said, "NOTHING'S OFF LIMITS, DON'T SELF-CENSOR YOURSELF. I need operational ideas from you. I'll worry about the lawyers in Washington." The CIA headquarters then sent messages directing CIA stations and bases worldwide to prioritize collection on WikiLeaks.
By mid-2017, US spies had excellent intelligence on numerous WikiLeaks members and associates. Proposals began percolating upward within the CIA and the NSC to undertake various disruptive activities — including paralyzing digital infrastructure, disrupting communications, provoking internal disputes within the organization by planting damaging information, and stealing WikiLeaks members’ electronic devices.
By the summer of 2017, the CIA’s proposals were setting off alarm bells at the National Security Council. “WikiLeaks was a complete obsession of Pompeo’s,” said a former Trump administration national security official. “After Vault 7, Pompeo and Deputy CIA Director Gina Haspel wanted vengeance on Assange."
Pompeo and others at the agency proposed abducting Assange from the embassy and surreptitiously bringing him back to the United States via a third country — a process known as rendition. The idea was to break into the embassy, drag Assange out and bring him to wherever, or U.S. operatives would snatch Assange from the embassy and turn him over to British authorities.
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.’”
Some discussions even went beyond kidnapping. U.S. officials had also considered KILLING ASSANGE. One official said he was briefed on a spring 2017 meeting in which the president asked whether the CIA could assassinate Assange and provide him “options” for how to do it.
At roughly the same time, agency executives requested and received sketches of plans for killing Assange and other Europe-based WikiLeaks members who had access to Vault 7 materials, There were discussions on whether killing Assange was possible and whether it was legal.
Assange had been on the CIA'S radar for years, especially regarding WIKILEAKS VAULT 7 which revealed extraordinary sensitive CIA hacking tools. It was the largest data loss in CIA history.
And, yes, Pompeo was seeking revenge because top CIA agency leaders and he were completely detached from reality because of their embarrassment about VAULT 7. This opened the door for agency operatives to take far more aggressive actions. US spies then began monitoring communications and movements of many WikiLeaks personnel.
Yahoo News conversed with more than 30 US officials - 8 of whom described details of the CIA's proposal to abduct Assange. This was a campaign headed by Pompeo. Although there was no indication that extreme measures against Assange were ever approved, the proposals worried some administrative officials so much that they reached out to staffers and Congress members on the House and Senate intelligence committees to alert them as to what Pompeo was suggesting.
Some National Security Council officials worried that the CIA's proposals to kidnap Assange would not only be illegal but also might jeopardize the prosecution of Assange. So, the Justice Department expedited the drafting of charges against Assange to ensure that they were in place if he were brought to the US.
In late 2017, the CIA's plans were upended when US officials said that alarming reports revealed that Russian intelligence were planning to sneak Assange out of the UK and whisk him to Moscow. At the SAME TIME, Ecuadorian officials had begun efforts to GRANT ASSANGE DIPLOMATIC STATUS as part of a scheme to give him cover to leave the Embassy and fly to Moscow to serve in the country's Russian mission.
In response, the CIA began preparing for a number of scenarios. Those included potential gun battles with Kremlin operatives on London streets, crashing a car into a full-blown Russian diplomatic vehicle transporting Assange and grabbing him, and shooting out the tires of a Russian plane transporting Assange before it could take off to Moscow.
US OFFICIALS ASKED THEIR BRITISH COUNTERPARTS TO DO THE SHOOTING IF GUNFIRE WAS REQUIRED, according to a former senior administration official.
All of this set off a wild scramble. "It was beyond comical," said the former senior official. "It got to the point where every human being in a 3-block radius was working for one of the intelligence services - whether they were street sweepers, police officers, or security guards."
By December 2017, the plan to get Assange to Russia appeared to be ready. UC Global had learned that Assange would “receive a diplomatic passport from Ecuadorian authorities, with the aim of leaving the embassy to transit to a third state,” a former employee said. On Dec. 15, Ecuador made Assange an official diplomat of that country and planned to assign him to its embassy in Moscow, according to documents obtained by the Associated Press.
Assange said he “was not aware” of the plan struck by the Ecuadorian foreign minister to assign him to Moscow, and refused to “accept that assignment,” said Fidel Narvaez, who was the first secretary at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2017 and 2018.
U.S. intelligence officials believed Russia planned to exfiltrate Assange, reportedly on Christmas Eve. According to the former UC Global employee, the company’s boss discussed with his American contacts the possibility of leaving the embassy door open, as if by accident, “which would allow persons to enter from outside the embassy and kidnap the asylee.”
In testimony first reported in the Guardian, another idea also took shape. “Even the possibility of poisoning Mr. Assange was discussed,” the employee said his boss told him.
Even Assange appeared to fear assassination. Some Vault 7 material, which CIA officials believed to be even more damaging than the files WikiLeaks had published, had been distributed among Assange’s colleagues with instructions to publish it if one of them were killed, according to U.S. officials.
A primary question for U.S. officials was whether any CIA plan to kidnap or potentially kill Assange was legal. The discussions occurred under the aegis of the agency’s new “offensive counterintelligence” authorities, according to former officials. Some officials thought this was a highly aggressive, and likely legally transgressive, interpretation of these powers.
Without a presidential finding — the directive used to justify covert operations — assassinating Assange or other WikiLeaks members would be illegal, according to several former intelligence officials. In some situations, even a finding is not sufficient to make an action legal, said a former national security official. The CIA’s newfound offensive counterintelligence powers regarding WikiLeaks would not have stretched to assassination. “That kind of lethal action would be way outside of a legitimate intelligence or counterintelligence activity,” a former senior intelligence community lawyer said.
In the end, the assassination discussions went nowhere, said former officials.
My question: Is it fair to say more than not that Julian Assange is still alive?
It has been 10 years since Assange arrived at the Ecuadorian Embassy. While at the Embassy, we watched John Pilger and Sean Hannity visit and heard about Pamela Anderson visiting him (x 2 was it)? and a Julian balcony appearance.
He was whisked off off to a maximum security prison in May 2019, placed in a tiny cell, 23 hours/day solitary confinement, 1 hr/day allowed out of his tiny cell, but he managed to get married in 2022 to a woman named Stella. There are many online pics of her in a white wedding gown and veil and holding flowers with a large crowd gathered around her on her wedding day which took place on the grounds of the maximum security prison, but no Julian was in sight.
We have essentially learned little to nothing of real value over the years about Assange, however, there is a very informative and lengthy Yahoo News article dated 09/06/2021 (link is at the very bottom). The following is as short a summary as I can make from it.
In the summer of 2016 at the height of the presidential election, an event occurred with the US government's approach to WikiLeaks when WikiLeaks started publishing Democratic Party emails. The US intelligence community concluded the Russian military intelligence agency, known as the GRU, had hacked the emails. Assange denied it. Regardless, US intelligence officials believed that Assange was acting in collusion with people who were using him to hurt the interests of the United States. Now, the CIA was put into high gear.
Then the NSA began surveiling Twitter accounts of suspected Russian intelligence operatives who were disseminating the leaked emails. This collection revealed direct messages between the operatives who went by the moniker Guccifer 2.0 and Wikileaks' Twitter account. Assange continued to deny that Russia was the source for the emails which were published by mainstream news.
On April 13, 2017, Pompeo comes to the podium at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSS), a Washington think tank, to deliver a standing-room-only crowd his first public remarks as CIA Director. Much of his speech was about WikiLeaks.
"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."
After the speech, Pompeo asked a small group of senior CIA officers to figure out "the art of the possible" when it came to WikiLeaks. Pompeo said, "NOTHING'S OFF LIMITS, DON'T SELF-CENSOR YOURSELF. I need operational ideas from you. I'll worry about the lawyers in Washington." The CIA headquarters then sent messages directing CIA stations and bases worldwide to prioritize collection on WikiLeaks.
By mid-2017, US spies had excellent intelligence on numerous WikiLeaks members and associates. Proposals began percolating upward within the CIA and the NSC to undertake various disruptive activities — including paralyzing digital infrastructure, disrupting communications, provoking internal disputes within the organization by planting damaging information, and stealing WikiLeaks members’ electronic devices.
By the summer of 2017, the CIA’s proposals were setting off alarm bells at the National Security Council. “WikiLeaks was a complete obsession of Pompeo’s,” said a former Trump administration national security official. “After Vault 7, Pompeo and Deputy CIA Director Gina Haspel wanted vengeance on Assange."
Pompeo and others at the agency proposed abducting Assange from the embassy and surreptitiously bringing him back to the United States via a third country — a process known as rendition. The idea was to break into the embassy, drag Assange out and bring him to wherever, or U.S. operatives would snatch Assange from the embassy and turn him over to British authorities.
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.’”
Some discussions even went beyond kidnapping. U.S. officials had also considered KILLING ASSANGE. One official said he was briefed on a spring 2017 meeting in which the president asked whether the CIA could assassinate Assange and provide him “options” for how to do it.
At roughly the same time, agency executives requested and received sketches of plans for killing Assange and other Europe-based WikiLeaks members who had access to Vault 7 materials, There were discussions on whether killing Assange was possible and whether it was legal.
Assange had been on the CIA'S radar for years, especially regarding WIKILEAKS VAULT 7 which revealed extraordinary sensitive CIA hacking tools. It was the largest data loss in CIA history.
And, yes, Pompeo was seeking revenge because top CIA agency leaders and he were completely detached from reality because of their embarrassment about VAULT 7. This opened the door for agency operatives to take far more aggressive actions. US spies then began monitoring communications and movements of many WikiLeaks personnel.
Yahoo News conversed with more than 30 US officials - 8 of whom described details of the CIA's proposal to abduct Assange. This was a campaign headed by Pompeo. Although there was no indication that extreme measures against Assange were ever approved, the proposals worried some administrative officials so much that they reached out to staffers and Congress members on the House and Senate intelligence committees to alert them as to what Pompeo was suggesting.
Some National Security Council officials worried that the CIA's proposals to kidnap Assange would not only be illegal but also might jeopardize the prosecution of Assange. So, the Justice Department expedited the drafting of charges against Assange to ensure that they were in place if he were brought to the US.
In late 2017, the CIA's plans were upended when US officials said that alarming reports revealed that Russian intelligence were planning to sneak Assange out of the UK and whisk him to Moscow. At the SAME TIME, Ecuadorian officials had begun efforts to GRANT ASSANGE DIPLOMATIC STATUS as part of a scheme to give him cover to leave the Embassy and fly to Moscow to serve in the country's Russian mission.
In response, the CIA began preparing for a number of scenarios. Those included potential gun battles with Kremlin operatives on London streets, crashing a car into a full-blown Russian diplomatic vehicle transporting Assange and grabbing him, and shooting out the tires of a Russian plane transporting Assange before it could take off to Moscow.
US OFFICIALS ASKED THEIR BRITISH COUNTERPARTS TO DO THE SHOOTING IF GUNFIRE WAS REQUIRED, according to a former senior administration official.
All of this set off a wild scramble. "It was beyond comical," said the former senior official. "It got to the point where every human being in a 3-block radius was working for one of the intelligence services - whether they were street sweepers, police officers, or security guards."
By December 2017, the plan to get Assange to Russia appeared to be ready. UC Global had learned that Assange would “receive a diplomatic passport from Ecuadorian authorities, with the aim of leaving the embassy to transit to a third state,” a former employee said. On Dec. 15, Ecuador made Assange an official diplomat of that country and planned to assign him to its embassy in Moscow, according to documents obtained by the Associated Press.
Assange said he “was not aware” of the plan struck by the Ecuadorian foreign minister to assign him to Moscow, and refused to “accept that assignment,” said Fidel Narvaez, who was the first secretary at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London in 2017 and 2018.
U.S. intelligence officials believed Russia planned to exfiltrate Assange, reportedly on Christmas Eve. According to the former UC Global employee, the company’s boss discussed with his American contacts the possibility of leaving the embassy door open, as if by accident, “which would allow persons to enter from outside the embassy and kidnap the asylee.”
In testimony first reported in the Guardian, another idea also took shape. “Even the possibility of poisoning Mr. Assange was discussed,” the employee said his boss told him.
Even Assange appeared to fear assassination. Some Vault 7 material, which CIA officials believed to be even more damaging than the files WikiLeaks had published, had been distributed among Assange’s colleagues with instructions to publish it if one of them were killed, according to U.S. officials.
A primary question for U.S. officials was whether any CIA plan to kidnap or potentially kill Assange was legal. The discussions occurred under the aegis of the agency’s new “offensive counterintelligence” authorities, according to former officials. Some officials thought this was a highly aggressive, and likely legally transgressive, interpretation of these powers.
Without a presidential finding — the directive used to justify covert operations — assassinating Assange or other WikiLeaks members would be illegal, according to several former intelligence officials. In some situations, even a finding is not sufficient to make an action legal, said a former national security official. The CIA’s newfound offensive counterintelligence powers regarding WikiLeaks would not have stretched to assassination. “That kind of lethal action would be way outside of a legitimate intelligence or counterintelligence activity,” a former senior intelligence community lawyer said.
In the end, the assassination discussions went nowhere, said former officials.
My question: Is it more fair to say more than not that Julian Assange is still alive?