September 26, 2021 – Zach Dorfman, Sean D. Naylor and Michael Isikoff at Yahoo News reported:
In 2017, as Julian Assange began his fifth year holed up in Ecuador’s embassy in London, the CIA plotted to kidnap the WikiLeaks founder, spurring heated debate among Trump administration officials over the legality and practicality of such an operation.
Some senior officials inside the CIA and the Trump administration even discussed killing Assange, going so far as to request “sketches” or “options” for how to assassinate him. Discussions over kidnapping or killing Assange occurred “at the highest levels” of the Trump administration, said a former senior counterintelligence official. “There seemed to be no boundaries.”
The conversations were part of an unprecedented CIA campaign directed against WikiLeaks and its founder. The agency’s multipronged plans also included extensive spying on WikiLeaks associates, sowing discord among the group’s members, and stealing their electronic devices.
While Assange had been on the radar of U.S. intelligence agencies for years, these plans for an all-out war against him were sparked by WikiLeaks’ ongoing publication of extraordinarily sensitive CIA hacking tools, known collectively as “Vault 7,” which the agency ultimately concluded represented “the largest data loss in CIA history.”
President Trump’s newly installed CIA director, Mike Pompeo, was seeking revenge on WikiLeaks and Assange, who had sought refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy since 2012 to avoid extradition to Sweden on rape allegations he denied. Pompeo and other top agency leaders “were completely detached from reality because they were so embarrassed about Vault 7,” said a former Trump national security official. “They were seeing blood.”
The CIA declined to comment. Pompeo did not respond to requests for comment.
“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”
Barry Pollack, Assange’s U.S. lawyer, told Yahoo News.
National Union of Journalists (NUJ) general secretary Michelle Stanistreet said:
“The suggestion that US security services even considered kidnapping and murder on the streets of a trusted ally is chilling. That such acts might have been contemplated as a reaction to an individual who had simply published inconvenient truths is all the more troubling.
“At Assange’s extradition hearings, the US government did not contest evidence that individuals allegedly working on its behalf had bugged the Ecuadorian embassy in London, followed Assange’s family and associates, and burgled the office of his lawyer. That context makes these fresh allegations all the more difficult to dismiss.
“If true, the story from Yahoo! News’ blows a hole in the case made by the US government that its attempt to extradite Assange is not politically motivated.
“I am calling on the UK home secretary to explain whether the security services had any involvement in, or knowledge of, these plans.
“Furthermore, it is clear that when the US appeal against the dismissal of its extradition application in respect of Assange is heard in October, it should be dismissed out of hand and its subject released at once.”
The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) general secretary, Anthony Bellanger, said:
“If these accusations are true, it would cast a long shadow over all independent journalism and they would once again prove that extraditing Assange to the United States would put his life at serious risk. We are calling for a full investigation and for the British authorities to release him immediately.”
Did the US plot to assassinate Julian Assange?
A judge wants answers from Mike Pompeo
London’s Telegraph reported:
20 June 2022 — Judge Santiago Pedraz of Spain’s National Court sends request to US authorities to call the former secretary of state as a witness
Mike Pompeo has been summoned by a Spanish court to testify over claims the US plotted to assassinate Julian Assange.
Judge Santiago Pedraz, of Spain’s National Court, is leading an investigation into whether Spanish security firm UC Global spied on Mr Assange while providing security for the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where the Australian resided between 2012 and 2019.
A spokesman for Spain’s National Court told The Telegraph that Judge Pedraz had sent a request to US authorities to call the former US secretary of state as a witness.
“There has been no reply as yet,” the spokesman added.
Mr Pompeo was the director of the CIA under Donald Trump from 2017 to 2018, when the Republican president appointed him as secretary of state.
Lawyers representing Mr Assange in Spain, including the former judge Baltasar Garzón, allege that the US “orchestrated” the espionage effort against the activist, with UC Global placing microphones and cameras in the embassy to spy on his private conversations and meetings.
However, Anthony Albanese, the Australian Prime Minister, on Monday rejected calls from Mr Assange’s supporters for him to publicly demand the US drop its prosecution of the WikiLeaks founder, who is an Australian citizen.
Mark Dreyfus, the Attorney General and Foreign Minister Penny Wong responded to the British government’s decision by saying Assange’s “case has dragged on for too long and … should be brought to a close.”
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