How Julian Assange and WikiLeaks Became Targets of the U.S. Government (Published 2019) (2024)
Advertisem*nt
World
By LIAM STACK, NICK CUMMING-BRUCE and MADELEINE KRUHLY
Mr. Assange has been has been charged by the United States in the 2010 release of reams of secret American documents. Here are the key points in his case since WikiLeaks burst onto the scene.Related Article
Photo
Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has long been targeted by the United States for his role in releasing secret government documents.
Now he is just one flight away from being in American custody after years of seclusion in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London. A newly unsealed indictment showed that American prosecutors charged him with conspiring to hack a government computer.
Some quick background: Mr. Assange shot to international prominence in 2010 when WikiLeaks published secret material about American military activity in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as confidential cables sent among diplomats. In 2012, he took refuge at the embassy to avoid extradition to Sweden, where he faced questions about sexual assault allegations.
More recently, Mr. Assange has been under attack for his organization's release during the 2016 presidential campaign of thousands of emails stolen from the Democratic National Committee, leading to revelations that embarrassed the party and Hillary Clinton's campaign.
American investigators have linked those disclosures to efforts by Donald Trump's campaign to damage Ms. Clinton, but Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel investigating Russian election meddling, did not file any charges against Mr. Assange.
Here's a fuller timeline of how Mr. Assange and WikiLeaks got to this point.
WikiLeaks burst onto the scene in 2010 when it published secret material about American military activity in Iraq and Afghanistan over the course of several months. In April it released a graphic decrypted video from Iraq. In July, it published a six-year archive of classified military documents about the war in Afghanistan. The group released a second cache of secret reports, this time about the Iraq war, in October. The next month it published a quarter-million confidential American diplomatic cables that offered a look at back-room bargaining.
Since then, Wikileaks appears to have gradually shifted its focus to releasing material that benefits Russia, to the consternation of many of its former allies and defenders. Mr. Assange was a persistent problem for the Obama administration, releasing embarrassing documents from the United States and other countries. Meanwhile, President Trump during his campaign repeatedly expressed glee over WikiLeaks’ release of confidential emails from the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign, even after American officials said the emails had been given to WikiLeaks by hackers working for Russian intelligence.
Summer 2010
U.S. Investigates WikiLeaks
Army investigators suspected that the source of the leaks was Chelsea Manning, who was then serving as an enlisted soldier. Private Manning was court-martialed in June 2010, and in August 2013 she was sentenced to 35 years in prison for passing information to WikiLeaks. President Barack Obama commuted her sentence at the end of his second term, and she was released in May 2017.
Photo
September - December 2010
A Rape Investigation and Extradition Request From Sweden
Mr. Assange was investigated in August and September 2010 on charges of rape and molestation after separate complaints from two women. Sweden issued an extradition warrant for him in November that said Mr. Assange was wanted for questioning in connection with accusations of “rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion.” He said he was afraid that Sweden would turn him over to the United States, where WikiLeaks has been under investigation, and he vowed to fight the extradition request.
November 2011 - June 2012
Assange Goes to Court
A British court ruled in November 2011 that Mr. Assange could be extradited to Sweden. His lawyers challenged that decision, having argued at a February 2011 hearing that he would not receive a fair trial if extradited to Sweden. He lost his final appeal before Britain’s Supreme Court in June 2012.
Photo
August 2012
Ecuador Grants Assange Asylum
Ecuador rejected pressure from Britain and granted Mr. Assange political asylum in August 2012. He had already spent two months living in the country’s embassy in London. The decision left Mr. Assange confined to the embassy: Ecuador could protect him as long as he remained on Ecuadorean territory, but if he left the embassy he was subject to arrest by the British police.
January 2016
U.N. Panel Rules in His Favor
A United Nations rights panel said in January 2016 that Britain and Sweden hadarbitrarily detained Mr. Assange, should restore his freedom of movement and should compensate him. The panel said that Swedish prosecutors had not pressed charges and had never shown Mr. Assange evidence against him or given him a chance to respond. The ruling was disregarded by both countries, and Mr. Assange remained in the embassy.
November 2016
He Is Questioned at the Embassy
Swedish prosecutors, with Ecuador’s help, questioned Mr. Assange for four hours at the embassy in London. His Swedish lawyer, Per E. Samuelson, was not summoned to attend, and on Radio Sweden, he questioned the validity of the interview.
April 2017
A New Ecuadorean President
Lenín Moreno is elected president of Ecuador, succeeding Rafael Correa, a leftist who had been in power for a decade. During the campaign, several candidates had vowed to evict Mr. Assange from the embassy if they won. Mr. Moreno said he would let Mr. Assange stay, but has been significantly more critical than his predecessor, calling Mr. Assange a hacker and warning him not to meddle in politics.
May 2017
Sweden Drops Rape Investigation
Swedish prosecutors said they would stop the rape investigation into Mr. Assange. The chief prosecutor, Marianne Ny, made clear that this did not mean he was being pronounced innocent: “I can conclude, based on the evidence, that probable cause for this crime still exists,” she said. Ms. Ny said that proceeding with the case would require Mr. Assange to be served notice of the charges against him and for him to be present in a Swedish court, both of which were impossible.
In Britain, he still faces a warrant for failing to appear in court, and the Metropolitan Police in London have said that they would arrest him if he were to try to leave the embassy. The Justice Department in Washington has also said it is reconsidering whether to charge Mr. Assange for his role in the disclosure of highly classified information.
January 2018
Ecuador Grants Citizenship
In early 2018, Ecuador announced that it had made several moves to end the long diplomatic standoff, including granting Mr. Assange citizenship in December, a few months after he asked for it.
Days later, Ecuador asked Britain to give Mr. Assange diplomatic immunity so he could leave the embassy, but Britain declined. Still, the Ecuadorean government pushed on, saying it would seek a mediator to help broker a potential deal that would free him to leave the building.
February 2018
His Warrant Is Upheld in the U.K.
A British judge twice upheld the outstanding arrest warrant against Mr. Assange for jumping bail when he took refuge in the embassy in 2012. It was not clear that a ruling in his favor would have led to his going free, because the United States and Britain have never said whether there is a secret request to extradite him to face charges in an American court.
November 2018
Indictment Is Mistakenly Revealed
A court filing revealed that the Justice Department had prepared an indictment against Mr. Assange, although it was not clear whether charges had been filed against him. The existence of the indictment became known only after prosecutors inadvertently mentioned possible charges against him in an unrelated case. Seamus Hughes, a terrorism expert at George Washington University who closely tracks court cases, discovered the document and posted it on Twitter.
April 2019
Assange Is Arrested as U.S. Charge Is Revealed
The United States charged Mr. Assange with one count of conspiracy to hack a computer related to his role in the 2010 release of secret American documents, according to a newly unsealed indictment.
Hours before the indictment was unsealed, Mr. Assange had been arrested by the British authorities at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where he had lived since 2012.
The single charge stemmed from what prosecutors said was his agreement to break a password to a classified United States government computer. Significantly, it was not an espionage charge, a detail that press freedom advocates had watched closely.
May 2019
Sweden Reopens a Rape Case
Prosecutors in Sweden said they would reopen an investigation into a rape accusation against Mr. Assange, a move that threatened to complicate American efforts to extradite him on the computer-hacking charge.
The Swedish investigation began in 2010, but the authorities dropped their initial investigation in May 2017, having concluded that there was no way to proceed with the case as long as Mr. Assange was holed up in the embassy.
Prosecutors made clear at the time that they had not cleared him and they reserved the right to reopen their inquiry. Should Mr. Assange be extradited to Sweden, the Americans would need the approval of both the Swedish and British governments in order to take him into custody.
Mr. Assange could be returned to Sweden under a European arrest warrant, though Britain will ultimately decide which case takes precedence.
How Russia Often Benefits When Julian Assange Reveals the West’s Secrets Nov. 16, 2018
Trying to Smoke Out the Players in the Hacking of the D.N.C. Jan. 20, 2018
Spy Agency Consensus Grows That Russia Hacked D.N.C. Dec. 21, 2017
Assange, Avowed Foe of Clinton, Timed Email Release for Democratic Convention Jan. 20, 2018
Snowden and WikiLeaks Clash Over How to Disclose Secrets Dec. 21, 2017
What did Julian Assange do? Mr Assange ran Wikileaks, a website that published many confidential or restricted official reports related to war, spying and corruption. In 2010, it released a video from a US military helicopter which showed civilians being killed in the Iraqi capital Baghdad.
WikiLeaks (/ˈwɪkiliːks/) is a non-profit media organisation and publisher of leaked documents. It is funded by donations and media partnerships. It has published classified documents and other media provided by anonymous sources. It was founded in 2006 by Julian Assange, an Australian editor, publisher, and activist.
Its release revealed some of the restrictions placed over detainees at the camp, including the designation of some prisoners as off-limits to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), something that the U.S. military had in the past repeatedly denied.
American politicians Mitch McConnell, Newt Gingrich, and Sarah Palin each either referred to Assange as "a high-tech terrorist" or suggested that through publishing US diplomatic traffic he was engaged in terrorism.
In or about 2010 and 2011, Assange publicly disclosed via the WikiLeaks website hundreds of thousands of documents that Manning had taken without authorization and given to him, including approximately 75,000 Afghanistan war-related significant activity reports, classified up to the Secret level; 400,000 Iraq war- ...
Assange freed: What's the deal the WikiLeaks founder struck with the US? Assange will plead guilty to one espionage charge in a US court in Saipan, before returning home to Australia.
Assange and a group of other dissidents, mathematicians and activists established WikiLeaks in 2006. Assange became a member of its advisory board. From 2007 to 2010, Assange travelled continuously on WikiLeaks business, visiting Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America.
WikiLeaks is not affiliated with Wikipedia or the Wikimedia Foundation in any way whatsoever. "Wiki" is a generic word that anyone can use; it is not a brand name or trademark. A wiki is any website that allows the creation and editing of interlinked webpages via a web browser.
Wikileaks co-founder Julian Assange is set to return to Australia a free man after over a decade fighting extradition to the United States on espionage charges. The 52-year-old Australian was arrested in April 2019 at the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where he had been staying since 2012.
Further documents from the Iraq war revealed that 66,000 civilians had been killed - more than previously reported. The documents also showed that prisoners had been tortured by Iraqi forces. Among the leaks were more than 250,000 messages sent by US diplomats.
The Iraq War documents leak is the disclosure to WikiLeaks of 391,832 United States Army field reports, also called the Iraq War Logs, of the Iraq War from 2004 to 2009 and published on the Internet on 22 October 2010. The files record 66,081 civilian deaths out of 109,000 recorded deaths.
In 2012, while on bail, Julian Assange was granted political asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he sought to avoid extradition to Sweden, and what his supporters said was the possibility of subsequent extradition to the US.
As of 2010, access to WikiLeaks was blocked in the United States Library of Congress and U.S. federal government staff were blocked from viewing the site.
Assange, an Australian national, came to prominence in the 2000s for setting up WikiLeaks, a website that published leaked government, military and intelligence documents disclosing a range of scandals in various countries. Most of the documents were released in full.
Lack of sunlight can cause vitamin D deficiency, weakening bones and the immune system, and increasing the risk of fractures. These effects fit with the reports that Assange suffered a mini-stroke in 2021 and a broken rib from persistent coughing fits while in isolation.
The New York Times stated: "Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks leader, was indicted on 17 counts of violating the Espionage Act for his role in obtaining and publishing secret military and diplomatic documents in 2010, the Justice Department announced on Thursday — a novel case that raises profound First Amendment issues."
In December 1996, facing a theoretical sentence of 290 years in prison, he struck a plea deal and pleaded guilty to 24 hacking charges including breaches of the Crimes Act, and fraudulent use of a telecommunications network.
After his arrest, he was sentenced to 50 weeks in jail for breaching his bail conditions and had been in London's maximum security Belmarsh prison ever since. Who is Wikileaks' Julian Assange and what did he do?
John Shipton (born circa 1944) is an Australian anti-war activist and architect, best known as the father of Julian Assange (who adopted the surname of his step-father). He founded the WikiLeaks Party and was involved with the creation of the website WikiLeaks and helped with WikiLeaks for years.
Address: 359 Kelvin Stream, Lake Eldonview, MT 33517-1242
Phone: +577037762465
Job: Product Hospitality Supervisor
Hobby: Gardening, Web surfing, Video gaming, Amateur radio, Flag Football, Reading, Table tennis
Introduction: My name is Manual Maggio, I am a thankful, tender, adventurous, delightful, fantastic, proud, graceful person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
We notice you're using an ad blocker
Without advertising income, we can't keep making this site awesome for you.
