“WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service.”
Attorney General Jeff Sessions at a press conference on Thursday said, “We are going to step up our effort and already are stepping up our efforts on all leaks…This is a matter that’s gone beyond anything I’m aware of. We have professionals that have been in the security business of the United States for many years that are shocked by the number of leaks and some of them are quite serious…Whenever a case can be made, we will seek to put some people in jail.”
Assange’s lawyer Barry Pollack told CNN that “we’ve had no communication with the Department of Justice and they have not indicated to me that they have brought any charges against Mr. Assange. They’ve been unwilling to have any discussion at all, despite our repeated requests, that they let us know what Mr. Assange’s status is in any pending investigations. There’s no reason why WikiLeaks should be treated differently from any other publisher.”
The Justice Department assigned prosecutors have been drafting a memo regarding charges against Assange and members of WikiLeaks. Those charges could include conspiracy, theft of government property, and violations of the Espionage Act. Although Assange has made the claim he is only asserting his First Amendment rights, prosecutors determined the First Amendment did not protect Assange from prosecution and are moving forward with the process of investigating and bringing charges.
Currently, the FBI and CIA are investigating hundreds of possible suspects in one of the biggest security breaches in CIA history. The WikiLeaks “Vault 7” release, contained thousands of documents, some top-secret, that revealed the agency’s hacking tools.
The release last month brought to light the CIA’s digital arsenal for hacking into computer systems and smart devices such as phones and televisions. Thousands of top secret classified files that had previously been guarded within a “highly secure section of the intelligence agency,” as CBS News sources described it, were made available to the world for free by WikiLeaks.
In a CBS interview, less than a week after the release, former CIA director Michael Morrell said, “This is CIA’s Edward Snowden. This is huge, in terms of what it will tell the adversaries. We’ll have to essentially start over in building tools to get information from our adversaries, just like we did with Snowden. This has to be an inside job, as the data was on a CIA top secret network and not connected to any other network.”
The FBI and CIA believe the source of the leak to be one of the large numbers of agents or contractors who had physical access to the material, not an outside hacker. The FBI and CIA coordinated reviews of the incident and opened a criminal investigation within a day of the release, the Washington Post reported.
With the investigation into the leaks and the hunt for the person or persons responsible, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, branded WikiLeaks a hostile intelligence service, saying it threatens democratic nations and joins hands with dictators. Pompeo focused on the anti-secrecy group and other leakers of classified information like Edward Snowden as one of the critical threats facing the United States.
“WikiLeaks walks like a hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service. It has encouraged its followers to find jobs at CIA to obtain intelligence. And it overwhelmingly focuses on the United States, while seeking support from anti-democratic countries and organizations. 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,” said Director Pompeo.
In response to Thursday’s report, WikiLeaks reposted on Twitter an opinion piece written by Assange and published in the Washington Post earlier this month. That post, said, “WikiLeaks’ sole interest is expressing constitutionally protected truths, which I remain convinced is the cornerstone of the United States’ remarkable liberty, success, and greatness.”
Pompeo further stated that the Russian media outlet Russia Today (RT) had actively collaborated with Wikileaks and that Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was a narcissist and a fraud “hiding behind a computer screen.” Mr. Assange is currently residing in Ecuador’s London Embassy, where he has been held in de-facto captivity since August 2012 after being granted asylum by Ecuador.
Assange, 45, has been living in the Ecuadoran embassy in London since 2012 hoping to avoid extradition to Sweden where he faces rape allegations. Sweden issued an international arrest warrant for Assange where he is wanted for questioning on suspicion of rape, sexual molestation, and unlawful coercion.
Although no request has been made, Assange is concerned, once in Sweden, he would be extradited to the United States to face trial for leaking hundreds of thousands of secret US military and diplomatic documents that first gained attention in 2010. The Justice Department has been investigating Assange since his website posted thousands of diplomatic cables stolen by Bradley Manning (now known as Chelsea), who was serving in the US Army at the time.
Assange would most likely be arrested as soon as he stepped foot outside the Ecuadorian embassy in London. On April 6, 2016, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention found that Assange’s detention was unlawful. They ordered that he be released immediately and compensated by Sweden and the United Kingdom for the roles these states played in his captivity.
On March 24th the UK’s Foreign &Commonwealth Office released its response to the ruling saying, “The UN Working Group is not a judicial body, and its opinions are not legally binding.”
At this point, Assange is still in the Ecuadorian embassy but his time may be running out.
