Revenge of Assange as WikiLeaks helps US leaker

LONDON, United Kingdon – WikiLeaks chief Julian Assange has served the United States an ice-cold slice of revenge by aiding US intelligence leaker Edward Snowden, as well as boosting the flagging profile of his own anti-secrecy website.

The organisation says that it had a legal adviser on the plane Snowden is believed to have taken to Moscow from his bolthole in Hong Kong, and that it helped him seek asylum in Ecuador, in whose London embassy Assange has been staying for a year.

For a man like Assange who believes that US authorities are desperate to hunt him down for leaking confidential information, there will be a deep satisfaction in helping Snowden avoid the same foe.

The irony of helping Snowden seek asylum in Ecuador will not be lost on the 41-year-old Australian, who sought refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy to avoid claims of sexual assault in Sweden that he says are part of a conspiracy to get him to America.

But even though WikiLeaks was not actually involved in Snowden’s leaks that exposed a huge Internet surveillance programme by the US National Security Agency, the case has propelled the website back into the spotlight.

WikiLeaks has suffered a series of blows since its heyday in 2010, ranging from the Sweden allegations that led to Sweden seeking Assange’s extradition from Britain that year, to the cutting of its funding, and a series of defections by key staffers.

In an interview with AFP to mark one year since he entered the embassy, Assange said that Snowden was “as good an example of a hero as any.”

Assange linked his own fate not only with Snowden but with that of Bradley Manning, 25, the US soldier who is being tried on accusations of leaking the documents to WikiLeaks that were behind its first major information dumps in 2010.

“Edward Snowden is one of us. Bradley Manning is one of us. They are young, technically minded people from the generation that Barack Obama betrayed,” Assange said in a statement on Sunday marking the anniversary, issued before WikiLeaks confirmed it was helping Snowden.

For Assange, the Snowden case gets WikiLeaks not just back in the public eye but also boosts its credentials as an important defender of what it says are efforts to challenge an excessive US culture of secrecy and national security.

He has spent a hermit-like year sealed in Ecuador’s embassy next door to the famed Harrods department store.

Visitors to the cramped embassy can see Assange in sweaty shorts and t-shirt prowling the corridor from a makeshift gym to the office where he has set up a bank of computers to carry on the work of WikiLeaks.

The organisation operates in a state of constant wariness. During one encounter with AFP, Assange insisted on conducting a large part of the conversation by writing feverishly on sheets of paper instead of talking, convinced that British and American intelligence services are listening in.

But its actual secret-busting coups have tailed off since 2010.

Back then it released a slew of US diplomatic cables and documents on the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts — but recent releases have been limited to emails by the security contractor Stratfor and a series of 1970s US State Department cables that were mostly already publicly available.

His most recent venture was working on a political song with Puerto Rican band Calle 13

WikiLeaks’ links with Snowden, 30, first emerged on June 11 when Assange said he had had ‘indirect communication with his people’ but went no further.

The group’s spokesman Kristinn Hrafnsson then said last week that he had personally delivered a message to the Icelandic government recommending that it should grant asylum to Snowden.

Hrafnsson is Icelandic and WikiLeaks was previously based there.

Hrafnsson told the BBC that WikiLeaks was helping Snowden because he is “one of the most important whistleblowers in history.”

WikiLeaks put Snowden in touch with Ecuador because the South American nation had been “very supportive” of Assange and his work, while WikiLeaks’s lawyers had extensive experience dealing with asylum and extradition cases, Hrafnsson added.

A WikiLeaks staff member, Sarah Harrison, travelled from Hong Kong to Moscow with Snowden, according to the organisation.

But WikiLeaks appeared to have jumped the gun on one aspect of the case, when in a press release on Monday it quoted renowned Spanish former human rights judge Baltasar Garzon as saying he was “interested in preserving Mr Snowden’s rights.”

Garzon clarified that on Tuesday to say he was still waiting to talk to the American to get more information, adding that “as of today I do not represent Mr Snowden’s interests”. – Rappler.com