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Julian Assange has said in an interview that he persuaded Edward Snowden to avoid seeking asylum in Latin America due to the CIA's reach, and that he fears assassination himself:
Julian Assange has said he advised the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden against seeking asylum in Latin America because there he could have been kidnapped and possibly killed. The WikiLeaks editor-in-chief said he told Snowden to ignore concerns about the "negative PR consequences" of sheltering in Russia because it was one of the few places in the world where the CIA's influence did not reach.
In a wide-ranging interview with the Times, Assange also said he feared he would be assassinated if he was ever able to leave the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where he sought asylum in 2012 to avoid extradition.
[...] WikiLeaks was intimately involved in the operation to help Snowden evade the US authorities in 2013 after he leaked his cache of intelligence documents to Glenn Greenwald, then a journalist with the Guardian. Assange sent one of his most senior staff members, Sarah Harrison, to be at Snowden's side in Hong Kong, and helped to engineer his escape to Russia – despite his discomfort with the idea of fleeing to one of the US's most powerful enemies.
"Snowden was well aware of the spin that would be put on it if he took asylum in Russia," Assange told the Times. "He preferred Latin America, but my advice was that he should take asylum in Russia despite the negative PR consequences, because my assessment is that he had a significant risk he could be kidnapped from Latin America on CIA orders. Kidnapped or possibly killed."
Assange also outlined his own fears of being targeted. He said that even venturing out on to the balcony of Ecuador's embassy in Knightsbridge posed security risks in the light of bomb and assassination threats by what he called "unstable people". He said he thought it was unlikely he would be shot, but that he worried that if he was freed he could be kidnapped by the CIA. "I'm a white guy," Assange said. "Unless I convert to Islam it's not that likely that I'll be droned, but we have seen things creeping towards that."
Here's an example of the CIA's alleged influence in Latin America.
Original Submission
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Sunday August 30 2015, @03:44PM
I am surprised that the NSA and CIA have not already assassinated Assange or Snowden, or that the British (who do Washington's bidding) have not stormed the Ecuadorean embassy. They grounded and searched the President of Bolivia's personal plane for Snowden, so they clearly have no regard for diplomatic repercussions. The NSA and CIA have violated the most fundamental precepts of the US Constitution and universal law, so why would they shrink from simply doing whatever the hell else they want?
Maybe there's hope in that for the rest of us, because it means they do feel vulnerable to how ordinary schmucks like us think. I mean, we have ample proof that they don't give a crap for scruples or ethics, but that they shrink back from what they could do means we still have power.
We must use it.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by opinionated_science on Sunday August 30 2015, @03:54PM
perhaps the intelligence agencies understand the streisland effect better than politicians...Untoward deaths draw too much attention (e.g. Diana Spencer died in a car crash, where the only person wearing a seatbelt survived....not a surprise really is it...?).
Essentially this is the "tradecraft" that has been written about extensively in the post-war decades, and forms the basis for just about every spy movie you have ever seen!! If you want to see some examples of the subtly (or not) of the intelligence agencies of years past, visit the spy museum in DC. It is educational in that, the technology is not that surprising, but right time, right place, is of paramount importance.
That said, grounding the planes where they *thought* snowden was on board, really tipped their hand.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday August 30 2015, @04:12PM
See my comment below. It really goes to show how effective that particular cryptoanarchist has been at getting under the skin of the elites that he got Snowden to Russia... and then used the fact that he was being spied on to get the U.S. to tip its hand and ground the plane of a President. It has been described as Assange creating "rumors" to get the plane grounded, but it was just disinformation on an insecure line of communication. Heckuva job, U.S. foreign surveillance.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by zugedneb on Sunday August 30 2015, @04:50PM
...perhaps the intelligence agencies understand the streisland effect...
This has 2 sides...
I think they know, that the modern civilian, well informed in terms of pictures and videos, of how war and killing actually looks like, will not put his ass at risk.
The modern civilian will patiently wait, and drown it's sorrow in consumption, until any particular storm bloes over.
As examples, the Romanian revolution or demonstrations in Russia and China: people kind of knew/know how brutal a regime can be, and that the police and military do not ask too much before pulling the trigger, but they were/are not actually fed with youtube videos about the actions of their owners...
They revolt, because "knowing" violence is not the same as "seeing" violence.
This is the reason I like to troll threads about US...
With all the guns and all the claims about fighting for your rights, lemme see you actually pull of revolution.
I think the average US citizen values himself higher then being used as container for an entire magazine of bullets discarded by a fat cop...
old saying: "a troll is a window into the soul of humanity" + also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ajax
(Score: 5, Interesting) by takyon on Sunday August 30 2015, @05:21PM
I think it has more to do with standard of living and the existence of a middle class. As long as the people are relatively well-off, they aren't desperate enough to fight against the government. That's the informal "deal" in China. You give up political freedoms but get relative economic prosperity. That deal may collapse if the urban-rural divide continues. Russia is well-off enough [oecdbetterlifeindex.org] to avoid regime change. In Syria, the people are either fighting or fleeing since stability is gone. It is likely the most well-documented civil war in history due to the proliferation of smartphones and cameras.
America has enough bread and circuses to pacify the majority of the population. The poor are too dispersed and are crushed by the middle class routinely. Easy access to drugs and alcohol helps to pacify this segment. Despite allegations of the media inciting violence against cops by playing up #BLM incidents, the cops routinely dictate to mainstream and local media. The Occupy movements got infiltrated and destroyed by the FBI. Bernie Sanders, Donald Trump, and Rand Paul (who is doing terribly, he might as well quit) face opposition from the mainstream candidates and party infrastructure. The NSA has undergone token reforms that aren't even in effect yet. The list goes on and on. Nothing will change as long as MOST Americans feel financially secure and physically safe most of the time.
Being in the middle class correlates to greater access to "pictures and videos", but the global poor are increasingly using smartphones. If they topple governments in spite of seeing images of war and killing, or actually coordinate their opposition using the technologies, then the problem is income/safety, not imagery.
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(Score: 3, Informative) by Nollij on Sunday August 30 2015, @04:07PM
Storming an embassy creates a long list of difficult problems. At the worst, it can be considered a direct act of war.
Besides, he's quite effectively on house arrest there, and has had limited public visibility during that time.
I did not know that Assange claimed responsibility for Evo Morales grounding incident, but most of the countries involved DID issue apologies. It has led to diplomatic issues, and it seems the US is the only one that doesn't give a shit.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Sunday August 30 2015, @04:57PM
How does grounding and searching the plane of the president of a country also not meet this standard? I think it does. How would Americans react if Air Force 1 were forcibly grounded by China and searched by Chinese Special Forces? Do you think that that would not lead to war?
Of course realpolitik and pragmatism dictate that the US can make war on China far more ably than Bolivia can make war on the US, but it does rather strip away the pretense of a respect for the rule of law and diplomacy, does it not?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 30 2015, @05:21PM
Well, China does this shit [wikipedia.org] too.
And the Russians shoot down passenger planes. Multiple times too.
(Score: 2, Informative) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Monday August 31 2015, @12:04AM
Well, China does this shit too. And the Russians shoot down passenger planes. Multiple times too.
Ms Pot, meet Mr Kettle. [wikipedia.org]
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31 2015, @12:26PM
Reads like the "shit" Scandinavian countries do all the time, when we send fighters up to tell the Russian spy planes to go home. Except for colliding, of course, but considering that the fighter pilot was killed in the incident, that sounds like an accident.
In fact, the need to continue doing so has been repeatedly mentioned as the reason for why we need to waste a lot of tax payer money buying a bunch of F35s.
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Sunday August 30 2015, @06:24PM
How would Americans react if Air Force 1 were forcibly grounded by China and searched by Chinese Special Forces? Do you think that that would not lead to war?
i do not think that would lead to war. the president is far too level headed for that and congress' outrage about most things is completely faux.
i recall a fighter pilot in distress (low on fuel) made an emergency landing at a Chinese airport and after refusing to let us fly the plane out, they sent the fighter jet back in pieces through the mail.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Sunday August 30 2015, @07:13PM
I don't recall the specific instance you are referring to, but that type of event has happened multiple other times also.
The time that springs to mind for me is Viktor Belenko's defection from the USSR by flying a MIG-25 to Japan. The following inspection of the aircraft completely changed the United States' perception of the aircraft (previously the MIG-25 was thought to be a fighter-bomber, not an interceptor).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viktor_Belenko [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 30 2015, @05:13PM
Why would they do that?
These people leaked what they had to leak. If they were carrying classified information and threatened to release them, that's grounds for putting a few bullets into them. But even then, that's the worst case scenario.
Better than that, get the person who wants to leak the data before they release it, and detain him at an undisclosed location. This allows to gather information on how the leak started, perhaps the leaker might also be willing to give the names of conspirators, or places where he or she made copies of data. Perhaps even the names of reporters who agreed to help publish the data and put them on no-fly lists.
As things are right now, this is actually the best case scenario for secret services. Why would they want to kidnap Assange? What could he tell them that they don't know already? And Snowden? He's not skiing in Switzerland or teaching at a University in The Netherlands, or living a peaceful life in the Bahamas, but in fucking Russia. And he really can't leave. But why would NSA want him back? They'd have to put him on trial, which will be highly publicized by the media. Right now, he's in the tender and loving hands of basically KGB, where he placed himself of his own volition. Ask any American what they think of him and they not only don't know who he is, and if You'd tell them that he ran for safety to Russia, they'll think of him as a commie spy.
(Score: 1, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 30 2015, @05:37PM
Assange is a legend in his own mind. If the US really wanted him, there are many many diplomatic options to lean on the Ecuadorians (cut aid, tarrifs, etc.). Sure, those aren't as romantic as living in The Bourne Identity, but real life never is, is it? Besides, if Assange can't keep telling everyone that he's the Most Dangerous Man in the World, and that the Big Bad US wants to kill him, that takes the edge off his ego and fundraising.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31 2015, @12:57AM
Wow, Soylent is now big enough for shills. Congrats to everyone involved.
If nobody wants Assange, why have they spent £11,000,000 (about US $20,000,000) waiting outside the embassy?
And that's only the publicly known direct cost, there is also whatever it cost to push the bogus sex cases, and any other covert costs.