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posted by martyb on Sunday August 30 2015, @03:22PM   Printer-friendly
from the staying-safe dept.

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.


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Nollij on Sunday August 30 2015, @04:07PM

    by Nollij (4559) on Sunday August 30 2015, @04:07PM (#229874)

    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.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Sunday August 30 2015, @04:57PM

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Sunday August 30 2015, @04:57PM (#229886) Journal

    Storming an embassy creates a long list of difficult problems. At the worst, it can be considered a direct act of war.

    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

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 30 2015, @05:21PM (#229900)

      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

        by fido_dogstoyevsky (131) <axehandleNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Monday August 31 2015, @12:04AM (#229994)

        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

        by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 31 2015, @12:26PM (#230121)

        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

      by Gravis (4596) on Sunday August 30 2015, @06:24PM (#229922)

      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

        by richtopia (3160) on Sunday August 30 2015, @07:13PM (#229936) Homepage Journal

        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]