The long strange trip of Julian Assange
After a 13 year legal saga, the enigmatic whistleblower and founder of WikiLeaks is finally a free man
Note: The story of the WikiLeaks founder and sensei is long and complicated. It involves hundreds of cases of known hacking and publishing state secrets, a dozen sovereign governments over six continents, a labyrinth of legal entanglements, and a litany of questions about one of the most absorbing and infamous characters of the 21st century.
Assange’s meddling/publishing career is as expansive as it is notorious (~10 million documents and files, which is a low estimate), as is his odyssey through an omnipresent international legal web. Drawing a detailed timeline was laborious — almost next to impossible — necessitating the sifting through dozens of stories and conflicting reports. What follows below is an abridged story. There surely are gaps. Some information may be conflated. I’ll submit that I have personal predispositions that may show up in the text. I ask for your indulgence, but please reserve judgment until a final summation where I’ll offer my thoughts on Julian Assange’s long road through perdition. — Jim
Julian Assange has been called many things: Hero … traitor … whistleblower … journalist … subversive … warrior … anarchist … political prisoner … cyberterrorist … egomaniac … truth-teller … Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. 1
Today, he can be called a free man.
More than a decade of legal tug-of-war culminated last week when the Australian national and world’s most famous snitch negotiated a plea deal with the U.S. Attorney General’s office and Britain’s High Court. First, he traveled to Saipan, Northern Mariana Islands, where Judge Ramona Manglona accepted a single guilty plea of espionage and ruled Assange was entitled to a credit for time served in prison.
Then he flew home … to Sydney … and freedom … for the first time since 2011.
Thus ended a 13-year saga of one of the most “wanted men” on the planet, involving numerous criminal charges and investigations in multiple countries, and as a target of Interpol and the U.S. Departments of Defense and Justice. He spent a year under house arrest in Suffolk, England, seven years at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London while seeking diplomatic asylum, and the last five years in the high-security Belmarsh Prison in England.
It is an incredible story of intrigue, high drama, legal maneuvering, extraneous charges of sexual misconduct, and international pressure from the most powerful nations in the world, some of which wanted him dead.
Chapter 1: The Rebellious Youth
Born in Townsville, Queensland, Australia in 1971, Julian Assange was raised in several towns in Australia until his family settled in Melbourne in his mid-teens. He was always an “outsider” — by his count, he attended 37 different schools in his adolescence.
Rather than following the traditional male rights of passage with girls, sports and competition, Assange channeled his rebellious nature toward more cerebral challenges. He had a knack for mathematics and an intuitive faculty with computers, which eventually evolved into exploring and exploiting the intricacies of emerging Internet technology.
As a teenager, he became involved in several hacker communities. In 1987, at age 16 he took on the hacker pseudonym “Mendax,” and before he turned 18 was considered Australia’s most notorious hacker. As a “cyberpunk,” Assange’s security hijinks were said to be “in the thousands.”
Assange had a self-imposed set of ethics: he did not damage or crash systems, or steal personal identities for financial gain. The hunt was the challenge, the youthful thrill of risk rather than malicious or harmful intent. To that end, he embraced his growing reputation. But because of his internal moral compass, he preferred the pedestal title of "most famous ethical computer hacker.” Not surprisingly, the charges of inflated ego, self-grandeur and narcissism would follow him through his lifetime.
It is said that Assange may have been involved in the infamous WANK hack at NASA in 1989, but this has never been proven. Nor did he ever deny it. Assange called the incident "the origin of hacktivism."
Chapter 2: Cyber Double Agent
In his formative years, Assange and others in hacking communities were breaking into enterprise computing systems based on governmental and private mainframes. Though years in development, a globally connected computer network (i.e. the Internet) and later the public World Wide Web were not operational until the early-to-mid 90s.
That doesn’t mean Assange and other cyberpunks were unaware of the emerging technologies pioneered by ARPANET. The most effective hackers are always a step ahead, and Assange was no different.
During this time, Assange became a kind of rogue cyber double agent. In the early 90s, he studied programming, mathematics, and physics at Central Queensland University. On the surface, he became semi-legitimate while learning to code and becoming a computer security advisor for government agencies and private companies.
Meanwhile, as he was learning to turn the keys inside network systems Assange continued his work as a clandestine hacker.
In mid-1991 the three hackers, known as the “International Subversives,” reportedly targeted MILNET, a data network used by the U.S. military, where Assange found reports he said showed the Pentagon was hacking other parts of itself. Investigators were never able to prove Assange’s role in the hacking and set aside the episode as self-aggrandizing braggadocio.
But the International Subversives were now on everybody’s radar.
Assange wrote a program called Sycophant that allegedly allowed the International Subversives to conduct "massive attacks on the U.S. military.” In reality, Sycophant was a basic “how-to” manual for other hackers.
Still, he was seen as posing a serious threat by the Australian authorities. He was charged in 1994 with 31 counts of crimes related to hacking Telecom Australia, fraudulent use of a telecommunications network, obtaining access to information, and erasing and altering data. He eventually struck a plea deal, avoiding prison time.
Chapter 3: WikiLeaks
Depending on who to believe, Assange was driven either by a Quixotic quest for truth or as a demagogue using idealism as a guise for a lifelong disdain for authority. Funded by donations and media partnerships, Assange and three others founded the WikiLeaks website in 2006.
The inspiration for WikiLeaks was the late U.S. attorney Daniel Ellsberg's release of the Pentagon Papers in 1971. Assange built WikiLeaks to shorten the time between a leak and its media coverage by the media. The site was originally set up in Australia, but its servers soon were disbursed to Sweden and several other countries, providing greater legal protection for WikiLeaks and its partners. Proxie sites said to number into the thousands were established as backups and repositories for the home site. Funding came primarily from crowdsourcing, private donations and media partnerships.
WikiLeaks essentially became a web-based "dead letterbox" for would-be leakers around the globe. It was never intended for hostile objectives, to release destructive computer viruses or “worms,” or to shut down enterprise network functions.
Journalist or Charlatan?
According to its charter, WikiLeaks was simply a place to publish information that Assange and others believed a free society had the right to know. Thus it took on the image of a publisher, and Assange assumed the role of “journalist.”
But classified documents and state security are more complicated than that. Privacy and institutional protections also are part of a free society. Assange and WikiLeaks often blurred those ethical lines.
Assange was its editor when it published the Bank Julius Baer documents, footage of the 2008 Tibetan unrest, and a report on political killings in Kenya. But it wasn’t until April 2010 that WikiLeaks burst into worldwide fame/infamy with the releases of the Afghan and Iraq War Logs. (see Chapter 5)
At that time Assange officially became an “Enemy of the State.”
Just as suddenly, Assange’s life of international notoriety was turned upside down by accusations of sexual assault from Sweden. Those accusations would haunt him for nearly a decade and drove him to seek diplomatic asylum at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.
Chapter 4: Swedish Sex Scandal
Just as the bombshell releases of hundreds of thousands of leaked military documents hit during the summer of 2010 (see below), the Swedish Prosecution Authority (SPA) called for a “preliminary investigation” into accusations of sexual offenses allegedly committed in August 2010. Assange left Sweden for the U.K. on September 27, 2010, and was arrested in absentia the same day. Charges were initially dropped due to lack of evidence but then reestablished a week later.
Then in December, British authorities arrested Assange at the behest of the SPA but was released on bail. In June 2012, Assange breached bail and sought refuge at Ecuador's Embassy in London and was granted temporary diplomatic asylum.
He would not leave the embassy for seven years.
He lived in a small office that was converted into a bedroom at the embassy in an upmarket neighborhood of central London, where he lived with his cat, James. The living space had a bed, sun lamp, computer, kitchenette, shower and treadmill.
While there, Assange was spied upon 24/7 by hidden security cameras planted by a contracted private surveillance agency. Often he met with his lawyers and visitors in the women’s bathroom at the embassy. The long stay while seeking asylum was to protect him from extradition by the British authorities to Sweden, fearing it would lead to extradition to face espionage charges in the United States. 2
The long stay (at the Ecuadorian Embassy) while seeking asylum was to protect him from extradition by the British authorities to Sweden, fearing it would lead to extradition to face espionage charges in the United States.
In 2019, however, Ecuadorian President Lenin Moreno decided Assange had overstayed his welcome and withdrew the request for diplomatic asylum. On April 10, 2019, he was booted from the embassy and immediately taken into custody by British authorities for "failing to surrender to the court" over a warrant issued in 2012. He was convicted a month later and sentenced to 50 weeks in jail for breaching his bail conditions. He was then sent to Belmarsh.
However, instead of 50 weeks, Assange would spend five years at the high-security British prison.
But the constant legal charges and the long stay at the Ecuadorian Embassy did not stop him, or WikiLeaks, from dropping a few nukes along the way.
Chapter 5: The bombshells
Bombshell No. 1 (Afghan and Iraq War Logs)
In 2010, WikiLeaks sent shockwaves through the world with two massive releases: the Afghan War Logs and the Iraq War Logs. These leaks, totaling hundreds of thousands of documents, exposed the realities of both conflicts in unprecedented detail.
The first release came in April 2010. The unlikely source of the leak was Pvt. Bradley Manning (a.k.a. Chelsea Manning), a low-level security analyst based in Iraq. Manning was an anxious and unhappy 22-year-old who, according to his trial testimony, was dismayed by a sense of moral consciousness of what he was seeing. With access to a huge repository of secret military files, Manning contacted Assange through an intermediary and secretly began releasing hundreds of thousands of documents to WikiLeaks.
WikiLeaks, working with media partners like The New York Times and The Guardian, in July, released over 91,000 internal U.S. military logs detailing the Afghan War from 2004 to 2009. These documents painted a grim picture, revealing a higher civilian death toll than previously reported, a more robust Taliban insurgency than publicly acknowledged, and the involvement of neighboring countries like Pakistan and Iran in fueling the conflict.
Just a few months later, WikiLeaks shattered another secrecy wall. In October, they released a staggering 391,832 U.S. Army field reports chronicling the Iraq War from 2004 to 2009. This leak, the largest in U.S. military history, exposed the war's true scale. The files documented over 66,000 civilian deaths, a figure significantly higher than previous estimates. They also shed light on the insurgency's strength and the possibility of Iraqi government abuses.
It also published a video file from April 2007 of a U.S. Apache helicopter killing 14 people in Iraq it believed were insurgents. It turned out that two of the victims were Reuters journalists. Minutes later the helicopter opened fire on a van that arrived to attend to the wounded. Pilots did not know there were two children inside the van.
(Warning: this video contains disturbing footage of the incident. Click “Watch on YouTube)
The releases were meticulously planned. WikiLeaks, wary of endangering sources, redacted sensitive information from the documents before sharing them with media partners. This collaborative approach ensured a wider audience while minimizing potential harm. However, the sheer volume of information required careful filtering, and WikiLeaks released the documents in stages.
The impact was undeniable. The leaks sparked international outrage and debate. Supporters hailed them as a triumph of transparency, shedding light on the true costs of war. Critics, however, expressed concerns about jeopardizing troop safety and national security.
Bombshell No. 2: Hacking the DNC and Hillary Clinton
WikiLeaks also disclosed thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and the account of presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's campaign boss John Podesta, in the run-up to the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
On July 22, 2016, WikiLeaks released emails and documents from the DNC in which the party leaders seemingly presented ways of undercutting Clinton's competitor Bernie Sanders and showed apparent favoritism towards Clinton.
The release led to the resignation of DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz and an apology to Sanders from the DNC. The New York Times wrote that Assange had timed the release to coincide with the 2016 Democratic National Convention because he believed Clinton had pushed for his indictment and he regarded her as a "liberal war hawk.”
In October WikiLeaks published emails from Podesta, Clinton’s campaign chairman. Those files placed Podesta in a bad light as the chief party manipulator. Soon after, the Ecuadorian government severed Assange's Internet connection for three months because of election interference.
There are conflicting reports about how Assange and WikiLeaks obtained the DNC emails, though cybersecurity experts attributed the attack on the DNC server to the Russian government. Twelve Russian GRU military intelligence agents were later indicted for the attack. The Senate Intelligence Committee reported that "WikiLeaks played a role in the Russian intelligence campaign and very likely knew it was assisting a Russian intelligence influence effort."
According to the Mueller report, the Russians hacked the emails using the online monicker Guccifer 2.0, and then shared them with WikiLeaks and other entities. However, the report never directly accused WikiLeaks of any illegal activity.
Retrospective
Assange’s release concluded what was a yearslong legal battle that stretched across three U.S. administrations. But he had legal targets on his back over hundreds of charges with possible prison sentences of more than 1,000 years. He’s been “wanted” in the U.S., Sweden, England, and Australia, banished by Ecuador and refused entry into a half-dozen other countries.
To its supporters, the whistleblowing website has been a key player in exposing secrets governments and companies would rather keep hidden.
But to his enemies, Assange became the ultimate spy villain, swept up by the trappings of notoriety and fame. He alienated many of his early defenders — and accomplices — in mainstream media. He was seen by many as recklessly handling data that disclosed combat strategy and imperiled the lives of U.S. troops and hundreds of vulnerable foreign nationals who risked their lives providing information to the military and its allies in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The Obama administration believed that criminal charges against Assange posed potential First Amendment concerns because of the role major news organizations played in publishing some documents obtained by WikiLeaks.
However, the Trump administration pursued the criminal case after taking a second look at the federal government’s investigation, and in 2017 charged Assange with 18 counts of espionage that carried a maximum of up to 175 years in prison.
But the Assange case was always going to present challenges for prosecutors. His background was unusual compared to others the Justice Department has charged under the Espionage Act or other counterintelligence and national security laws. Most well-known groups supporting press freedoms, and some major news outlets opposed the Assange indictments. Some argued that the case imperiled journalists, even if Assange didn’t operate under the same rules or ethics that guide newsrooms.
“The prosecution of Assange in the United States would create legal pathways under the Espionage Act and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act that would allow for the prosecution of journalists who are simply doing their jobs and covering matters of public interest,” the coalition wrote in a letter to Garland last month.
My Take
To call Julian Assange a “journalist” would be a stretch. At the turn of the 20th century, he might be called a muckraker. Today, many in the U.S. “Surveillance Industrial Complex” call him a cyber-terrorist and a threat to national security. At one time, members of Congress quietly called for his assassination.
No doubt, Assange’s WikiLeaks exposed some of our nation’s most closely guarded military and state secrets.
But it also begs the question: can two things be true at the same time? Ultimately, what is the cost of freedom? Is the price to pay for saving Democracy and its ideals offset by un-democratic acts? Are we liable for the secret crimes Assange fought so long to expose?
Ultimately, what is the cost of freedom? Is the price to pay for saving Democracy and its ideals offset by so many un-democratic acts? Are we liable for the secret crimes Assange fought so long to expose?
Assange’s “crime” was summed up by Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, who told the press last week that “this deal contemplates that Assange will have served five years in prison for activities that journalists engage in every day.”
That is the consensus of almost all of the experts who have studied this case, including prosecutors at the Obama Justice Department, who investigated the case and decided that Assange could not be prosecuted, because of “the New York Times problem.” In other words, the Times would also have to be prosecuted for similar investigative reporting, something that caused alarm among editors at the most important U.S. newspapers.
And what about recent whistleblowers — Marcus Allen and Steve Friend (FBI), Peiter “Mudge” Zatko (Twitter), Frances Haugen (Facebook), Merle Meyers and Sam Mohawk (Boeing) … and hundreds more, including Edward Snowden and back to the late Daniel Ellsberg? How should they be viewed in the court of public opinion?
I am a citizen. As such, I want to believe my government exists to protect our national interests. But I’m also a former journalist who still believes in the Fourth Estate and its vital role in ensuring my government always acts responsibly on behalf of those interests.
Rest assured, my government often doesn’t.
That’s why, for all his faults and foibles, we will always need Julian Assange.
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Question: What do you think of Julian Assange? Leave a comment below.
Jim Geschke was inducted into the Marquis Who’s Who Registry in 2021.
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a 1974 spy novel by British-Irish author John le Carré.
Jim - what a great post! Very even-handed, laying out points of view from all “sides”, and ultimately coming to the only reasonable prescription: sunlight is the best disinfectant. Looking forward to a potential examination of the Snowden affair!
Great bio, Jim! I learned a lot about him that I had not heard before. I really haven't thought about Assange, other than when he was in the news for a minute at at a time. Any similar articles about Snowden in the future?