Julian Assange

Julian Assange (born July 3, 1971, Townsville, Queensland, Australia) is an Australian computer programmer who founded the media organization WikiLeaks. Practicing what he called “scientific journalism”—i.e., providing primary source materials with a minimum of editorial commentary—Assange, through WikiLeaks, released thousands of internal or classified documents from an assortment of government and corporate entities. He spent nearly seven years in the Ecuadoran embassy in London in an effort to avoid prosecution and an additional five years in British prison fighting extradition to the United States.

Early life and creation of WikiLeaks

Assange’s family moved frequently when he was a child, and he was educated with a combination of homeschooling and correspondence courses. As a teenager, he demonstrated an uncanny aptitude with computers, and, using the hacking nickname “Mendax,” he infiltrated a number of secure systems, including those at NASA and the Pentagon. In 1991 Australian authorities charged him with 31 counts of cybercrime; he pleaded guilty to most of them. At sentencing, however, he received only a small fine as punishment, and the judge ruled that his actions were the result of youthful inquisitiveness. Over the next decade, Assange traveled, studied physics at the University of Melbourne (he withdrew before earning a degree), and worked as a computer security consultant.

Assange created WikiLeaks in 2006 to serve as a clearinghouse for sensitive or classified documents. Its first publication, posted to the WikiLeaks Web site in December 2006, was a message from a Somali rebel leader encouraging the use of hired gunmen to assassinate government officials. The document’s authenticity was never verified, but the story of WikiLeaks and questions regarding the ethics of its methods soon overshadowed it. WikiLeaks published a number of other scoops, including details about the U.S. military’s detention facility at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba, a secret membership roster of the British National Party, internal documents from the Scientology movement, and private e-mails from the University of East Anglia’s Climatic Research Unit.

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Early WikiLeaks activity and legal issues

In 2010 WikiLeaks posted almost half a million documents obtained from U.S. Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning (later called Chelsea Manning)—mainly relating to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. While much of the information was already in the public domain, Pres. Barack Obama’s administration criticized the leaks as a threat to U.S. national security. In November of that year, WikiLeaks began publishing an estimated 250,000 confidential U.S. diplomatic cables. Those classified documents dated mostly from 2007 to 2010, but they included some dating back as far as 1966. Among the wide-ranging topics covered were behind-the-scenes U.S. efforts to politically and economically isolate Iran, primarily in response to fears of Iran’s development of nuclear weapons. Reaction from governments around the world was swift, and many condemned the publication. Assange became the target of much of that ire, and some American politicians called for him to be pursued as a terrorist.

Assange also faced prosecution in Sweden, where he was wanted in connection with sexual assault charges. (It was the second arrest warrant issued for Assange for those alleged crimes; the first warrant was dismissed in August 2010 because of lack of evidence.) Assange was arrested in London in December 2010 and held without bond, pending possible extradition to Sweden. He was eventually released on bail, and in February 2011 a British judge ruled that the extradition should proceed, a decision that was appealed by Assange’s attorneys. In December 2011 the British High Court found that Assange’s extradition case was “of general public importance” and recommended that it be heard by the Supreme Court. This decision allowed Assange to petition the Supreme Court directly for a final hearing on the matter.

In May 2011 Assange was awarded the Sydney Peace Foundation’s gold medal, an honour that had previously been bestowed on Nelson Mandela and the Dalai Lama, for his “exceptional courage in pursuit of human rights.” Assange’s memoir, Julian Assange: The Unauthorised Autobiography, was published against his wishes in September 2011. Assange had received a sizable advance payment for the book, but he withdrew his support for the project after sitting for some 50 hours of interviews, and the resulting manuscript, although at times enlightening, read very much like the early draft that it was.

While Britain’s Supreme Court continued to weigh the matter of Assange’s extradition, he remained under house arrest on the estate of a WikiLeaks supporter in rural Norfolk. From this location, Assange recorded a series of interviews that were collected as The World Tomorrow, a talk show that debuted online and on the state-funded Russian satellite news network RT in April 2012. Hosting the program from a makeshift broadcast studio, Assange began the series with an interview with Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, Nasrallah’s first with a Western journalist since the 34-day war between Hezbollah and Israel in 2006.

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Asylum in the Ecuadoran embassy and impact on the 2016 U.S. presidential election

In June 2012, after his extradition appeal was denied by the Supreme Court, Assange sought refuge in the Ecuadoran embassy. He applied for asylum on the grounds that extradition to Sweden could lead to eventual prosecution in the United States for actions related to WikiLeaks. Assange claimed that such a trial would be politically motivated and would potentially subject him to the death penalty. In August Assange’s request was granted, but he remained confined within the embassy as British and Ecuadoran officials attempted to resolve the issue. Assange began his second year within the walls of the embassy by launching a bid for a seat in the Australian Senate. His WikiLeaks Party, founded in July 2013, performed poorly in the September 7, 2013, Australian general election; it captured less than 1 percent of the national vote and failed to win any seats in the Senate. In August 2015 Swedish prosecutors dropped their investigation of three of the allegations against Assange, as they had been unable to interview him prior to the expiration of a five-year statute of limitations. Swedish authorities continued to pursue an investigation into the outstanding allegation of rape, however, and Assange remained within the Ecuadoran embassy in London.

In 2016 Assange became an active player in the U.S. presidential race, when WikiLeaks began publishing internal communications from the Democratic Party and the campaign of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton. Assange made no secret of his personal hostility toward Clinton, and the leaks were clearly timed to do maximum damage to her campaign. Numerous independent cybersecurity experts and U.S. law enforcement agencies confirmed that the data had been obtained by hackers associated with Russian intelligence agencies. Despite this evidence, Assange denied that the information had come from Russia. In January 2017 a declassified U.S. intelligence report stated that Assange and WikiLeaks had been key parts of a sophisticated hybrid warfare campaign orchestrated by Russia against the United States. In May 2017, as Assange approached his fifth year under de facto house arrest in the Ecuadoran embassy in London, Swedish prosecutors announced that they had discontinued their investigation into the rape charges against him.

On April 11, 2019, Ecuador withdrew its offer of asylum to Assange, citing repeated violations of both international law and the terms that it had imposed upon him regarding his tenure in the embassy. After securing a written agreement from the British government that Assange “would not be extradited to a country where he could face torture or the death penalty,” Ecuadoran Pres. Lenín Moreno allowed British police to enter the embassy and arrest Assange. While he was no longer subject to investigation in Sweden, Assange was still wanted for failing to appear in British court. He was also the target of an outstanding extradition warrant from the United States for computer crimes. He would spend more than five years in Britain’s high-security Belmarsh Prison, fighting extradition to the United States. In June 2024 Assange was freed from British custody as part of a deal with the U.S. Department of Justice. In exchange for pleading guilty to a single count of illegally obtaining and disclosing national security information, Assange would be sentenced to time already served and allowed to return to Australia.