Kidnapping, assassination and a London shoot-out: Inside the CIA's secret war plans against Wikileak

[Nevilledog]

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Michael Isikoff
@Isikoff
In 2017, then CIA director Pompeo was so infuriated by the Vault 7 leak, he ordered up an all-out war on Wikileaks. Inside one of the most contentious intel debates of the Trump era @zachsdorfman @SeanDNaylor

Kidnapping, assassination and a London shoot-out: Inside the CIA's secret war plans against...
In 2017, as Julian Assange began his fifth year holed up in Ecuador’s embassy in London, the CIA plotted to kidnap the WikiLeaks founder, spurring heated debate among Trump administration officials...
news.yahoo.com
5:41 AM · Sep 26, 2021

https://news.yahoo.com/kidnapping-assassination-and-a-london-shoot-out-inside-the-ci-as-secret-war-plans-against-wiki-leaks-090057786.html

In 2017, as Julian Assange began his fifth year holed up in Ecuador’s embassy in London, the CIA plotted to kidnap the WikiLeaks founder, spurring heated debate among Trump administration officials over the legality and practicality of such an operation.

Some senior officials inside the CIA and the Trump administration even discussed killing Assange, going so far as to request “sketches” or “options” for how to assassinate him. Discussions over kidnapping or killing Assange occurred “at the highest levels” of the Trump administration, said a former senior counterintelligence official. “There seemed to be no boundaries.”

The conversations were part of an unprecedented CIA campaign directed against WikiLeaks and its founder. The agency’s multipronged plans also included extensive spying on WikiLeaks associates, sowing discord among the group’s members, and stealing their electronic devices.

While Assange had been on the radar of U.S. intelligence agencies for years, these plans for an all-out war against him were sparked by WikiLeaks’ ongoing publication of extraordinarily sensitive CIA hacking tools, known collectively as “Vault 7,” which the agency ultimately concluded represented “the largest data loss in CIA history.”

*snip*

[yardwork]

1. This is going to burn some folks.

[Tetrachloride]

2. Mister A is about as useful as McTurtle

[struggle4progress]

3. From love to "not my thing"

[SidDithers]

4. I hope this isn't meant to engender sympathy for Assange...

Neither Pompeo nor Assange is a good guy here.

Sid