Toward the end of 2017, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), then headed by Mike Pompeo, considered plans to kidnap or kill WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, according to a Yahoo News investigation published in September 2021. The Yahoo News article contained interviews. and more than 30 former U.S. officials, eight of whom elaborated on American plans to assassinate Assange and three of them described the establishment of assassination plans. As one former official told Yahoo News, talks to kidnap or assassinate Assange took place at the "highest level" of Trump's administration. "There seemed to be no boundaries," said a former counterintelligence officer.
Possible conditions proposed by the CIA and the Trump Administration include hitting a Russian car carrying Assange to seize it, shooting the tires of a plane carrying Assange to block its departure, and getting involved in a gun battle passing through London. U.S. officials have requested that "their British counterparts shoot when necessary, and the British consent," reports Yahoo News, based on the testimony of a former senior administration official. Top CIA officials even asked for "drawings" or "options" with detailed details of Assange's assassination plot.
Although some of the former officials interviewed by Yahoo News dismissed the plan as futile— “It was considered immutable and foolish,” according to a former CIA official; a former chief of counterintelligence described them as "just Trump is Trump." However, a senior official noted that there had been discussions about whether Assange's assassination was "possible and whether it was legal."
Those plans met a new urgency in December 2017 when Trump officials, tipped off by spies at Ecuador's embassy where Assange was staying, heard of a plan to give Assange a diplomatic mission and transfer him to a friendly country. The spies work for UC Global, a Spanish-based independent security company employed by Ecuador to protect its London embassy. Instead of simply doing the assigned work, UC Global evaluated Assange and his United States allies. Their targets include American journalists, Assange's legal team, a member of the American Congress, and Ecuadorian politicians hired to protect them, according to a 2020 Grayzone report. When asked if the CIA had broken into the homes of WikiLeaks colleagues or stolen computer hard drives, the former official said "steps have been taken," reports Yahoo News.
This story has received little or no news coverage in the United States, with the exception of a few Business Insider, Verge, and sad news coverage by Reuters, each based on the original Yahoo News report. In the United Kingdom, the story was reported in the Daily Mail, The Guardian, and the Independent, although the BBC or Channel 4 apparently did not cover the story. Al Jazeera English has a broad story that answers the question, "Why does the CIA kidnap Julian Assange's plan not make so many headlines?" Among the US news outlets, Democracy Now! had an interview with Michael Isikoff, one of the Yahoo News reporters who broke the story, as well as Jennifer Robinson, a human rights lawyer who advised Julian Assange and WikiLeaks since 2010.
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