Julian Assange had just pulled off one of the biggest scoops in journalistic history, splaying the innards of American diplomacy across the web. But technology firms were cutting ties to his website, WikiLeaks, cable news pundits were calling for his head and a Swedish sex crime case was threatening to put him behind bars.
Caught in a vise, the silver-haired Australian wrote to the Russian Consulate in London.
“I, Julian Assange, hereby grant full authority to my friend, Israel Shamir, to both drop off and collect my passport, in order to get a visa,” said the letter, which was recently obtained by The Associated Press.
The Nov. 30, 2010 missive is part of a much larger trove of WikiLeaks emails, chat logs, financial records, secretly recorded footage and other documents leaked to The Associated Press.
The files provide both an intimate look at the radical transparency organization and an early hint of Assange’s budding relationship with Moscow.
The ex-hacker’s links to the Kremlin would become increasingly salient before the 2016 U.S. presidential election, when the FBI says Russia’s military intelligence agency directly supplied WikiLeaks with stolen emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman and other Democratic figures.
Representatives for Assange, who has been barred from internet access at his refuge inside the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, didn’t return repeated messages seeking details about the visa bid. Kristinn Hrafnsson, a sometime-spokesman for the group, declined to comment, calling the AP’s story “rather uninteresting.” The Russian Embassy in London said it didn’t discuss the personal details of visa applicants.
WikiLeaks has repeatedly been hit by unauthorizeddisclosures , but the tens of thousands of files obtained by the AP may be the biggest leak yet.
The AP has confirmed the authenticity of many of the documents by running them by five former WikiLeaks associates or by verifying non-public details such as bank accounts, telephone numbers or airline tickets.
One of the former associates, an ex-employee, identified two of the names that frequently appeared in the documents’ metadata, “Jessica Longley” and “Jim Evans Mowing,” as pseudonyms assigned to two WikiLeaks laptops.
Anytime yuh see dem a expose di government and di things dem they create fake allegations on that particular being. Why dem tek whey him internet access, cause him a expose they corrupts. Ano democracy dat. An how dem naa fight feem rights. Ppl know waah gwan but naa do nat. Like mi seh if we nuh careful trump win again.