CNN has a big story today about WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and his seven years spent living in the Ecuadorian embassy. Apparently the Ecuadorians became suspicious of Assange fairly quickly and kept him under regular surveillance. The CNN reporters got hold of a report that Ecuador commissioned from UC Global, a private Spanish security company, and notes over and over in its story that Assange interacted frequently with Russian agents.
But I think we’ve known that for a long time. The question is whether or not Assange knew they were Russians. The CNN piece has exactly one sentence about that:
After the election, the private security company prepared an assessment of Assange’s allegiances. That report, which included open-source information, concluded there was “no doubt that there is evidence” that Assange had ties to Russian intelligence agencies.
Well, sure, there’s no doubt that “there is evidence,” but how strong is the evidence? What is it based on? Is UC Global’s analysis trustworthy? I would be entirely unsurprised if Assange knew who he was dealing with all along, but there’s nothing much here to demonstrate that. At the very least, I’d like to see some of the context around those six words. This is a mighty big accusation to hang on a mighty small excerpt.
