slate | When he met Julian Assange for the first time, Sigurdur Thordarson
admired the WikiLeaks founder’s attitude and quickly signed up to the
cause. But little more than a year later, Thordarson was working as an
informant spying on WikiLeaks for the U.S. government—embroiling himself
as a teenager in one of the most complicated international events in
recent history.
In a series of interviews with Slate,
Thordarson has detailed the full story behind how, in an extraordinary
sequence of events, he went from accompanying Assange to court hearings
in London to secretly passing troves of data on WikiLeaks staff and
affiliated activists to the FBI. The 20-year-old Icelandic citizen’s
account is partly corroborated by authorities in Iceland, who have
confirmed that he was at the center of a diplomatic row in 2011 when a
handful of FBI agents flew in to the country to meet with him—but were
subsequently asked to leave after a government minister suspected they
were trying to “frame” Assange.
Thordarson, who first outed himself as an informant in a Wired story
in June, provided me with access to a pseudonymous email account that
he says was created for him by the FBI. He also produced documents and
travel records for trips to Denmark and the United States that he says
were organized and paid for by the bureau.
The FBI declined to comment on Thordarson’s role as an informant or
the content of the emails its agents are alleged to have sent him. In a
statement, it said that it was “not able to discuss investigative tools
and techniques, nor comment on ongoing investigations.” But emails sent
by alleged FBI agents to Thordarson, which left a digital trail leading
back to computers located within the United States, appear to shine a
light on the extent of the bureau’s efforts to aggressively investigate
WikiLeaks following the whistle-blower website’s publication of
classified U.S. military and State Department files in 2010.
Late last month, Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning was
convicted on counts of espionage, theft, and computer fraud for passing
the group the secrets. During the Manning trial, military prosecutors
portrayed Assange as an “information anarchist,” and now it seems increasingly possible
that the U.S. government may next go after the 42-year-old Australian
for his role in obtaining and publishing the documents. For the past 14
months, Assange has been living in Ecuador’s London Embassy after being granted political asylum
by the country over fears that, if he is sent to Sweden to face sexual
offense allegations, he will be detained and subsequently extradited to
the United States.
Meanwhile, for more than two years, prosecutors have been quietly
conducting a sweeping investigation into WikiLeaks that remains active
today. The FBI’s files in the Manning case number more than 42,000
pages, according to statements made during the soldier’s pretrial
hearings, and that stack of proverbial paper likely continues to grow.
Thordarson’s story offers a unique insight into the politically-charged
probe: Information he has provided appears to show that there was
internal tension within the FBI over a controversial attempt to
infiltrate and gather intelligence on the whistle-blower group.
Thordarson gave the FBI a large amount of data on WikiLeaks, including
private chat message logs, photographs, and contact details of
volunteers, activists, and journalists affiliated with the organization.
Thordarson alleges that the bureau even asked him to covertly record
conversations with Assange in a bid to tie him to a criminal hacking
conspiracy. The feds pulled back only after becoming concerned that the
Australian was close to discovering the spy effort.
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