England and the US Unite to Take Down Whistleblowers

[April 19, 2013] A lawyer for the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, has said she was stopped at Heathrow airport and told she was on a watch list requiring official approval before she could return to her native Australia.

Jennifer Robinson said a member of airport security told her she "must have done something controversial" and that they would have to contact the Australian high commission in London before letting her on her flight.

The Australian human rights lawyer was later allowed on to a plane bound for Sydney, where she is due to speak at the Commonwealth Law Conference on Friday.

Australia's department of foreign affairs said it was not aware of any restrictions on Robinson's travel and added that its high commission in London had no record of receiving a call from the British authorities about her movements.

  UK Guardian

[August 16, 2013] 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 US government

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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 centre 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.

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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.

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Meanwhile, for more than two years, prosecutors have been quietly conducting a sweeping investigation into WikiLeaks that remains active today.

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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 organisation.

Thordarson alleges that the FBI 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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Unlike many drawn to WikiLeaks, Thordarson does not seem to have been principally motivated by a passion for the cause of transparency or by the desire to expose government wrongdoing. Instead, he was on the hunt for excitement and got a thrill out of being close to people publishing secret government documents.

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By claiming that he effectively solicited LulzSec [Anonymous] to break into government computers, Thordarson has implicated himself in a potential international criminal conspiracy, leaving WikiLeaks open to the allegation that it, too, was somehow involved.

But the full facts about the incident remain murky – not least because there is another dramatic twist to the tale.

What Thordarson did not know at the time was that Sabu, the loudmouth figurehead of LulzSec and one of the hackers he was communicating with, was in fact working as an FBI informant – and the online chat about hacking Icelandic government infrastructure was apparently being monitored by the feds.

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[J]ust as Thordarson was getting anxious about the high-stakes international affairs he had become entangled with, he also seems to have become bored with WikiLeaks – and he now admits he wanted to embark on a new adventure.

It was then that, at about 3:30am on August 23, 2011, Thordarson sat down at his computer at home in Kópavogur and typed out a message to the US Embassy in Reykjavik. He decided he wanted to become an informant – and, unlike Sabu, he was ready to do so without any threats hanging over his head.

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Then-Interior Minister Ögmundur Jónasson told me that Icelandic authorities initially believed the FBI agents had come to the country to continue their investigation into the impending LulzSec hacking attack on Icelandic government computers. But once it became clear that the FBI agents were in fact engaged in a broader swoop to gather intelligence on WikiLeaks, according to Jónasson, the agents were asked to immediately remove themselves from the country.

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As a result, the FBI could not meet with Thordarson in Iceland again. Instead, he says, the FBI held further meetings with him in Denmark (three times) and brought him to the United States (once) to continue discussions about WikiLeaks. Through this period, Thordarson says the bureau paid him about $US5000 in total to cover his expenses and to make up for loss of earnings.

  Sydney Morning Herald

But Judas, for only 30 pieces of silver?

He received an email from his alleged handler – who used the alias "Roger Bossard" – in an account set up for him under the fake name "Ibrahim Mohammad."

Really? A Muslim name? To make the records appear to be related to an investigation of terrorism, and not a persecution of Wikileaks’ founder? I’m thinking this kid was not particular attentive, or didn’t care.

When Sabu was outed as an informant in an explosive Fox News story in March 2012, it made sense to Thordarson. He says he found it strange that the FBI never seemed interested in the information he told them he had about the hacker, who was a hugely prominent figure at the helm of a group that had claimed responsibility for attacking US government websites and multinational corporations, including Sony and News International.

Not particularly attentive.

On March 18, 2012, Thordarson says he met with the FBI for what would be the final time, in Aarhus, Denmark. Prior to the meeting, he exchanged emails with his alleged handler, agreeing that he would come equipped with hard drives packed with chat logs, photographs, and other data related to WikiLeaks.

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Once the agents obtained the hard drives and received the passwords to access them, Thordarson's emails suggest, they stopped responding regularly to his messages and rebuffed his attempts to set up another meeting.

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"Understand J has your laptop," an alleged agent wrote to Thordarson shortly after the final Denmark meeting, referencing Assange. "Is there anything on it about our relationship?"

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Thordarson was accused [by Wikileaks] of embezzling about $US50,000 from a merchandise store that he had helped set up to raise funds. He admits that he took some of the money but denies stealing it, saying he used the funds to cover expenses he was owed by WikiLeaks. The matter is currently being investigated by police in Iceland

He didn’t steal it. He just used it to pay himself. After all, he was getting very little from the FBI.

Eventually, the US government may attempt to prosecute Assange, and there can be little doubt that he remains fixed firmly in the feds' crosshairs. The WikiLeaks founder's lawyers believe that a grand jury probe may already have produced an indictment against him that remains under seal – and so he remains sheltered in Ecuador's London Embassy, fearing that if he sets foot outside the door he will subsequently be extradited to the United States and thrown in jail. But the prospect of this does not appear to be weighing heavily on Thordarson's mind. Only once, when recounting the time he spent passing information on Assange to the FBI, does his voice tremble with a quiver of guilt. "If you come into Julian's inner circle," Thordarson says, "he really takes care of his friends."

And some times his “friends” really "take care of him," too.