Wikileaks' 10th Anniversary Present to American Elections - One Million Secret Emails

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WikiLeaks' Assange signals release of documents before U.S. election

By Andrea Shalal,Reuters 

By Andrea Shalal

BERLIN (Reuters) - WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said on Tuesday the organization would publish around one million documents related to the U.S. election and three governments, but denied the release was aimed at damaging Hillary Clinton.

He said the documents would be released before the end of the year, starting with an initial batch in the coming week.

He criticized Clinton, the Democratic presidential candidate, for demonizing the group's work after a spate of releases related to the Democratic National Committee before the Democratic convention this summer.

Assange said her campaign had falsely suggested that accessing WikiLeaks data would make users vulnerable to malicious software.

But he denied the release of documents related to the U.S. election was specifically geared to damage Clinton, saying he had been misquoted.

Assange also signaled changes in the way WikiLeaks is organized and funded, saying the group would soon open itself to membership. He said the group was looking to expand its work beyond the 100 media outlets it works with.

Assange, 45, spoke via a video link at an event marking the 10th anniversary of the group's founding. He remains in the Eucador Embassy in London where he sought refuge in 2012 to avoid possible extradition to Sweden, where he is wanted for questioning over allegations that he committed rape in 2010.

Assange denies the allegations and says he fears extradition to the United States, where a criminal investigation into the activities of WikiLeaks is underway.

He told a packed news conference at a Berlin theater the group's work would continue, even if he had to resign in the future, and he appealed to supporters to fund the group's work, and said several new books were forthcoming.

Assange said Britain's vote to leave the European Union could complicate his case by limiting his ability to appeal to the European Court of Justice.

Asked how he felt after four years in the embassy, he said "pale" and joked he would be a good candidate for medical study since he was otherwise healthy but had not seen the sun in over four years.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Madeline Chambers and Janet Lawrence)

World

WikiLeaks vows to release 'significant' material on US election

AFP  

Berlin (AFP) - WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange pledged Tuesday to publish "significant" new material on the US election before the November 8 vote, speaking on the 10th anniversary of the online leaking platform.

Assange said there were "enormous expectations in the United States" about the material and that "some of that expectation will be partly answered", with "a lot of fascinating angles" in the documents.

"Do they show interesting features of US power factions? Yes they do," he said, addressing an anniversary event in Berlin via videolink.

On why WikiLeaks was holding back for now, he added that "if we're going to make a major publication in relation to the United States at a particular hour, we don't do it at 3:00 am," referring to the time in the eastern United States.

He also said that "we hope to be publishing every week for the next 10 weeks," promising documents on the subjects of war, arms, oil, Google and mass surveillance.

Assange -- speaking from the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where he has been holed up for over four years to avoid being extradited to Sweden to face rape allegations -- hailed WikiLeaks for releasing 10 million documents over the past decade, exposing state and corporate secrets.

He pledged that WikiLeaks would seek to expand its activities with extra staff and new media partnerships, with plans to hire 100 more journalists over the next three years.

"We're going to need... an army to defend us from the pressure that is already starting to arrive," said Assange, wearing a black T-shirt with the word "truth" on it.

On the eve of the US Democratic Party convention in July, WikiLeaks published some 20,000 internal emails pointing at an apparent bias of its leaders for Clinton during the primary campaign.

Assange charged that WikiLeaks was now the target of a witch hunt orchestrated in particular by Clinton, likening it to the repression of American communists in the 1950s driven by then senator Joseph McCarthy.

Assange said WikiLeaks would scale up to "amplify our publications and to defend us against what is really a quite remarkable McCarthyist push in the United States at the moment, principally by Hillary Clinton and her allies because she happens to be the person being exposed at the moment".

Asked whether he felt affinity with Clinton's Republican rival Donald Trump, he said: "I feel personal affinity with all human beings. Through understanding someone, you can feel sorry for them.

"I certainly feel sorry for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. These are two people who are tormented by their ambitions."

World

Julian Assange moves speech to Berlin due to 'specific information'

steven_musil,CNET

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has moved a much-anticipated press conference on Tuesday from London to Berlin, citing unspecified "specific information."

Assange, who has been living in asylum in Ecuador's embassy in London for four years, had been scheduled to deliver a speech from his balcony during which it was expected he would release information that could be damaging to US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. Assange had said in August he planned to release "significant" information about the Democratic nominee before the November 8 election.

The change in venue, which WikiLeaks announced in a tweet Monday, came just hours after the document-leaking site tweeted a report that quoted Clinton as appearing to suggest use of a drone strike against Assange. According to True Pundit, Clinton asked during a 2010 State Department meeting about WikiLeaks and Assange, "Can't we just drone this guy?"

The quote, allegedly made while Clinton was serving as Secretary of State, was included in a massive trove of classified State Department documents that Wikileaks began releasing later that month.

Representatives for WikiLeaks and Clinton's campaign didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.

The WikiLeaks founder sought asylum from Ecuador in 2012 after Swedish investigators issued a European arrest warrant for Assange that required British police to detain and extradite him. He is trying to avoid extradition to Sweden out of fear he would then be extradited to the US to face questioning over classified material published on WikiLeaks.