In 2017, the CIA was planning the possible kidnapping or assassination of Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder. This took place when Julian Assange had been trapped for five years in London at the Ecuadorian embassy.

In one of their assassination scenarios, they asked British authorities for help.

This report comes from  Zach Dorfman, Sean D. Naylor, and Michael Isikoff. While he was holed up at the Ecuadorian embassy in London the US was planning his demise. Assange’s disappearing plan scenarios were reportedly made for Mike Pompeo, Trump's CIA chief who took office in January 2017. 

The US intelligence community was allegedly outraged at Wikileaks publishing its secret CIA hacking tools in March 2017. The so-called Vault 7 top secret information was  "the largest data loss in CIA history."

The extreme measures targeting Assange were never approved. But no action was taken since Trump’s White House attorneys objected to the agency’s plans.

Julian Assange Journey to Prison

Assange first took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in 2012. 

He was facing charges in Sweden of that involved 2 two separate women. The sex in both cases was consensual on more than one multiple occasions. one claimed that Assange caused the condom to tear. And the other said he had sex with her the third time without a condom despite agreeing to use one.

In April 2019, British authorities stormed the Ecuadorian embassy and arrested Assange.

In May 2019,  the U.S. issued an 18 count indictment on charges related to "Illegally Obtaining, Receiving, and Disclosing Classified Information". 

Most of these charges stem from information that was published in 2009. It was given to Wikileaks by then a soldier and US citizen Chelsea Manning. And she served 6 years of a 35-year sentence which was commuted to “time-served” by the Obama administration for violating the Espionage Act.

The statute of limitations expired in 2020 for both charges that the Wikileaks publisher faced in Sweden. And Assange remains jailed in a London prison while attorneys fight in British courts to avoid extradition to the US.