Midway through releasing a series of damaging disclosures about U.S. presidential contender Hillary Clinton, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange says his hosts at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London abruptly cut him off from the Internet.
With both WikiLeaks and Ecuadorean officials refusing to say much more about the incident, outsiders were left to guess at what was happening behind closed doors at the embassy suite. Had Ecuadorean diplomats lost patience with him? Had they finally bowed to pressure from Washington? Had there been some other kind of confrontation?
Tiff with embassy officialsWikiLeaks said unspecified “contingency plans” were in place and its Twitter account was still active Tuesday. On Monday it released the latest tranche of e-mails from senior Clinton ally John Podesta, suggesting that, for now at least, the group’s ability to publish has not been compromised.
Evidence of tension and mutual suspicion with Mr. Assange’s hosts surfaced after BuzzFeed News drew on confidential Ecuadorean government documents to detail a violent, after-hours confrontation between him and an Ecuadorean security guard in September 2012. The documents also carried a warning that Mr. Assange’s “evident anger” and “feelings of superiority” could cause stress to those around him “especially the personnel who work in the embassy, mainly women”. — AP
