Julian Assange: In the summer of 2016, when WikiLeaks published documents from the US Democratic Party, apparently leaked by Kremlin-directed hackers, Julian Assange reportedly rejected the publication of Russian government documents, according to chat messages from the source who provided him with the files.
Below are correlations, from various actions of Julian Assange through WikiLeaks. I do not express my personal opinion, but I found the Foreign Policy article extremely interesting. In any case, it gives food for thought, but also for questioning stereotypes.
WikiLeaks has refused to publish a wide range of documents (at least 68 gigabytes of data) that originated from the Russian Interior Ministry, according to some chat log files obtained by Foreign Policy.
The logs, which were provided to FP, included only the WikiLeaks side of the conversation.
“WikiLeaks rejects all submissions that it cannot verify. WikiLeaks rejects submissions that have already been published elsewhere or that are likely to be considered frivolous. WikiLeaks has never rejected a submission based on its country of origin,” the organization said in a direct message on Twitter when contacted by FP about the unpublished Russian documents.
(The account is widely believed to be operated solely by Julian Assange, the group’s founder, but in a message to FP, the organization said it is maintained by “staff.”)
In 2014, the BBC and other news outlets reported on leaked documents revealing details of Russian military and intelligence involvement in Ukraine. However, the information released by that hack was less than half of the data Assange obtained in 2016, and he never published it.
“We sent some leaks to WikiLeaks, including a Russian hack. The documents would expose Russian activities and show that WikiLeaks is not controlled by Russian security services,” the source who provided the messages told FP.
“Many WikiLeaks employees and volunteers or their families suffered under Russian corruption and cruelty. So we were sure WikiLeaks would release them. Assange gave one excuse after another.”
