(2015) Assange to Snowden: Don’t Go to Latin America, Go to Russia Despite ‘Bad PR’
Julian Assange has said he advised the NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden against seeking asylum in Latin America because he could have been kidnapped and possibly killed there.
The WikiLeaks editor-in-chief said he told Snowden to ignore concerns about the “negative PR consequences” of sheltering in Russia because it was one of the few places in the world where the CIA’s influence did not reach.
In a wide-ranging interview with the Times, Assange also said he feared he would be assassinated if he was ever able to leave the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he sought asylum in 2012 to avoid extradition.
He accused US officials of breaking the law in their pursuit of him and his whistleblowing organisation, and in subjecting his connections to a campaign of harassment.
WikiLeaks was intimately involved in the operation to help Snowden evade the US authorities in 2013 after he leaked his cache of intelligence documents to Glenn Greenwald, then a journalist with the Guardian.
Assange sent one of his most senior staff members, Sarah Harrison, to be at Snowden’s side in Hong Kong, and helped to engineer his escape to Russia – despite his discomfort with the idea of fleeing to one of the US’s most powerful enemies.