Julian Assange Went After Former Ally, Barrett Brown. It Backfired Epically.
By Spencer Ackerman, The Daily Beast
13 August 18
WikiLeaks founder tried to retaliate against hacktivist hero Barrett Brown
and prompted a crack-up at a whistleblower protection group, losing an asset
in an extradition clash.
Abotched power play by Julian Assange has led to a split within a key
organization supporting whistleblowers and leaves the WikiLeaks founder more
isolated than ever among his core constituency of radical transparency
activists.
Assange has grown furious at a one-time ally with substantial moral
authority within their movement: the journalist and activist Barrett Brown.
Since his release from federal prison on trumped-up charges related to a
major corporate hack, Brown been increasingly public in voicing disgust at
Assanges embrace of Donald Trump and his general comfort with the
nationalist right. That has led Assange, an erstwhile transparency advocate
and whistleblower champion, to retaliate.
I have been increasingly vocal about my growing distaste for WikiLeaks in
general and Julian Assange in particular, largely due to his close and
ongoing involvement with fascist entities, his outright lies about his role
in the last U.S. election, and his willingness to have others tell similar
lies on his behalf, Brown told The Daily Beast. I have also continued to
support his rights against the state and private organizations that have
pursued him from the very beginning, when his original mission of ethical
transparency was still in play.
Assange had a lever against Brown. Brown has received financial backing from
the Courage Foundation, a whistleblower protection group. Courage operates
WikiLeaks legal defense fund, which is increasingly important to Assange
amid rumors that Ecuador will soon evict Assange from its London embassy,
where he has lived since 2012 following a since-shuttered rape investigation
in Sweden and possible interest in Assange from U.S. special counsel Robert
Mueller. Mueller, as part of his investigation into Russian interference in
the 2016 election, last week subpoenaed an alleged backchannel between
Assange and Trump consigliere Roger Stone.
While Assange has no formal role on Courage, multiple knowledgeable sources
said he continues to exert informal influence over it. Assange co-founded
what would become the group and was an initial trustee. In May 2017, Courage
formally took on WikiLeaks as a beneficiary.
On Thursday, three Courage trustees aligned with Assange instructed
Courages widely respected director, Naomi Colvin, to cut off Brown.
According to a new statement Colvin has posted on Medium, the trustees
explicitly based their reasoning on nasty adversarial remarks about
WikiLeaks Brown has made.
Colvin rejected the retaliation on principle. But they persisted,
instructing her to work out getting rid of Brown expeditiously.
On Sunday, Courage trustee Susan Benn, who came to Courage from the Julian
Assange Defense Fund, informed Brown that Courage will no longer represent
him.
You have made a number of hostile and denigrating statements about other
Courage beneficiaries who are facing grave legal and personal risks, Benn
wrote in an email acquired by The Daily Beast. Courage expects solidarity
and mutual aid from its beneficiaries, especially when those among you face
extreme uncertainty and danger; and Courage as an organisation cannot afford
to be conflicted because of the conflicting interests of others. Moreover,
your own criminal proceedings have concluded and you were released from
prison almost two years ago. (Chelsea Manning, its worth noting, remains a
Courage beneficiary despite being released from prison in May 2017.)
Brown told The Daily Beast: Im afraid I cannot agree with the stance,
presented by the Courage board to me yesterday via a poorly written email,
that I am somehow obligated to not only defend Assanges rights, as Im
happy to do, but also to refrain from speaking out about the problems facing
a movement that I risked a hundred years of prison time in order to defend.
But the retaliation came with a price for Assange. It prompted a split
within Courage, complete with at least one outraged resignation: Colvin, the
director of the organization. A transition in staff may be underway,
knowledgeable sources said.
The short-term result of Assanges behavior may be to consolidate control
over Courage. But it has come at the expense of broken ties with two heavily
respected and influential figures within the hacktivist circles from which
Assange emerged. At this point, it leaves Assange with more solid support
from the extreme right and its media organs than from his original
community.
Courage supports our beneficiaries because they have spoken out, at great
risk to themselves, in order to make the world a better place, Colvin wrote
in a statement. I am fundamentally and implacably opposed to excluding
anyone from beneficiary status on the basis of their political speech, and
still more when that comes out of responding angrily to being baited on
Twitter.
Colvins statement anticipates a line of attack she is likely to face by
WikiLeaks remaining supporters and hints at the raw emotions within the
transparency community where Assange is concerned.
In resigning from Courage on a fundamental point of principle, I am not
turning against WikiLeaks or abandoning Julian in his hour of greatest
peril, Colvin continues in the statement. I remain absolutely,
unambiguously opposed to the withdrawal of Julian Assanges asylum and the
prospect of his extradition to the United States. I do, however, have acute
concerns about the way advocacy on this issue is developing.
Losing the Courage money wont be a significant financial blow for Brown.
Courage, though a fine organization staffed by extraordinary people, has
provided me with something along the lines of $3,500 out of the total
$14,000 that was donated to me since FreeBB [the Free Barrett Brown
legal-defense fund] was incorporated into that organization, Brown said.
Assange and close associates have nonetheless chosen to publicly imply that
I am somehow indebted to Assange for having made me a beneficiary after Id
already been sentenced.
But Assanges allies at Courage, sources said, didnt try to argue that
Brown no longer needs the money. They instead made it clear they wanted
Brown excommunicated for the sin of criticizing Assange and WikiLeaksa move
reflecting a willingness to become a cudgel for Assange, despite Courages
lofty principles.
Colvins departure from Courage is especially ironic for Assange and speaks
to the botched manner in which his allies retaliated against Brown. Colvin
led and recently won a fight to prevent the U.K. from extraditing the
computer scientist and activist Lauri Love to the United States to face
hacking charges. With Assange ostensibly fearing his own prospective
extradition, his desire to silence Brown has cost him a key legal asset.
The Assange-Brown falling out is simultaneously predictable and astonishing.
It is predictable because Assanges ego for years has prompted him to
publicly condemn ally after ally for minute infractions, usually encouraging
a horde of trolls to harass targets and police deviations from a narrative
of glory for WikiLeaks. Last year, as The Daily Beast first reported, a
formerly crucial source of support and funding for WikiLeaks, the
influential Freedom of the Press Foundation, cut ties, in part because of
disillusionment with Assange. As well, Browns extensive, National Magazine
Award-winning body of writing demonstrates an inability to resist subjecting
lordly figures like Assange to abrasive examination and ridicule.
But it is also astonishing considering Browns closeness to WikiLeaks. His
willingness, as part of Anonymous, to examine a hack exposing a corporate
plot against Assange preceded the Justice Departments malicious, pretextual
prosecution that led to Brown doing four years in federal prison.
The original FBI investigation into me stemmed directly from my involvement
in defending WikiLeaks from firms like HBGary, Booz Allen Hamilton, and
Palantir, as made clear by the FBIs own search warrant, Brown noted.
Many of Assanges dwindling original allies have stuck with Assange in part
because of U.S. intelligences now-public assessment that WikiLeaks is a
catspaw of Russian intelligence. Mueller, in a recent indictment of 12
members of Russian military intelligence, alleged that the Kremlin used an
online persona, Guccifer 2.0, to provide WikiLeaks with thousands of
Democratic National Committee emails it had stolen. WikiLeaks published them
on July 22, 2016.
Brown is no fan of the intelligence agencies. Yet he has been unsparing in
his public criticism of his former ally. WikiLeaks is bullshit and
WikiLeaks is over are two of his recent tweets. An appearance last month
at the hacktivist HOPE conference in New York featured Brown in conversation
with this reporter and is said to have contributed to Assanges desire to
retaliate.
During that appearance, Brown reflected that back in WikiLeaks early days,
I was very much enthusiastic about WikiLeaks existing. I was enthusiastic
about Assange jumping into the vacuum here and serving in a leadership role
in an effort to enforce transparency on fascist institutions. But now,
Brown continued, Its time for [WikiLeaks] to pass the baton to something
with the moral authority and the capability to publish whistleblowers
exposés of powerful opaque institutions.
I will always defend Julian Assange against governments. They are not going
after him for his vices, theyre going after him for his virtues. Theyve
been going after him since the very important work that he did. I was not
opposed to that release of the DNC emails because that is an appropriate
thing for a leaking organization to do, Brown said.
But Assange, Brown continued, has collaborated closely with outright
fascists. He has uttered absolute demonstrable falsehoods over and over
again recently
It was difficult for me to come out and have to criticize
WikiLeaks for the first time. I just did four years in prison largely
because I was inspired by WikiLeaks. It wasnt fun for me, but it was a
necessary thing for me to do if I was to maintain intellectual honesty,
which is all I have.
Browns allies consider the retaliation attempt yet another revealing moment
from WikiLeaks.
Kevin Gallagher, who ran the Free Barrett Brown legal-defense fund for
nearly three years before Courage stepped in, said he was initially
hesitant about its involvement. Id thought that WikiLeaks was like an
octopus with its tentacles reaching into everything, trying to capture all
of the politicized hacktivist legal cases at that time, Gallagher said.
Assange prefers to surround himself with a cult that washes his feet and
thinks he can do no harm; and therefore finds himself increasingly isolated
due to flexibility of his principles and these devious and foolish
machinations of petty revenge, Gallagher continued. That said, I support
and defend WikiLeaks and what they stand for and have accomplished, as well
as their right to publish, and I once admired and respected Assange. This is
not surprising but its completely unwarranted. Julian, were sick of your
shit, get a grip, man.
Colvin, in her statement, suggested that Assanges maneuver may fatally
weaken Courage.
Building Courage up into a useful organisation has been a major part of the
past four and a half years of my life, she said. I still believe that an
organisation that fulfills Courages mission would be valuable to have
around: we might just have to put together a new one.
Neither Courage nor WikiLeaks responded to The Daily Beasts requests for
comment.
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