"The owner of UC Global S. L. ordered a meeting between the head of the Ecuadorian secret service, Rommy Vallejo, and Assange to be spied on, at a time when they were planning the exit of Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy using a diplomatic passport in order to take him to another country," according to El Paà s. "This initiative was eventually rejected by Assange on the basis that he considered it to be 'a defeat,' that would fuel conspiracy theories, according to sources close to the company consulted by this newspaper. Morales called on his employees to keep his relationship with the US intelligence services a secret."
The Vallejo-Assange meeting, which included Assange's lawyers, took place Dec. 21, 2017. The security firm made audio and video recordings through microphones and cameras installed in the embassy. The CIA was immediately made aware of the plan, perhaps through an "external streaming access point" installed in the embassy, according to El Paà s. The next day the United States issued an international arrest warrant for Assange.
Microphones were implanted in fire extinguishers and a women's restroom where Assange's lawyers would cloister themselves with their client in an effort to avoid being recorded. The windows in the embassy were given a treatment that provided better audio quality for the laser microphones that the CIA was using from exterior locations, the paper reported.
When Moreno was elected to the presidency in Ecuador, replacing Rafael Correa, who had granted Assange asylum in the embassy, an intense campaign was launched to force the publisher from the embassy. It included daily harassment, cutoff of internet access and the termination of nearly all visits.
UC Global, which provides personal security for casino magnate Sheldon Adelson and protection for his company Las Vegas Sands, apparently used Adelson, a friend of President Trump and one of the largest donors to the Republican Party, to lobby the Trump administration and then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo to make Assange a priority target.
La Repubblica, like El Paà s, obtained important files, recordings and other information stemming from the UC Global surveillance at the embassy. They include photos of Assange in the embassy and recordings of conversations he had with doctors, journalists, politicians, celebrities and members of his legal team.
"The videos and audio recordings accessed by the Repubblica reveal the extreme violations of privacy that Julian Assange, the WikiLeaks journalists, lawyers, doctors and reporters were subjected to inside the embassy, and represent a shocking case study of the impossibility of protecting journalistic sources and materials in such a hostile environment," the Italian newspaper wrote. "This espionage operation is particularly shocking if we consider that Assange was protected by asylum, and if we consider that the information gathered will be used by the United States to support his extradition and put him in prison for the crimes for which he is currently charged and for which he risks 175 years in prison: the publication of secret US government documents revealing war crimes and torture, from Afghanistan to Iraq to Guantanamo."
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