Judge: Assange visitors can proceed with spying suit against CIA

A lawsuit journalists and allies of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange brought against the CIA advanced in federal court Tuesday after a federal judge turned down a bid by the spy agency to toss out the case.

Manhattan-based U.S. District Court Judge John Koeltl ruled four Americans who visited Assange while he was holed up at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London several years ago can proceed with their suit over allegations that a security contractor gave the CIA data copied from their phones during those visits.

In his 27-page decision, Koeltl rejected portions of the Assange visitors lawsuit filed last year that alleged the CIA violated their rights by eavesdropping on conversations at the embassy and by obtaining copies of their passports.

However, Koeltl said accessing the contents of their phones — if that occurred — invaded the visitors’ privacy rights under the U.S. Constitution.

“The misconduct alleged is a violation of the plaintiffs’ reasonable expectation of privacy in the contents of their electronic devices under the Fourth Amendment,” the judge wrote.

Koeltl, an appointee of President Bill Clinton, threw out part of the lawsuit that sought money damages against former CIA Director Mike Pompeo. But the judge said the plaintiffs could continue to seek a ruling requiring the spy agency to destroy any records it may have gleaned from the Assange visitors’ phones.

Spokespeople for the CIA and for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan, which is representing the federal government in the case, declined to comment.

The judge’s ruling could prompt officials to try to invoke the state-secrets privilege — a legal doctrine that can be used to shut down civil suits that implicate classified information.

The suit was filed in August 2022 on behalf of two attorneys who visited Assange in 2017, Margaret Ratner Kunstler and Deborah Hrbek, along with two journalists: John Goetz with German broadcaster NDR and Charles Glass, a freelance reporter formerly with ABC News.

“We are thrilled that the Court rejected the CIA’s efforts to silence the Plaintiffs, who merely seek to expose the CIA’s attempt to carry out Pompeo’s vendetta against WikiLeaks,” the lawyer for the visitors, Richard Roth, said in an email to POLITICO.

The suit tracks allegations in reports by the Spanish newspaper “El Pais” that a security firm at the Ecuadorian embassy gave the CIA information about Assange’s visitors. The data was gleaned from hidden cameras and microphones and from opening their phones while they were meeting with the WikiLeaks founder.

The suit accuses Pompeo of spearheading the effort, citing his record of public animosity towards WikiLeaks, the controversial group which anonymously obtains secrets from governments, militaries, banks and political figures and publishes them online–often in raw form.

Critics have accused the group of being a pawn of Russia, but supporters say the organization’s practice of radical transparency has been groundbreaking.

As a presidential candidate in 2016, Donald Trump praised the leaks of hacked emails from advisers to his opponent at the time, Hillary Clinton.

Pompeo also welcomed those disclosures at the time, but after being confirmed as CIA chief the following year, he declared WikiLeaks to be a “hostile intelligence service” and spurred government-wide efforts to target the organization and Assange.

Assange, an Australian citizen, entered the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2012 and was granted asylum while he was on bail pending efforts by the Swedish government to extradite him to face a rape charge.

That investigation was dropped in 2017, but the U.S. brought criminal charges against him the next year for allegedly conspiring to hack U.S. government computers and to disclose national security secrets.

Ecuador effectively turned Assange over to U.K. officials in 2019, who have been detaining him for the past four years as he fights extradition to the U.S.