Julian Assange: The Rolling Stone Interview

Julian Assange: The Rolling Stone Interview
Under house arrest in England, the WikiLeaks founder opens up about his battle with the ‘Times,’ his stint in solitary and the future of journalism
By Michael Hastings – 18 January, 2012

It’s a few days before Christmas, and Julian Assange has just finished moving to a new hide-out deep in the English countryside. The two-bedroom house, on loan from a WikiLeaks supporter, is comfortable enough, with a big stone fireplace and a porch out back, but it’s not as grand as the country estate where he spent the past 363 days under house arrest, waiting for a British court to decide whether he will be extradited to Sweden to face allegations that he sexually molested two women he was briefly involved with in August 2010.

Assange sits on a tattered couch, wearing a wool sweater, dark pants and an electronic manacle around his right ankle, visible only when he crosses his legs. At 40, the WikiLeaks founder comes across more like an embattled rebel commander than a hacker or journalist. He’s become better at handling the media – more willing to answer questions than he used to be, less likely to storm off during interviews – but the protracted legal battle has left him isolated, broke and vulnerable. Assange recently spoke to someone he calls a Western “intelligence source,” and he asked the official about his fate. Will he ever be a free man again, allowed to return to his native Australia, to come and go as he pleases? “He told me I was fucked,” Assange says.

“Are you fucked?” I ask.

Assange pauses and looks out the window. The house is surrounded by rolling fields and quiet woods, but they offer him little in the way of escape. The British Supreme Court will hear his extradition appeal on February 1st – but even if he wins, he will likely still remain a wanted man. Interpol has issued a so-called “red notice” for his arrest on behalf of Swedish authorities for questioning in “connection with a number of sexual offenses” – Qaddafi, accused of war crimes, earned only an “orange notice” – and the U.S. government has branded him a “high-tech terrorist,” unleashing a massive and unprecedented investigation designed to depict Assange’s journalism as a form of international espionage. Ever since November 2010, when WikiLeaks embarrassed and infuriated the world’s governments with the release of what became known as Cablegate, some 250,000 classified diplomatic cables from more than 150 countries, the group’s supporters have found themselves detained at airports, subpoenaed to testify before a grand jury, and ordered to turn over their Twitter accounts and e-mails to authorities.

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