Ecuador bankrolled a multimillion-dollar spy operation to protect and support Julian Assange in its central London embassy, employing an international security company and undercover agents to monitor his visitors, embassy staff and even the British police, according to documents seen by the Guardian.
Over more than five years, Ecuador put at least US$5 million into a secret intelligence budget that protected the WikiLeaks founder while he had visits from UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage, members of European nationalist groups and individuals linked to the Kremlin.
Other guests included hackers, activists, lawyers and journalists.
Illustration: June Hsu
In the lead-up to the 2016 US presidential election, his whistleblowing Web site WikiLeaks released several batches of e-mails connected to the US Democratic Party and US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign.
Last month, the Democratic National Committee filed a lawsuit against the Russian government, US President Donald Trump’s campaign and WikiLeaks, alleging a conspiracy to help swing the election for Trump.
Documents show that the intelligence program, called “Operation Guest,” which later became known as “Operation Hotel” — coupled with parallel covert actions — ran up an average cost of at least US$66,000 a month for security, intelligence gathering and counterintelligence to “protect” one of the world’s most high-profile fugitives.
An investigation by the Guardian and Focus Ecuador reveals that the operation had the approval of then-Ecuadoran president Rafael Correa and then-Ecuadoran minister of foreign affairs Ricardo Patino, according to sources.
Correa has defended the decision to give Assange political asylum and described the UK’s behavior toward Ecuador as “intolerable.”
Neither he nor the Ecuadoran government had any immediate comment.
From June 2012 to the end of August 2013, Operation Hotel cost Ecuador US$972,889, according to documents belonging to the country’s intelligence agency, known as Senain.
The agency used a “special expenses” budget to pay for CCTV cameras to be installed in the embassy weeks after Assange moved in.
At the same time, documents show that an international security company was contracted to secretly film and monitor all activity in the embassy. The company installed a team who provided 24-hour security, with two people on shift at a time, based at a £2,800 per month apartment in an Edwardian mansion building around the corner from the Knightsbridge embassy.
Even then-Ecuadoran ambassador to the UK Juan Falconi Puig seems to have been unaware of the operation until a council tax bill for the apartment was posted to the embassy in May 2015.
The arrangement had to be explained to the ambassador in a conference call with Patino, according to a source.
The security personnel recorded in minute detail Assange’s daily activities, and his interactions with embassy staff, his legal team and other visitors. They also documented his changing moods.
The team consulted Assange about each person seeking to visit him.
Guests would pass through a security zone, leaving their passports with staff there, according to sources and documents seen by the Guardian.
The passports were used to create a profile that described the visit and gave background details of all his visitors.
Worried that British authorities could use force to enter the embassy and seize Assange, Ecuadoran officials came up with plans to help him escape.
The plans included smuggling Assange out in a diplomatic vehicle or appointing him as Ecuador’s UN representative so that he could have diplomatic immunity to attend UN meetings, according to documents seen by the Guardian dated August 2012.
In addition to giving Assange asylum, Correa’s government was apparently prepared to spend money on improving his image.
A lawyer was asked to devise a “media strategy” to mark the “second anniversary of his diplomatic asylum” in a leaked 2014 e-mail exchange seen by the Guardian.
This included a joint news conference with him and Patino in London, and the publication of an opinion piece for the Guardian. The fee including other costs would be US$180,960 for a year’s media consultancy.
However, the documents showed the way in which the relationship between Assange and his hosts deteriorated over time.
In an extraordinary breach of diplomatic protocol, Assange hacked into the communications system within the embassy and had his own satellite Internet access, according to a source who wished to remain anonymous.
By penetrating the embassy’s firewall, Assange was able to access and intercept the official and personal communications of staff, the source said.
In 2014, the company hired to film Assange’s visitors was warning the Ecuadoran government that he was “intercepting and gathering information from the embassy and the people who worked there.”
The escalating cost of the Operation Hotel surveillance operation was also an issue for Ecuador’s financial controller’s office.
Then-Ecuadoran comptroller-general Carlos Polit in March 2013 wrote to then-intelligence chief Pablo Romero, asking how US$411,793 could have been spent on special expenses in five months without a single receipt.
More than half of that amount — US$224,699 — was spent on three undercover agents for Operation Hotel: a captain in the Ecuadoran navy, a colonel and a counterintelligence operator.
They were typically given monthly cash payments of about US$10,000, according to official accounts, for services classified as “intelligence and counterintelligence operations.”
Romero said documentation relating to “the security of our guest” needed to be kept to a minimum given the “high sensitivity of the case.”
However, the Operation Hotel outgoings were a fraction of the intelligence agency’s special expenses. In Assange’s first two months in the embassy, Senain spent US$22.5 million on 38 other operations with codenames including “undercover agents,” “counterintelligence” and “Venezuela,” according to official documents.
Documents seen by the Guardian show Senain made multimillion-dollar payments to Internet surveillance companies for spying software. One was Hacking Team, a cybersecurity company based in Italy.
Hacking Team did not respond to a request for comment. Documents show that it was contracted directly, or subcontracted through other companies, by Senain from 2012 to 2015.
It is unclear how the Ecuadoran government used the surveillance tools.
However, investigative journalists working in Ecuador say they have often been forced to move their Web sites abroad to avoid cyberattacks and hacking attempts.
Other journalists have been prosecuted through the courts. Facing fines and criminal charges, some were forced into exile.
Ecuadoran President Lenin Moreno in March shut down Senain in response to what he called the “ethical outcry of citizens.”
He said the move was intended to “guarantee the security needs of the country,” in what appeared to be a pointed reference to the resources that the agency had dedicated to protecting a person who had very little to do with Ecuador’s security.
The Ecuadoran comptroller is investigating how Senain spent US$284.7 million from 2012 to last year, most of which went to special expenses such as activities connected to Assange.
About 80 percent of the overall budget went to such expenses last year, according to a statement on the comptroller’s Web site.
This article was written in collaboration with Fernando Villavicencio and Cristina Solzano from Focus Ecuador.
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