When WikiLeaks bumped into the CIA: Operation Kudo exposed [video]

Posted last week here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29723433

TL;DW Guy thinks information should be free. Thinks an informed society is important. Thinks journalistic freedom is necessary for that. Thinks Julian Assange should be free.

Video is about the circumstances around the foiling of the plot to get Julian Assange out of the country by means of becoming an Ecuador diplomat. There was a meeting between JA and an Ecuadorian diplomat during the final stages of the plan (end of 2017 I think). This was high priority for US intelligence. One company inspected the fire extinguishers just before the meeting. The fire extinguisher was later found to be bugged. Each day around the time of the meeting there was a Ford Focus or a police car parked in front of the building allegedly collecting signals from the bugs and being ready to rock if necessary (often there were multiple dudes in the car, once 8 cups of coffee were brought to a police car). High quality surveillance of one such car reveals a dude holding case notes mentioning what to do in case the video surveillance goes out and JA tries to leave the building, including shooting out tires. Mentions operation kudo (meaning has something to do with “friend”), which the presenter suspects to be a joint operation between the CIA and the London metropolitan police since it used MS7 (something like that) and MET acronyms. This would all be very much a breach of inviolability of diplomatic missions from Vienna convention. Lawsuits are underway apparently. In the end Ecuador gave up on this plan due to diplomatic pressure from US.

Presenter was himself surveilled on behalf of the CIA but things have calmed down since a yahoo news article last year described some of the circumstances above, though he said it was also filled with some misinformation.

Might not be 100% accurate. I was distracted.

Were those guys in the car likely to be card-carrying CIA operatives or just hired thugs given orders from the CIA/MI6?

Seems a little overcooked: to be accredited as a diplomat requires the host country's assent. So Ecuador can't simply say "Mr Assange is our diplomat so you must give him free passage"; the UK govt can simply reject the proposed appointment.

As for shooting out the tyres, before contemplating such a reckless and dramatic Michael Bay violation of diplomatic protocol, public safety, and common sense, surely a simpler and well practiced technique like blocking the road, boxing in the car underway with some police vehicles, or simply intercepting it at the airport would be preferred?

> card-carrying CIA operatives

I realize you're just using that as an expression, but I recently watched an old Columbo episode [1] that featured just that, and if it were true it would be the literal dumbest thing.

[1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072804/

> As for shooting out the tyres...

This comes up every so often with regard to high speed chases: "Why not just let him go and then make the arrest after things have calmed down? We know where he lives." The answer to that question is very simple: you are operation under the premise that you can accurately predict your target's future actions. You cannot, and it is laughably foolish to think otherwise. This is why, in the US military at least, the prevention of prisoner escape is a justification for deadly force regardless of the reason for imprisonment - mind reading isn't even attempted.

So with that in mind, do you still think you know enough about Assange's state of mind (and the minds of an unknown number of unknown confederates) to accurately predict what he would do? Because he might have no intention of making a predictably foolish b-line for an exit point, he might be happy to momentarily break surveillance and lay low in a warehouse while his lawnchair weather balloon is readied.

That said, Assange has been horribly mistreated and his tormentors will never have to answer to it.