The Metropolitan Police shared information about WikiLeaks journalists with US prosecutors for at least four years as the US Department of Justice (DOJ) conducted secret investigations into the whistleblowing website and its founder Julian Assange.

The Met has disclosed that it has shared correspondence with the US since at least 2013 on WikiLeaks’ UK staff, which include former investigations editor Sarah Harrison, editor in chief Kristinn Hrafnsson and section editor Joseph Farrell.

The three WikiLeaks employees learned in 2014 that a court in East Virginia had ordered Google to disclose their personal emails, contacts, calendar entries and log-in IP addresses to the US government, as part of an investigation into alleged violations of US federal laws, including the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the US Espionage Act.

US law enforcement agencies have been investigating WikiLeaks and Assange since at least 2010, when former US Army intelligence officer Chelsea Manning leaked hundreds of thousands of US government diplomatic memos and cables that were published on the WikiLeaks website.

Manning, who was awarded clemency by Barack Obama after serving seven years of a 35-year jail term in January 2017, was jailed again last week when she refused to testify before a closed-door grand jury investigation into WikiLeaks, in Alexandria, Virginia. She said in a statement on Twitter: “I will not participate in a secret process that I morally object to.”

The Met’s involvement in the US investigation, which appears to have begun after US prosecutors secretly seized the Google accounts of the three WikiLeaks staff, came to light after a precedent-setting ruling following an information appeal tribunal hearing in November 2018 (see ‘Tribunal sets legal precedent for journalists’ below).

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy

The tribunal ordered the Metropolitan Police to confirm or deny whether it held correspondence on the three WikiLeaks staff, following a legal challenge brought by Stefania Maurizi, an investigative journalist with Italy’s La Repubblica, who has written extensively about the organisation.

“It is shocking to realise how a media organisation which has revealed very important information in the public interest and has revealed the true face of the wars in Afganistan and Iraq has been under investigation since 2010, and this investigation is completely shrouded in secrecy,” she told Computer Weekly.

Met confirms it exchanged information on UK WikiLeaks staff with US The Met’s involvement in the US investigation emerged when Brian Wilson, senior information manager at the information rights unit of the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), wrote to Maurizi on 30 January 2019. The letter confirmed that the Met had shared correspondence with the US Department of Justice referring to one or more of three named WikiLeaks British editorial staff – including two British citizens – between June 2013 and June 2017. Tribunal sets legal precedent for journalists An information appeal tribunal ruled in December 2018 that individuals should have the freedom to ask investigative journalists to obtain their personal data. The precedent-setting case, brought by Italian investigative journalist Stefania Maurizi, means that in future people will be able to delegate a journalist to conduct subject access requests on their behalf. “From a legal perspective, the FOIA case has been important in establishing how journalists can obtain information about individuals form public bodies,” said Estelle Dehon, a public law barrister who represented Maurizi at the tribunal. “The case confirmed that a journalist can obtain that information directly, with the consent of the individual, rather than the individual being forced to make a subject access request themselves,” she said. Maurizi had proper consent from WikiLeaks staff The tribunal dismissed arguments by the Metropolitan Police and the UK’s information commissioner that Maurizi had not obtained proper consent from the three current and former WikiLeaks staff to obtain their personal data under data protection laws. Maurizi supplied the tribunal with letters of consent from the three WikiLeaks staff, backed up by signed witness statements confirming they were happy for the Metropolitan Police to disclose their personal data to Maurizi as a journalist and for her to take a decision on whether or not to publish it. WikiLeaks editor Kristinn Hrafnsson told the tribunal that he gave consent to Maurizi to act on his behalf “without hesitation, fully aware of her intention to use the information as material in her work as a journalist”. There was no conflict in his mind that Maurizi could publish whatever information the Met Police released, he said. The tribunal found that the Met had failed in its duty to advise and assist Maurizi by refusing her Freedom of Information request without explaining that it needed clarification over the consent provided by the WikiLeaks staff. “This would hardly have been resource intensive and would have likely found a way through this difficulty and indeed have likely avoided the need for this tribunal hearing at all,” the 16-page ruling stated. “It was necessary for Ms Maurizi to seek this information as, from the evidence, little progress was otherwise being made on whether or not the three named individuals were under criminal investigation,” it said. Estelle Dehon, a public law barrister representing Maurizi, said the letter made it clear that the MPS had been asked to assist with the US DOJ investigation into WikiLeaks, and potentially Assange and other WikiLeaks staff. “This is the first time that such potential cooperation has been confirmed,” she said. “It is still unclear who or what is the subject of such an investigation, but confirmation that investigation involving UK authorities was ongoing between 2013 and 2017 is, in and of itself, new.” The Met’s use of political and diplomatic exemption to refuse to disclose the correspondence under the Freedom of Information Act also revealed a clear political involvement in the case, she said. An American man protests against the actions of Wikileaks and Julian Assange outside the Embassy of Ecuador Assange took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in 2012, after losing his appeal against extradition to Sweden - and potentially from Sweden to face criminal charges in the US - following allegations of sexual assault by two Swedish women. The case has since been dropped, but Assange remains at risk of extradition to face charges in the US under the Espionage Act if he leaves the embassy. British police have spent at least £13m policing the embassy between June 2012 and October 2015, when they ended 24-hour physical surveillance of the embassy in favour of cheaper “overt and covert” tactics to arrest Assange.

Met refuses to release correspondence The Met has refused to release the correspondence with the US Department of Justice on the three WikiLeaks employees, citing damage to national security, international relations and the risk that the documents could disclose the involvement – or lack of involvement – of Britain’s intelligence services, MI5 and GCHQ. The MPS argues that disclosure of the documents: May undermine reciprocal cooperation between the UK and other states in the future;

Is likely to be detrimental to the UK’s international relations and may result in other countries or international organisations reconsidering their affinity with the UK;

Would be likely to have the potential to provide intelligence and insight on whether individuals are of interest to the police. This, in turn, would compromise the security of policing information;

Could indicate whether specific individuals and/or groups are of interest to the police, and whether any particular investigation has taken place. Dehon said Maurizi was considering an appeal against the failure of the Met Police to release the correspondence. “Some of the case law suggests that the MPS’s reasoning in applying the exemptions is flawed, particularly where the MPS is required to balance the reasons for refusing to provide the information against the public interest in disclosing that information,” she said.

US investigation gradually unfolds The extent of the US Department of Justice investigation into WikiLeaks and its founder, and the role of UK police, has emerged gradually. In June 2011, a number of Chelsea Manning’s friends were subpoenaed to testify before the grand jury, including WikiLeaks volunteer David House, according to a report by Kevin Poulsen in the Daily Beast. House initially refused to answer questions in the grand jury chamber, pleading a right of silence under the fifth amendment. Chelsea Manning was jailed again last week In May 2017, House was offered immunity from prosecution and agreed to testify in a grand jury investigating WikiLeaks. According to Poulsen, House answered questions about his meetings with Assange. He was also questioned over a series of chat logs which show he had argued with Assange over the disclosure of documents that “could leave people vulnerable or put people’s lives at risk”. In 2014, it emerged that the US government had accessed the personal emails, contacts, calendar entries, and login IP addresses from the Google accounts of three WikiLeaks UK employees as part of an investigation into alleged violations of US federal laws, including the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the US Espionage Act. The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and DOJ became more outspoken about prosecuting WikiLeaks after the organisation published more than 8,000 documents and files detailing the CIA’s secret hacking operations and hacking tools in a series known as “Vault 7” In April 2017, CIA director Mike Pompeo said in a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington: “It’s time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is: a non-state hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia.” Prosecutors accused Joshua Adam Schulte, a former CIA employee, of illegally accessing the CIA’s secret information and supplying it to WikiLeaks. Schulte has further been charged with a raft of child pornography offences. Schulte has denied all the allegations. Meanwhile, US special counsel Robert Mueller is conducting investigations into collusion between Trump and Russia over Russian interference in the US elections, which includes the role of WikiLeaks in publishing confidential documents from Hillary Clinton’s campaign team obtained by Russian hackers. Further details of the US investigation emerged last year when the Department of Justice inadvertently revealed it was preparing charges against Assange when a prosecutor accidentally copied and pasted information disclosing a sealed arrest warrant and criminal complaint against the WikiLeaks founder into an indictment of an unrelated case.

Swedish FOIA requests reveal UK tactics against WikiLeaks Maurizi began using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) to request public-interest information on WikiLeaks in 2015. She obtained correspondence between the Swedish Prosecution Authority (SPA) and the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), which revealed discussions between the UK and Sweden over allegations of assault made against Assange by two Swedish women. Documents released under Swedish freedom of information laws showed that the CPS had advised the SPA not to agree to Assange’s request for Swedish investigators to interview Assange in the UK, but to pursue Assange’s extradition. “It is shocking to realise how a media organisation which has revealed very important information in the public interest has been under investigation since 2010, and this investigation is completely shrouded in secrecy” Stefania Maurizi, La Repubblica In one email, the then Crown Prosecution lawyer, Paul Close, told his Swedish counterparts that the UK authorities would block any attempt by Assange to leave the Embassy of Ecuador to seek medical treatment, despite reports on the BBC World Service about his deteriorating health. “There is no question of him being allowed outside of the Ecuadorian embassy, treated, and then being allowed to go back. He would be arrested as soon as appropriate,” he wrote. Close suggested he was optimistic that Assange could be extradited before Christmas, writing: “I am sure you can guess what I would just love to send you as a Christmas present.” In an email on 13 January 2011, he wrote: “Please do not think that the case is being dealt with as just another extradition request.” Attempts by Maurizi to use the FOIA to access Close’s correspondence floundered after the CPS admitted it had deleted his email account and was unable to recover its contents. During a press conference in May 2017, Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny, who liaised with Close, disclosed that her office had deleted an email from the FBI. She said the email was a request for information already available on the prosecutor’s website.