A website described as a successor to WikiLeaks published documents on Tuesday it called secret evidence in the U.S. government’s case against the other’s founder, Julian Assange.
The Distributed Denial of Secrets released a collection of more than two dozen documents involving WikiLeaks and its inner workings, including transcripts of online chats and emails.
Among the documents are material referenced in the superseding indictment the U.S. Department of Justice unsealed last month expanding on its Assange case.
“With the Justice Department’s superseding indictment against Assange, public access to the evidence becomes critical,” reads a message posted on the site where they appear.
The documents, released under the name “AssangeLeaks” are not meant to “blow anyone’s mind,” Distributed Denial of Secrets publisher Emma Best said on Twitter.
“It’s meant to give context for one of the most important cases of the century. If that doesn’t interest you or fit your narrative, then I’m sorry. The truth doesn’t have to be/isn’t supposed to be sexy. It only has to be true,” they said.
Assange, a 49-year-old Australian, was charged last year with crimes related to having published classified U.S. documents through his WikiLeaks website nearly a decade earlier.
In announcing the superseding indictment filed last month, the Justice Department said it was not bringing any new counts against Assange but was broadening the scope of a conspiracy to commit computer hacking charge he already faced.
Among the documents leaked by Distributed Denial of Secrets are copies of online conversations involving people associated with the Anonymous hacktivist movement. The Justice Department alleged in the latest indictment that Assange and his associates recruited Anonymous to commit computer intrusions that would benefit WikiLeaks.
The material also includes several transcripts of chats involving an individual alleged to be Assange, as well as internal WikiLeaks emails and documents.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Alexandria, Virginia, where Assange faces the charges, declined to comment.
Distributed Denial of Secrets, or DDoS, was launched in 2018 by a former WikiLeaks insider. More recently, the site faced scrutiny last month for releasing a trove of leaked law enforcement documents belonging to various U.S. police agencies. The Associated Press subsequently reported last week that German authorities recently seized a computer server belonging to DDOS at the behest of the FBI.
• Andrew Blake can be reached at ablake@washingtontimes.com.
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