By STEVEN ERLANGER and DAVID E. SANGER
OCT. 18, 2016
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/19/world/europe/julian-assange-embassy.htmlLONDON — Ecuador announced on Tuesday that it had cut off Julian Assange’s access to the internet in his exile in the country’s embassy in London, making it clear that it feared the tiny country was being sucked into an effort to “interfere in electoral processes” in the United States by the activities of the founder of WikiLeaks.
The announcement came a day after WikiLeaks said that Mr. Assange’s connection to the internet had been severed shortly after the organization published speeches that Hillary Clinton gave to Goldman Sachs, the global investment firm. The transcripts, the latest in a series of disclosures, appear to have come from the hacked email account of John Podesta, the chairman of her campaign and a White House chief of staff when Mrs. Clinton’s husband served as president.
The statement clearly sought to separate Ecuador from the decision by WikiLeaks to publish Mr. Podesta’s emails and, before those, emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee and other organizations. In recent weeks, Mr. Assange, once the hero of the American left for exposing classified State Department and Pentagon documents, has been hailed by Donald J. Trump and his advisers for disclosures from Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, which Mr. Trump has used almost daily to fuel his attacks on her.
American intelligence agencies have said that the D.N.C. hack was the work of the Russian government, and had to be approved at the highest levels of the Kremlin. But it is unclear how the documents made it to WikiLeaks, which has never said where the emails came from, if it knew.
(more at link)
