Assange visitors lawsuit against CIA dismissed by US judge

NEW YORK – A US judge dismissed a lawsuit against the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) by journalists and lawyers who said the intelligence agency illegally spied on them when they visited Wikileaks founder Julian Assange while he was holed up at Ecuador’s embassy in London.

In a decision made public on Feb 18, US District Judge John Koeltl in Manhattan said the CIA could invoke the state secrets privilege in refusing even to acknowledge whether a private security contractor copied and provided data from the plaintiffs’ mobile phones.

The journalists, Mr Charles Glass and Mr John Goetz, and the lawyers, Ms Deborah Hrbek and Ms Margaret Kunstler, both of whom represented Mr Assange, said the data collection by Undercover Global in 2017 violated their privacy rights under the US Constitution. They sought an injunction requiring the CIA to destroy the data.

But the judge said forcing the CIA to reveal whether it gathered intelligence in a foreign embassy “could have serious national security repercussions for the United States, even though Mr Assange no longer lives at the embassy and UC Global no longer provides security there”.

Lawyers for the plaintiffs did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The US Attorney’s office in Manhattan, which represented the CIA, declined to comment.

Judge Koeltl’s decision is dated Feb 15. The judge dismissed other claims in December 2023.

Mr Assange, 53, returned to his native Australia after pleading guilty in June 2024, under an agreement with US officials, to one count of illegally obtaining and disclosing national security materials.

The plea ended Mr Assange’s five-year stay in a British prison, which followed seven years at the Ecuador embassy as he sought to avoid extradition to Sweden on sexual assault allegations.

Mr Assange denied those allegations and called them a pretext to extradite