Wikileaks's Assange Accuses Google of 'Back Channel Diplomacy' for US

Wikileaks has leaked a portion of Julian Assange's new book on Google, revealing

 the inner workings of a company closely tied to the U.S. State Department.

As Wikileaks founder Julian Assange's new book hit shelves, on Friday the whistleblower

 website provided supporters with a sneak peak of 'When Google Met WikiLeaks.'

“While WikiLeaks had been deeply involved in publishing the inner archive of the U.S. State Department, the U.S. State Department had, in effect, snuck into the WikiLeaks command

 center and hit me up for a free lunch,” Assange wrote in a chapter of the book released

 to the public on Wikileaks' website.

The “free lunch” Assange referred to was a 2011 meeting between himself and the

 chairman of Google, Eric Schmidt and his then partner Lisa Shields.

“When he introduced (Shields) as a vice president of the Council on Foreign Relations

—a US foreign-policy think tank with close ties to the State Department—I thought little

 more of it,” Assange wrote. He continued by describing Schmidt as “a good foil.”

“A late-fifty something, squint-eyed behind owlish spectacles, managerially dressed

—Schmidt’s dour appearance concealed a machinelike analyticity,” Assange wrote.

 The two men got along, according to Assange's account, though they were later

 accompanied by soon-to-be State Department speechwriter Scott Malcomson

 (introduced to Assange at the time as the editor of a book Schmit was working on), 

and the head of think tank Google Ideas, Jared Cohen.

Before working at Google Ideas, Cohen spent four years working at the

 State Department.

“At this point, the delegation was one part Google, three parts US foreign-policy 

establishment, but I was still none the wiser,” Assange wrote.

Months after the meeting, when Wikileaks tried to contact the State Department, 

Assange wrote that Shields was used by the U.S. government as an intermediary.

“Not only had Hillary Clinton’s people known that Eric Schmidt’s partner had visited me, 

but they had also elected to use her as a back channel,” he wrote. “It was at this point 

that I realized Eric Schmidt might not have been an emissary of Google alone.

 Whether officially or not, he had been keeping some company that placed him very close to Washington, DC, including a well-documented relationship with President Obama,” 

Assange explained.

For Assange, the incident was a wake-up call that the lines between Google and the

 State Department had become blurred.

“Google is literally in bed with the State Department,” he told teleSUR English in an

 exclusive interview in September.

Speaking to teleSUR's Chris Spannos, Assange explained how Google compiles 

user information from everything from Google searches to Gmail, Youtube and even 

smartphones.

However, these “seemingly free services” are no more than “bait” for internet users,

 according to Assange.

“(Google) pools together all this information collection...couples it together for each 

person it detects, and builds a profile of that person,” he explained.

Assange said these user profiles are then sold to advertisers, and secretly harvested

 by the U.S. National Security Agency.

“This is its business model — being a private, lawful version of the National Security 

Agency,” he said.

During the same interview, Assange also discussed yet another controversy over 

NATO's former head, Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

Read teleSUR's investigative piece on Rasmussen here.

See also Assange's full interview with teleSUR below.

http://www.telesurtv.net/english/news/Wikileakss-Assange-Accuses-Google-of-Back-Channel-Diplomacy-for-US-20141025-0044.html#cxrecs_s