yahoonews
Dylan Stableford

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has lashed out at a former employee who claims to have deleted thousands of unpublished files----in the only way Assange knows how: by leaking information about his former colleague.

Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a former WikiLeaks spokesman, told Germanys Der Spiegel that he destroyed more than 3,500 files from "unknown informants" in August 2010 before leaving the whistleblower website to launch a competing site, called OpenLeaks, and publish a book--"Inside WikiLeaks"--about his year or so working there.

Included among the purported doc-uments Domscheit-Berg claims to have deleted: the so-called "no fly list" maintained by the U.S. government, internal information of "20 neo-Nazi organizations" and five gigabytes from the Bank of America--information that Assange once boasted could bring the American banking system to its knees.

Domscheit-Berg says the reason he deleted the files was, essentially, that he did not think Assange could keep the sources of the information secret.

Assange responded in a long statement filled with allegations and various conspiracy theories involving Domscheit-Berg, his wife, his book publisher and "hostile media," including, specifically, Wired magazine.

Among them: Domscheit-Berg, who recorded internal WikiLeaks "chats," has been working with the FBI, possibly Israeli intelligence; that his book contains "malicious libel" and is being promoted by the American military; and that his wife, Anke Domscheit-Berg, was once in contact with the CIA.

You know, pretty standard fare. Assange writes:

Early in 2010, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, (then "Daniel Berg", "Daniel Schmitt") (born 1978), who was responsible for keeping selected WikiLeaks backups, met and entered into a relationship with Anke Domscheit-Berg (then, "Anke Domscheit") (born 1968) who described her job title as "Director Government Relations" for Microsoft, Germany.

DDB told me that ADBs role was to interface with the German government on behalf of Microsoft. He was proud that he had been to a party at the German ministry of the interior, as ADBs consort, and that ADB was on intimate terms with senior figures in the German government and bureaucracy.

DDB told me that he had moved into ADBs house in Berlin, without any counter-intelligence cover, going so far as to place his legal name on a street visible mail box and the interior door and that he would work from this location.

At this point WikiLeaks issued a policy directive that DDB not be permitted contact with source material.

ADB and DDB officially married within a few weeks and changed their surnames to "Domscheit-Berg".

DDB secretly, and in clear violation of WikiLeaks internal security directives, recorded internal WikiLeaks encrypted "chat" conversations. He initially publicly denied having done so, but attempted to place many of these recordings into his ghostwritten book, most of which were rejected by his publishers lawyers as violations of german privacy law. Others he secretly conveyed to hostile media, such as Wired magazine, which had been involved in the arrest and persecution of US intelligence analyst Bradley Manning.

His book, "Inside WikiLeaks", contains many proven malicious libels and breaches of WikiLeaks security policies. The book is promoted throughout U.S. military book stores, by the U.S. military.

After DDBs suspension in August 2010, he managed, through guile, to convince a German WikiLeaks system administrator, who was an old associate of DDBs, to obtain the keys and data for a large quantity of then pending WikiLeaks whistleblower disclosures.

In the last year there has been publicly declared task forces or investigations into WikiLeaks by the CIA, the Pentagon, the FBI, the Department of State, the DoJ, ASIO, ASIS, and the AFP (the last has now been publicly cancelled, finding that no Australian laws have been broken). Many other agencies, such as the NSA have also been involved, but not publicly declared.

I have received a warning from a current Western intelligence officer that DDB has been in contact with the FBI, on more than one occasion, and that the information from this contact was "helpful". I do not know if DDB was complicit with the reported contact.

David House, of the Bradley Manning Support Network, stated publicly, and repeatedly, that U.S. investigative authorities attempted to bribe him to become an informant and infiltrate WikiLeaks activities.

I have been told that the girlfriend of a Berlin-based Israeli intelligence officer attended the wedding of ADB and DDB. This may not be significant.

I have received intelligence from current Western intelligence officer, that Anke Domscheit Berg, personally, came into contact with the CIA during her time working for the McKinsey & Company consulting group. This was a direct, volunteered statement of fact and warning, and not a statement of speculation. I do not know if ADB was complicit in the reported
contact.

J. Assange

A representative for Wired.com pointed to editor-in-chief Evan Hansens explanation of the editorial process behind the sites publication the Manning chat logs. The spokesman declined to comment further.