Julian Assange has suggested that when he met with Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt, Schmidt gave him the impression he was doing "back channel diplomacy" for the US government.
By telesurtv
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.”
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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.
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