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- The CIA discussed "options" to assassinate or kidnap the WikiLeaks founder in 2017, Yahoo News reported.
- Then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo reportedly wanted revenge after WikiLeaks published secret CIA documents.
- Assange was at the time holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
- See more stories on Insider's business page.
The CIA pitched senior Trump administration officials plans to kidnap or assassinate WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange back in 2017, when he was holed up in a London embassy, according to a Yahoo News investigation.
The report, which Yahoo News said was based on interviews with 30 former US officials, said the CIA was enraged by WikiLeaks' publication in 2017 of thousands of documents detailing the agency's hacking and covert surveillance techniques, known as the "Vault 7" leak.
According to Yahoo News, senior officials inquired about "options" on what to do about Assange, including the feasibility of assassinating or kidnapping him.
Then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo – who later became secretary of state – was determined to take revenge on Assange after the leak, Yahoo News reported.
In 2017, Pompeo had designated WikiLeaks a "non-state hostile intelligence service," meaning it could be targeted with the same aggressive actions used against foreign states' intelligence agencies.
A former senior counterintelligence official told Yahoo News that "there seemed to be no boundaries" during discussions with then-President Donald Trump's administration about Assange in 2017.
Pompeo and other senior officials "were completely detached from reality because they were so embarrassed about Vault 7. They were seeing blood," according to another former Trump administration national security official.
Yahoo News said it could not confirm if the discussions were escalated to the Trump White House. Insider has contacted the CIA and Pompeo for comment.
At the time of the reported discussions, Assange was living in the Embassy of Ecuador in London. He had been taking refuge there since 2012, after Swedish prosecutors opened an investigation into him following rape and molestation allegations.
Assange had claimed that if he was extradited to Sweden for questioning, he would be sent to the US, where he said he would face persecution. Assange had been charged in the US with offenses relating to WikiLeaks' publication of thousands of confidential US diplomatic cables.
According to the Yahoo News report, there was intelligence suggesting that Russia was planning on smuggling Assange out of the UK to Moscow, prompting a search for ways to ensure that he didn't escape.
Among the possible scenarios was a gun battle with Russian agents on the streets of London, or ramming a vehicle that Assange was being smuggled in to prevent the getaway, the report said.
Ultimately, assassination plans were dropped because of legal concerns at the highest levels of the Trump administration, Yahoo News reported. There were also concerns it would derail the State Department's attempt to prosecute Assange.
Assange was arrested by UK authorities in April 2019 after Ecuador withdrew its asylum protections for him. He is currently being held in Belmarsh prison, London, with a UK judge having refused a US request for his extradition in January.
"As an American citizen, I find it absolutely outrageous that our government would be contemplating kidnapping or assassinating somebody without any judicial process simply because he had published truthful information," Barry Pollack, Assange's lawyer in the US, told Yahoo News.