Lenín Moreno was president of Ecuador when the country ended Julian Assange’s asylum in its London embassy. John Kiriakou, speaking on a vigil livestream four days before Assange was removed, gave a blunt reading of the motive: “this is a case of the Ecuadorians being sellouts. This is a case of the Ecuadorians wanting American money and more favourable trade negotiations, or debt relief, visas, who knows. This is about Lenín Moreno being a two-faced traitor. I hate to say it. This is a guy that we put our trust in, which was very foolish.”[1][2]
Kiriakou noted the reversal was total: WikiLeaks supporters had backed Moreno during his campaign precisely because he was seen as the successor to Rafael Correa who would go on protecting Assange, which he says has been one of the most shocking elements of the affair.[3]
The death-penalty framing
Kiriakou rejected the suggestion, then circulating, that Ecuador had negotiated an assurance that Assange would not face a capital charge. “This isn’t a death penalty charge in any case under the sun. The only way this would be a death penalty charge would have been if the United States was in a state of declared war — which we haven’t been since December 8th 1941 — and Julian were caught providing aid and comfort to the enemy. So don’t treat us like we’re stupid.”[1]
The INA Papers accusations
On the corruption-leak scandal Moreno cited against Assange, Kiriakou said the accusations were “just simply factually not true” and that the material had come from a legislator in the Ecuadorian parliament. He was harsher on the accompanying claim that Assange had photographed Moreno’s food, his daughter dancing and the interior of his bedroom: “buddy, you’re confusing Julian with the CIA. The CIA is bugging your bedroom and taking pictures of your kids and your food — not Julian Assange. He doesn’t even have internet access. He’s the one person in the world who couldn’t hack anybody right now."[4][5][6]
"Ecuador is open for business”
Kiriakou dates his own alarm to an episode almost a year earlier. Having delivered a letter to the Ecuadorian ambassador to the United States asking him to press his government to restore Assange’s internet access, he watched what appeared the following morning. “The very next day an article appeared in the Wall Street Journal, and it was entitled ‘Ecuador is open for business’, and it talked about how the Ecuadorian government had approached the Trump administration to try to improve and to enhance business ties.”[7]
“That sent a chill up my spine, because it made me think and fear that Julian may be used as a pawn so the Ecuadorian government can make a little bit of money. So that troubles me very deeply — and that’s not something I was worried about just a few short months ago.”[7][8] At that stage he still expected the cut-off of Assange’s communications to be temporary and reversible, and said former president Rafael Correa had expressed disappointment at Moreno’s policy.[9][10]
The economics
Kiriakou pointed to a Wall Street Journal report he says nobody in the movement had missed, describing how Moreno “practically got on his knees and begged the Trump White House” for an increase in American aid and better tariffs so Ecuador could export more goods to the United States. “This guy’s supposed to be a communist. He’s supposed to be a liberator and somebody who values human rights and civil rights and civil liberties — and he’s not. It’s all about the money.”[11][12] He argued the pressure applied to Ecuador was economic precisely because the country was weak enough for it to work.[11]
The Bini arrest
Kiriakou’s verdict on Moreno is delivered in the course of explaining a second arrest rather than the famous one. “His arrest was ordered by the president of Ecuador, Lenín Moreno, who to me is one of the biggest traitors that we’ve encountered in this entire experience.” The man arrested was Ola Bini, a Swedish programmer and a personal friend of Assange.[13]
The irony he presses is onomastic. “He’s named Lenin because he’s supposed to be a communist, right? His parents were communists, named him after Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. And he just couldn’t get on his knees fast enough in front of the United States and do the US’s bidding.”[14]