105 CHAPTER THIRTEEN Enter Assange “Thanks to Russia (and thanks to WikiLeaks), Snowden remains free.” — Julian Assange Born on July 3, 1971 in Queensland, Australia, Julian Assange had made a brilliant career of trafficking in state, military and corporate secrets. While still a teen-ager, using the alias “Mendax” (the untruthful one), he had hacked into the computers of the Pentagon, the U.S. Navy, NASA, Citibank, Lockheed-Martin and Australia's Overseas Telecommunications Commission. At the age of 25, pleaded guilty to 25 charges of hacking in Australia, but was released on a good behavior bond. In 2006, with the spread of TOR software, he co-founded Wikileaks, a website in which secret documents could anonymously be sent and posted. The site received little public attention until Bradley Manning sent it several hundred thousand lowly-classified U.S. military and State Department documents in April 2010. With these stolen documents, Wikileaks became a media sensation and Assange, the runner-up for Zime’s Man-of-the Year for 2010, became a leading figure, along with Appelbaum, in the global hacktavist underground. In November 2010, however, he also ran into a legal problem. A judge in Stockholm, Sweden ordered his detention on suspicion of rape, sexual molestation and unlawful coercion. He denied the charges but he was arrested in London on a European arrest warrant for him. In December, he was released on a $312,700 bail deposit (supplied by his supporters) and confined to Ellingham Hall in Norfolk, England. While awaiting the outcome of the extradition proceedings, he lived there with Sarah Harrison, his 28- year deputy at Wikileaks. A graduate of the elite Sevenoaks School in Kent, she also served as Assange’s liaison with the outside world. Although she officially was given the title “investigative editor” of Wikileaks, she worked so closely with Assange during this period that the British press carried stories saying she was his paramour. During this period,