February 18, 2025 — A United States judge dismissed a lawsuit against the CIA and former CIA director Mike Pompeo for their alleged role in spying on American attorneys and journalists who visited WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange during his asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.
Judge John Koeltl of the Southern District of New York ruled that “the subject matter of this litigation is subject to the state secrets privilege in its entirety”, and that any answer to these allegations would “reveal privileged information.”
The lawsuit was brought in August 2022 by four Americans – lawyers Margaret Ratner Kunstler and Deborah Hrbek, journalist John Goetz and Charles Glass – who alleged that they were required to “surrender” their electronic devices to employees of UC Global, a Spanish company providing security for the Ecuador embassy, who “copied the information stored on the devices” and shared this information with the CIA.
The first hearing in the case was held in November 2023, when Judge Koeltl refused to accept Assistant U.S. Attorney Jean-David Barnea position who neither confirmed nor denied that the CIA had targeted Americans without obtaining a warrant.
In December 2023, the Judge ruled that the four Americans may sue the CIA for its role in the alleged copying of the contents of their electronic devices.
The decision to dismiss the lawsuit comes after CIA Director’s William Burns’ declaration from April 2024, when he claimed that the case must be dismissed or there could be “serious” and “exceptionally grave” damage to the “national security of the United States.”
Following the decision, Wikileaks editor-in-chief Kristinn Hrafnsson commented that by hiding behind state secretes privilege CIA effectively admitted guilt while avoiding accountability for its actions.