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WikiLeaks volunteer claims he was paid $5,000 as an FBI mole

WikiLeaks volunteer claims he was paid $5,000 as an FBI mole

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For 21 months, Sigurdur "Siggi" Thordarson was a volunteer for WikiLeaks. For three of those months, he says he was also an FBI informant. After an ill-advised plan to enlist LulzSec and hack the government of Iceland, Wired reports that he approached the FBI to hand over chat logs, video, and other details about the organization — and Julian Assange, who he says he counted as a friend. Thordarson's statements often sound unreliable, and he was ignominiously fired from WikiLeaks in late 2011 for embezzling. But he provides convincing evidence that the FBI used him to collect data about Assange and WikiLeaks, something he says ultimately netted him $5,000. "WikiLeaks was something new, so I think the FBI had to make a choice at some point as to how to evaluate it: Is this The New York Times, or is this something else?" says Stephen Aftergood of the Project on Government Secrecy. "And they clearly decided it was something else."