Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com
An Icelandic man is the first known FBI informant inside WikiLeaks, a secret-revealing website.
Wired.com reports that Sigurdur “Siggi” Thordarson was an informant for three months in 2011 when he worked for WikiLeaks and the FBI. Ticklethewire.com mistakenly printed that Julian Paul Assange was the informant.
He reportedly received $5,000 for his undercover work.
“It’s a sign that the FBI views WikiLeaks as a suspected criminal organization rather than a news organization,” says Stephen Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists’ Project on Government Secrecy. “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? And they clearly decided it was something else.”
