Stefan Mileschin

Wikileaks worker "Siggi" Thordarson has outted himself as a double agent working for the FBI.

According to Wired, Thordarson was a long time volunteer for WikiLeaks with direct access to Assange and a key organiser.

He had the role of double agent for three months and earned $5,000 for his trouble. The FBI flew him internationally four times for debriefings.

Thordarson was 17 when he joined WikiLeaks in February 2010. He joined after WikiLeaks published internal bank documents connected to that country's financial crisis.

When the local staff revolted over what they considered Julian Assange's self-promotion, Assange put Thordarson in charge of the WikiLeaks chat room, making Thordarson the first point of contact for new volunteers, journalists, potential sources, and outside groups.

He was also the middle man in the negotiations with the Bradley Manning Defense Fund that led to WikiLeaks donating $15,000 to the defence of its alleged prime source.

In January 2011, Thordarson was implicated in a political scandal in which a laptop packed with spying gear was found running unattended in an empty office in the parliament building.

According to chat logs, Assange promised to back him, but said that he expected total loyalty in return.

In June 2011 he visited Ellingham Hall where Assange was then under house arrest while fighting extradition to Sweden.

Thordarson had tried to get Lulzsec to hack Iceland's government systems as a service to WikiLeaks. He shot and uploaded a 40-second mobile phone video that opens on the IRC screen with the chat in progress, and then floats across the room to capture Asssange at work with an associate.

This video fell into the hands of the FBI who had just arrested Lulzsec's leader, Hector Xavier Monsegur, AKA Sabu, a week earlier.

The FBI warned Iceland and a huge team of FBI came to the country, asking authorities to help them.

They never caught Thordarson but he approach the FBI two months later.

Talking to Wired he said that he cooperated because he didn't want to participate in having Anonymous and Lulzsec hack for Wikileaks. But Wired think his second reason was more likely - he did it for the adventure.

To prove he had the adventure he provided Wired with emails that appear to be between him and his FBI handlers, flight records for some of his travels, and an FBI receipt indicating that he gave them eight hard drives.

http://news.techeye.net/security/wik...-was-fbi-spook