is suspected of working for the Russian intelligence services. We’ve been asked to determine if we can place one or more microphones in the guest’s bedroom. They will be concealed and recording in real time… This microphone must have FTP transmission capability with an output to a secure server.” The embassy in question was Ecuador’s diplomatic mission in London; the guest, Julian Assange, the man whom FBI Director James B. Comey had publicly identified weeks earlier as a major focus of his attention; the author of the message was a former member of the Spanish Navy’s Special Operations Unit whose company was in charge of security at the Ecuadorian embassy in the English capital. It was there that the WikiLeaks founder , hounded by legal troubles and protected by the government of then-Ecuadorian president Rafael Correa, had found refuge. Dozens of intercepted emails from Morales and his employees demonstrate the espionage to which the Australian activist and his lawyers were subjected while they were preparing his defense against the U.S. justice system, which was seeking a 175-year prison sentence against him for revealing classified material about secret military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. An investigation by EL PAÍS, published in 2019, revealed audio recordings, videos, and reports about this espionage operation for the CIA. Weeks later, Morales was arrested and released on bail pending trial. After six years of judicial investigation , the owner of UC Global S.L. was facing prison sentences of between 13 and 20 years, sought by the prosecution and by Assange. In addition to the compromising emails he sent to his employees, there is the testimony of three protected witnesses, former employees of his company, who claim that their boss confessed to working for the CIA. There were also his frequent trips to the U.S. But with just a few months to go before his trial, Morales, the main figure involved in this affair, has just died from an undisclosed illness, according to a statement posted on LinkedIn by his company, UC Global S.L. Michel Wallemacq, his head of operations, will be in the dock instead. The prosecution is seeking up to five years behind bars for him. A trip to Las Vegas It all began in January 2016 during a trip to the Shot Show security trade show in Las Vegas. There, the former soldier met Brian Nagel and Zohar Lahav, then heads of security for Las Vegas Sands Corp., the casino owned by the late American billionaire Sheldon Adelson , a generous donor to the Republican Party and a friend of then-presidential candidate Donald Trump. Nagel was a highly skilled former member of the U.S. Secret Service. No one knew about the small security consultancy Morales ran in Spain, but Nagel and Zohar’s eyes lit up when he told them he was in charge of security for the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, at 3 Hans Crescent, a red-brick building that was sheltering the founder of WikiLeaks. The Australian activist had become a top priority target for U.S. intelligence. “I’ve gone over to the dark side” and “we’re going to play in the big leagues now,” the euphoric director of UC Global S.L. confessed to his employees upon returning from that trip. “You shouldn’t pass information to the other side,” one of his IT specialists reproached him. Morales opened his shirt and replied, “I’m a mercenary, and I’m going in with my chest bared,” this former employee recalls. It was the beginning of a relationship with an enigmatic “American client” who would demand more and more each day. Contracts and the yacht ‘My Queen Miri’ The payment would be made through contracts. “He (Morales) told me openly that he had contact with American friends, in this case with the CIA, and that they weren’t paying us, that the intention was to get contracts [...] That he was going to pass on information in exchange for contracts,” declared protected witness number 2. After that trip to the Nevada trade show, the first contract arrived: the supervision of the security that Adelson’s team provided for his yacht, My Queen Miri , when the ship crossed the Mediterranean. UC Global S.L. signed the contract with Sira Company Ltd., based in the tax haven of the Cayman Islands. But only Morales would ever set foot on the deck of that ship because the vessel already had an extensive security team. “It’s surprising [...] They were asking us for just one operator; it clearly didn’t make much sense,” the same protected witness stated. The Musketeers To spy on the founder of WikiLeaks, his lawyers, visitors, doctors, and even embassy staff, Morales created a unit. It was led by Michel Wallemacq, a trusted associate. Reporting to him were IT and communications technicians, including those now under witness protection. To communicate, they created the group “The Three” on Signal. From there, “the musketeers,” as Wallemacq called them, channeled orders from the owner of UC Global S.L. This team was responsible for replacing the embassy’s cameras in December 2017 and processing the purchase through the company Espiamos.com . The new cameras needed to have hidden audio recording features. This modification was concealed from embassy staff. The new video surveillance system could stream live so that “American clients” would have real-time access to all the recordings from every corner of the embassy. Six months earlier, on June 23, 2017, the initial arrangements began. An email sent to Espiamos.com by one of the employees read: “As I mentioned to you on the phone, we need the interior cameras to have microphones for internal eavesdropping […] the client wants to have streaming control of the cameras […] we need a storage server where previous recordings can be retrieved for analysis […] All of this, of course, with the highest level of security for access and handling.” Walls and stickers But spying on Assange wasn’t easy. He was obsessed with his security. In the embassy’s main room, he had installed a white noise machine to prevent his conversations from being recorded. And the marathon meetings with his lawyers were moved to the women’s restroom. An uncomfortable space, but seemingly the most secure. They were wrong. The camera filters weren’t enough to dampen the white noise in the meeting room, so Morales ordered a hidden microphone to be attached to the PVC base of the fire extinguisher next to the table. The “musketeers” knew no bounds and they also installed another microphone in the women’s restroom. Message from Witness 1 to a colleague: “You have to buy a hidden microphone. Delete this message when you read it.” Message to Espiamos.com : “There shouldn’t be any advertising on the packaging or inside. [...] We want maximum discretion.” There was no safe corner in the embassy. Morales asked his team to take pictures of decorative figures in the hall so they could replicate them with eavesdropping devices. Rigid yellow stickers were placed on the windows to capture conversations from the outside. Morales confessed to his men that “the American friends” had laser microphones outside and were able to pick up sound through vibrations. An email from Witness 3 read: “Do you have a picture of the outside of the embassy? Of the stickers?” Response from Witness 1: “No way, man… there were almost always press there, and when I could go out it was at night.” Even the embassy walls were subject to evaluation. In August 2017, while on a trip to Miami, a city he frequently visited, the former military officer wrote to his employees: “I need you to work on the following: info on the embassy’s Wi-Fi; I need to see what the guest’s (Assange’s) walls are made of — brick, masonry, cement — photos of the interior, furniture.” He also requested silence regarding his frequent trips to the U.S. “I want to warn you to be very careful with the information we transmit. SENAIN (Ecuador’s National Intelligence Service) is investigating us. I would like my location to be kept confidential, especially regarding my trips to the USA.” SENAIN was precisely the agency that had contracted Morales’ company in 2012 to provide security at the embassy. A plan to rob Stella Entering the Ecuadorian Embassy in London to visit Assange was like stepping into an elephant trap the moment you poked your nose through security. The owner of UC Global S.L. imposed a protocol that forced visitors to hand over their mobile devices and passports. No one imagined that the IMEI and SIM codes of their cell phones were being photographed, along with visas to countries of interest to the “American client,” especially Russia and the U.S., and that the codes from cryptophones — the encrypted devices used by WikiLeaks members — were being copied. A report on the visitor’s profile was compiled after each meeting. During one of his trips to the U.S., Morales provided a list of priority targets. Stella Morris, the lawyer and current wife of the Australian activist, became a target because of her close relationship with the “guest.” They were intrigued by her and believed she was using a false name. They stole a diaper from a baby who was being carried by a friend of Assange’s to investigate whether it was the couple’s child, and produced a graphological report on the activist. And they also planned to rob her. The proof is in another email from the former soldier: “Regarding Stella, I would suggest following her on the street to locate her address and try to see if we can find any more names in her mailbox or mail from her house, or even snatch her purse on the street.” Meeting in Miami On July 23, 2017, Morales traveled to Miami to “present” the information obtained at the embassy to the “American client.” From there, he emailed Witness 1 via Telegram chat: “Don’t forget the camera quote. Send it to me so I can deliver it when we meet.” He attached a sticker with Donald Trump’s face to the text. But the presentation didn’t go as planned. The next day he wrote to Witness 1 again: “After a whirlwind trip to this part of the world [...] I couldn’t present the hotel portal [...] I couldn’t view the hard drive in the meeting because we all had Apple devices. A meeting where I could have achieved 100%, I only managed 50%. That said, I’ve covered thousands more miles.” Friends of Morales sensed the growing tension. “He would show up exhausted; he was involved in something very big for himself and his company,” a person outside his company told this newspaper. “I warned him to be careful, that he was taking too many risks, and he would reply: ‘Relax, I’m with God, with the one here (CNI, the Spanish intelligence services), and the one there (the CIA).’” The former military officer ordered that no one contact the CNI ; he would handle that relationship alone. All of Morales’ emails to his team of “musketeers” regarding the camera swap, the website where the information was downloaded, and the creation of three access points — “one for Ecuador, one for us, and one for X (the American client)“ — were always sent from Las Vegas, New York, Washington, or Miami. They coincided with his trips to the U.S., which he made with the hard drives recording the cameras in London. “We’ll have to start compiling the new information so I can take it with me on my next trip,” he wrote before traveling to New York. His contact in Miami was an enigmatic “Paisa,” a name he typed many times on his personal computer. A striking trace was left on his cell phone. The device connected to the Wi-Fi network of the U.S. Marshals Service in the District of Virginia, a federal agency that, among other roles, is responsible for the protection of protected witnesses. It was precisely there that the secret case against Assange was being conducted. Frustrated exit plan The “American client” was in charge. In the months leading up to the camera upgrade, everything revolved around the mysterious U.S. client. “They’re monitoring us, they’re our friends in the USA”; “Problems with the damn mail: the U.S. guys aren’t getting the emails”; “Don’t delay… I have the client waiting”; “What can we do if a U.S. agency wants to see us?” he wrote in his emails. Witness 2 states that Morales requested a laptop that was off the company server “to speak directly with the Americans.” And on this laptop, he created a folder called “CIA” in which he filed instructions in English for accessing the embassy’s cameras. On December 21, 2017, with the new cameras now operational, a meeting took place in the embassy’s meeting room. It was a key encounter for Assange’s future. The cyberactivist, Stella Morris and Rommy Vallejo, head of Ecuador’s intelligence service, were finalizing his imminent secret departure from the embassy, ​​a building where he had been confined for five years. It was a delicate operation, planned over months, made possible by the fact that the Ecuadorian government under Correa had granted him a diplomatic passport. Only a few people were aware of the plan. Morales ordered the cameras to be operational “because there was a very important meeting that day and it had to be recorded.” The former military officer urgently requested the recording and received it in the early hours of December 22. A few hours later, the U.S. issued the arrest warrant for Assange. The plan that would have spared the WikiLeaks founder seven more years of confinement and imprisonment had failed. Witness 1 states that while this plan was being hatched, Morales proposed breaking into the Madrid office of the internationally renowned lawyer Baltasar Garzón, who was acting as director of Assange’s legal defense. Four masked men assaulted him as he and lawyer Aitor Martínez were returning from visiting Assange and finalizing the “guest’s” departure. They were looking for the server and the diplomatic safe-conduct pass that the Australian had just received. Assange was expelled from the embassy 16 months later, in April 2019, with the rise to power of Lenin Moreno in Ecuador. He was arrested by British police and held in London’s Belmarsh prison until his release in June 2024 , after reaching an agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice. The website and FTP server created by Morales to spy on Assange were connected to IP addresses from the U.S., some linked to U.S. intelligence services, but the U.S. justice system has not responded to the requests for information from the two judges who have been investigating the case at Spain’s Audiencia Nacional high court. Morales’ bank accounts in Delaware (USA) and Gibraltar are also another outstanding issue. Morales left a trail of clues leading to CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. But the deepest mark was left in the Southern District Court of New York. There, in March 2024, then-CIA Director William J. Burns invoked the National Security Act of 1947 and the Central Intelligence Agency Act of 1949 to withhold information about this covert operation with Spanish assistance. Burns stated that revealing it “could reasonably cause serious, and in some cases exceptionally grave damage to the national security of the United States.” The judge granted his request and dismissed the civil lawsuit filed by four Americans who visited Assange and whose phones were allegedly hacked. “There is a reasonable danger that disclosure of the specific facts in dispute would endanger national security,” the court concluded. The discovery request (for the declassification of the CIA operation) was rejected. The CIA requested that the privileges of state secrecy be extended to Morales and his company. source: elpais