Outside the Ecuadorian embassy, where Julian Assange may or may not have flushed the toilet (Getty Images)

Poor Julian Assange ... even his bowel movements are being censored.

The WikiLeaks founder was granted asylum in Ecuador today, after two months holed up in the the country's British embassy, where he was avoiding the long arm of Sweden's justice system. (Britain, understandably, is not happy about this.)

Despite the good news for Mr. Assange, a tweet from the official WikiLeaks account took offense at The New York Times’s coverage of the story, which, it claims, "alleges that Mr. Assange neglected to flush a tiolet" [sic] even once the whole time he was in the embassy.

"We're not joking."

They're not? Because search as we might, we couldn't find a single reference to toilets in the entire NYT piece from last night, or in any of its follow-up articles. We were about to chalk it up to a misread (after all ... "tiolet") on WikiLeaks' part, until  a Google News search revealed that the original article did mention Toilet-gate:

Without notice or explanation, the allegations of Mr. Assange's refusal to flush have disappeared from the article of the same headline, and an updated item about Mr. Assange's mental and physical deterioration under house arrest likewise made no scatological references.

Like the saying goes: Just because you are paranoid, it doesn't mean that they aren't out to get you or your shit.

(Future AU Senator??) Julian Assange

Head Wikileaker and house arrestee Julian Assange has been pondering a run for the Australian Senate. Before you even quirk an eyebrow at the prospect of a "Senator Assange," note that a recent survey by Australian Labor Party pollsters indicates Mr. Assange could garner nearly 25% of the vote. Agence France-Presse reports members of "the left-wing Greens party were most likely to be pro-Assange, with 39 percent saying they would vote for him."

In a sampling of 1,000 potential voters, nearly equal percentages of Labor and conservative supporters also indicated they might vote for Mr. Assange, who is currently on bail in England after being  accused of "sexual molestation" in Sweden.

Mr. Assange is essentially under house arrest while he waits to see if he'll be extradited but that hasn't stopped him from launching a TV show in addition to exploring a future in politics. His World Tomorrow airs on RT and has featured guests such as Hassan Nasrallah, the Secretary General of Hebollah and Ecuador's president, Rafael Correa.

Agence France-Presse also reports that Wikileaks, as an organization, is prepared to field a candidate against Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard in 2013.

Correction: An earlier version of this post said Mr. Assange was "charged with" sexual molestation. At this point he has not been officially charged.

Wikileaks front man Julian Assange

Wikileaks will hold a press conference Monday at 12 p.m. in London to discuss its "Global Intelligence File." The "File," which the whistle-blowing site claims comprises over 5 million Anonymous-hacked emails from Texas-based Stratfor, contains a great deal of what appears to be highly sensitive information regarding Stratfor's sources, how they pay sources and their operating techniques in general. One document circulated among Stratfor staff in 2007 may be of particular interest to the company's customers, as its plain-spoken language appears to reflect an internal attitude toward Stratfor clientele as well as several federal agencies that was obviously never intended for public consumption. It also implies (perhaps jokingly) that Stratfor was willing to do extralegal work to covertly gather information.

The Microsoft Word doc is titled "The Stratfor Glossary of Useful, Baffling and Strange Intelligence Terms." The author--not identified in the file's metadata--succinctly introduces the list of terms and definitions: "Every profession and industry has its own vocabulary. Using baseball terms to explain a football game is tough. These are some of the terms we use."

The following is just a selection of the terms and definitions that could further complicate Stratfor's already sticky situation. Some are so bluntly-worded they raise the possibility that this was some kind of internal joke:

ATF Alcohol Tobacco and Fire Arms. Rednecks with a license to kill. Never, ever, ever ask for their help on anything.

Background Check Check of history of someone to determine reliability. Usually meaningless. A perfect credit rating does not mean you aren’t devious scum. Does run up the client’s bill and makes it appear that you are busy. Clancy move. Pros run tests. [Ed. The same document later states that a "Clancy" is "Somebody who has read a lot of Tom Clancy novels and thinks he knows the Craft. Total moron. Really dangerous if he is the Customer. Never let a Briefer be a Clancy. "]

Black Op If you heard even a hint of it, it ain’t black. Anyone who tells you about a black op is a liar. Does Stratfor do black ops? You’ll never know.

Backgrounder General analysis that gives the customer better situational awareness. The customer never actually reads the Backgrounder. Its primary use is as cover when the customer screws something up. Backgrounders are the basic intelligence tool for shifting blame to the customer.

Brief the Times When the Briefer has obtained zero valuable intelligence from analysis, he finds something in the inside of the morning paper, powers up a view graph, and “Briefs the Times.” Customers are frequently impressed. It’s a hoot.

CIA Central Intelligence Agency. Also called “Langley” or “up river.” Owns human intelligence (directorate of operations) and analysis (directorate of intelligence). Director, CIA is supposed to oversee all of the intelligence community. Isn’t that a joke? Imagine the Post Office with a foreign policy.

CIA Appetite/Botswana budget A customer with limited resources asking for enormous amounts of intelligence. Defines most of Stratfor’s customers.

Duplicitous little bastards Israeli Intelligence

FBI Federal Bureau of Investigation, aka the Downtown Gang. Very good a breaking up used car rings. Kind of confused on anything more complicated. Fun to jerk with. Not fun when they jerk back.

Green-carder A source working for you because he believes that you will take him to America where he will own a Seven-Eleven. Try not to disabuse him until after you’ve squeezed his sorry ass.

Secret Service They catch counterfeiters, break up child pornography rings and guard the president. Continual identity crisis. Very nice people. Not, shall we say, the most sophisticated crew you’ll ever find.

The glossary in full may be an additional embarrassment for Stratfor, but Wikileaks appears to promise there's much worse to come: "Like WikiLeaks’ diplomatic cables, much of the significance of the emails will be revealed over the coming weeks, as our coalition and the public search through them and discover connections."

We haven't gotten all the way through it, and we don't even have "an uncensorable system for untraceable mass document leaking" to run!

kstoeffel@observer.com :: @kstoeffel

Today, however, NBC reports that investigators have been unable to link Manning with Wikileaks front man Julian Assange. 

The officials say that while investigators have determined that Manning had allegedly unlawfully downloaded tens of thousands of documents onto his own computer and passed them to an unauthorized person, there is apparently no evidence he passed the files directly to Assange, or had any direct contact with the controversial WikiLeaks figure.

Assange says Manning is a political prisoner, but that he never heard of him or considered him a source for information before reading about him in the press. 

bpopper [at] observer.com | @benpopper

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Rudolf Elmer, a former employee of Swiss bank Julius Baer who leaked information to Wikileaks in 2008, called a press conference to discuss his leak. Although Wikileaks founder Julan Assange was also present at the announcement, Mr. Elmer said it was he, and not Mr. Assange, who was responsible for the latest leak.

The last time Mr. Elmer provided documents to Wikileaks, Bank Julius Baer filed a court complaint that resulted in a temporary shutdown of Wikileaks. This leak, coupled with Mr. Assange's promised publication of documents related to a major U.S. financial institution, may suggest that while 2010 was the year Wikileaks took on U.S. foreign policy, 2011 will be the year the site takes on the global financial system.

mtaylor [at] observer.com | @mbrookstaylor

Today, reports Daily Intel's Nitasha Tiku, Assange told British reporters that these files include, "504 US embassy cables on one broadcasting organization and there are cables on Murdoch and News Corp."

It's unclear why Assange is singling out his fellow Aussie, especially given the respect the two have shown each other in the past.

Assange once wrote, "In 1958 a young Rupert Murdoch, then owner and editor of Adelaide’s The News, wrote: 'In the race between secrecy and truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win.'"

And as Tiku points out, Assange used an interview in Murdoch's Time's U.K. to strike back at the Guardian for publishing documents related to rape allegations against Assange. 

Assange, who has recently been ramping up efforts to define himself as a journalist, seems to be picking an odd target for his latest round of threats. 

bpopper @ observer dot com - @benpopper

We should remember, of course, that Assange has not yet specified which major U.S. bank would implicated in an upcoming data release. Nevertheless, rumors have swirled that Bank of America is the target.

The article also raises the possibility that Wikileaks' potential document dump could have come from the U.S. government. The authorities deny this theory:

Officials at the S.E.C., the House oversight committee and the New York attorney general’s office insist the information they received had been turned over in the form of papers and discs, never a hard drive, and deny they are the source of the WikiLeaks cache.

It's an interesting hypothetical to consider -- that government officials, who have for the most part regarded Wikileaks as a dangerous threat, would perhaps deploy secrets to Wikileaks in hopes of bringing down one of thier targets.

In any case, this story indicates that Bank of America is concerned enough about Assange's threat that it's basically playing Whack-a-Mole with its own internal documents. Not a good sign for America's biggest bank.

mtaylor [at] observer.com | @mbrookstaylor

For the episode of Rap News entitled "New World Order - War On Journalism," international man of mystery Julian Assange agreed to throw down a guest verse. 

Assange isn't much of a rapper, but according to an interview with the Rap News stars in Agence France Presse, “He was full of creative ideas for how to act and time the entrance, and he really enjoyed lampooning his own image,” Farrant said. “It was fantastic—we’re still pinching ourselves,” added Nanni. “He’s a preternaturally calm person, but with a great sense of humour.”

A rapper with great hair, preternatural calm and a sense of humor. No wonder the ladies love him.

 "Assange said that Russians will soon find out a lot about their country and he wasn't bluffing," Novaya Gazeta said. "Our collaboration will expose corruption at the top tiers of political power. No one is protected from the truth."

The newspaper has been given full access to the Wikileaks database and will begin publishing documents next month.

Novaya Gazeta is a weekly newspaper run by former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and billionaire Alexander Lebedev, known as an independent and critical alternative to the state-run papers. It was home to Anna Politkovskaya, the journalist who wrote about civil rights abuse in Chechnya and corruption in Putin's Kremlin and was assassinated on Putin's birthday in 2006.

Documents about Politovskaya's murder, as well as information linking Russian officials to organized crime, are reportedly in the imminent release.

@kstoeffel | kstoeffel@observer.com