washington<u+2014>the ecuadorean government declined late monday to say whether it had cut off internet access to wikileaks founder julian assange, but said it would continue providing him asylum, as they have in their london embassy since 2012. early monday, wikileaks announced on twitter that mr. assange<u+2019>s internet access had been <u+201c>severed by a state party.<u+201d> several hours later, it alleged that ecuador was behind the action, prompting a response from quito. the allegations were the latest in a bizarre chain of events confronting wikileaks, a controversial organization at the center of alleged russian meddling in the u.s. election. mr. assange, an australian citizen, first sought asylum in the embassy following a sexual assault investigation launched by swedish authorities. he is the editor of wikileaks, which has published thousands of internal emails in recent months from democratic party leaders and senior aides to presidential candidate hillary clinton. the ecuadorean government issued a statement late monday responding to the wikileaks accusations. <u+201c>in the presence of speculations in the last few hours, the ecuadorean government ratifies the validity of the asylum given to julian assange four years ago,<u+201d> ecuador<u+2019>s foreign relations minister guillaume long said. <u+201c>we confirm that the protection provided by the ecuadorean state will continue while the circumstances that motivated the claim for asylum remain.<u+201d> a spokeswoman for the ministry, catalina yanez, declined to say if ecuador<u+2019>s london embassy cut mr. assange<u+2019>s internet. she said the ministry wouldn't provide further comment. wikileaks<u+2019>s online behavior does appear to have changed in the past 48 hours. on monday, for the first time in nine days, it wasn<u+2019>t the first to promote a new batch of emails that it alleged were sent or received from john podesta, a top campaign adviser for mrs. clinton. instead, the publication of those emails on wikileaks<u+2019>s website appears to have been first noted by rt, a news organization closely aligned with the russian government. wikileaks noted the publication several hours later. wikileaks began releasing emails hacked from mr. podesta<u+2019>s email account more than a week ago, and it has continued publishing several thousand new emails most days ever since. the clinton campaign hasn<u+2019>t confirmed the authenticity of individual emails. wikileaks alleges to have obtained 50,000 of mr. podesta<u+2019>s emails and it has published around 15,000 so far. the u.s. intelligence community has alleged that russian intelligence agencies hacked the emails and leaked them to wikileaks. wikileaks hasn<u+2019>t revealed the source of its emails, but it has taken an adversarial stance toward mrs. clinton, the democratic presidential nominee. her rival, republican donald trump, has praised wikileaks and has said the public should pay more attention to the emails it has unearthed. wikileaks<u+2019>s assertion that mr. assange<u+2019>s internet link had been disrupted couldn<u+2019>t be confirmed. on monday morning, the organization<u+2019>s website was operational. mr. assange, who was born in australia and was granted asylum by ecuador, is subject to extradition to sweden to face questioning over allegations that he raped a woman during a trip there in 2010. he hasn<u+2019>t been charged and has denied the allegations. on saturday, actress pamela anderson visited mr. assange at the ecuadorean embassy in london and brought him food, according to news reports. on sunday, one day after ms. anderson<u+2019>s visit, wikileaks issued a series of three messages over twitter. each one began <u+201c>pre-commitment<u+201d> and then the number 1, 2, or 3, followed by a short phrase, and then an assortment of 64 letters and numbers. when the u.s. intelligence community alleged that wikileaks was publishing information stolen by the russian government, it also said another entity<u+2014>guccifer 2.0<u+2014>was publishing similar stolen records. guccifer 2.0 has denied any connection to the russian government, but little is known about the entity. guccifer 2.0 has published hacked information since june, often promoting the hacked records on a twitter account. that account went dormant on oct. 4, shortly before u.s. officials publicly accused guccifer 2.0 of collaborating with russia. on monday, guccifer 2.0 reappeared, saying on twitter <u+201c>i<u+2019>m here and ready for new releases, already changed my location thanks @wikileaks for a good job!<u+201d> write to damian paletta at damian.paletta@wsj.com and ryan dube at ryan.dube@dowjones.com corrections & amplifications: an earlier version of this article said a representative for actress pamela anderson requested a fee in exchange for an interview. the person requesting the fee was not a representative for ms. anderson, and she does not request fees for news interviews. (oct. 21, 2016)
wikileaks alleges ecuador disrupted assange<u+2019>s internet connection - wsj
damian paletta ryan dube