Watching the video of his arrest earlier, I was shocked to see how much Assange has aged. His tall frame bent over by the police dragging him out. He looked desperate and cornered. He was not the confident, daring -- and often calculating -- transparency activist I once knew.
The last time I saw Assange was just after he claimed asylum in the embassy, nearly seven years ago. He was in good health then and fairly optimistic that he could still run WikiLeaks from the embassy.
I don’t think Assange had any idea he would be in there for so long. He didn’t even have his own window to look out on the world. He needed a sun lamp to simulate natural light. For the first few weeks, there wasn’t even a proper shower for him. That had to be installed later.
He told me it was like living on a space ship. His friends worried about his health and bought him an exercise machine. Celebrity guests would sometimes visit and that would make a big splash in the news. But it was a lonely existence, and friends brought him a kitten to keep him company.
And then there was the 24-hour police surveillance outside the embassy. I cannot fathom the toll it must have had on his physical and mental health.
Assange had always maintained that he was not afraid of facing allegations of sexual assault in Sweden, which is what the original arrest warrant was for. He was more concerned that it was a ploy -- he called it once a "honey trap" -- to get him extradited to the US on charges of espionage.
Remember that -- before the DNC leaks, before allegations of Russia collusion, before Trump’s declarations of "I love WikiLeaks!" -- Assange and WikiLeaks published hundreds of thousands of classified documents leaked to him by former Army private and whistleblower, Chelsea Manning.
That was unprecedented. It made WikiLeaks what it is today. And Assange was convinced that the US government was coming after him, that a grand jury had issued a sealed indictment charging him with criminal acts.
Today, it seems, Assange was right.