THE TRAITOR AND THE BOMBSHELL
Inside Jul & Pam’s strange courtship
His-and-hers platinum tresses aside, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and former pinup Pamela Anderson may be the most unlikely couple on the planet.
But since last fall, the 49-yearold blond bombshell — whose résumé includes 15 Playboy covers, “Baywatch” and a sex tape with rocker Tommy Lee — has been content to be photographed (almost) fully clothed, as she delivers lunch, or dinner, or heaven knows what else to her latest badboy infatuation.
Anderson has been a fixture coming and going from Assange’s stronghold in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, silently carting trays of plastic-wrapped homemade vegan delicacies.
She has also been seen loaded down with Pret A Manger and Whole Foods bags filled with takeout meals for her numerous
têtes-a-têtes with Assange, 45. She has long pleaded for his freedom. In January, she sent a letter to then-President Barack Obama asking him to pardon Assange, while posting a picture of a ruffled leak-wrangler with a tiny kitten on his shoulder.
Anderson has been calculatingly coy about the nature of her visits with one of the most wanted men in the world, as if to stir the pot of media speculation.
Then, just Thursday — the day she was photographed visiting him again with a camel coat draped around her shoulders and a short black sweater clinging to her curves — came another tidbit for the press.
Anderson took to social media, penning an open letter titled “My Julian” that made her intentions more clear.
She breathlessly declared Assange to be brave and upstanding. Oh, and sexy. “My Julian is the most intelligent, interesting, and informed man in existence,” she wrote in a social-media post. “Yes, I think he’s quite sexy.” She gushed that he intellectually stimulates her more than all her “ex-husbands and lovers combined.”
As she ferries her vegan treats, Anderson has been couch surfing between the London homes of two of her celebrity designer pals, Stella McCartney and Vivienne Westwood.
McCartney is a vegetarian who does not use animal-derived products in her designs, and the two are very good friends.
And it was Westwood who introduced her to Assange.
Westwood, who visits the WikiLeaks founder every month, is another Assange acolyte.
Westwood told British reporters last year: “He knows more about what’s going on in the world than anybody I’ve ever met. He’s incredible.”
For his part, Assange has been coy about the relationship with Anderson, although he has done little to deny rumors that they are an item.
In a recent interview with an Australian radio reporter, he said, “She’s an attractive person with an attractive personality and whip-smart.
“She’s psychologically very savvy and over the last two years, she has done more to try and get this Australian — me — out of detention without charge.”
Further pressed on the details of their relationship, Assange continued, “I mean, I like her, she’s great, but I’m not going to go into private details.”
The budding romance could be one of the wackiest romantic couplings of all time.
It could also be a mutually beneficial publicity ploy for two fading celebrities with spotlights to chase and axes to grind.
Anderson needs to raise cash for herself, and awareness for the many charitable causes she has taken on.
And continued media attention is Assange’s only hope for clemency and freedom from his embassy confines, since stepping outside now would lead to almost certain extradition to Sweden, where he faces accusations of sexual assault.
“Pamela doesn’t do anything unless she is getting paid,” said a former associate, who did not want to be identified. “And a few years ago she was pretty broke.”
Public records show that Anderson has spent the last few years paying off hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax liens.
She now — horrors! — does her own hair and makeup, according to her Web site.
“I have only begun to attempt my own makeup for public appearances,” she wrote in a Jan. 31 post on her site, titled “Paris,” adding that in the past 20 years her makeup was done by “professional artists.”
Anderson’s special causes — in addition to Assange — have long included AIDS, the environ-
ment and animal rights.
Following in the stiletto-clad footsteps of Brigitte Bardot — the sexy French actress who campaigned for animal welfare — Anderson is the veteran of many outrageous publicity stunts.
In January she sent First Lady Melania Trump a fake fur for the inauguration.
She has also taken off her clothes numerous times to draw attention to animal welfare, including a 2006 stunt in which she posed naked in the window of McCartney’s London boutique.
Anderson, meanwhile, has had a tumultuous romantic life.
She married Mötley Crüe drummer Lee in 1995 after a whirlwind, four-day courtship, and she was briefly married to singer Kid Rock.
Anderson sued one boyfriend, developer Laurence Hallier, over a Las Vegas luxury condo investment deal gone bad.
She claimed that she was promised a penthouse in the luxurious Panorama Towers development in exchange for helping to promote the real-estate venture.
Hallier later sued Anderson, countering she had not fulfilled her end of the bargain.
Her financial straits may have also had an impact on her own charitable giving.
Tax filings for her 5-year-old nonprofit, The Pamela Anderson Foundation, which claims to benefit “human, animal and environmental rights,” show she donated only $14,000 in 2014 and $6,200 in 2013.
Then there was ex-hubby Richard Salomon, a professional poker player and film producer who is listed as the president of an outfit called Suck It Productions.
Salomon donated $237,000 to Anderson’s foundation in 2014 and $100,000 the previous year, tax records show.
She actually married Salomon, her third husband, twice — in 2007 and again in 2014.
She told Ellen DeGeneres in 2013 that the two had remained “friends with benefits.”
The first marriage to Salomon was annulled after only 10 weeks, and the second ended in 2015.
As she was going through her divorce, Anderson publicly revealed that she had been the victim of sexual abuse as a child and had also been molested and gangraped as an adolescent.
“I did not have an easy childhood,” Anderson told an audience at an event to launch her nonprofit at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014.
“I was molested from age 6 to 10 by my female baby sitter,” she said.
But despite being a victim of sexual assault, Anderson vigorously defends the allegedly predatory Assange.
She is fully on board with his insistence that he did not sexually assault two women in Sweden on a lecture tour in August 2010.
Assange has said the claims are “without basis.”
He fled to the Ecuadorean Embassy in London after Britain’s Supreme Court threatened to extradite him to Sweden to face questioning in 2012.
Anderson believes the allegations against Assange amount to little more than a political witch hunt.
“Julian has ruffled a few very powerful feathers,” Anderson wrote on her site.
“So anytime anyone maliciously or frivolously mentions ‘rape’ next to his name — they need to understand it is defamation . . . There is no rape . . . This has been recklessly politicized.”
The “powerful feathers” are many.
Last week, Assange came under fire after WikiLeaks posted more than 8,000 files of CIA secrets online.
He also hinted he had “a lot more” information about the CIA’s hacking tools that he would release soon.
Last year, during the presidential campaign, Assange’s organization released internal e-mails from the Democratic Party that US intelligence agencies said were hacked by Russia in an effort to turn the election against Hillary Clinton.
While President Trump may have defended the leaking of the Democratic e-mails during the election campaign, his administration has vowed to vigorously prosecute the leakers in the latest WikiLeaks data dump.
Now Anderson, too, is ready to leak — about her new love interest, who she says would make a fabulous world leader, especially with her at his side.
“I think I might have what it takes to be an effective first lady,” she said recently.
“If I had to pick a world leader to stand beside,” she gushed, “it would be Julian Assange.
“Wouldn’t that be great?”