The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), during Donald Trump’s presidency, had chalked out plans to kidnap and possibly assassinate Wikileaks founder Julian Assange when he was holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, a report has claimed.

According to Yahoo News, officials of the CIA and the Trump administration had hotly debated the plot to abduct the whistleblower in 2017, exploring the legality of such a move. The mission was eventually nipped in the bud, the report adds.

Yahoo News spoke with over 30 former US officials to pursue the story. The report says Mike Pompeo, who was secretary of state then, was at the forefront of the plot. It quotes a former Trump national security official as saying that Pompeo and other CIA leaders were “seeing blood”.

Assange was holed up at the Ecuadorian embassy from 2012-19, after which he was arrested and moved to London’s Belmarsh prison.