We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks Page #11

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still had an Internet connection

to military networks.

His gun had

been taken away,

but he still had access to

millions of classified documents.

HAYDEN:
We have personnel

security programs.

We try to take a look at the folks

to whom we give security clearances.

Should this young man have

been given that clearance?

In retrospect, certainly not.

In prospect, who knows'?

These are the kinds of decisions

that are difficult to make.

But let me put it

to you this way,

the American Army has had

incredibly stupid PFCs

for more than two centuries,

[CHUCKLING]

and PFCs occasionally

do incredibly stupid things.

SHOWMAN:
I didn't

see him get arrested.

But I saw him

walk down the hall

with about four MPs.

He had a grin on his face,

like, "I'm on top

of the world."

EDWARDS:
The last communication

I received from him

was that I was going to hear something

that would shock the world.

[TELEPHONE PLAYING]

HAYDEN:
It was

a pretty simple process,

dropping CDs into your tower

and downloading large

volumes of information.

It wasn't incredibly

sophisticated.

NARRATOR:
That's

not quite true.

Manning turned his computers into

efficient exfiltration machines.

Over several months, Manning

made over 794,000 connections

with the State Department's

server.

He downloaded hundreds of

thousands of documents

without anyone noticing.

When he hit a snag,

he reached out to another hacker for

advice on how to crack passwords.

Later, Manning talked to him about

the progress of the uploads.

In Manning's buddy list, the address

was listed under a familiar name,

Julian Assange.

[TELEPHONE CONTINUES PLAYING]

NARRATOR:

On November 28th, 2010,

WikiLeaks and

its media partners

began to publish a small

fraction, carefully redacted,

of the State Department cables

supplied by Bradley Manning.

The day-to-day memos

of American diplomats

revealed a surprising honesty about

how the world really worked.

BROOKE:
It was that whole

Wizard of Oz moment.

We all look at these politicians,

"Oh, wow, they're so powerful!"

And then it was the little dog

[LAUGHING] pulling the curtain away.

NARRATOR:
The cables exposed

criminal behavior and corruption

by tyrants in Egypt,

Tunisia, and Libya.

That in turn helped to fuel

an exploding popular anger

against repression,

the so-called Arab Spring.

They also told the truth

about the faults of

America's so-called allies

in ways that were

bound to reveal

that their power and legitimacy

were a kind of fraud.

This leak is

industrial scale.

It touches every relationship

the United States has

with other countries

around the world.

Even as the United States and others

try to manage the impact of this,

it will be a wound that just keeps

opening up on a recurring basis.

NARRATOR:
The behavior of the

United States was also exposed,

as the cables revealed

criminal cover-ups

and a systematic policy of using

diplomats to spy on foreign governments.

HAYDEN:
Look,

everyone has secrets.

Some of the activities

that nation-states conduct

in order to keep their

people safe and free

need to be secret

in order to be successful.

If they are broadly known,

you cannot accomplish

your work.

Now look, let me be

very candid, all right.

We steal secrets.

We steal other

nation's secrets.

One cannot do

that aboveboard

and be very successful for a

very long period of time.

HILLARY CLINTON:
Disclosures

like these tear at the fabric

of the proper function

of responsible government.

People of good faith

understand the need for sensitive

diplomatic communications,

both to protect

the national interest

and the global

common interest.

BROOKE:
For the previous leaks,

the American government,

they were obviously angry,

but they suddenly decided,

"Right, now it's time to

get Draconian on their ass."

It's time that the Obama administration

treats WikiLeaks for what it is,

a terrorist organization.

What we should do is treat

Assange as an enemy combatant,

who's engaged in information

warfare against the United States.

He's a blackmail,

extortionist, terrorist.

...crackpot,

alleged sex offender...

He's a criminal and he

ought to be hunted down,

and grabbed,

and put on trial.

We have a very serious criminal

investigation that's underway

and we're looking at all of

the things that we can do

to stern the flow

of this information.

He needs to be prosecuted to

the fullest extent of the law,

and if that becomes a problem,

we need to change the law.

We've got special ops forces.

A dead man can't leak stuff...

...illegally shoot

the son of a... [BLEEP]

This little punk...

Now I stand up for Obama.

Obama, if you're listening today,

you should take this guy out.

I think Obama should put out a contract

and maybe use a drone or something.

That's what I'd like to see, a

little drone hit Assange, right.

NARRATOR:
All the threats

were aimed at Assange.

No one called for attacks on The

Guardian or The New York Times.

DAVIS:
I found

that astounding.

If Julian Assange

should be charged

with some offense

under American law,

then absolutely

The New York Times editor

should be in

the slammer with him.

NARRATOR:
Suddenly, only

two days after the release

of the first batch of

State Department cables,

Interpol issued a demand

for Assange's arrest,

for his failure to

return to Sweden

to answer questions

about sex charges.

MARK STEPHENS:
I'm really rather

worried by the political motivations

that appear to

be behind this.

Sweden was one of

those lickspittle states

which used its resources

and its facilities

for rendition flights

and torture.

INTERVIEWER:
You think if he goes to

Sweden, he may be sent to the States?

Certainly my mind is

very open about that.

And you may fight it on that basis?

Certainly.

NARRATOR:
There were rumors of a

sealed indictment against Assange.

In secret, a U.S. grand jury served

subpoenas targeting WikiLeaks supporters.

Under political pressure,

VISA and MasterCard stopped

processing donations to the website.

VISA and MasterCard

will happily process payments

for the Ku Klux Klan,

for all kinds of organizations

around the world,

and yet this one,

with no charges,

no warrants, no nothing,

they've not only blocked it themselves,

they won't let any intermediaries do it.

Meanwhile, WikiLeaks' founder is

still hiding from the police,

but today he did

speak out, online.

REPORTER:
What happens to WikiLeaks

if Julian Assange is arrested?

This is carrying on, this is huge

material that is really important,

and everyone working on it

is getting it out there.

BALL:
WikiLeaks' principal

spokesman always has been Julian,

but with Julian

being in hiding,

I essentially filled

in the gap.

Where is Julian Assange,

this mythic character'?

Honestly can't remember

where I last saw him.

I ended up doing

a lot of their television,

looking pretty

much about 16.

You really did feel

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