We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks Page #13

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They were just ordinary,

nice girls

admiring Julian and WikiLeaks.

INTERVIEWER:
You've been very

careful not to say anything.

Why?

Because this is a legal case,

and not a public debate.

PROTESTERS:
Sweden!

Shame on you!

Sweden! Shame on you!

BALL:
The way Julian's private affairs

have been conflated with WikiLeaks,

I find quite troubling.

There was at one point an effort to

try and separate the two issues.

That was reversed

and the decision was made to

push the two causes together.

And so it just...

INTERVIEWER:
How was that reversed?

Was there a meeting?

Was there... Or it just

slid into that direction?

Julian reversed it.

Explicitly.

He very much wanted

what happened in Sweden

to be seen as part of

the transparency agenda.

And it worked.

I'm here because the U.S. government

and the Swedish authorities

are trying to gag the truth.

These charges are completely

politically motivated

and have nothing whatsoever

to do with the prosecution.

It's a persecution,

not a prosecution.

DAVIES:
What is so extraordinary

is the way in which the two women

have been either

completely forgotten,

as though they had

no rights here at all,

or caricatured, vilified.

Web post by Assange supporter

AN NA:
I've been through

two years

of different kinds

of abuses.

People coming to my house,

people threatening,

or questioning

or following my friends

and family.

Some death threats,

but mostly sexual threats

that I deserve to get raped.

A lot of Twitter

accounts and blogs

that are very close

to WikiLeaks

have been publishing things that

I know Julian knows is not true.

They admire him very much, and he

could have easily stopped that.

DAVIES:
There was an enormous

amount of hype and misinformation

and bullshit that came out of

Julian Assange's supporters.

And the more that

people realize

that they were lied

to by Julian,

the less moral and

political authority he has.

He's supposed to

be about truth.

PROTESTERS ON LOUDSPEAKER:

Information should be free!

PROTESTERS:
This

is not democracy!

We want free speech!

Hands off WikiLeaks!

We want free speech!

Hands off WikiLeaks!

What do we want?

Free speech!

When do we want it?

Now!

[CROWD CHEERING]

ALL:
Free Julian Assange!

Free Julian Assange!

[CLINKING]

Good evening, and welcome

to this fundraising dinner

for freedom of speech.

While I cannot be with

you in person this evening

because I am under

house arrest,

I can at least be

with you in spirit.

NARRATOR:
After nine days, Assange

was released from prison,

his supporters putting up

over $300, 000 in bail.

While Julian appealed

his extradition to Sweden,

a local journalist named Vaughan Smith

offered Julian a place to stay.

VAUGHAN SMITH:
Ellingham Hall is

125 miles northeast of London.

It's a house that's been in my

family for 250 years or so.

We've got livestock, we've

got cattle, we've got sheep.

We've got game, obviously,

pheasant, partridge.

We shoot them and eat them.

BALL:
Ellingham Hall

is a lovely place,

but it's right in

the middle of nowhere,

and we'd packed it with

about 15-20 people.

It's a sort of cross between Big

Brother and a spy thriller.

Part of Vaughan's plan

to keep the thing civilized

was setting strict rules

around meals,

and so Vaughan's very lovely housekeeper

would cook for us three times a day.

Even port served at dinner,

which was passed to the left, of course.

[CHUCKLES]

And now we are

in a position

WikiLeaks fundraising video

where we are being

most aggressively censored

by the Washington establishment

of the United States.

NARRATOR:
To raise money

for his legal defense,

Assange began selling

a compelling package:

Dinner with Julian.

In exchange for a donation,

WikiLeaks would provide a

link to a video of Julian

to be played at home

on a laptop,

placed on a tablemat set

for the absent hacker.

And together, we make the world into a

place where all our dreams can play.

BALL:
This

Dinner for Free Speech

was in fact dinner for Julian's

sex offense defense fund.

No one knows now whether

money given to WikiLeaks

is going to Julian

or elsewhere.

NARRATOR:
Julian's legal troubles

made him more famous than ever,

but they also intensified his differences

with his former media partners.

They defended his

right to publish

but began to turn

on Assange himself.

I've been close enough

to see the

wasps around the jam here.

He stirred the nest

and they've come to sting him rather

more than perhaps he expected.

JACK SHAFER:
In a January

piece, you described Assange as

"eccentric, " "elusive, "

"manipulative, " "volatile, "

"openly hostile, " "coy, "

an "office geek,"

a "derelict, " "arrogant,"

"thin-skinned, " "conspiratorial, "

and "oddly credulous. "

Um, is that any way for a journalist

to talk about his sources?

He looked like

a bag lady coming in.

He was wearing kind of

a dingy khaki sports coat,

old tennis shoes,

with socks that were kind of

collapsing around his ankles.

And he clearly hadn't

bathed in several days.

DAVIS:
The New York Times...

The hypocrisy of this act.

They wanted the material.

They were fully complicit in the

publication of the material.

But as soon as the heat came on,

they wanted to wash their hands.

NARRATOR:
I tried over many months to get

an on-camera interview with Assange.

After meetings and emails,

I was finally summoned

to the Norfolk mansion

for a six-hour negotiation.

Julian wanted money.

He said that the market rate

for an interview with him

was one million dollars.

When I declined,

he offered an alternative,

perhaps I would spy on my other

interviews and report back to him.

I couldn't do that either.

During his time under house arrest, he

had become more secretive and paranoid.

He railed against

his enemies,

and I knew that he had tried

to get all his followers

to sign a non-disclosure

agreement.

The penalty for leaking,

$ 19 million.

BALL:
I'd found this

a little bit awkward,

being asked by

a transparency organization

to sign exactly

the kind of document

used to silence whistle-blowers

around the world.

Seemed pretty troubling.

And so I refused.

ASSANGE:
All organizations

face two possible paths.

They can be open,

honest, just,

or they can be closed, unjust,

and therefore not successful.

NARRATOR:
Had the secret-leaker

become the secret-keeper?

More and more fond

of mysteries.

The biggest mystery of all was

the role of the United States.

Over two years

after the first leak,

no charges have been

filed by the U.S.

Assange claimed that the U.

S. was biding its time,

waiting for him

to go to Sweden.

But there was no proof.

In fact, members of

Assange's legal team

admitted that

it would be easier

for the U.S. to extradite

Assange from Britain.

HELENA A. KENNEDY: Britain is the

one that's done this special deal

with the United States

on extradition.

But Sweden is

particularly strong

in seeing as sacrosanct that

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