We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks Page #2

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One early leak was from the

National Security Agency.

Frantic text messages

from desperate workers

trying to save lives

on 9/11.

9/11 turned out to be a watershed

moment for the world of secrets,

both for the leakers

and the secret keepers.

After 9/11 we were accused of not

being willing to share information

rapidly and facilely enough,

and we've pushed that

very far forward.

NARRATOR:
Michael Hayden

is an expert on secrets.

He's been the director of the

National Security Agency and the CIA.

HAYDEN:
In terms

of our focus,

the default option, in a practical

sense, has been to sharing

rather than caging information and

making it more difficult to flow.

NARRATOR:
In the years after 9/11,

facing enemies it didn't understand,

the U.S. government started

sharing more information

between different agencies.

At the same time, the U.S. also started

to keep more secrets from its citizens.

In data centers that sprang

up all over the country,

NSA/CSS Cryptologic Center

the U.S. launched

a massive expansion

of its operations

to gather secrets.

The amount of classified documents per

year increased from eight million

Office of the Director of

National Intelligence

to 76 million.

The number of people with access

to classified information

NSA National Business Park

soared to more

than four million.

And the government began to

intercept phone calls and emails

at a rate of

60, 000 per second.

Nobody knows how

much money is involved,

it's a secret.

Not even Congress

knows the entire budget.

The classification system can be a

very effective national security tool

when it's used as intended,

when it's used with precision.

NARRATOR:
During

the Bush Administration,

Bill Leonard was

the classification czar,

the man charged with overseeing

what information should be secret.

The whole information environment

has radically changed.

Just like we produce

more information

than we ever produced

in the history of mankind,

we produce more secrets than we've ever

produced in the history of mankind,

and yet we never

fundamentally reassessed

our ability to

control secrets.

NARRATOR:
In this environment

of expanding secrecy,

Assange went fishing

for secrets to publish.

To bait whistle-blowers, he published

a list of the most wanted leaks.

Those of us who have been

in the business a long time

knew that this day

would come,

knew that because we'd removed all

the watertight doors on the ship,

once it started taking on water,

it would really be in trouble.

[STATIC]

[INDISTINCT CONVERSATIONS]

NEWS ANCHOR:
In Iceland,

winter is never easy,

but this year much

of the pain is manmade.

[PEOPLE SCREAMING]

Last October, all three of

Iceland's banks failed.

Normally stoic and proper

Icelanders have started protesting.

NARRATOR:
In July 2009, WikiLeaks

fueled a growing popular rage

when it published a confidential

internal memo from Kaupthing,

the largest failed

bank in the country.

BROOKE:
WikiLeaks had got hold

of the Kaupthing loan book,

which showed what was going on in

a lot of those Icelandic banks.

They had credit ratings

which were completely at odds

with their actual

credit worthiness.

It was all insiders,

they took out billions

of dollars out of this bank

and bankrupted the thing shortly

before it went bankrupt anyways.

NARRATOR:
A German IT technician,

Daniel Domscheit-Berg,

became the second full-time

member of WikiLeaks.

DOMSCHEIT-BERG:
We met online first, and

then we met personally in December 2007

at the Chaos Communication

Congress in Berlin.

He was not the stereotypical

hacker you would expect,

looked completely

differently,

he was interested in

completely different topics.

NARRATOR:
For Daniel and Julian, the Kaupthing

leak was their biggest success to date.

SMARI MCCARTHY:
The loan book came

out and took the country by storm.

RUV, the national broadcaster, was

going to do a big segment on it.

And they got slapped

with an injunction.

[SPEAKING ICELANDIC]

This evening, we had intended

on releasing a full report

regarding the enormous credit

facilities made available by Kaupthing

to the various companies of its shareholders.

However, we are prevented from

doing so this evening...

BIRGITTA JONSDOTTIR: It was

the first time in our history

that a gag order was placed on the

state TV not to produce that news

just before they were

supposed to produce it.

So instead of doing nothing they

decided to put the website up.

[SPEAKING ICELANDIC]

MCCARTHY:

Up pops WikiLeaks- org

with this Kaupthing

loan book front and center,

and everybody goes online

and checks it out.

The guys at WikiLeaks definitely get

massive props for that. [CHUCKLES]

NARRATOR:
Later that year, a group of

young cyber-activists from Iceland

invited representatives

of the WikiLeaks organization

to come speak at

a conference in Reykjavik.

JONSDOTTIR:
Iceland and

WikiLeaks really fit.

This is something we really need in

our society, the media failed us.

So I was excited

to meet them.

Up until the day

before the conference,

we didn't know

who was going to come.

It could be a massive organization

or it could be a tiny organization.

[AUDIENCE APPLAUDING]

Hello? Um...

Does that work? Okay.

DOMSCHEIT-BERG:
In the beginning

we had no funding at all,

we were not set up with

manpower nor organizationally,

so there was

a lot to improvise.

WikiLeaks, we haven't mentioned

that what we are doing right now

is still a proof of concept.

So in technical terms, we are in

a beta stage, so it's just...

We're not in a beta stage.

Well...

[AUDIENCE LAUGHING]

We're not in a beta stage as far as...

We're in a Gmail beta stage.

[BOTH CHUCKLING]

So we 're not in a beta stage in terms

of our ability to protect people.

In terms of...

Um...

[AUDIENCE CHUCKLING]

You could let me

finish my sentence.

Okay.

It was a really awkward

experience in some way

because we were just

so famous over there.

You work

for WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks is now

very famous in Iceland

because of the big

Kaupthing leak.

We got this letter

from the Kaupthing lawyers,

telling us that under

Icelandic banking secrecy law

we deserved one year

in prison.

So we thought we'd

come to Iceland...

DOMSCHEIT-BERG:

And see for ourselves.

...and see for ourselves.

[CROWD CHEERING]

[ASSANGE SPEAKING]

The banksters need to be

put on public trial

and given the justice

they deserve.

More power to you, Iceland!

NARRATOR:
Julian teamed up

with Birgitta Jonsdottir,

a poet turned politician,

to hatch a plan to turn Iceland into

a haven for freedom of information.

But Julian was also preoccupied

with a new source,

one with access to classified

U.S. government materials,

and a willingness

to leak them.

[APACHE GUNNER SPEAKING]

See all those people

standing down there...

There's more that keep walking

by and one of them has a weapon.

[APACHE GUNNER SPEAKING]

We have five to six

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