We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks Page #3

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individuals with AK-47s.

Request permission to engage.

NARRATOR:
It was an on board video of an

Apache helicopter gunship on patrol in Iraq.

[APACHE GUNNER SPEAKING]

I can't get 'em now because

they're behind that building.

NARRATOR:
A half-mile above the ground, it

was invisible to the people down below.

[APACHE PILOT SPEAKING]

That's a weapon.

He's got an RPG.

We got a guy with an RPG.

I'm gonna fire.

SOLDIER:

You are free to engage, over.

[APACHE PILOT SPEAKING]

Light 'em all up.

[GUNFIRE]

Keep shooting.

[APACHE PILOT SPEAKING]

Keep shooting.

[GUNFIRE CONTINUES]

Keep shooting.

[APACHE GUNNER SPEAKING]

Oh yeah, look at those

dead bastards.

NARRATOR:
Two of the men killed

worked for the Reuters news agency.

[APACHE GUNNER SPEAKING]

Nice.

NARRATOR:
What had looked

like a weapon from the sky,

turned out to be

the long lens of a camera.

APACHE PILOT:
Bushmaster.

We have a van that's approaching

and picking up the bodies.

[APACHE GUNNER SPEAKING]

Yeah, we're trying to get

permission to engage.

SOLDIER:

This is Bushmaster-Seven.

Roger, engage!

APACHE PILOT:
One-Eight.

Engage. Clear.

APACHE GUNNER:
Come on.

[GUNFIRE]

APACHE PILOT:

Clear.

[GUNFIRE]

Clear.

APACHE GUNNER:

We're engaging...

Oh, yeah, look at that.

Right through

the windshield!

[LAUGHS]

NARRATOR:
Inside the van

were two children,

who were wounded in

the hail of cannon fire.

[APACHE GUNNER SPEAKING]

It's their fault for bringing

their kids to a battle.

APACHE PILOT:

That's right.

NARRATOR:
In March 2010, Assange

and a team of Icelandic activists

holed up in a rented

house in Reykjavik

to edit and prepare

the video for publication.

We did most

of our work here.

This was

the operational table.

[INDISTINCT CONVERSATIONS]

McCARTHY:
It was chaotic and hectic and

all sorts of varyingly frayed nerves.

Eventually I went out and

bought a bunch of Post-its

[LAUGHS] and kind of tried to figure

out what it was we needed to do.

My horrific task was to go

through the entire movie

and pull out the stills

to put on the website.

And at the same time I was

learning who these people were

that I could see their flesh

being torn off their bodies.

Photographs taken by US soldier

NARRATOR:
The Army

claimed it was engaged in

"combat operations

against a hostile force."

But it also began

a criminal investigation.

It turned out

that the driver of the van

had been a father taking

his children to school.

SOLDIER 1:
I think I just

drove over a body.

SOLDIER 2:
Really?

SOLDIER 1:
Yeah.

[INDISTINCT CONVERSATIONS]

JONSDOTTIR:
The curtains

were drawn.

But I never had any sense that we

were being watched, not physically.

But we joked a lot about it.

We were becoming

super paranoid.

It wasn't really

cloak-and-dagger stuff,

it was just yet

another cool project.

Everybody thinks that we were sort

of huddled over the computers

and it was all very serious.

We actually had

an incredible time.

The second last night

we all went out

and we were all wearing the same

silver snowsuits. [LAUGHING]

MAN:
WikiLeaks!

[ALL LAUGHING]

Lava-leaks!

JONSDOTTIR:
It was

an incredibly intimate time,

because we were all working closely,

we were working on something

that we knew that could get us

all in very serious trouble.

And we were all willing

to take that consequence.

So my name

is Julian Assange.

I am the editor of WikiLeaks.

Could you spell your name?

Julian, with an A.

Assange.

MANNE:
What's clear about him

is he became a public figure

extraordinarily quickly.

It was really April 2010

where he went from

relative obscurity

into an absolutely

central world figure.

And he did it deliberately.

He knew what he was doing.

He decides to take on the

American state, in public.

NARRATOR:
The team posted the unedited

video on the WikiLeaks website.

They also posted

a shorter version

edited for maximum impact.

Julian titled it

"Collateral Murder. "

And no surprise, it's getting

reaction in Washington.

Our military will take

every precaution necessary

to ensure the safety

and security of civilians.

ASSANGE:
The behavior of the pilots is

like they are playing a computer game.

Their desire

was simply to kill.

The Pentagon says that it sees no

reason to investigate this any further.

Its own inquiry found that

the journalists' cameras

were mistaken for weapons.

But the rules of engagement

were followed.

If those killings were lawful

under the rules of engagement,

then the rules of

engagement are wrong.

Deeply wrong.

HAYDEN:
You've

got this scene.

Some may be ethically

troubled by the scene.

Frankly, I'm not.

But I can understand someone

who's troubled by that

and someone who wants the

American people to know that,

because the American

people need to know

what it is their government is doing for them.

I actually share that view.

When I was director of CIA, there

was some stuff we were doing

I wanted all 300 million

Americans to know.

But I never

figured out a way

without informing a whole

bunch of other people

who didn't have a right

to that information,

and who may actually

use that image or that fact

or that data or that message

to harm my countrymen.

LEONARD:
From a national

security point of view,

there was absolutely no justification

for withholding that videotape.

Number one, gunship video

is like trading carols

amongst soldiers in

Iraq and Afghanistan.

It's freely exchanged

back and forth.

LEONARD:
What's even

more disturbing is that

it was one in

a series of efforts

to withhold images

of facts that were known.

NARRATOR:
Reuters knew

its employees had been killed.

The news agency requested the

video, but the Army refused,

claiming the video

was classified.

The fact that innocent people were

killed in that helicopter attack,

that was a known fact

that was not classified.

NARRATOR:
A record

of the incident

and a word-for-word transcript

of the pilots' conversation

had already been published in a

book called The Good Soldiers

by a writer embedded

with the Army.

The Army later confirmed that the

information was not classified.

Yet the Army would

prosecute the man

who leaked the video

to WikiLeaks.

What kind of games

was the Army playing?

Why was a transcript less

secret than a moving image?

APACHE PILOT:

We won't shoot anymore.

LEONARD:
Clearly the government

recognizes the power of images.

But the ultimate power of image

is it helps people understand

what it is this fact

is that we all know.

Flag-draped coffins

help us understand

the consequences of sending

our children off to war.

Pictures of detainee

abuse in Abu Ghraib

help us understand exactly

what was taking place.

Video of that unfortunate occurrence

where innocent people were killed,

helps us understand that this is

an inevitable consequence of war.

[FEMALE REPORTER SPEAKING]

How was the video obtained?

We can't discuss

our sourcing of the video.

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