We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks Page #8

---

He was actually quite

tortured by this material

and with very few resources.

By himself, day and night,

he was consumed

with working out what to release

and what not to release.

WikiLeaks is a tiny organization

working on this huge scale.

It's going to make

some mistakes.

Is Spiegel "I-E"

or "E-l"?

MAN:
I-E.

All right. F*** that end

of the press release.

DAVIS:
He was without

any support structure,

and he was about to

do a press conference.

So, I'd say to him, "Julian,

you need someone there.

"I mean, someone's got to

write a press release

"or at least answer

the phone."

[INDISTINCT]

DAVIS:
So it was just in the

couple of days before that launch

that a couple of volunteer

students came in.

ASSANGE:
I'm going to go now,

but I just want to give you

something to think about, which is,

we've got this press

conference on, tomorrow.

We're going to be

totally inundated.

Completely

totally inundated.

INTERVIEWER:
Let's talk about

WikiLeaks as an organization.

Mmm-hmm. Is this Apple

or IBM, or is this...

[CHUCKLES] It's

a corner gas station,

with some extremely

bright attendants.

[LAUGHING]

it was true that he tried

to create an impression

that it was this very

large organization.

It was Julian Assange,

his $300 laptop,

10 SIM cards,

and a very cheap jacket

that he'd put on if he

had to do an interview.

[ALARM RINGING]

DAVIS:
He woke up late,

of course.

I'm knocking on the door.

"Julian, come on, man."

He gets up.

Just his normal thing.

What's the time?

What's the time?

DAVIS:
Twenty-five to.

I also need to prepare a little

list of things. All right.

[DAVIS SPEAKING]

I'll be two minutes.

How are you feeling?

Tired.

I haven't been to sleep.

But, good.

Fourteen pages in The

Guardian this morning.

"Massive leak of secret files

exposes true Afghan war."

We tell our sources

maximum political impact,

and I think

we got pretty close.

DAVIS:
There's

10 trucks out there,

10 media trucks,

[CHUCKLING] 10 media trucks.

Yep.

It'll be a good outcome.

DAVIS:
He walked out that door as

the sort of aging student hobo.

By the time he had made

this 50-yard walk,

he was a rock star.

He was one of the most

famous guys on the planet.

[PEOPLE CHATTERING]

[CAMERAS CLICKING]

Holy f***.

ASSANGE:
Most of you have read

some of the morning papers.

So, this is The Guardian

from this morning.

Fourteen pages

about this topic.

It's clear that it will

shape an understanding

of what the past six years

of war has been like,

and that the course of

the war needs to change.

NARRATOR:
The war logs revealed a

conflict that was very different

from what citizens

had been told.

Civilian casualties were

much higher than reported.

America's supposed ally, Pakistan,

was playing a double game,

taking military aid

from the U.S.,

even while working with the Taliban

to plan attacks in Afghanistan.

The war logs also revealed the existence

of a secret American assassination squad,

with a terrible record of wounding

and killing women and children.

[GUNFIRE]

LEONARD:
There is nothing that will have

greater consequences for our nation

than the unleashing

of the brutality of war.

To have those types

of decisions,

those types of deliberations,

done in secrecy

is a tremendous disservice

to the American people,

because these are things that

are being done in their names.

And whether you agree

with it or not,

to have a free back-and-forth

airing of these is essential.

All the material is

over seven months old,

so it's of no current

operational consequence.

Now, in what circumstances

wouldn't you publish information,

or are there any circumstances in

which you wouldn't publish it?

We have a harm

minimization process.

Our goal is just reform,

our method is transparency.

But we do not put

the method before the goal.

[REPORTERS CLAMORING]

Sorry.

DAVIES:
To my amazement,

Julian announced to the world,

"WikiLeaks always conducts

a harm minimization process."

Julian had no harm minimization

process in place at all.

INTERVIEWER:
So, on the WikiLeaks

side, were the redactions made?

No.

There were 15,000 documents

in the end got held back.

But 75,000 documents

were published,

and they contained

about 100 names.

NARRATOR:
The newspapers

published articles,

accompanied by only a few

hundred redacted documents.

But even after the holdbacks,

and despite Julian's promises,

WikiLeaks published 75,000

documents on its website

without redactions.

ROBERT GATES:
The battlefield consequences

of the release of these documents

are potentially

severe and dangerous

for our troops, our allies

and Afghan partners.

[GUNFIRE]

DAVIES:
I do not know whether

anybody subsequently did get hurt-

The fact that

the material was there

and identifiable as

potentially dangerous

did the political damage.

When the material

was first published,

the world was indeed talking about

civilian casualties in Afghanistan,

and about the existence of a squad that

was going out and killing Taliban.

But the White House

managed the news,

and the story became "WikiLeaks

has got blood on their hands."

ADM. MICHAEL MULLEN: Mr. Assange

can say whatever he likes

about the greater good

he thinks he and

his source are doing,

but the truth is they might

already have on their hands

the blood of some young solider

or that of an Afghan family.

The people at WikiLeaks could

have blood on their hands.

He does clearly have

blood on his hands.

The blood is on their hands.

BROOKE:
This is where we get

into the information war.

That speculative blood became more

important than the actual blood.

OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM

Coalition troop deaths: 3,936 Afghan

civilian deaths:
15,500 - 17,400

Taliban deaths:

15,000 - 25,000

We already can see

all that terrible stuff.

We know about that.

Let's focus on

your nightmares.

How all these people

might die

because the government's

secrets have been unleashed.

DAVIES:
As soon as

they pick up this line

about who's got

blood on their hands,

it's WikiLeaks

being isolated,

and that, from

a political point of view,

was a clever move

by the White House.

They stepped all around

any kind of argument

with these big news

organizations

and isolated Julian.

NARRATOR:
By creating a distinction

between Assange and the newspapers,

the government avoided a war

with the mainstream media

and invented a perfect enemy,

the guy Bradley Manning called

"the crazy,

white-haired Aussie. "

What was your name?

[ASSANGE SPEAKING]

I don't know what it was,

I know what it is.

What is your name?

Julian.

DAVIS:
Is this taking

some getting used to?

You've been pretty

much in the shadows

as far as the media's

concerned until recently.

We've grown a bit, so this is

now a time for me to do it.

WikiLeaks needs a face?

Yeah, the public demands

that it has a face.

And actually we'd much

sort of prefer,

Rate this script:0.0 / 0 votes