Subtitles source : Wikileaks Annotated Transcript of "We Steal secrets" by Alex Gibney Full version with links to sources here: http://wikileaks.org/IMG/html/gibney-transcript.html
INTRODUCTORY NOTE : This document is an annotated transcript of the anti-WikiLeaks documentary "We Steal Secrets: The story of WikiLeaks". It open(ed) on May 24, 2013. The documentary was commissioned by Universal for $2 million. The commission went to US film maker Alex Gibney, who is listed as the film's director and producer. The film is filled with factual errors and speculation, the most serious of which are set out below. The stock footage used has also been heavily edited, in some places distorting what was said. This is unprofessional and irresponsible in light of ongoing legal proceedings. It trivialises serious issues.
The film implies – erroneously and when evidence is to the contrary – that Assange may be guilty of "conspiring" with Bradley Manning. This not only factually incorrect, but also buys into the current US government position that journalists and publishers can be prosecuted as co-conspirators with their alleged sources or with whistleblowers who communicate information to them. This is a dangerous proposition for all journalists and media organisations — not just WikiLeaks.
Bradley Manning is currently being court-martialed for committing "espionage" (by communicating with the press) and "aiding the enemy" (by communicating with the press). He is defending those charges in a 12-week trial commencing June 3, 2013.
Neither Julian Assange nor anyone associated with WikiLeaks agreed to participate in this film. Any footage of Assange or WikiLeaks’ staff was taken from stock footage. WikiLeaks has, however, co-operated with a film by respected Academy Award-nominated film- maker Laura Poitras, which will be out later this year. Another film, co-produced with Ken Loach's 16 Films, will be released shortly.
* Selective editing * The interview is edited to cut out the NASA scientist's punch line--no files were, in fact, deleted.
It is apparent that the "worm" was a practical joke. The whole episode is extensively documented in the book "Underground" by Julian Assange and Suelette Dreyfus.
No person has ever claimed responsibility for the WANK worm.
Gibney's "key clue" is merely that Assange, along with most of his generation, had also listened to the internationally famous Australian rock band Midnight Oil.
* Selective editing * Assange is quoting the lyric in relation to his book, written with Suelette Dreyfus, which includes a chapter on the WANK worm.
The title "We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks" is false. It directly implies that WikiLeaks steals secrets.
In fact, the statement is made by former CIA/NSA director Michael Hayden in relation to the activities of US government spies, not in relation to WikiLeaks.
This an irresponsible libel. Not even critics in the film say that WikiLeaks steals secrets.
WikiLeaks is a publisher. It does not "enter where it is not supposed to go".
WikiLeaks is a not-for-profit media organisation. Our goal is to bring important news and information to the public.
We provide an innovative, secure and anonymous way for sources to leak information to our journalists (our electronic drop box).
One of our most important activities is to publish original source material alongside our news stories so readers and historians alike can see evidence of the truth.
We are a young organisation that has grown very quickly, relying on a network of dedicated volunteers around the globe.
Since 2007, when the organisation was officially launched, WikiLeaks has worked to report on and publish important information.
We also develop and adapt technologies to support these activities.
Gibney collapses four years of publishing history, touching on nearly every country in the world, into "some smaller successes" -- because his documentary does not cover them.
In fact, WikiLeaks has been making front pages since 2007. Legal attacks on the organization started immediately. WikiLeaks won a significant battle against the largest private Swiss bank in US federal courts in 2008. That fight was the subject of extensive discussion, including New York Times editorials.
There were many significant WikiLeaks releases and conflicts prior to 2010. For a comprehensive list, consult the archives at Wikileaks.org. The archives can also be browsed by country or by year of release
Gibney's choice of words, “Fishing,” “Bait”, implies solicitation. Throughout the film, Gibney propagates the idea Assange had been “fishing” for the leaks or that Manning had been “persuaded” to leak. This is factually incorrect but also buys into the dangerous proposition that journalists and publishers can be conspirators by virtue of their interaction with confidential sources. The US government is attempting to argue that any news organization that deals with confidential sources can be put into prison for engaging in "conspiracy".
Gibney makes a careless error that shows poor fact-checking. WikiLeaks makes clear on its website that, like "other media outlets conducting investigative journalism, we accept (but do not solicit) anonymous sources of information". Gibney falsely attributes the 2009 "Most Wanted Leaks" list to Julian Assange. It was compiled by human rights NGOs, activists, lawyers, journalists and historians nominating the censored documents they considered the most important to uncover.
WikiLeaks requests nominations for 2009's Most Wanted Leaks—the concealed documents or recordings most sought after by a country's journalists, activists, historians, lawyers, police, or human rights investigators. You may securely and anonymously add your nomination by editing this page. WikiLeaks will then prioritize the list and seek to obtain the leading candidates directly, through the legal system, or indirectly through its network of journalists, intelligence sources, volunteers and readers.
It is false that Daniel Domscheit-Berg was the second full-time employee of WikiLeaks.
He volunteered full-time for WikiLeaks during 2009. He was uninvolved in WikiLeaks for most of the significant events of 2010, until he was suspended in September of that year.
Gibney lacks access - WikiLeaks staff declined his interviews - and therefore tries to boost the CVs of those he was able to interview, no matter how peripheral their actual role.
* False * Here Gibney shapes the narrative to fit his access. For example, in 2007 WikiLeaks uncovered billions of dollars' worth of corruption in Kenya, a leak that made front pages around the world, and is widely viewed to have changed the results of the Kenyan 2007 Presidential Election. In 2008 WikiLeaks defeated the largest private Swiss bank in US courts after revealing its Cayman Islands trusts, costing the bank hundreds of millions as it cancelled its scheduled US IPO. However these leaks pre-date Domscheit-Berg's substantive involvement. For a comprehensive list, consult the archives at Wikileaks.org. The archives can also be browsed by country or by year of release.
Alex Gibney does not mention that the Collateral Murder video contains clear evidence of a war crime. In the aftermath of the first attack a passing van stops in order to render aid to the injured. The Apache helicopter crew is eager to fire on the van and its occupants, including two children. The ensuing attack kills a further four people. None of them were armed.
A US soldier who was present, Ethan McCord, states: This is where I start to have a problem. This is not following the rules of engagement, they’re embellishing information and it’s wrong; this constitutes a war crime.
In fact, the alleged chatlogs between Lamo and Manning show that Lamo started slyly manipulating and exploiting Manning immediately. Lamo was a researcher for WIRED magazine (owned by Conde-Naste). He claimed that he could protect Manning under journalist-source confidentiality laws then also claimed he could additionally protect Manning under Californian Confessional laws (as he was a registered priest). When WIRED magazine first published the alleged logs, these references were censored, allowing Lamo to lie to the press about what they contained. Later publication of the alleged logs make the duplicity clear. WIRED's censorship of the logs has been attributed by journalist Glenn Greenwald to the close personal relationship between Adrian Lamo and WIRED section editor Kevin Poulsen.
In fact, as the alleged chat logs make clear, Manning had already lost his security clearance, his access, and was being discharged from the US Army in relation to another issue.
Despite this and Lamo's promises of confidentiality, Lamo not only became an informer, but immediately pushed the story out through WIRED magazine, issued nine press releases, gave dozens of interviews, and campaigned for Assange's extradition.
Court records show that Lamo actively attempted to inform on other people well after the Manning arrest, including Jason Katz, a physicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory, who he alleged helped WikiLeaks decode the encryption on a US Air Force massacre video. Katz was fired and swept up into the ongoing FBI investigation against WikiLeaks as a result of his alleged contribution to uncovering a war crime. People close to him were forced to testify against him at the WikiLeaks grand jury. None of this is covered by Gibney.
* Selective editing * By introducing Bradley Manning in this way, Gibney establishes Manning's character in the context of an alleged gender confusion. This context is reinforced through constant repetition over the next few minutes of the film, in order to leave a lasting impression on the audience. This is Gibney's frame for Manning's alleged acts throughout the entire documentary: that his alleged acts represent a failure of character, rather than a triumph of conscience.
In an interview, Gibney stated that: The initial presentation of the story was that Bradley Manning was a pure political figure, like a Daniel Ellsberg. I don’t think that’s a sufficient explanation of why he did what he did. I think he was alienated; he was in agony personally over a number of issues. He was lonely and very needy. And I think he had an identity crisis. He had this idea that he was in the wrong body and wanted to become a woman, and these issues are not just prurient. I think it raises big issues about who whistleblowers are, because they are alienated people who don’t get along with people around them, which motivates them to do what they do.
This "crude gay caricature" is a version of a classic attack on whistleblowers, once used on Daniel Ellsberg: to distract from acts of conscience by focusing on sexuality, character, psychology and alleged "issues," rather than conscience, motive and morality. In order to carry out this attack, it is necessary for Gibney to ignore the explicit statements as to motive given or alleged to be given by Bradley Manning himself.
From the alleged chatlogs between Manning and Lamo: god knows what happens now. hopefully worldwid discussion, debates, and reforms. if not... than we’re doomed as a species. i will officially give up on the society we have if nothing happens. the reaction to the video gave me immense hope... CNN’s iReport was overwhelmed... Twitter exploded... people who saw, knew there was something wrong. [...] i want people to see the truth... regardless of who they are... because without information, you cannot make informed decisions as a public
From Bradley Manning's plea statement of February 28, 2013 : ...the people in the bongo truck were merely attempting to assist the wounded. The people in the van were not a threat but merely "good samaritans". The most alarming aspect of the video to me, however, was the seemly delightful bloodlust they appeared to have. They dehumanized the individuals they were engaging and seemed to not value human life by referring to them as quote "dead bastards" unquote and congratulating each other on the ability to kill in large numbers. At one point in the video there is an individual on the ground attempting to crawl to safety. The individual is seriously wounded. Instead of calling for medical attention to the location, one of the aerial weapons team crew members verbally asks for the wounded person to pick up a weapon so that he can have a reason to engage. For me, this seems similar to a child torturing ants with a magnifying glass. While saddened by the aerial weapons team crew's lack of concern about human life, I was disturbed by the response of the discovery of injured children at the scene.
From Bradley Manning's plea statement of February 28, 2013 : In the video, you can see that the bongo truck driving up to assist the wounded individual. In response the aerial weapons team crew – as soon as the individuals are a threat, they repeatedly request for authorization to fire on the bongo truck and once granted they engage the vehicle at least six times. Shortly after the second engagement, a mechanized infantry unit arrives at the scene.Within minutes, the aerial weapons team crew learns that children were in the van and despite the injuries the crew exhibits no remorse. Instead, they downplay the significance of their actions, saying quote "Well, it's their fault for bringing their kids into a battle" unquote. The aerial weapons team crew members sound like they lack sympathy for the children or the parents. Later in a particularly disturbing manner, the aerial weapons team verbalizes enjoyment at the sight of one of the ground vehicles driving over a body – or one of the bodies. [...] For me it's all a big mess, and I am left wondering what these things mean, and how it all fits together. It burdens me emotionally.
From Bradley Manning's plea statement of February 28, 2013 : I hoped that the public would be as alarmed as me about the conduct of the aerial weapons team crew members. I wanted the American public to know that not everyone in Iraq and Afghanistan are targets that needed to be neutralized, but rather people who were struggling to live in the pressure cooker environment of what we call asymmetric warfare. After the release I was encouraged by the response in the media and general public, who observed the aerial weapons team video. As I hoped, others were just as troubled – if not more troubled that me by what they saw. [...]
From Bradley Manning's plea statement of February 28, 2013 : For me, the SigActs represented the on the ground reality of both the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. [...] I believe that if the general public, especially the American public, had access to the information contained within the CIDNE-I and CIDNE-A tables this could spark a domestic debate on the role of the military and our foreign policy in general as [missed word] as it related to Iraq and Afghanistan. I also believed the detailed analysis of the data over a long period of time by different sectors of society might cause society to reevaluate the need or even the desire to even engage in counterterrorism and counterinsurgency operations that ignore the complex dynamics of the people living in the affected environment everyday. [...] [I] stated I had information that needed to be shared with the world. I wrote that the information would help document the true cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. [...] I considered my options one more time. Ultimately, I felt that the right thing to do was to release the SigActs. [...]
From Bradley Manning's plea statement of February 28, 2013 : The more I read the cables, the more I came to the coclusion that this was the type of information that should become public. I once read and used a quote on open diplomacy written after the First World War and how the world would be a better place if states would avoid making secret pacts and deals with and against each other. I thought these cables were a prime example of a need for a more open diplomacy. Given all of the Department of State cables that I read, the fact that most of the cables were unclassified, and that all the cables have a SIPDIS caption. I believe that the public release of these cables would not damage the United States, however, I did believe that the cables might be embarrassing, since they represented very honest opinions and statements behind the backs of other nations and organizations.
Here Gibney fabricates the significance of one of Julian Assange's teenage screen names "Splendide Mendax" (from the classical author Horace). He does so throughout the film. The screen name is a joke. In Latin it means "Nobly untrue", but as a pseudonym it describes how handles protect an author's identity even though being inherently "untrue". It is a phrase which describes itself, not its author, just like the word "word".
"Claims my teenage nickname was Mendax, “given to lying”, instead of Splendide Mendax, “nobly untruthful”, which is a teenage joke on handles being inherently untrue. It is self-referential, not a psychoanalysis 20 years ahead of its time!" — Julian Assange, Complaint to Ofcom regarding the Guardian co-produced Secrets & Lies documentary, January 9, 2012.
Julian Assange set out his group's Golden Rules as follows: Don’t damage computer systems you break into (including crashing them) Don’t change the information in those systems (except for altering logs to cover your tracks) and share information. At his eventual trial, the judge recognised that Assange's actions had not been malicious, had caused no damage and had been motivated by intellectual curiosity. Source: Underground: Tales of hacking, madness and bsession on the electronic frontier, by Suelette Dreyfus
In fact, the judge said: There is just no evidence that there was anything other than sort of intelligent inquisitiveness and the pleasure of being able to — what's the expression — surf through these various computers.
No evidence has been adduced in the Bradley Manning proceedings to prove the person Manning was allegedly communicating with was Julian Assange.
Despite this lack of evidence, in pre-trial hearings the US government prosecutor continually refers to Julian Assange as being the person allegedly communicating with Manning. Julian Assange has been denied formal legal representation in the Manning proceedings. His legal representatives at the proceedings have been denied the ability to object to the US government’s unsubstantiated allegation. Gibney repeats this allegation without supporting evidence.
Manning makes clear in his pre-trial statement that no one at WikiLeaks pressured him into giving any information and that he made his own decision to send documents. From Bradley Manning's plea statement, February 28, 2013: No one associated with the WLO pressured me into giving more information. The decisions that I made to send documents and information to the WLO and website were my own decisions, and I take full responsibility for my actions.
Throughout the film, Gibney propagates the idea Assange had been “fishing” for the leaks or that Manning had been “persuaded” to leak. This is factually incorrect but also buys into the dangerous proposition that journalists and publishers can be conspirators by virtue of their interaction with confidential sources.
The selection of US news clips used here shows carelessness towards the facts.
The materials allegedly leaked by Bradley Manning were all at the level of Secret or below, comprising low-level classified or unclassified military reports, emails and cables to which up to 4 million federal employees or contractors had the same access. The reference to Top Secret information in the clips obscures this fact. The video of the Apache helicopter gunship attack - now known as Collateral Murder - was found to be unclassified, yet these clips used by Gibney twice state that it was classified material.
Human rights lawyer, Renata Avila Pinto, who knows Mr Domscheit-Berg, has stated that when she contacted him to alert him about the arrest of Mr Manning, which had been made public, Mr Domscheit-Berg, despite being made aware of the gravity of the situation, said he was busy on holiday and didn't want to deal with the matter.
In fact, as the alleged chat logs make clear, Manning had already lost his security clearance, his access, and was being discharged from the US Army in relation to another issue. Despite this and Lamo's promises of confidentiality, Lamo not only became an informer, but immediately pushed the story out through WIRED magazine, issued nine press releases, gave dozens of interviews, and campaigned for Assange's extradition.
Court records show that Lamo actively attempted to inform on other people well after the Manning arrest, including Jason Katz, a physicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory, who he alleged helped WikiLeaks decode the encryption on a US Air Force massacre video. Katz was fired and swept up into the ongoing FBI investigation against WikiLeaks as a result of his alleged contribution to uncovering a war crime. People close to him were forced to testify against him at the WikiLeaks grand jury. None of this is covered by Gibney.
Gibney's rhetorical questions reveal his malicious agenda and poor research. The answers are easy to find: The full phrase is "Splendide Mendax" and it was never used by Assange in this manner. The phrase is a literary joke. In Latin it means "Nobly untrue", but as a pseudonym it is a a witicism about how pseudonyms, which are "untrue", protect the author's safety. WikiLeaks' system uses the Tor onion router across multiple servers in multiple jurisdictions, stripping out submission metadata at each Tor node, meaning anonymisation occurs early in the process and long before information reaches WikiLeaks web servers. WikiLeaks does not keep logs, hence logs cannot be seized.
(02:56:46 PM) bradass87: he knows very little about me (02:56:54 PM) bradass87: he takes source protection uber-seriously (02:57:01 PM) bradass87: “lie to me” he says (02:57:06 PM) info@adrianlamo.com: Really. Interesting. (02:57:34 PM) bradass87: he wont work with you if you reveal too much about yourself. "Our technology does not permit us to understand whether someone is one of our sources or not, because the best way to keep a secret is to never have it." Julian Assange.
The question instead is fourfold: Would halting publication set a precedent that would lead to the "hostage taking" of other people alleged to be WikiLeaks sources? Would halting publication be interpreted as substantiating allegations that Manning was a source? Would halting publication be a betrayal of WikiLeaks' promises to publish? Would halting publication also halt political support for Manning?
It was not Davies’ suggestion that WikiLeaks partner with other media: WikiLeaks had worked with journalists at the New York Times and at the Guardian many times previously. WikiLeaks first Guardian front page, on Kenyan corruption, was as early as 2007. WikiLeaks had already brought in Der Spiegel and the New York Times and the Guardian were next. That is why Assange agreed to meet with Nick Davies.
Assange has always maintained he never said this and made a formal complaint to the Leveson Inquiry about the veracity of Davies’ evidence. Assange is alleged to have made this remark while discussing the redaction of the Afghan War Diaries with journalists from Der Spiegel and the Guardian during a dinner in London in July 2010. Nick Davies was not present at that dinner. A journalist at that dinner, John Goetz provided a signed witness statement affirming that the remark was not made.WikiLeaks 'ambassador' Joseph Farrell emailed the OfCom complaint containing the Goetz witness statement to Gibney, his producer and his executive producer on 14 June 2012.
Gibney edits in a single line of audio, with no context, from an unrelated discussion to give a misleading impression of Julian Assange's views on the redactions necessary for the Afghan War Logs publication. Instead of resorting to deceptive editing such as this, Gibney could have talked to Der Spiegel, one of WikiLeaks other media partners on the Afghan release, who raised the issue with Assange in this interview dated July 26, 2010: Assange: The Kabul files contain no information related to current troop movements. The source went through their own harm-minimization process and instructed us to conduct our usual review to make sure there was not a significant chance of innocents being negatively affected. We understand the importance of protecting confidential sources, and we understand why it is important to protect certain US and ISAF sources.
The working method agreed at the start of the five-week period during which WikiLeaks' media partners would assess the Afghan War Logs material ahead of publication was that the media partner journalists would provide oversight by flagging up to WikiLeaks any regions or keywords requiring redaction in the individual records as they went through them. This resulted in 1 in 5 documents being witheld from initial publication: some 15,000 documents in total.
No person came to harm and NATO forces in Afghanistan admitted to CNN that there wasn't a single person in the released documents in need of protection.
Daniel Domscheit-Berg was not directly involved in any of WikiLeaks' 2010 releases (with the exception of a minor administrative role in booking the venue for the Collateral Murder press conference). These facts have been widely reported, yet Alex Gibney uses Domscheit-Berg as a primary source for this film. Domscheit-Berg has no way of knowing the state of preparedness of WikiLeaks prior to the Afghan War Logs release date, and cannot be considered an authoritative source on the matter. Due to his increasingly erratic behaviour, in late February 2010 WikiLeaks issued a policy directive that Domscheit-Berg not be permitted contact with source material. After February 2010 Domscheit-Berg's input within WikiLeaks was restricted to the maintenance of some WikiLeaks back-ups within Germany, and as German spokesperson. His role as spokesperson within Germany was removed after he gave a number of interviews following the 5 April 2010 release of Collateral Murder in which he misdescribed himself to the press.
There was no fixed schedule for release of the held-back 15,000 documents for which WikiLeaks sought Pentagon help with redaction. This was confirmed on August 8, 2010 by Domscheit-Berg himself: "[Daniel Schmitt] rejected allegations that the group’s publication of leaked US government documents was a threat to America’s national security or put lives at risk. “For this reason, we conveyed a request to the White House prior to the publication, asking that the International Security Assistance Force provide us with reviewers,” Schmitt said. “That request remains open. However, the Pentagon has stated that it is not interested in ‘harm minimization’ and has not contacted us, directly, or indirectly to discuss this offer.”
* False * Later on the same day Davis is referring to, July 25, 2010, at the press conference for the Afghan War Logs which was streaming live all over the world, Assange told a room full of journalists that WikiLeaks is a "small organization."
it's actually a very hard engineering task to supply 2-5% of the entire world internet connected population at a single moment with material. And so we are a small organization trying to understand how to do that and do that in a secure way. As a result we have built up during that period an enormous backlog of whistleblower disclosures.
* Poor quality fact-checking * Davies is ad-libbing for the camera, but the footage and dialogue in the next clip makes it clear that, in fact, the situation is such that Assange has worked through the night and still hasn't found time to sleep.
Nick Davies is shown to be lying. He was alreadycompletely aware of the harm minimization procedures implemented by WikiLeaks. An article by Nick Davies in which he himself explained the procedures had been published on the front page of The Guardian, prior to Assange's announcement. The most famous photograph from the July 25 press conference at which Assange made this announcement shows him holding a copy of the Guardian newspaper from that morning. (Embedded Image) The front page headline in the photograph is "Massive leak of secret files exposes true Afghan war". This is an article by Nick Davies and David Leigh. From the article: A small amount of information has been withheld from publication because it might endanger local informants or give away genuine military secrets. WikiLeaks, whose founder, Julian Assange, obtained the material in circumstances he will not discuss, said it would redact harmful material before posting the bulk of the data on its "uncensorable" servers.
Nick Davies' "amazement" at Assange's statement is not credible in light of the fact that had already reported the content of that statement in a front page story in an international newspaper. As is also clear, the claim that "Julian had no harm minimization process in place at all" is also false. The working method agreed at the start of the five-week period during which WikiLeaks' media partners would assess the Afghan War Logs material ahead of publication was that the media partner journalists would provide oversight by flagging up to WikiLeaks any regions or keywords requiring redaction in the individual records as they went through them. This resulted in 1 in 5 documents being witheld from initial publication: some 15,000 documents in total. No person came to harm and NATO forces in Afghanistan admitted to CNN that there wasn't a single person in the released documents in need of protection. The newspapers published just a few hundred documents. WikiLeaks gave the world 75,000 of these documents, revealing many suspected war crimes in the process. NATO in Kabul had confirmed there had not been a single case of Afghans needing protection because of the leak. The New York Times censored a number of stories that came out of it, such as details of Obama's assassination programme killing children. Gibney tries to make this appalling abuse and failure to document history sound as if it is in the New York Times' favour
* This is officially hyperbole * The statement from then-Defense Secretary Robert Gates is from a July 2010 press conference. Just two weeks later, in an August 16 private memo to Senator Carl Levin of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gates said: [T]he review to date has not revealed any sensitive intelligence sources and methods compromised by this disclosure. An internal State Department assessment conducted in late 2010 found that WikiLeaks' releases were "embarrassing not damaging".
In a November 2010 press conference, Robert Gates made the following statement: Let me just offer some perspective as somebody who’s been at this a long time. Every other government in the world knows the United States government leaks like a sieve, and it has for a long time... Now, I’ve heard the impact of these releases on our foreign policy described as a meltdown, as a game-changer, and so on. I think those descriptions are fairly significantly overwrought... Is this embarrassing? Yes. Is it awkward? Yes. Consequences for US foreign policy? I think fairly modest.
At a briefing to Congress in late 2010 State Department officials admitted they lied about the actual impact of WikiLeaks to bolster the US efforts to bring a legal case against them. As one of the journalists who worked on the release, Nick Davies' claim to not know that the US government has officially confirmed that no individuals in Afghanistan came to any harm as a result of the Afghan War Logs is not credible.
Gibney misses the opportunity to give a more nuanced account of the Pentagon-directed media blitz following the publication of the Afghan War Logs. Though clearly orchestrated across the entire US mainstream media, it was not uniformly successful: The Pentagon initially claimed that it had not been contacted by WikiLeaks for help in identifying vulnerable individuals named in the documents. However, journalist Glenn Greenwald uncovered evidence that it had been, and had refused.
US Defense Secretary Robert Gates' private August 16 letter to the Senate Armed Forces Committee admitting that the Pentagon's review “has not revealed any sensitive intelligence sources and methods compromised” was widely reported.
CNN reported that a senior NATO official in Kabul had confirmed there had not been a single case of Afghans needing protection or to be moved because of the leak.
Julian Assange: We saw the New York Times as, yes, influential within its market, but on the other hand so corrupting of the material that we were trying to get out, and so hostile to us as an organisation in order to save itself, in order to distance itself, that we were not only betraying the impact of the material, but we were shooting ourselves as an organisation every time we work with the New York Times, because the way they try to save themselves from the lash-back by military apologists in the United States was by attacking us, and therefore increasing the perceived separation.
Nick Davies has no first-hand knowledge of the events in Sweden but Alex Gibney uses him to relate (inaccurately) much of the story. Nick Davies is a partisan adversary of WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks had informed The Guardian, through Nick Davies, from the start that in order to maximise the impact of the release WikiLeaks would bring TV into the release. Davies did not accept that the Guardian would not have total exclusivity in the UK, not just print exclusivity, and became antagonistic to Assange. None of this context is given by Gibney.
After his fight over exclusivity, Davies published an error filled sex article about Assange. He was criticised by other journalists for unprofessional conduct. In response, he physically attacked one of them. Nick Davies has also internalised and repeated the falsehood, first spread by his colleague at The Guardian David Leigh, that Julian Assange said "Afghan informers deserve to die". Leigh falsely claimed Julian Assange had made this statement at a dinner at which Davies was not present. An American journalist working for Der Spiegel, who was present at that dinner, John Goetz, has said this is untrue and has written a witness statement to this effect.
Donald Bostrom is a Swedish journalist. He has never been an employee of WikiLeaks or co-ordinator for WikiLeaks. * Gibney's interview with Donald Bostrom is selectively edited * This can be ascertained by consulting what Bostrom has said elsewhere, both in his witness statement to police and in press interviews.
In fact, WikiLeaks kept its servers in many countries, among them: Belgium France Iceland United States Sweden WikiLeaks continues to distribute its web presence across multiple jurisdictions. This is an explicit undertaking designed to make WikiLeaks uncensorable.
It is surprising, given Gibney's reference to a report on the burst condom that he fails to mention its other, rather more sensational, finding: the absence of any chromosomal DNA. This has been widely reported. Missing DNA evidence in Julian Assange sexual assault case
* The use of this clip shows biased editing * In the original footage Julian Assange explains the reason he feels questions about the Swedish case "contaminate" the interview is because it had been arranged to discuss the disclosure by WikiLeaks of 100,000 previously unreported deaths, but this context is omitted in Gibney's documentary. The full clip restores the context.
On September 15, 2010, the Swedish prosecutor confirmed that "he is not a wanted man" and that Julian Assange was free to leave Sweden. Despite requests to be interviewed during the 5 weeks he remained in Sweden, the reasons given why this was impossible were "it's a weekend", "the investigator is off sick" and "it's too late". He finally left Sweden on September 27 for a pre-arranged business meeting in Berlin. Once in the UK he instructed his lawyers to contact the Metropolitan Police to inform them how he could be reached.
To date, the Swedish prosecutor has refused to give a reason why Julian Assange cannot be interviewed abroad under standard Mutual Legal Assistance procedures, which is both legal and routine in Sweden, or why the need for him to be in custody for questioning is considered essential. The Ecuadorean government has made formal offers to the Swedish Foreign Office to facilitate this questioning in either their London embassy, where Julian Assange has now been granted political asylum, or their Stockholm embassy, but all offers have been refused.
The surveillance of WikiLeaks and Julian Assange is well documented and is a serious matter. For instance, as far back as 2008 US military intelligence prepared a classified report on how methods to destroy WikiLeaks' "center of gravity". Two of Assange's Kenyan associates, Oscar Kamau Kingara and John Paul Oulo were assassinated on March 6, 2009 in a matter connected to WikiLeaks' publications about extrajudicial assassinations. As a teenager Assange had his phone tapped and had been physically surveilled by Australian Federal Police in Operation Weather.
Robert Manne, who has never met Julian Assange, has retracted this statement. The original statement was made in an essay about Assange after reading Daniel Domscheit-Berg's error-filled book. Robert Manne subsequently released an updated essay with the statement explicitly removed.
In 2011 eight FBI agents secretly flew to Iceland to interrogate a young WikiLeaks ex-volunteer without the permission of the Icelandic authorities. On hearing about the FBI's unauthorised operation in Iceland, the Interior Minister, Ögmundur Jónasson, ordered the FBI to leave the country and told the Icelandic police to cease all co-operation, but in fact the FBI agents stayed a further 5 days, interviewing the vulnerable young man in hotel rooms and then flew him back to Washington DC for 4 more days of questioning.
On August 25, 2010 Daniel Domscheit-Berg was caught in the act of sabotaging WikiLeaks mail server. He was suspended the following day. The Newsweek article is dated August 26, 2010. Source: Inside WikiLeaks, by Daniel Domscheit-Berg
* This is a proven libel * Domscheit-Berg uses the qualification "as much as I can tell" to excuse the fact that he is lying. This language is not from the Espionage Act of 1917 or any other year. The phrase simply isn't present. Domscheit-Berg's attribution is easily demonstrated as false by consulting the original text of the Act. Source: United States Espionage Act of 1917
Unconcerned that this is an outright falsehood, Gibney goes on to brandish it as a "cruel irony".
Throughout the film Gibney attempts to ascribe psychological rather than political motives to Bradley Manning's alleged whistleblowing, trivialising the political significance of Manning's alleged actions. The same tactic has been employed by US military prosecutors at Manning's pre-trial hearings.
The film focuses on his alleged sexuality, his alleged gender dysphoria and at one point even super-imposes a picture of his face on that of Jean Harlow. Manning's political and principled motivations for disclosing the information are detailed clearly in the statement he himself made in the court-martial proceedings. Gibney's portrayal of Manning is as a disempowered individual, rather than as someone courageous and principled. Gibney makes no effort to explore the politicizing effects that deployment to a war zone had on the young soldier.
As we now know from Manning's plea statement, his discovery of the US military's complicity in Iraqi torture disturbed him greatly. After informing his superiors that some detainees were guilty of nothing more than printing leaflets containing a benign political critique: "They told me to quote "drop it" unquote and to just assist them and the Federal Police in finding out, where more of these print shops creating quote "anti-Iraqi literature" unquote. I couldn't believe what I heard... I knew that if I continued to assist the Baghdad Federal Police in identifying the political opponents of Prime Minister al-Maliki, those people would be arrested and in the custody of the Special Unit of the Baghdad Federal Police and very likely tortured."
In his plea statement, Manning says that he experienced conscientious alarm after he viewed the Apache helicopter gunship video ("Collateral Murder"). He says: I hoped that the public would be as alarmed as me about the conduct of the aerial weapons team crew members. I wanted the American public to know that not everyone in Iraq and Afghanistan are targets that needed to be neutralized, but rather people who were struggling to live in the pressure cooker environment of what we call asymmetric warfare.
* The chronology is manipulated to frame Manning * Here Gibney tries to diminish Manning's alleged ethical motivations and frame him as acting out of petty personal revenge. However prosecution documents state just the opposite--Manning's alleged submissions to WikiLeaks are alleged by the prosecution to have already occurred by the time of the incident described.
There is no evidence that Manning was communicating with Assange.
Bradley Manning says he was not even sure who he was allegedly talking to at Wikileaks. Due to the strict adherence of anonymity by the WLO [WikiLeaks], we never exchanged identifying information. However, I believe the individual was likely Mr. Julian Assange [he pronounced it with three syllables], Mr. Daniel Schmidt, or a proxy representative of Mr. Assange and Schmidt. As the communications transferred from IRC to the Jabber client, I gave 'office' and later 'pressassociation' the name of Nathaniel Frank in my address book, after the author of a book I read in 2009. Furthermore, this had been widely reported following Manning's first pre-trial hearing in December 2011.
The title "We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks" is false. It directly implies that WikiLeaks steals secrets. The statement is made by former CIA/NSA director Michael Hayden in relation to the activities of US government spies, not in relation to WikiLeaks. This an irresponsible libel. Not even critics in the film say that WikiLeaks steals secrets.
* This is false * There are no charges. Julian Assange is not charged and has never been charged in Sweden. The matter, formally, is at the stage of "preliminary investigation". The fact that an Interpol Red Notice was issued for Assange's arrest and extradition, leading to his detention for more than 900 days, all without charging him, is one of the principle abuses in the case. The audience can't possibly understand the abusive nature of the situation after having been misled by Gibney in this manner.
The full interviews from which Gibney selects clips of James Ball talking to the media tell a different story. As James Ball makes a number of false statements in Gibney's documentary these are worth watching in full. In one with Fox TV, for example, Ball appears alongside Kristinn Hrafnsson (as he usually did), who is introduced as "WikiLeaks spokesman" while Ball is described as "a journalist working with WikiLeaks".
James Ball never "essentially filled in" as "WikiLeaks' principal spokesperson".
(From FOX TV) At 2.45 mins in, Mark Stephens explains that Julian Assange is not in hiding: "the police know how to get in touch with him, the Swedish prosecutor knows how to get hold of him, so everybody knows where he is - except the media." It is therefore false and misleading for James Ball to suggest that Julian Assange was "in hiding". Starting at 8.30mins, Ball refutes the suggestion that WikiLeaks has put anyone in harm's way: "We have correspondents from all over – you know, the New York Times Chinese correspondent, the Guardian Chinese correspondent – checking those cables that are published to see what they're like. Of course WikiLeaks takes redactions seriously. It was said on the Iraq War Logs that there were 300 names going to be in them by the Department of Defense. When they were actually published, of course, the whole things were published redacted and safe."
In this December 3, 2010 interview with ABC Lateline, James Ball makes the following remarks about Julian Assange being 'in hiding' and his own relationship to WikiLeaks: "He said it to me on the way to talk to you today" "Well, I'm a freelancer working for them, for me it's kind of perhaps a little bit of an outside view but from what I've seen working with them this week..." [Ball had been interning at WikiLeaks for 10 days at this date]; Asked what would happen if Julian Assange is arrested, Ball replies: "Asking me is a little bit like asking a Saturday sub-editor at the Guardian what happens if Alan Rusbridger resigns. It's very obvious, you know, you don't have to work with them for very long to see that Julian Assange is, you know, absolutely core to what they do."
In fact, thousands of people, of all ages, took part in a popular online protest against the blockade. In response the FBI and Scotland Yard conducted nearly 100 police raids. There are more than a dozen ongoing trials as a result. A number of young people have already been unjustly imprisoned.
The European Parliament has proposed legislation to stop the blockade. WikiLeaks has brought a number of victorious court actions against the blockade. All verdicts have found in WikiLeaks' favour. Visa's designated contractor has been ordered to reopen payments as a result. However, a new blockade will start on July 1, 2013 as Visa believes it has found a way to subvert the court order. For two years the European Commission has been investigating a possible prosecution against Visa and MasterCard over the issue.
Julian Assange voluntarily attended a London police station for arrest by appointment and was immediately imprisoned. He was held without charge, in the highest security unit of Wandsworth prison. After appeals he was eventually released into house arrest and an electronic monitoring device was strapped to his leg. After 552 days he applied for political asylum.
The two issues were inextricably linked from the beginning – by the Pentagon. As soon as news there was an arrest warrant for Julian Assange became global on August 21, 2010 the Pentagon immediately launched an aggressive social media smear campaign using official US Army twitter accounts. US Defense Secretary Robert Gates told CBS News that Julian Assange's arrest in London "sounds like good news to me".
* Manipulative framing * Anna has a high public profile and ran for office in the last national election. She is the Political and Press Secretary of a major section of the Social Democrats--the largest political party in Sweden. The Social Democrats have ruled Sweden for the majority of the last 80 years.
A commonplace falsehood is that the two Swedish women were WikiLeaks volunteers, repeated here carelessly by Alex Gibney. Neither individual had anything to do with WikiLeaks.
Anna helped organise the seminar on behalf of the Social Democrats.
There is no allegation that Julian Assange has HIV. Yet over the rest of the film, Gibney slyly tries to give the viewer the impression that he might.
Alex Gibney falsely implies that it is Julian Assange's fault that the identities of the two women became known.
Anna's name became public after the Swedish police leaked her name by mistake when redacted copies of the police report were obtained by the press under Sweden's Freedom of Information laws. Anna's name was not removed from the document header (an error by the Swedish authorities). Swedish police unlawfully released Assange's name to the Swedish right-wing tabloid Expressen, which is what made the story public in the first place. The New York Times was the first to publish Anna's name when it republished her previously anonymous interview from August 21, 2010.
It is not true that Julian Assange refused to have a HIV test It is not true that it was too late when Julian Assange agreed to do a HIV test. Julian Assange's "Unauthorized Autobiography", which has not been approved by Assange, recounts the following: "[SW] said she wanted me to come down immediately and have an STD test. I said I couldn't that day, I was dealing with heavy stuff, but I'd come the next day, and she said that was fine. She then asked me if I'd called her off my own bat, or because I'd been speaking to [AA]? It just became too ludicrous at this point. Donald was ringing me again and again, saying that [AA] was trying to look out for me with this [SW] situation, and I was saying, 'No, it's fine, I've spoken to [SW] and we're meeting tomorrow'." His conversation with Sofia took place late Friday morning, August 20th, while Sofia was at a Stockholm hospital clinic. By 2pm the two women were at the police station.
as is borne out by three witness statements to police: Johannes Wahlstrom reports phoning Julian Assange on the morning of Friday August 20, who said: "So, no but I, I can test myself but I don't want to be blackmailed to test myself. Um... Because they say that either they go to the police, or, Sofia, that she either goes to the police or so I test myself. So I can give, I can give her that but I'd rather do it out of, out of, uh goodwill like rather than it's a blackmailing situation." Donald Bostrom told police: "And then I ring Julian again and then he says, no but now I've had a long conversation with Sofia. He says on Friday. And she, (inaudible) no worries, that's to say she's not going to the police and that was, they were fully in agreement and... I say, is it really true I say because Anna, when I spoke with Anna right now I got a completely different impression, they're on their way to the police (inaudible). No he says, she, we were in complete agreement, it was very friendly, very nice." On August 30, 2010 Julian Assange told police: "We can always continue if it's needed? But the main thing is that I and others got to hear a lot of unbelievable lies. And got to hear I was to meet Sonia [Sofia] on Saturday afternoon to discuss the matter. Anna had no accusations and no one had any intention of going to the police and so forth. That's how I expected things to remain until I heard the news in Expressen."
* Selective editing * Assange actually begins the statement, which is from a BBC interview, with "What they say is that..". Restoring the context we have: [T]he suggestion is that they went to the police for advice and they did not want to make a complaint. What they say is that they found out that they were mutual lovers of mine and they had unprotected sex and they got into a tizzy about whether there was a possibility of sexually transmitted diseases. A ridiculous thing to go to the police about.
No one alleges that Assange has HIV or has ever had HIV. Gibney, however, through innuendo alone, tries to manipulate the viewer into believing the contrary.
Similarly, Gibney's so-called "fact" about Assange's children is simply false. It is malicious and repeated here without citation, in a documentary supposedly about WikiLeaks. What Gibney does not say, and is a public fact, is that Mr. Assange's mother and eldest son both received death threats from the Republican right, and had to move and change their names.
* Selective editing * Iain Overton first met Julian Assange in 2010 and knows nothing of Assange's personal life. Here, Gibney has pushed Overton into rather silly speculation on matters he knows nothing about, and then edited out the question to hide this fact. Overton resigned as editor of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism on November 12, 2012 after his involvement in false sexual accusations led to a victorious libel action.
* Selective editing * Gibney spins a careful statement by Assange to make it look as if it is something to be debunked. When context is restored, the meaning is clearly the opposite to that insinuated by Gibney Q: Did you have sex with those women? JA: It's a matter of public record as far as the courts are concerned but I am not going to be exposing other people's private lives or my own more than is absolutely necessary. That is not what a gentleman does, that why I have also never criticised these women. We don't know precisely what pressures they have been under, exactly. There are powerful interests that have incentives to promote these smears. That doesn't mean that they got in there in the very beginning and fabricated them. Q: So you're not suggesting that this was a honey-trap? That you were somehow set up by the Americans, by the CIA? You don't buy into that idea because your lawyer's suggested that that's the case. JA: He says that he was misquoted. I have never said that this is a honey-trap. Q: You don't believe it? JA: I have never said that this is not a honey-trap. I'm not accusing anyone until I have proof. Q: Do you believe it is possible? JA: That's not how I operate as a journalist because almost everything is possible.
Julian Assange found out through the internet he was 'wanted for rape' - he could not know (since he is innocent) who would be accusing him of that. Even the prosecution claims that they did not go to the police to file complaints but to ask for advice about HIV tests. When the press came out with stories of 'rape' he couldn't have known who was behind it. He couldn't have imagined that a HIV test would turn into an arrest warrant for 'rape'.
* Selective editing * Gibney changes a careful statement by Assange to make it look as if it is something to be debunked. When context is restored, the meaning is clearly the opposite to that insinuated by Gibney: Q: No? You deny them completely? But did you have sex with the women? JA: We know there is all sorts of nonsense in the tabloid press and all sorts of spin conducted for all sorts of reasons. Q: But you haven't denied having sex with those women? JA: No, I haven't denied that. Q: So you did have sex with those women? JA: I have always tried in this case and in my other dealings to be a private person and to not speak about matters that are private. ...
...Q: This is now public. So I'm asking you the question. Did you have sex with those women? JA: It's a matter of public record as far as the courts are concerned but I am not going to be exposing other people's private lives or my own more than is absolutely necessary. That is not what a gentleman does, that why I have also never criticised these women. We don't know precisely what pressures they have been under, exactly. There are powerful interests that have incentives to promote these smears. That doesn't mean that they got in there in the very beginning and fabricated them.
Nick Davies' comment is false as is shown in the previous note
Anna made a very important public announcement after this interview. On 22 April 2013 she tweeted that she had "not been raped". The other women, Sofia, has stated that she also had not been raped and that the police had "railroaded" her and "made up the charges (sic)".
Anna has not spoken directly to the press directly since 21 August 2010 (the day after the police complaint). Her counsel, the politician/lawyer Claes Borgstrom, however, appeared continuously in Swedish and international media to push his position on the preliminary investigation against Julian Assange. His media appearances were especially intense in the month leading up to the national elections for which he ran (19 September 2010). Borgstrom has billed 80 hours for Assange-related media appearances, although he estimated that the amount was greater. This led to a civil rights group filing a complaint against Borgstrom to the Bar Association's discipline commission in June 2012.
Ball was seconded to WikiLeaks as an intern for a short time during the Cablegate release. James Ball's first day at WikiLeaks was November 23, 2010 and his second last was December 15, 2010, with one further day visit on January 12, 2011. Ball is implying he was party to an alleged discussion at which he could not have been present.
It is admitted by the Swedish Prosecution Authority that Julian Assange's case is not being handled in the normal way - but they can't say why. There has been political interference in the case at the highest level, with the Swedish Prime Minister, Justice Minister, Foreign Minister and Prosecutor-General all weighing in with prejudicial public comments Top Swedish jurists are highly critical of the way the case has been handled, believe questioning should take place in London and recognise the validity of Julian Assange's fears of being transited from Sweden to the US.
This is a simple rhetorical trick by Davies. Davies tries to claim Assange lies but avoids giving any details. If details were given, the claim could be refuted. What Alex Gibney does not tell his viewers is that a 68-page version of the police investigation file was leaked to Nick Davies, on the basis of which Davies wrote a highly skewed and prejudicial article "10 Days in Sweden", published in the Guardian on December 17, 2010. When the full police protocol leaked to the internet in February 2011 people could see for themselves how biased and one-sided Nick Davies' article had been and how much information he had omitted. Hence, for Nick Davies there is an economic and reputational cost to the truth coming out and he is highly motivated to maintain his own skewed version of events.
Julian Assange, in conversation with Eric Schmitt, June 23, 2011: "Greg Mitchell wrote a book about the mainstream media, So Wrong For So Long. And that's basically it. That, yes, we have these heroic moments with Watergate and Bernstein and so on, but, come on, actually it's never been very good, it's always been very bad and these fine journalists are an exception to the rule. And especially when you are involved in something yourself and you know every facet of it and you look to see what is reported by it in the mainstream press, and you can see naked lies after naked lies. You know that the journalist knows it's a lie, it is not a simple mistake, and then simple mistakes, and then people repeating lies, and so on, that actually the condition of the mainstream press nowadays is so appalling I don't think it can be reformed. I don't think that is possible. I think it has to be eliminated, and replaced with something that is better."
* This is a deliberately false statement by James Ball * Alex Gibney does not challenge Ball on it. The facts are easy to find. The Julian Assange and Wikileaks Staff Legal Defense Fund (JADF) and the various means by which Wikileaks receives donations for its running costs are kept separate. Donors to "Dinner for Freedom of Speech" were given a choice to donate to WikiLeaks or JADF, and this was made explicitly clear. The different donation bank details were clearly set out. There is no confusion for donors about where their money is going.
The original 'Dinner For Free Speech' web page is still available, having been mirrored by the internet archive on February 10, 2011. It clearly indicates where donors can choose to donate to either the Defense Fund or to WikiLeaks, and also states unequivocally: By pledging a donation on this day, no matter how large or small, you can help support Julian's defence fund, and/or contribute to WikiLeaks. This fundraising idea was organised in February 2011. James Ball's internship had expired by mid-January 2011 and he had no involvement in this initiative at all. The JADF is administered and audited by Derek Rothera & Co. See Original Transcript for link to The terms of the trust and trustees. WikiLeaks has been under an arbitrary and unlawful financial embargo by Bank of America, VISA, MasterCard, PayPal and Western Union since December 7, 2010, cutting off ninety-five per cent of its funding. The blockade was declared unlawful by Icelandic Supreme Court.
The Guardian newspaper broke all three terms of its contract with WikiLeaks and conspired with the New York Times to cut WikiLeaks out and publish Cablegate without them, despite the obvious danger of doing so to WikiLeaks associates who were still in the United States at the time. Journalists from the third media partner Der Spiegel sided with WikiLeaks and refused to join the plot.
This section deliberately distorts the final, lengthy negotiation between Julian Assange and Alex Gibney regarding his and WikiLeaks' possible participation in the documentary, which at the time was unnamed.
Julian Assange did not say the market rate for an interview with him was $1 million dollars and Alex Gibney did not decline. WikiLeaks had already been approached by different productions and individuals. Gibney failed to conduct an interview with WikiLeaks--for a documentary about Wikileaks. He now tries to shift blame by misreporting the negotiations. However WikiLeaks kept detailed notes of the conversation. Assange first explained to Alex Gibney about his previous bad experiences with malicious projects, the most recent had been 'Secrets and Lies', which was the subject of an official complaint, and which had been secretly co-produced by The Guardian's David Leigh. Gibney said that documentary was "practically scripted by Leigh" in an email to WikiLeaks. Julian Assange explained that WikiLeaks was in a position where it may be more in its interest not to participate than to participate, as he did not want to lend credence to a project that potentially missed the big picture, did not accurately grasp the political dimension of the US investigation, misrepresented Manning, overplayed the Swedish investigation, and so on.
Julian Assange explained to Gibney that four factors played a role in the decision whether or not to participate: Security: Raw footage of WikiLeaks work could find its way into the hands of the US Department of Justice. This could endanger WikiLeaks staff. Financing: WikiLeaks had previously received an offer of £800,000 for its cooperation in a British documentary project. WikiLeaks rejected the offer for security reasons. In the film and in interviews, Alex Gibney distorts this conversation by attempting to portray Julian Assange as greedy. Yet in reality Assange rejected these offers because these were not in the greater interest of the organisation, despite the fact that WikiLeaks had already been under an arbitrary financial blockade for a year when this negotiation took place. Information: Gibney told Julian Assange that he would be interviewing members of the US government for the WikiLeaks film. Assange detailed the different forms that the continuing US persecution of WikiLeaks and its allies had taken. Assange said WikiLeaks was interested in understanding the progress of the US investigation into itself and its sources. Any information that Gibney picked up about the matter in the course of his interviews might be of interest to WikiLeaks. Impact: In an email pitching the documentary to WikiLeaks from 10th of March 2011, Alex Gibney said "while you know that many docs will be made on this subject, I have a sufficient global reputation (oscar, oscar noms, worldwide fans) and such a substantial budget for production, worldwide distribution and promotion that my documentary will reach an audience that will dwarf the reach of all the other documentaries combined". Julian Assange explained that the impact of the documentary was potentially problematic.
While Alex Gibney is happy to allow the false imputation Julian Assange demanded $1 million for an interview to remain in his film he is careful not to allow the same 'mistake' to appear in the film's pre-publicity material. New York Times correction: December 21, 2012: “An article on Thursday about the coming documentary “We Steal Secrets” and other films about WikiLeaks and Julian Assange referred imprecisely to a comment that Alex Gibney, the maker of “We Steal Secrets,” says in the film about Mr. Assange’s demands for money in exchange for collaborating on it. While he says that he rejected the demands, and that the market rate for an interview was $1 million, he does not specifically say that he rejected a demand from Mr. Assange for a $1 million fee for an interview.” WikiLeaks has co-operated in other productions, including a film by the well respected Academy Award nominated film maker, Laura Poitras, which will be released later this year. Another film, co-produced with Ken Loach's 16 Films, will be released shortly.
WikiLeaks uses non-disclosure agreements to help protect the safety of its sources, its staff and its upcoming publications from informants. The FBI and rival media organizations have previously bribed or pressured persons they believe to be close to WikiLeaks. James Ball understood this, and saw no irony in being asked by WikiLeaks to sign his NDA in November 2010.
* James Ball is lying * James Ball signed a non-disclosure agreement with WikiLeaks on November 23, 2010. WikiLeaks staff suspected Ball was passing information from WikiLeaks onto others: rival media organisations or government agencies. WikiLeaks discovered that Ball had told a colleague he had a job interview with the UK intelligence service MI5 and had interned at the UK Home Office. WikiLeaks also discovered Ball was attending secret meetings with the Guardian journalist David Leigh - his former college professor at City University, and a vocal opponent of WikiLeaks.
While Assange was in prison it was discovered that someone had accessed the Sunshine Press press contacts account using an email client, and had mirrored its archive. Ball had briefly been given access to the account. Documents from the account subsequently appeared in the Guardian. Physical documents went missing, and Ball's behaviour became erratic. Therefore a second, special non-disclosure agreement was devised for Ball, to test his reaction. After being asked to sign it at WikiLeaks' Norfolk office, Ball became anxious and asked to postpone signing it while he considered it. He then left for London. It later became obvious to WikiLeaks staff that, showing malicious forethought, Ball had stolen what he thought was WikiLeaks' copy of his original NDA (which would have given him both copies). However the document that James Ball stole was not WikiLeaks' copy of the agreement. Ball had left his NDA out on a desk and it had been filed for security reasons. He had stolen his own copy of the NDA. The other copy had already been removed to a secure location, and is still in WikiLeaks' possession.
Ball became unavailable for work, and stopped returning calls. He lied about his whereabouts, and invented reasons why he could not return, which were confirmed to be untrue by a mutual third party. After several weeks, it became clear that he had cashed in his favours to David Leigh, in return for which he was given a post at the Guardian and the first credit in David Leigh's book. Ball pursued career advancement at the Guardian by placing himself at the service of The Guardian's institutional vendetta against WikiLeaks, publishing numerous deceitful attacks on WikiLeaks over the last two and a half years, all of which rely on heavily embellishing his role as a freelancer working as a junior intern at WikiLeaks. During the short time he worked for WikiLeaks he insisted on being called "a journalist working with WikiLeaks" or "a freelancer working for them". Some time after leaving, Ball reimagined his role at WikiLeaks for career advantage, changing his title in order to misrepresent himself to others as a "former spokesperson." James Ball was never a spokesperson for WikiLeaks. Alex Gibney did not secure an interview with WikiLeaks' actual spokesperson, Kristinn Hrafnsson.
Ball has consistently maintained that he never signed the WikiLeaks NDA, and has felt secure enough to lie in print and on camera because he believed he had destroyed the evidence, having stolen the NDA. Although he lies straight to camera in "We Steal Secrets" about the NDA, in January 2013 Ball admitted that he did sign the WikiLeaks NDA, after having been challenged about it by WikiLeaks lawyer Jennifer Robinson. In admitting this, he lied again, claiming that he had never denied signing a WikiLeaks NDA. The evidence to the contrary is in the film itself.
Throughout "We Steal Secrets," Gibney systematically omits mention or downplays the significance of the US attempt to prosecute WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. The film neglects to mention that the US investigation against WikiLeaks is, as official accounts describe, "unprecedented in its scale and nature". The film downplays the serious investigation and prosecution of Julian Assange in the US and what would happen to him were he extradited to the US. It does so to make the argument that Assange is in the Ecuadorean embassy to simply avoid going to Sweden. This is false: he sought asylum based on his concern about being extradited to the US, and Ecuador granted asylum on the basis of the evidence Assange presented.
The cases of Manning and Assange are clearly linked, as was made explicit in the course of the Manning proceedings with reference being made to the parallel DOJ investigation into Assange and WikiLeaks. There is no “mystery” about the role of the US: there is an ongoing Grand Jury, which has been empanelled since September 2010. This was first confirmed by the US Department of Justice November 2010 and re-confirmed on 26 March 2013.
The grand jury is, by its nature, secret. It cannot be said that “no charges” have been filed. The film-maker certainly does not know that: it is illegal to disclose whether or not an indictment exists. It is a common practice to issue sealed indictments. Charges would not be made public until Assange is in custody. A former high-level State Department official said in a once-confidential email (Stratfor) that there was such a sealed indictment. It cannot be said that there is “no proof that the US was biding its time”. The US ambassador to the UK said this on the BBC in February 2011: the US would wait to see what happened in Sweden. Discussions between the US and Sweden reported that the US would only extradite Assange after the Swedish case was disposed of.
Helena Kennedy has complained that her interview has been misleadingly edited by Gibney to remove the proper context of her remarks. She states that she "did not expect that he [Gibney] would fillet my interview" and also says "I regret thinking I could present a sensible perspective". It is false that it would be easier to extradite Assange from the United Kingdom than from Sweden.
* This is pure hyperbole * Since December 2011 WikiLeaks has released millions of documents, including the SpyFiles series, the Detainee Policies, the Stratfor emails (the GIFiles), the Syria Files and, in April 2013, both Cablegate and 1.7 million Kissinger Cables in an easily searchable PlusD Public Library of US Diplomacy. In December 2012 the Freedom of the Press Foundation was set up in response to the banking blockade against WikiLeaks to raise funds for transparency journalism organisations under threat. The FPF commitment to raise funds for WikiLeaks is ongoing while the blockade remains in place.
Gibney makes an unfounded statement for which he provides no evidence. WikiLeaks asked those making this claim to provide their information so that an investigation could be commenced into the issue. They did not. The most comprehensive discussion of the matter can be found : see link on full annoted transcript
In August 2011 Daniel Domscheit-Berg was responsible for the whereabouts of the hidden unredacted cables files and the location of the passphrase to it (a chapter title in Guardian journalist David Leigh's cash-in WikiLeaks book) being reported in the press.
In fact, Julian Assange did not "host a chat show for Russian state television." He produced a 12-part interview series with activists and thinkers from around the world, "The World Tomorrow". The series was produced by Assange's own production company, QuickRoll Productions, in conjunction with the London-based production company Dartmouth Films. The license for the series was sold to a number of regional broadcasters, one of which was Russia Today.
* The claim is false * According to the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists there are no journalists in prison in Ecuador. The attack on Assange over Ecuador's press freedom record is comprehensively addressed: see link in full annoted transcript
* This is false and misleading *
Assange did not allege a 'secret plot'; he presented an asylum application, backed by voluminous evidence, of a political persecution against him and the WikiLeaks organisation, including public statements acknowledging the existence and unprecedented nature and scope of a US investigation against WikiLeaks. The government of Ecuador rigorously examined the evidence presented for two months before granting Assange asylum. The government of Ecuador explained the reasons for concluding that "there are serious indications of retaliation by the country or countries that produced the information disclosed by Mr. Assange, retaliation that can put at risk his safety, integrity and even his life". Furthermore, the government of Ecuador noted that "that the Swedish prosecutor’s office has had a contradictory attitude that prevented Mr. Assange from the total exercise of the legitimate right to defense" and they were "convinced that the procedural rights of Mr. Assange have been infringed during that investigation".
Throughout "We Steal Secrets," Gibney systematically omits mention or downplays the significance of the US attempt to prosecute WikiLeaks and Julian Assange. The film neglects to mention that the US investigation against WikiLeaks is, as official accounts describe, "unprecedented in its scale and nature" . The US grand jury has been empanelled in secret since September 2010 (first confirmed by the US Department of Justice November 2010). US prosecutors in Virginia have been working since 2010 to establish a 'conspiracy to commit espionage" link between Manning and Assange. The ongoing nature of the Grand Jury criminal investigation into WikiLeaks was most recently confirmed on March 26, 2013 by a spokesman for the US Attorney's office for the Eastern District of Virginia. The FBI investigation into WikiLeaks consisted of "42,135 pages or 3,475 documents", not including Grand Jury testimony, according to the lead prosecutor at Manning's pre-trial hearing. He added that "Private First Class Manning ... represents only 8,741 pages of the file."
Correspondence from the ex-Deputy Chief of Counterterrorism for the DSS (State Department's Diplomatic Security Service) leaked to WikiLeaks revealed that the WikiLeaks Grand Jury had issued a sealed indictment for Assange before February 2011: "Not for Pub — We have a sealed indictment on Assange. Pls protect." It is a criminal offence for any US government official to reveal the existence of a sealed indictment before it is unsealed, which only happens when the indicted person is taken into custody. The law provides for the possibility for the Swedish prosecutor to question Julian Assange in London. In April 2013, Swedish Supreme Court judge Stefan Lindskog stated: “I would like to comment upon the possibility of the prosecutor to go to London. It is possible that the prosecutor could travel to London and interrogate him there. I have no answer to the question why that hasn’t happened.”
The Bradley Manning, Julian Assange and WikiLeaks cases have everything to do with each other. The parallel investigation by the Department of Justice into Assange and WikiLeaks is mentioned explicitly in the Manning proceedings at numerous points. Assange and WikiLeaks are current litigants in the Manning case. In relation to the Swedish matter the intense politicization of the process is clear. Although Assange has still not been charged, the UK admits to spending more than $4.3 million on surveilling Assange at the embassy in the first 7 months alone.
Ball fabricates the significance of one of Julian Assange's teenage screen names "Splendide Mendax", this time in the mouth of an interviewee. The screen name is a joke. In Latin it means "Nobly untrue", but as a pseudonym it describes how handles protect an author's identity even though being inherently "untrue". It is a phrase which describes itself, not its author, just like the word "word".
"Claims my teenage nickname was Mendax, “given to lying”, instead of Splendide Mendax, “nobly untruthful”, which is a teenage joke on handles being inherently untrue. It is self-referential, not a psychoanalysis 20 years ahead of its time!" — Julian Assange, Complaint to Ofcom regarding the Guardian co-produced Secrets & Lies documentary, January 9, 2012.
Daniel Domschiet-Berg is not a reliable narrator. He is in an ongoing legal conflict with Wikileaks over theft of equipment and data left in Germany. He tried to start a now-defunct rival publishing organisation, "OpenLeaks," in August 2010. OpenLeaks did not publish a single document. He also has a pecuniary interest in the anti-Wikileaks film The Fifth Estate.
Nick Davies makes a false assumption that Bradley Manning naively "dump[ed] the whole lot without thinking ahead about how that was going to be handled", which is contradicted by the statement presented by Bradley Manning before the military court: At this point I decided that it made sense to try to expose the SigAct tables to an American newspaper. I first called my local newspaper, The Washington Post, and spoke with a woman saying that she was a reporter. I asked her if The Washington Post would be interested in receiving information that would have enormous value to the American public. Although we spoke for about five minutes concerning the general nature of what I possessed, I do not believe she took me seriously. He claims he then contacted the New York Times, but "I never received a reply."
As part of his work as an intelligence analyst, Manning claims he had assessed WikiLeaks to be a credible media organisation, "following it and collecting open source information from it. During this time period, I followed several organizations and groups including wire press agencies such as the Associated Press and Reuters and private intelligence agencies including Strategic Forecasting or Stratfor. This practice was something I was trained to do during AIT, and was something that good analysts were expected to do." Manning noted that : "WLO [WikiLeaks] received numerous award and recognition for its reporting activities" and, based on his observations, that "WLO seemed to be dedicated to exposing illegal activities and corruption" and "I would describe the WL organization as almost academic in nature".
Manning states that his sole concerns about WikiLeaks were that "I was not sure if the WLO would actually publish the SigAct tables... I was also concerned that they might not be noticed by the American media. However, based upon what I read about the WLO through my research described above, this seemed to be the best medium for publishing this information to the world within my reach."
Gibney attempts to remake the man who betrayed and exploited Bradley Manning, Adrian Lamo, into a tragic figure, unwillingly swept up into the WikiLeaks story, when in reality his aggressive exploitation of the situation for personal benefit is well documented.
This is a now-classic anti-WikiLeaks argument created by James Ball, an attempt to allege that the blame for Manning's arrest lies with WikiLeaks and not with Adrian Lamo, the FBI informant who turned Manning in after telling him that he would protect him.
Ball's allegation that WikiLeaks does not adequately support its sources conflicts with the account that Manning presented before the military court regarding his alleged contacts with WikiLeaks. In a plea statement, February 28, 2013, Manning said this: After a period of time, I developed what I felt was a friendly relationship with Nathaniel [Manning's designation for his contact at WikiLeaks]. Our mutual interest in information technology and politics made our conversations enjoyable. We engaged in conversation often. Sometimes as long as an hour or more. I often looked forward to my conversations with Nathaniel after work.
Subtitles source : Wikileaks Annotated Transcript of "We Steal secrets" by Alex Gibney Full version with links to sources here: http://wikileaks.org/IMG/html/gibney-transcript.html
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