The WikiLeaks Story

bit in previous episodes. We're talking about wiki leaks. So before we even get into wiki leaks, we do have to say this is an incredibly emotionally charged subject with lots of political players, right, and Jonathan and I are going to eight we you know, if you've listened to the show, you probably know a little bit about a personal politics. We're going to be really careful with this one to to report the facts as they are and

not slam our foreheads into the microphone. Um. Also, real quick, before we get into this, I do want to give a brief trigger warning. It's it's a light trigger warning, really. UM. Juliana Sang being Um, one of the so called founders of wiki leaks, has been brought up on some rape charges and so there will be a non graphic discussion of that later on in the podcast. Um, if that is the kind of thing that you would rather avoid hearing, than perhaps you would like to uh skip the rest

of this episode now spoiler alert. Both Lauren and myself and and with our particular political views, feel that no one in this story really comes out being a complete hero. It's it's it's just it's humans being humans, which means it's complex. It's it's complex and gets kind of messy. Yeah, so we're gonna get messy. But before we get messy, let's just clear things up a little bit. Let's talk

about what wiki leaks is. Now. First of all, the name wiki gives you this sense that it has this sort of collaborative, open structure that allows people to come in and add things and tweak things. Not so much. They tried that early on in the timeline of wiki leaks,

but eventually moved away from it. The name has stuck, however, right, and I think that I think that really what they wanted to do was, um, it was used, was used that that easy reading format of wikis without you know, and then they decided to really close down the part where hey, anyone can edit it, because that's bad times right, right when you're talking about what it is WikiLeaks is trying to do and uh and be yes, the sourcing

of information in order to remain um anonymous and pertinent. Yeah. Yeah, these are all things that make it. You know, if you were to just open it up for what wiki leaks does, it would just be a mess very quickly. It also has created a lot of confusion among people who are just casually following this or have just heard about it, who think that wiki leaks has some sort of connection to Wikipedia, which it does not know. The Wikipedia and wiki leaks are not at all related. So

what is wiki leaks. Well, it's a not for profit organization, and the purpose of wiki leaks is to publish information that would uh normally not be available to the public. Right, normally normally be the stuff that's either been classified or yeah, it could be trade secret stuff, it could be a corporate uh communications that normally would not be available to anyone outside a certain group of people within that corporation. Really, it's any information that would be of public interest but

is not publicly available. And in fact, WikiLeaks go so far as to say that the organization does not want anything that's been published elsewhere. That's not the purpose for WikiLeaks. They also make pains to say that they do not

solicit any kind of information or files. They accept it, but they don't solicit, which is an important distinction they have to make so that they can, yeah, because otherwise they could start getting charges about being a spy or or trying to bribe officials or people in who have

access to to classified information too then share it. If they merely accepted donations of information, that absolves them of of some of that responsibility kind of technically, yeah, and just at least prints a better picture of them, right as far as it makes it more difficult to make a case against them, doesn't necessarily mean that a case would not be made against them and it wouldn't be successful.

But anyway, we're kind of getting ahead of ourselves now. Um. According to Columbia University's Journalism School, I read this, there was a very long article about wiki leaks and it's association with the Guardian newspaper, a newspaper in the UK, and uh, in fact, there was quite a strong relationship between the two for a while until an event that we will discuss later. Yeah, yeah, that will come important later.

But according to that particular article, it said that Julian Assange, who is often referred to as a founder, found or or at the very least the spokesperson for wiki leaks, he's certainly the most identifiable personality associated with yeah figurehead, if if nothing else. Yeah, Yeah, and that gets complicated too, and we'll explain that in a bit. But according to this article, he registered the domain name back in nine However, every other source I could find six was the earliest

that it was actually UM registered. This is another part that makes talking about wiki leaks challenging, in that there's a lot of misinformation about the site itself, not just about all the shenanigans that went on both within wiki leaks and surrounding Wiki leaks, but just when it really

got started. Right, And part of the problem we should mention now is that a lot of the information out there about wiki leaks comes from either Juliana Sounds himself or um other other personalities that have been involved with the organization and have left it violently and bitterly. Yeah, and so so all of all of this is uh not necessarily it's difficult to track down the exact truth. Yeah,

there's a lot of subjectivity here. I mean, everyone involved has their own agenda and uh, and that doesn't that doesn't necessarily align with the organization stated mission. Right, So this is this is what makes this complicated. Now what

is that stated mission? Well, the whole idea here is that what wiki leaks is trying to do is make available information that the public that that that you know, the organization feels the public should have access to but otherwise would not because of the secrecy of either governmental or corporate organizations or even just other organizations in general, and that it's an attempt to make these organizations more transparent. Right.

They cite the Universal Declaration of Human Rights UM, in particular Article nineteen UM, which which just says that that everyone has the right to freedom, freedom of opinion and expression right and that they should be able to pursue information regardless of frontiers, Which is kind of like saying, you know, uh, a person in in say, China, who otherwise might not have access to certain information completely has the universal right to that, even if the Chinese government

says they don't. So in other words, it's kind of this idea that everyone has this right regardless of what your government says. This is the United Nations that has the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And it's not like this is somehow legally binding for all. It's a very nice idea. Yeah, it's it's an ideal, right, It's not so much legal wording. It's it's saying, ideally, we would say all people have the right to these expectations, and

one of them would be this right to freedom of expression. Now, depending on where you are in the world, your right to freedom of expression maybe fairly generous or it might be really restrictive. In the United States, we like to think that we have the freedom of speech, but there are certain limitations. I mean, obviously, if you are using that freedom of speech to inflict harm upon someone and it is completely unjustified, and you know, you could be

taken to court for things things like lives, um. You know, the whole there's the whole argument about you can't yell fire in a crowded theater because it could cause people your your right or freedom of expression does not override someone else's right to safe safety right or at least the expectation of safety. Um. And so there are a lot of complications here. But even in the United States, you know, it's fairly wide open people will argue as to how wide open it is because of their own

personal views. If you go to someplace like the United Kingdom, there rights of free speech are are more narrow. There are very specific laws that prevent newspapers, for example, from violating secrecy agreements. So something The Guardian had to make some really tough decisions when they got information from Wiki leaks onto whether or not to publish it, because it could result in some injunctions from the government, So that gets really complex as well. Anyway, Wiki Leaks essentially says

we don't subscribe to any of these regional concepts. We subscribe to this universal concept and that's what it's all about. And so they try to provide the material that journalists can use to tell the stories that otherwise would be untold. Right um Assan Assam said in one interview with Time Um that this organization practices civil obedience. It tries to make the world more civil and act against abusive organizations

that are pushing it in the opposite direction. So it's kind of funny to call it civil obedience considering that, uh, you know that they are directly disobeying. Yes, they're being disobedient by by very nature. But it's it's all an argument about who has the power responsibility if you have a lot of you know, as as Uncle Ben would say, with great power becomes great responsibility. Now that's that's one of those little cliche sayings, but there is truth to that.

It's very true that if you are a governmental agency or a corporation that has a lot of power, then there is a certain expectation that you will use that power in a responsible way and not do it in such a way that you are going to violate people's rights, right.

You know. At the same time, frequently information is withheld by by governments, in particular because because of of of measures of national security, because they're trying to protect um, you know, either their their military interests or their scientific interests, or or you know, the people and the research that go into making that country a safe place to be. Right.

So there is a very delicate balance here, right. I mean, you could argue that there are there's certain information that's out there that it's good that it's secret, because that means that the people who are doing valuable work, and it may be valuable work that in no way is violent towards any other person it may be completely humanitarian work that their lives could be in jeopardy if the information were made public, and that is something that you know,

needs to be taken into consideration. Now, the what Wicked Leaks would say is, on the other hand, you also have these instances where UH agencies or the military or a corporation are behaving in an unethical or corrupt or illegal manner, and without this information becoming public, they can never be held accountable for that. And so if they

you know, this transparency gives accountability to those agencies. And in fact, they go so far as to say it's the media's role to to reveal this kind of information to the public, to to make the public informed enough to be good citizens, right, because this is that that big relationship. You know, we often think of the government as being this kind of separate entity. That is, in some cases we think of as sort of that big brother Orwellian idea of this this other that dictates what

we do. But in reality, at least in in you can argue to watch right. You know, they're definitely fringe theories about how much your your average citizen does or

doesn't have power over over these things. But but but saying that, you know, if we take democracy in the United States for what it's supposed to be, if we assume that that in fact is the case, then what Wiki Leak's role is to tell the public, Hey, this is what your officials are up to, and if you don't approve of that, you need to be aware of it so that you can the next time voting comes around behave in a way that that allows you to get the right people in charge, assuming of course that

the right people are the ones who are running for office. That's that's a different political discussion. That's the whole other, whole other cannon worms. I'm honestly, I'm I'm probably coming across is really cynical. I'm actually not at cynical. I'm just aware of a lot of cynicism. So it's one

of those things where you kind of dance around it anyway. Well, yeah, and you know, the thing is that I read one thing about how the US Information Security Oversight Office reported that um the number of new secrets designated as such by the government rose from two tho nine and so so partially what this has to do with is the way that governments are processing information and UM and releasing it to the public right and and to be fair,

I mean, the Obama administration in the United States specifically said that one of its cornerstones was going to be transparency. And so in a way, you can think of the media in general and wiki leaks in particular in this case, trying to hold them accountable for that claim, saying you said you're going to be transparent. Here are all these things that have not been reported. What is your stance on this? And so, I mean, you know, I can't

disagree with that motivation. I think that that's very important. I think that any nation where you have a free press, that presses job to keep an eye and make sure that things are not being uh, that people are not behaving in an unethical manner or taking advantage of a situation, and if they are, that that's reported. I think that's very important. It's a key role in journalism, and it's something that some people would say has really been slipping

from journalism over the last couple of decades. Again, I'm not a journalists, so I'm not going to comment on that. Well, that's that's another you know, there's also a lot of ideas about out there about how entertainment based the journalism industry is these days. Yes, yeah, the whole idea of of the the commercialization of journalism. Uh well, anyway, Wiki leaks does have some policies that try to guide the

organization and how it behaves. One of those is that that they do sometimes delay or remove some details in stories in order to protect people from immediate harm, especially either current victims of of harm somewhere or the whistleblowers

who are reporting this information right. And then on top of that, they also try to make sure that every single leaked report that they receive, which by the way, they they've set up an electronic dropbox, that's their preferred method of receiving information is electronically, and that this dropbox is encrypted so that again in theory, you wouldn't be able to trace the origin of that other than being able to see that this is original source material, but

it's not tied to any particular person. So the electronic dropbox is supposed to be a secure way of getting files two Wiki leaks, and they have said that they would also receive files or or documents in other forms like including through the mail, but they prefer not to because that kind of stuff can be intercepted in securities and questions, Sharon, and also also if they have a physical mailing add dress, that makes it more difficult for

them to uh avoid entanglements, all right. So anyway, they they do refer to their electronic drop box as being the preferred method, and they say that everything they get they use traditional investigative journalism techniques as well as more modern technology based methods to verify that that information is in fact accurate and true, and that it really is from a verifiable source, right, that the documents are actually from wherever the person the anonymous source says they're from.

So if an anonymous source drops off a enormous file that is supposed to contain all these documents from the Department of Justice in the United States, for example, they would go through and try to verify that those were in fact d o J documents and not just someone

using some logos or whatever to fabricate something. Right. This is through a largely volunteer based system, they've They've reported and again you know, these members are kind of whibbly wobbly, but um they reported having up to eight hundred volunteer members, mostly mostly journalists. I think helping helping them out with stuff like this, right, and some of those volunteers have a lot of stuff to say about wiki leaks, but again we'll cover that probably in the second half. I

think of this of this episode. So they their policies to verify everything, to keep it secure, and then once they verified it, the next step is deciding on when to publish this information. And wiki leaks has done uh well. They've done their own journalism. They've had their own journalists right, stories that were based off of the documents that they had found. That I think you mentioned earlier that that part of what wiki leaks holds very DearS that they

want to publish original material. They don't want to republish anything, and and that's and so yes, so um so actually doing writing an investigation, it's a big part of that. They also will partner with existing media outlets, although there's been sort of a contentious relationship between wiki leaks and several high profile newspapers UH in multiple nations, and and part of that I think has to do with the

sana's personal handling of situations. But anyway, they they their goal is to have stories written about the information they have because It's kind of like if you were to walk into a laboratory that's doing scientific experiments and you see the experiment going on, but you can't really necessarily make any meaningful conclusion based on that. You need to have the report written up where you can see what the actual methodology was, what the results were, and what

the conclusions are. That's what is digestible to the average person. Same thing with these wiki leaks reports. It's usually the raw material is something that they hand over to journalists, and the journalists and up rutting the stories, and then the raw material is published along with the story, so that way transparency that they're really going for right that way,

so that you can check their sources exactly exactly. Like if if Lauren reads the story and then you know, she reads one journalist's perspective on that story and they're the way that they have taken this information and then communicated it, she can then go to the the source material, read the source material and see if her own interpretation of that source material is aligned with what the journalists said.

Because remember, no matter what, we're all humans, so we all view things through our own kind of lens in the world, and we try and be as you know, a journalists try to be as objective as possible, at least most people call themselves journalists try that's the hypothetical ideal.

Yeah so, but it's it's you know, there's no way to ever truly attain that sure And and and in some of these cases, they the Assange and and other folks at wiki leaks have admitted to wanting to market some of these bigger releases, uh, to to really get

things into the public eye. Right, I don't I haven't personally read any any ill intent to change details, but but just to bring the most important details to the forefront, because they are a political organization, right and when you look at it, you're you're talking about sometimes they're getting files that are enormous, Like they're talking about pages and

pages and pages of documentation. It's like like over over three hundred thousand documents and ago that that's you know, obviously way too much for anyone to just wade through beginning to end and find the nuggets that are meaningful, because a lot of this stuff has information that's not really um, you know, important in the grand scheme of things. It might have been important for a very specific purpose, but you know, beyond that, it doesn't really matter so much.

So well, we'll mention a few examples of stuff like that a little bit later. Yeah, so they you know, this is this is their basic purpose and their basic approach. To go into more detail, we'll have to kind of look at the timeline and discuss what had happened throughout the history of wiki leaks, which course is still in existence today. I don't mean to suggest that that history is over, but it is. It is a continuing story.

But um, but most of the most of the action within wiki leaks was going on around Yeah, that's when the big big stuff was going on, although it's played a part in other stories since then, and of course before then too. But before we get into that discussion, let's take a quick break. Alright, so we've had an overview of what wiki leaks is, what its purpose is, what you know, role it's it's ideally would fill within the world of journalism and transparency and accountability. Let's talk

a little bit about the timeline. So it was around two thousand six that wiki leaks began to coalesce, and it was officially launched in two thousand seven. Right, either December two thousand six or early two thousand seven. Yeah,

it's right around then. The first public nations were coming out in in December of two thousand and six, but most folks just say that are the official launch where we've had a thing was in early two thousand seven, right, And and I did want to mention that this is coming on the heels of in two thousand five, the commission that had been investigating the nine eleven terrorists attacks here in the United States had found that that poor information sharing was a huge failure of the government in

the in the lead up to the attacks, of of of preventing this sort of thing from happening, and and that that had led to internally a lot of reorganization of how information is shared in between different departments department. Yeah, this this is something that we see in all levels of organization where you have multiple departments and then the communication between departments. Sometimes the communication within a department tends to get bogged down by red tape. And uh, you know,

you see this all the time. If you ever read any stories about UH police investigations that spanned multiple jurisdictions, that's always part of the story is how complicated it was to get the cooperation of one police office versus another, and if their federal UH investigators, then that adds another

layer of complexity. And and it was it wasn't until around that time that UM, I think that a lot of agencies had been kind of resisting going digital just because of the ease of flow of information, which isn't really considered a good thing when you're trying to keep things secret. UM. And but but it was after after two five after that report from that commission, that things started going going online. And the first story that wiki leaks partnered with The Guardian on was for around August

thirty one, two thousand seven. It was a story about the alleged corruption of Daniel A Rotmi, the former president of Kenya, and it was a leaked report. The Kenyan government had elected to keep this report secret, and UH someone leaked the information to wiki leaks. Wiki leaks then approached The Guardian and the Guardian was very cautious about this kind of relationship. It was one of those things where they saw the value in what WikiLeaks was doing.

WikiLeaks was setting itself up to be a completely independent safe house of information leaked information. UH. The idea being that of course anyone who would submit to it would remain anonymous, WikiLeaks would not point the finger at anybody, and that that information could then get to some sort of outlet that could communicate it to the wider world. So this was the first attempt of The Guardian and

WikiLeaks to work together. From the story I read from Columbia University, it really did sound like Julian Assange was a big part of this early early on, and that that was both a good thing in the early days and turned into a complicated thing as time went on. Um. From what I understand, he can he can have an effect on people, uh and make them feel like they're not really being listened to. He's frequently described as being a very um dynamic personality. That's a very generous way

of putting it. Uh. Yeah, people who have taught to him have had some pretty contentious things to say about him. I've never met the man, so I know nothing about him personally, nor have I had any interactions with him, But just going from what other people said, it seems like he seems he seems very intense. Yeah, he could be a handful, yes, um Uh. This the WikiLeaks would later be presented with an award from Musty International um on behalf of the Kenyan folks who leaked this information.

Um uh. Now that's one of the awards that Wiki leaks has won. Wiki Leaks, of course, you know, it's it is very controversial, but there are organizations that have recognized its role in UH in uncovering corruption and even going so far as to uh giving enough information so that authorities could end up pursuing and correcting problems. UM or that people could end up going out and voting what would what some would call a corrupt administration out of power. This is, of course, you know, on a

global scale, not not limited to just one country. Uh. In February of two eight, a Wiki leaks report along with The Guardian exposed a Swiss bank called Julius Bear for money laundering uh and UH that ended up getting Wiki leaks hit with one of their first major lawsuits, which is not something unusual for the organization. They've been hit with many of them. Right. Also in two eight,

they posted a bunch of scientologies secret membership manuals. Yeah. Uh. And it's funny because there's there are some stories that talk about how Wiki leaks expected certain things to get a lot more attention than what they what it actually did, and that these manuals were that was one of the things thought that a lot more attention would be devoted

to the scientology manuals than what actually happened. And that's another reason why wiki leaks was looking to partner with various newspapers around the world, because they were discovering that trying to direct people to wiki leaks to find out about the information was tricky. Anyone who makes a website learns pretty quickly it's hard to get folks to go to your website. It is folks need to want to go to your website, you can't really make them go.

So uh, you know, if WikiLeaks was going to fulfill its mission and being this this uh depository of secret information that could then be used by journalists, they determined that they had to reach out to more journalists to make that happen. Um, the next thing I have is November two thousand nine. Do you have anything before that? Okay?

That's when they published a comprehensive list of text pager messages that were sent during September eleventh, two thousand one, which of course was the date of the terrorist attacks that that that ended thousands of lives here in the

United States. Um. And they were criticized for this because a lot of those text messages were just simple messages from between family members or co workers to let people know that they were all right, that they had um managed to to stay clear of the impact zones, that sort of thing, and that there was a real question of is this actually newsworthy? Is this is this valuable

information to publish? Is this are is this getting a little too voyeuristic into the personal tragedies that happened during this day? And and and there was a little bit of a question um. And this ties back into the scientology bit of of whether wiki leaks was was publishing things to get attention and to be sensational um rather mission right. Yeah, And that's that's played wiki leaks throughout

its history as well. Like the again, the goal that it states seems very noble in the journalistic sense, but the behavior of at least some of the people in wiki leagues may have been so is aligned quite with that. It seemed it seemed like you said, a little more sensationalists, and that might not have ever been the intent of the people in wiki leaks. It just maybe the impression

that everyone got from the way it was handled. Um. Now, getting back in, one last little thing about these these text pager messages, UM, was that Wiki leaks said their response to the criticism of is this actually newsworthy? Their response was, this helps create a more complete picture of what happened on that day. And I'm not. I mean, yeah, it's more complete. I just don't know that it's more relevant. Sure,

sure I could, I could. I could argue that one you know that that that could easily be argued either way. But um, but yeah, I did want to mention also in two thousand nine, UM, that was the year that President Obama signed the executive order requiring a whole bun of people who hold classified status here in the States um to receive extra training on what actually needs classification and UM and also forced people who who are creating

these classified documents to identify themselves on those documents. And again this is that this is that effort for official transparency to say, you know, let's not just blanket whitewash everything is classified, because that just all that really does is engender a spirit of distrust in the government to say, like what, why are they hiding this? What else do

they have to hide? And uh, And of course, I mean this is an ongoing story, stuff that we're finding out about now, about things like clandestine surveillance, which are these are stories that are breaking as we are recording this podcast in early June two thousand thirteen. There are all these stories about the n s A and surveillance

and cell phones and things like that. And some might even argue that the things that happened with wiki leaks are what kind of led to those policies, which is the antithesis of what they were supposed to be doing. I think I think that there's been a lot of that actually from from I think a lot of governments have kind of cracked down on openness in response to

the sort of thing, yeah it's it's you know. And some might argue they're cracking down on one side while really doubling down on the shady stuff on the other side. So it's almost like the Wookie defense. Hey it's Chewbacca. So um, yeah, I mean, these is complicated issue. April that's when Assane goes to the National Press Club in d C and shows a video of a two thousand seven incident. Now this is the the most probably the

most notorious Wiki leaks release. Yeah, of I mean, there's been a lot of high profile ones, but this one is like the defining one, I think. And this is one that showed an incident in two thousand seven in which UH two US Apache helicopter pilots allegedly executed UH innocent people on the ground in Iraq, including to Reuter's correspondence. The whole thing was caught on video, and Assange called it collateral murder. That's what he named the video. And

again that seems very sensationalist. Now, at the same time, the video itself really did portray a horrific act. Yeah, and and I mean, and there's and there's full audio in it, so there's this very chillingly calm discussion of everything that they're doing and um and and yeah, it's it's you. You can you can see. I think at least eighteen people are killed during the course of the y and two of them were Reuters reporters, right, right.

This has been a project that had been going on since March and had been they had received these files and UH kind of went into a frenzy of work in Iceland putting them together. It was called Project B and and they knew that it was big. Yeah, they knew it was big. And and again as Sange was trying to find a way to get more visibile be for wiki leaks. So part of that sensationalism was in fact intended because it was meant to to get as much press as possible. But also, I mean, you know,

it was an absolutely pressworthy release. Yes, I mean, you know you can't Yeah, it was, I mean, I mean, I was a legitimate It was a completely legitimate story. It was something that needed to be broken because it

was people needed to be held accountable. Although it should be said that the military never did charge those helicopter pilots with anything illegal or the official statement was essentially that the people were in an area where there was a suspected um uh ambush that was going to attack US forces and that the helicopter pilots acted responsibly. That's the official response. So anyway, definitely was newsworthy. Uh. Then again, it was the handling of it that I think was sensational,

not the material itself, but that was again completely valid. Uh. On the Pentagon arrested US Army private Bradley Manning on charges of downloading and then leaking thousands of classified US documents, including this video. And uh, that's sort of been the The video and and the handling of Bradley Manning and and Bradley Manning's case have been this sort of defining element to what Wiki leaks is and the way that

it's portrayed in general. I mean, this story is still ongoing to this day, right, I believe that the trial for Manning is going on right now as we're recording this podcast. Yes, it is, although it apparently it's going much more quickly than what they had originally planned. They thought it was going to take It was gonna be a three month trial, but apparently there moving through witnesses

much more quickly than they had previously thought. And uh, and there were thousands of documents involved in this, not just the video, right right. Uh. WikiLeaks ended up publishing over two documents from Manning. He had downloaded all of these diplomatic cables while he was in an Iraq Army outpost between November two thousand nine in April um reportedly having burned them to a c d R labeled Lady Gaga and told a told a hacker friend that he

had them. The hacker turned him in, and apparently that hacker has since felt a great deal of conflict about that act. UH. The charge, the main charge against Bradley Manning is that he knowingly gave intelligence to the enemy through indirect means. And UH because before he was arrested and put on you know, put on trial, he had obviously leaked these documents to wiki leaks, right, and so in the trial I can say this because this was

reported very recently as of the recording of this podcast. UH. The defense called the senior intelligence or one senior intelligence analyst from Manning's unit. Her name is Casey Fulton, and Fulton's said that the unit received no specific warning about sites visited by al Qaeda. She did say that al Qaeda would visit sites like Facebook or Google or even Google Maps to gather information, but she did not mention

Wiki leaks among them. And the defenses case is saying that, UH, that there was information went directly to right well that the al Qaeda was not using wiki leaks specifically together information that that was not Manning's intent, and in fact, the judge in the case has said that the prosecution has to show that Manning had actual knowledge that he was actually giving intelligence to the enemy through a third party and intermediary or in some other indirect way, and

that the soldier must have had quote a general evil intent unquote, and to have known he was dealing directly or indirectly with an enemy of the United States in order for this particular charge to hold. Now keep in mind this one charge out of all the trial. So but it sounds to me that it's a it's a really tough case to make, you know, to prove the intent parts specifically, but improving intent is one of those things that's uh, basically impossible, but doesn't when people don't

do it or don't don't achieve it. Now to say they also point out that this is a military trial. It's different from other trials in the United States. Typically in the United States you have a trial with in front of a jury of your peers. But in this case, it is a judge that is overseeing the case and her word is final at least unless you go through an appeals process. But and you do not have exactly the same the same rights to see what is a

normal citizen in a court of law. So getting back to two Wiki leaks back in UH July two thousand and ten, so so Bradley Manning had been arrested. By this point, three news organizations released separate accounts of the war logs gathered from Wiki Leaks regarding the war in Afghanistan. And in August UH, that's when another big controversial event in the history of Wiki leaks in general and Julian

Assange in particular happens. UH. Two former employees of Wiki leaks filed rape charges against Julian Assange, and Assange has essentially spent the rest of his life from that point evading any extradition to Sweden to stand trial for this. All right, right, these charges were brought up in Sweden. UM. The the two women who have brought up the charges, their names have not been revealed to the press. UM and UH. In Sweden there are laws about using using condoms.

If partner tells you to use one and you do not, then you can be brought up on what is called a rape charge and and the technical definition I shall leave up to other political parties. Yeah. At any rate, he has been fighting extradition since then, and at this point he's actually um been a granted asylum from by Ecuador. Ecuador has granted asanjea sailing. I'll tell him more about that when we get a little further down. Yeah, that whole the whole drama is a story and of itself.

But because again it's so hard to get to the truth of the matter, there's just we actually talked about doing an episode just about Julian Sange, but instead of about wiki leaks. But the more we looked into it, the more we realize that this there's no way to verify half the information that's out there, right, you know, as as I said at the beginning of the episode, all of the information about Julian Assange comes from either Assange himself UM or from very close personal ex compatriots

who are pretty angry at him. Right, So there are a lot of biases, and neither of those sources are really necessarily reliable. So the UH in July you had the UH, the the Afghanistan reports released. Now that was one third of three big blocks of information that we're

going to be released UH that year. The other two were about the ira Key War, which that information came out in October, and then there was a huge block of classified US diplomatic cables, and a cable is essentially a message, So these were all these thousands and thousands of diplomatic messages that came out in November twenty ten. That was the trifecta of big, big bombshell releases that came out in twenty that really established what wiki leaks

was all about. I think I think there's in November where the ones are specifically from Manning. Yeah, yeah, and then in September twenty a little bit earlier, that's when Daniel dom Scheideberg left Wiki leaks, right, that's when he walked. He had joined in two thousand eight and had become sort of Asannge's right hand man. Yeah, he was kind of.

He was specifically a spokesperson four Wiki Leaks in Europe, mainly in Germany, and he had a major falling out with a Sange to the point where it went from he and Assange sharing the same ideals to both of them demonizing one another whenever they had the opportunity to speak to the media. And they were roommates somewhere in between there. So this is like talking about that band you used to love and then they broke up, and now no one has anything good to say about each other,

multiplied by about a billion. Right later, later on, he would publish a book called Inside wiki Leaks, My Time with Julian Assange at the World's Most Dangerous Website. Yeah, he was not particularly complementary of Osange in that book or in any of his interviews. He left to try, and his goal was to found a competing leak site. He felt that wiki leaks had lost sight of its ideals, that it was not following, it was not behaving in

a way that again was aligned with its ideals. Perhaps he felt that it was more sensationalized, the kind of way that we've been talking about. How you know, that's always been my personal impression, But again that's a personal impression. Um. So he wanted to found a company called open leaks that would be essentially a competitor to wiki leaks. Uh, and he wanted it to be more transparent than wiki

leaks was. So he didn't want to have these kind of deals with various news organizations where it was almost exclusive, like a partnership saying Hey, I'm going to give you this information and then you can run it, and you know, we'll we'll have this buddy buddy relationship. Just link back to my site. Make sure you do that. If you link back to my site, we're all good. He didn't want to do any of that, but eventually he ended up changing his tune for open leaks because it just

didn't go well. Part of it was that when he left, one of the things he did was he copied about thirty five hundred files and then deleted them from wiki

leaks's database, and he left with those files. Depending upon whom you ask, he was either trying to partially sabotage wiki leaks and establish open leaks by getting a jump start with these files, or from his point of view, he felt that what wiki weeks was doing was irresponsible and endangering the information that was within these thirty files, and he was only copying it so that that information would remain safe until such time that he could return

those files to wiki leaks. This is why this gets really complicated, because people get you know, they get a little irritated at each other and then they act out a bit. So um Anyway, open leaks never really took off. It ended up sort of transforming into more of a site that's designed to teach other people how to set up sites that that can accept and publish leaked material. So it really did change quite a bit. So then we had October and November where those other big releases

came out. In two thousand eleven, that's when wiki leaks was hit by a pretty hard blow, and it didn't have anything to do with a lawsuit. This was a blockade, a financial blockade. This was when several major financial companies, banks and credit card companies all decided to end any transfer of funds towards Wiki leaks. Wiki leaks existed solely upon uh submissions of of monetary donations to the site. You know, people were donating money in order for wiki

leaks to keep going. This was essentially all those methods of transmission saying we are no longer allowing payments to go to wiki leaks, So even if you want to donate, there was no route for you to go right. Um. It actually got to a point where Assange said that wiki leaks had burned through of its assets UH and and that it wasn't able to really regenerate them in any meaningful way because this blockade was preventing payments to

go to wiki leaks. Absolutely, and this was also going on at the same time that um or or a little bit before this, UH servers had started withdrawing their services from wiki leaks. Amazon dumped them, every DNS had terminated their service, right it got to a point where

you know, you could still get there. It was you know, they would have work around so that people could still get to UH to wiki leaks, but it was a lot of that that support was going away, and you know, there were theories on all sides of this as well, saying that was a conspiracy that these companies had been pressured by various governments around the world to end any support so that way wiki leaks would essentially kind of starved to death, that no one would be able to

get there, that it would no one would be able to financially support it, and that it would just go away and then hey, no more problems with all this leaked information because no one has any place for this leaked information to go. So UH, whether or not that's true or if it was just the company saying, you know, this is something that is going to cause us problems and we just don't want to be a part of it, and they were independently coming to that decision. I don't know.

I guess if there was a leak about it, we'd find out this was. This was also around the same time that UM that they had published in September of two, two thousand eleven, they had published over two cables that did not contain redactions, which means that UM that the sources of this information and in some places victims names

and etcetera, had not been blacked out. Yeah. In other words, there were names of individuals within these cables that someone who is reading over this could then target, either politically or literally target these these folks that are mentioned in these cables, And so there were there's a lot of criticism leveled against Wiki leaks and against Assange, saying that

it was being irresponsible and endangering people's lives. Assange has not been the most um compassionate person in regards to this. He's often said that, uh, his goal is to save innocent lives, but if it endangers a few people because of the information that's revealed in these in these cables, then that's you know, that's acceptable. I'm paraphrase thing that's not exactly what he said. But it's it's more or less the message that has been given collateral murder. Yeah,

it's yeah. That's the problem is that the Lauren seems to feel that this might be a little touch hypocritical, considering the uh, the criticisms that WikiLeaks has levied against UH, you know, governments and corporations that WikiLeaks itself seems to be engaging in the same sort of cavalier behavior towards people's safety. And to be fair, it is absolutely not a parallel to compare um, uh putting putting a source in hypothetical danger of persecution versus and Apache pilot killing

a child in a car. That's that's different. Yeah, that's the obviously very different things. But it does seem to suggest that there's a little bit of hypocrisy going on. I don't disagree with Lauren, is what I'm saying. UM. But but but that's but but that is that is my personal opinion and uh and I apologize a little bit for injecting it. Um. This this move did did

create a great rift between WikiLeaks and UM. Several of those newspapers or or reporting organizations that we had been talking about them being in cahoots with earlier at The Guardian, the New York Times, UM, a bunch of papers around the world. Der Spiegel was another one. Yeah, it was actually uh. And the way that Assange was handling the relationship between wiki leaks and these news organizations was starting

to cheese them off. Like the Guardian had certain expectations, The New York Times had certain expectations uh, And the Guardian had felt that the New York Times was going to be able to report on certain things which the Guardian actually wanted to have happened, because again the Guardians in the UK and the secrecy laws are such that there were there were these partnerships between the Guardian and New York Times where New York Times could publish some

stuff that would possibly get the Guardian into trouble but would still benefit the Guardian in some way. So it was this this kind of weird relationship that was going on.

But then Assange got essentially got ticked off at the New York Times for the way that the New York Time Times handled its information because one thing that the New York Times would do is approached the government and say, hey, we receive these cables and we plan on running with a story, but we're letting you know ahead of time, whereas in the UK that's generally not done. Generally in the UK, they run the story. So that put pressure on the Guardian. It also put pressure on a Sange.

And then Assange was apparently very much upset about this and wanted to sever the relationship with the New York Times, but the Guardians still wanted this relationship with the New York Times. If this is starting to sound like the relationships in middle school drama club, that's kind of what it comes out to being, except the stakes are obviously

way higher. Absolutely, and uh yeah, they the newspapers five five global newspapers found up putting out a joint statement that said, um, we deplore the decision of Wiki Leaks to publish the unredacted State Department cables, which may put

sources at risk. The decision to publish by Julian Assange was his and his alone, right, yeah, because they all had the policy of actually going through and very carefully uh redacting any identifiable information to protect sources and to protect people who could potentially become a victim of some agency.

And uh and you know that was an important part of their process to the point where you had people entire departments in charge of reviewing every single cable to make certain that all the stuff they published was going to be safe. And so for this move to happen on Wiki leaks and meant that a lot of that work was just nullified. And obviously that is a good

reason to become upset. Well. Once you get into about May two thousand twelve, so Assange had been fighting extradition attempts and he had been living in London while Sweden authorities were trying to extradite into Sweden. He had he had spent about a week in jail in December of

on on those um extradition charges. Yeah, and he had been released on bail, been in and out of court trying to appeal extradition, and by May two thousand twelve, the British Supreme Court, it had gone all the way up to the British Supreme Court said no, we're not going to prevent your extradition. You are going to have to go to Sweden to stand trial. That's when a Sange then started to appeal to Ecuador the embassy in the UK and actually saying will you grant me asylum.

And um, it was at a point where he was in the he was staying in the embassy, he had not officially been granted asylum by Ecuador, and then there was going to be apparently a raid on the Ecuador embassy in order to get a Sange out, and that's when Ecuador said we're giving you asylum. So it's almost it's possible that that that raid was the precipitating Yeah, that was exactly the moment where the Ecuador said, you know, we weren't going to but now we totally are because

now it's political. So still very complicated issue. Um, and you know, guilt or innocence aside. It's it's one of those stories that is really complicated and tough to to kind of unwind and follow. So anyway, Wiki leaks is still still a thing still around. It's still you know, accepts leaked information. Uh. It has uncovered lots of stories, not just with governments, but like we said, with corporations, some of which have caused newspapers to get into trouble

for running the stories. Things like you know, major corporations that may have fallen short on promises for doing things like cleaning up a gasoline spill. There was a specific example of that, UM, and it continues to fulfill that role. Some argue that it's even possible that the whole Ossange story could just be a smoke and mirrors for Wiki Leaks to continue doing what it does without having to

worry about so much focus because there's this fall guy. Right. Yeah, you've got this very flash bang kind of person over here who's going like, look at me, extradition charges. Yeah, and then they can continue doing their their political political work. Right. So, uh, I doubt that anything is that planned out because life is just complicated and messy and it's tough to ever have a plan that, like James bondishes be very impressed.

But but you know it's possible. You know, if they did do that, then it's it's the stuff of movie legend. Speaking of movie legends, there is a film being made, well, there's there. There are two films that that have been

UM in production recently. One is a documentary that was just released I believe, um Alex Gibney's We Steal Secrets, right, and that one focused both on a Sange and on Manning and uh and sort of it was supposed to be, you know, like a warts and all kind of portrayal, and some people say that his portrayal of Assange does

give sort of a warts and all approach. In fact, I think, you know, Assange definitely did not make that relationship shop a sweet one because apparently he demanded outright that if Gibney where to talk to a Sane it would cost him a million bucks, and the documentary filmmaker, that's probably not the best way to win that person

over to your side. No, Yeah, Sane has come out very vocally against this documentary, which is funny because people other people have also on both sides, have come down upon this documentary right and and some some people are proponents of it. One uh four more Wiki Leaks employee in particular, James ball Um reported reported it being a very accurate portrayal, like to the point that it was deja vu seeing the film. Now, there are some who

say that the Manning's portrayal was overly sympathetic. That they do you know, it's hard to say that that it's unjustified because you're talking about one person who may very well have been acting in what he thought was the right way to to exp supose what he saw as unethical behavior and there's no you know, there's no official way of doing it and any hope of it being addressed, and so he went outside the system in order to try and have this done. That's that's that's kind of

the story that's being told. There are other people who say it's more complicated than that, and that you know, it wasn't truly altruistic motivations that had him do what he did. But again, that's a really complicated story. When you're doing a documentary film, you have to simplify things so that you can and so two hours long and not. Yeah, So that was one of the criticisms I saw was that it made uh Manning out to be more sympathetic

than than the person felt that he should be. Uh. I think it's really hard to say that you can't feel sympathy for someone who's being held for a military trial that doesn't have the same same protections as a criminal or civil case would in a normal court of law. But you know, again, I don't know, so we don't know the guy, don't know all the details. So uh, you know, that will play out and the judge will

come to a decision. So the other one is, um, it's it's a fictional film, or I mean fictional, it's a biopic. Maybe Barnaby cumber bund in it benefitted cumber Batch right right, I'm sorry, John Harrison? Is that John Harrison? And um? This this film is called The fifthest Stage. It's being directed by Bill Condon, UM and it is slated to be released on October eleventh, um and uh. Cumber Batch has said that Assange directly asked him to

not do the film, um, calling it a massive propaganda attack. Yeah, then maybe it is. I haven't seen it. I don't know. We'll have to wait yet. But if you want to see some really cool pictures of Benedict cumber Batch looking intense with Bleach with um, those are on the internet. Yeah, it's uh. I remember seeing that for the first time. I'm thinking, what the what? Uh So anyway, Yeah, this

it's a complicated story Wiki leaks, you know. It's one of those things we actually debated on whether or not we wanted to do a full episode on it because it's it's a tough topic. It's and it's got a

lot of controversial elements to it, but it's important. It's definitely one of those things that has raised a lot of questions about, you know, transparency, surveillance, expectations of privacy, what is classified information, I mean, and the role the role of the media and the role of the of the government in reporting to citizens what's going on in their world. Yeah, and the role of the Internet and

net neutrality. I mean, all of these things have been tied up in this and if wiki leaks had not been a thing, the conversation might be very, very different in all of those arenas. So we felt that it had to be something we would cover. So hopefully you guys appreciated and and enjoyed this episode, even though it was one of the probably darker ones that we've done recently. Do you have any suggestions for future episodes of text Stuff, Please get in touch with us and let us know.

You can send us an email that addresses tex Stuff at Discovery dot com, or you can drop us a line on Facebook or Twitter or handle There is tech Stuff H. S. W. M. Laren and I will talk to you again really soon for more on this and thousands of other topics. Does it how staff works dot Com