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You've described WikiLeaks as untraceable and uncensurable.

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What do you mean by that?

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Well, nothing in this world is guaranteed for sure.

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But within that we have put together an infrastructure using technical and legal techniques

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to really make it hard to trace people and make it hard to take down our material

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once it's published.

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And today we've had 100% success rate.

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So that basic idea and intention is comprised of a number of specific ways of doing things.

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So for untraceability this means people send us material in the post in a particular way,

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engaging in particular procedures which makes it effectively impossible to trace.

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Or it means they submit material to us online and bounce the information through dozens

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of computers around the world, each computer encrypting its transmissions before it connects

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to another computer.

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So in this way, discarding identities as the information flows around the world.

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As it flows through different countries, we make sure it flows through Sweden and Belgium.

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And these two countries have specific source protection laws in Sweden as part of the Swedish

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Constitution to press freedom act.

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And in Belgium a specific law dealing with the communications protections between a source

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and a journalist using any means whatsoever including electronic transmissions.

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For publication this means housing our servers in many different jurisdictions such that any sort

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of interim attack on us, interim injunction is not going to take the information down entirely.

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It may not get out here, it may not get out there.

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But we can put up servers and gain support and respond legally fast enough such that the information

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is not going to be removed from the public.

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And that has been what has happened today.

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We've never lost the court case in any jurisdiction.

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Important thing to remember, but they have been interim attempts to injunct us.

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And while those interim attempts have gone on, we have managed to keep publishing.

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How many documents of real value have you been able to accept and publish?

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Well it's hard to know how many real value in the eyes of the holder to us all information

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that is true has value eventually.

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It may not only be a very small value to someone somewhere, but getting that information

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into the historical record, patting out the historical record, provides a sort of richness

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to every other bit of information is the record.

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So if you're talking about things which have clearly changed our comes elections or clearly

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introduce some law reform or clearly bought perpetrators to trial, then this is in hundreds,

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some are in the hundreds.

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Well the clearly changing governments or elections or heading ministers to pose this is maybe half

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a dozen to ten something like that.

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That's the power of information that's an all-true is not.

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And this is such a modern, ultramotten form of getting it out.

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It must frighten a lot of establishments and authority and especially governments.

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What governments have been successful in blocking it?

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In blocking WikiLeaks.

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The governments that have clearly tried to interfere with reusability to look at what we publish

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and weakers ability to give it stuff.

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China is the worst event.

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China has the most aggressive sophisticated interception technology that places itself in between

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every reader inside China and every information source outside China.

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And we've been fighting a running battle to make sure information can get through.

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So there's also a ways that China's readers can read outside.

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But the first thing that they try doesn't work.

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The first thing you would imagine doing just go to WikiLeaks.org that doesn't work.

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But variations on that do work.

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Iran has blocked us as well for a period.

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Have a renau unblocked in Iran.

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The Australian government has added us to the list of secret internet sites that are to be

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blocked.

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Once a national sort of filtering system is put into place, that national filtering system

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has not yet been put into place.

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But if it is, we'll be on the list.

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That's the only Western government, does it?

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There's also Germany.

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It has done a similar thing to Australia.

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In a similar position where they're trying to get up the national sensor system, it looks

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like it's not going to pass constitution.

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It looks like it won't get up.

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But something important to understand is what happens in the West is privatized

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and that means big corporations go through the court system to get injunctions and use the

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coercive power of the state.

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The ability to deploy unpolice to force the court order.

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They use the court apparatus to do that.

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The other way is the way it's going to be.

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It pushes and so on.

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But to give a specific example, a private bank, deals with wealthy private clients, minimum

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account balance of 1 million bucks.

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Hides their assets around the world to make sure credit is, ex-wives, police, tax

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departments, so I can't get them.

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We revealed the trust structures in the Cayman Islands, the beneficiaries who set up the trust

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and how much money was in it and so on.

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They attacked us in the United States in the courts.

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So it's a Swiss Cayman operation using US Federal Law to try and attack us.

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They attacked the main registration URL that people familiar with, WikiLeaks.org, because

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one of the companies involved in registering that was based in California.

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And through the interim injunction, they did take that down for 10 days.

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Now, of course, we were still publishing on all our other URL, still publishing successfully

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out of Sweden.

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But the thing that people were most familiar with was no longer available.

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And we then responded with a coalition of 20 lawyers and managed to turn that around.

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So quite an interesting result.

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It's not that the US justice system brings justice.

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It's not that the US justice system is always unjust.

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But you have to bring justice to the US justice system.

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And if you have a big enough coalition with enough money, you can force a good verdict out

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of it.

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But the initial verdict by the same judge was that we were to be shut down.

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This interesting you mentioned just as there, because I was going to ask you where the

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idea of WikiLeaks came from.

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But I mean, having the sense I get from you is that you've been using the technology

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to mine this information, especially within authority for quite a long time.

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But there's really something, there's another element to it.

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There is an element of justice seeking about WikiLeaks.

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It seems to me almost a moral element.

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That's a lot.

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I won't go as far as saying as a crusade.

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But there is a passion about it.

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That's not just simply transparency.

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There's something else.

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No, the goal is just as the method is transparency.

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It's important not to confuse the goal and the method.

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So what I observed by looking at how the press worked and how successful activists

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can pains work is a very cheap and effective way of getting justice, was finding information

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that people were spending effort on concealing and revealing it.

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Why do people spend effort on things?

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Or because they believe it's going to benefit them.

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So when organisations spend effort to conceal something, they are making a statement.

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They're giving off an economic signal that if that information is revealed, it's going

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to have an effect.

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Otherwise why would you spend the work?

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So in many of those cases, the effect that it will have is a push to reform the organisation

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that is concealing some kind of abuse or some plan for some future abuse.

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And so they're both selectively going after that information as opposed to all the other

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sorts of information out there which they're a vast amount.

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We are able to selectively bring about just change.

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The arrival of WikiLeaks coincides with a whole almost a sense of permanent war.

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The term permanent war, perpetual war, is constantly used in the United States.

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We have two wars running together and others and other secret wars.

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In the information that you have revealed on WikiLeaks about these so-called endless wars,

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what has been the real high value of material that has given people, ordinary people,

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if you like, the kind of information upon which they can then act.

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Looking at the enormous quantity and diversity of these military intelligence apparatus

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inside the documents, what I see is a vast sprawling estate.

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The, what we would traditionally call the military intelligence complex or military industrial complex.

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And that this sprawling industrial estate is growing becoming more,

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more secretive becoming more, more uncontrolled.

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This is not as sophisticated conspiracy controls the top.

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This is a vast movement of self-interest.

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Thousands and thousands of players all working together and against each other to produce an end result,

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which is a rock and Afghanistan, and come on here and keep that going.

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So what I see is, we often deal with tax havens and people hiding us and transferring money

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as we're offshore tax havens. So I see some really quite remarkable similarities.

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Guantanamo is used for laundering people to an offshore haven,

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which doesn't follow the rule of law that we would normally expect.

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Tax haven is used for hiding people's assets, laundering people's assets through

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the jurisdiction which doesn't follow the rule of law that we would expect in our home countries.

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Similarly, a rock and Afghanistan, a ankle ambia,

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a used to wash money out of the US tax base and back arms companies, arms companies, yeah.

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And the general's and so on, which if you like non-profit versions.

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So that you can't just, or you can't always pull out two billion bucks from the US tax base and just say,

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hey, let's give it to the arms company straight away with no expectation of doing any work.

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But if you say this two billion dollars has got to go into Colombia,

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but the Colombian government has to buy US arms and those arms has to be of a particular type,

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particular specification that only one of these arms companies has,

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then that's just the way of laundering this back into United States.

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What you're saying is that money and money making is at the center of modern war and it's almost

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self-papetuating. Yes, and it's becoming worse.

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The number of private companies that sprung up around the rock, the number of private companies

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in our supporting the National Security Agency, this has increased a hundred times in the past ten years.

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The number of companies. So now you have a school of feeding school that is feeding off the US tax base

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and is a lobby to make sure that those wars go on. You have two sorts of lobbies.

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They have offences lobbies and defensive lobbies. So an offence of lobby tries to get new money

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that it didn't have before, by lobbying to leave the government. And a defensive lobby make sure

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that companies continue to receive the money that they've been getting before.

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So now we're in a position in the United States where we have both enormous offensive lobbies

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and enormous defensive lobbies. For the defensive lobbies always fight harder.

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They fight to keep the expectation of the money for going. And that apparatus has been

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built up in the past ten years. I think it's going to be extremely difficult to dismantle.

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What was your reaction when you first saw the Apache video that is now infamous?

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When I first saw this, we didn't know that there was a general cent. We didn't know who they were,

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we didn't know the circumstances. We knew this was a tape of a helicopter attack and otherwise nothing.

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So I could immediately see that this was a risk for attack on people walking in the street in a relaxed manner.

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But I didn't know where they are and where they really are. The bad guys, they seemed

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incredibly relaxed. It seemed like this was an attack that was very provocative.

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So if these people were insurgents, then they were insurgents on having a break playing on the street in a suburb.

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But as we dug deeper and deeper, the situation became more and more appalling.

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So we found that clearly, nearly all of these people were not armed.

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Clearly, there were two cameramen, they're holding cameras, not arms.

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These cameramen turned out to be warriors' news reporters.

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Then looking at this wounded man crawling on the curb,

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we could spending more time in the detail. It was clear that there was no arms being picked up.

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That he was just been rescued by a passerby.

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Could you hear the voices? Could you hear the voices from the helicopter at this point?

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Yeah, we could hear the voices from the helicopter and, you know, sort of the grotesque language that

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soldiers have. What really struck me was not this very dark grotesque humor.

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I can accept that.

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People exercise black humor very black humor sometimes in war.

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Rather, it was the another day at the office.

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Feel to all the proceedings. How routine it was to kill these 18 to 26 people.

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And that a whole street covered with bodies, the reaction to that, was nice.

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This tape from me and the other people involved made nice and dirty word.

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So we just couldn't see something has been nice anymore when a whole street covered with carnage is nice.

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The reaction, let me ask you, what did you make of the reaction to it in the media?

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The mainstream media reaction to the release of this video.

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We have been involved in obviously many different stories that have produced

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fall out in the United States in the countries.

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But this one was over degree and of a specific issue.

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The real able to sort of plot how all this unfold and blew out and what the

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back reaction was. So initially, on the TV networks,

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there was an attempt to immediately downplay this.

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So for example, CNN, we'll split so, I mean, they only showed.

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They took the first segment, which is not the most appalling on the first attack.

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And then blanked out all the shooting. And then said, this was out of sympathy or difference to the

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families. But there's no blood here, you can just see dust coming up.

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And then immediately started apologizing for the military saying, oh, well, it's hard for our soldiers.

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Reminders that war is more difficult. No condemnation, not even any request for an inquiry,

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which is the sort of neutral response. Well, we don't want to blame people before all the facts

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are in, although actually, if you see the video, you've got most of them. But we want to know

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everything about this. We want this inquiry to be open. We want to fall disclosure. We want to know

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why this video was withheld from Reuters for so long. So we're going to know where the children

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who were in New Compense did daily, all these things, which would be sort of in a natural reaction.

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I did not take place in the broadcast networks. Then, for CNN and NBC, there was,

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I think, a sort of internal revolt by journalists who were seeing other journalists

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slowed down in the streets of Baghdad. So I pushed back against the editorial management

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decision to treat it so briefly and incentivize way. So the next day saw a richer

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discussion. And then it flipped. Then, enormous editorial space, both in the printed press

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and in TV press opened up for military apologists and no space opened up for anyone else,

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including people with new facts, including the soldiers on the ground who were there,

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the only English speaking witnesses, the only US witnesses and the only soldiers speaking.

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Those people couldn't get into the mainstream press and couldn't get on to TV.

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Talk about that one, the one soldier who his name was McCord, is that right?

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Yeah, one of the soldiers on the ground who was one of those who see arriving at the van.

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Ethan McCord. Ethan McCord is a soldier about 30 years old. It was in the ground unit that

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was been serviced if you like, by the patches in this in this way. And they marched in and arrived

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to where the bodies were in the shooting up the van. And Ethan heard the child crying in the van

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historically and pulled out the girl saw the boy and thought the boy was dead.

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Took the child away from the van to sort of intermediate location and then went to look for anyone

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else in the van and just saw the boy was just breathing and pulled him out. So he ended up being

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covered with a blood of his children. And he was quite disturbed by this event and he got in contact with

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us immediately after the video was published and he produced a statement to a letter of apology

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to this family. Of course he was involved directly with killing a bit indirectly.

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It was his unit that was being serviced by the suspension and indirectly that it was part of the

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US Army in Iraq. But he says that he complained to his superiors about the event and they just

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told him to stop being a pussy in the suck it up. And he's tried quite hard to draw attention to what

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happened in the mainstream to get the mainstream for his interest in. In it, within two days of us

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revealing the material. So why it was still newsworthy? It can't be an excuse in the US press too.

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Well the moment had passed and therefore I guess his story is interesting but the moment has passed

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because at the very same time that he was trying to get his story across,

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editorial space was being given to military apologists who were just war is hard and

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these things had these things happened. And you didn't show the full context and

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they were shooting that morning. So it's not like you know, and the soldiers, it's difficult

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to say, no, to get whatever. Not new facts. Whereas this soldier had new facts about what had

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happened then and incident happened. It immediately after. I mean it was interesting about him. He also

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had an overview and he described what had happened that day as a common occurrence and he talked about

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if there's any kind of threat or perceived threat to American soldiers. They would let everybody

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have it. He said let all the motherfuckers have it of 360 degrees. That's right. If there was an idea.

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He was instructed. If there if an idea goes off anywhere in the street then

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360 degree rotational fire and just take out everyone. Everyone, children, everyone gets it.

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I guess as to try and act as a disincentive for the local population for supporting any

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idea placement. And that's what happened. It's not that he was told that and it didn't happen.

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But rather that happened and he was instructed. So he and some other soldiers in the unit who

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liked that instruction apparently. Five high when those orders came. When an idea went off

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and they were instructed to fire those orders. What what do the leaks around this issue tell you about

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whether this particular incident was as the government, the US government claims,

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an aberration or not? We have seen in other leaks. I mean, I just have a vast number of

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these type of incidents. And when I say these type what I mean is indiscriminate attacks on civilians.

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Not deliberate attacks on civilians. It's important to make clear but just not giving it down.

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Not caring whether they are or whether they are. Sometimes occasional attack,

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deliberate attacks on civilians. But those do seem to be rare in the record. But just maybe they

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are maybe they're not that we want to shoot. And so go for it. Ethan McCord and one of his fellow

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soldiers who were in that ground unit, they say that they were surprised that was this video

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that leaked because there were many many worse instances. And this was a sort of every day,

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no currents. Not every day that journalists were killed. Although I did read the statistics that

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they have been seven warriors journalists killed. Back there in all of them were killed by

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the US military fire. But probably the only reason we were talking about this now is because they

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were too journalists there. And they were sort of trackable and warriors put in a free

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movement of nation act request. Whereas if they weren't journalists, if they were just regular

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citizens of Baghdad, we wouldn't even be talking about it. The material just would have been buried.

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They would have been no internal investigation at all, which prompted the eventual leaking.

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So this is a kind of tip of an awful iceberg in many ways. It's not because

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a war like Iraq and a war like Afghanistan. If not directed at civilians, civilians become

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the casualties. Their civilians wore us and what has sent something. No, there's a

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old statement that absolutely power corrupts absolutely. And you can see from this video that

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when you're in an Apache with a zoom lens that can show you people's face from one

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mile up in the sky. And you have a 30 millimeter cannon and you shoot and there's no

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effect against you. You can't even hear the screams. And when you get back to base,

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there's no discipline for seizures against you. The wind this happens every day,

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the days for a year, of course it's incredibly corrupting. And these people are shot in the same way

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that every day person walks over ants on the street because they just seem to be

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irrelevant. They're not complaining. There's no discipline for seizure. And so as the war goes along,

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civilians do become just something to get rid of because they're annoying or have no concern

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over. And why there are some of these civilian massacre cases do a cheap prominence. And then

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a do a fine genuine concern by some of the higher general's or by other groups looking into them.

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That's not what we see for the everyday cases of civilian kills. And we have acquired records

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of six years worth of civilian kills for a rock and Afghanistan. And not just the big ones

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where there's 100 people killed or 20 people killed, where there is some investigation of

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publicity sometimes. But rather this sort of everyday incident where a man might be in one case,

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you know Afghanistan, a man is seen to be running away after US soldiers approach.

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And they try to shoot him against jam. So he's running towards a village. So what did they do?

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It comes up jam. They get the artillery and they shell him. There's one man they want shells towards him.

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They over shoot hit the village and they kill a five-rock boy. So there's hundreds and hundreds of those

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small incidences which sort of reveal the the squalor of war at a micro-scopic detail. It's not

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always these big kill events. It's these little events where there's a lack of concern and care

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about the sort of lethal engagement or the use of lethal force. Another example from Afghanistan

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is American troops going through an area, they're not receiving fire. But they see some unexploded

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ordinance. They see a one point five meter shell that's sitting there in a sort of dusty area.

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And could it be a village? Possibly. Could be a village? I mean they could just walk past

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what should they do? Should they shoot it? Should they call in their bond of squalor's squad,

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which is what you normally do and have a taken care of. They call in their strike instead.

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To take out just this one unexploded shell. Now presumably these are guys and Afghanistan

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they're bored. They want to see what their strikes like up close. It's very easy. It's a day time.

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They call an astrike. The astrike. Overshoots. The shell. It's a village. This is sort of just a lack of concern,

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lack of care. Are these particular incidents from the documents that you've released

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in July? Yes, that's right. And there's hundreds, hundreds like that. Can you just describe the

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almost the panorama of these documents? They're across Afghanistan. Yeah, a lander up there.

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So for Afghanistan this is 91,000 reports by troops on the ground and by some intelligence people back

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at the base. These are like done just starts and event happens or are updated during the course of

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a day. So there's a raw data before, before bandicoons been doctors have had a chance to mess

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out of it. Although that said sometimes troops don't put things in there that might incriminate

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their meal. And for Iraq this is 490,000 reports over the same period. 490,000.

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Or a 98,000 over the same period of time. That's a hell of a leak. That's a really extraordinary thing.

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This is the most finely detailed history of war that has ever been disclosed.

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Besides times, locations, kill counts. Although the kill counts are sometimes massaged.

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But kill counts, people detained. What happened from the US troops point of view? They're not

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reliable narrators, but you can't hide everything when you're producing so much detail so quickly.

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And I mean, statistics extraordinary. We're sorry, we're ready to computer program to add up all these

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kill counts. And so for Afghanistan this is in the hundreds of thousands. Hundreds of thousands.

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It's important to remember this wasn't just a figure of a hundred thousand. This hundreds of thousands

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is a result of adding up all the individual cases which are documented. So the individual

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cases that the highest kill count was 480 or so related to a stampede that occurred on a breach.

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490 people were killed. Checking this in the news report seems like it was more like a thousand

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people were killed. But in the internal US military reporting it's 480 people who were killed.

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And that's the single highest event. That's sort of an unusual. Next one down was a US sweeping

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operation that killed about 300. Some of these events are on the surface disturbing. So the highest

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kill count event in Afghanistan killed 181 people in a US operation led by Canada. I call the operation

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the juicer in December 2006. And that kill count of 181 there was only one wounded.

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One wounded. One wounded. It says no civilians were killed and they were no captures.

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So if we then look at what was a sort of military hardware deployed. So it speaks about some ground

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force sweeping and so on. A couple of people went to the benelie everyone.

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Who has been killed was killed by an AC 130 gunship. So this is an AC 130 is a big

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cargo plane which is being converted to have be decked out with machine guns and tank guns and

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saturation from high up. But it's a plane that's moving. This is it's not exact.

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And in the course of 362 people are described as being killed by this. And then there's also an unexplained

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missing 90 or so people were at their how they are killed is not established in the report that they

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are listed as having been killed in two places. I just they call these all Taliban the enemy.

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Yeah they're all called the enemy. Looking at that operation, a juicer killed.

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That broader operation. Quite interesting. I mean I hadn't heard about this before.

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But this was the biggest according to the Canadian military, the biggest operation in Afghanistan

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post-invasion. And but Afghanistan wasn't when people's radar in December 2006. The rock was.

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But during that week they say they killed about a thousand Taliban. But actually what happened is

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that this was in a region of about 20k out of Canada where there's lots of vineyards.

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And there was the government installed by US forces posted 2001 invasion,

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had become extremely corrupt. And the local people had grown to support the Taliban in

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United effort to clean out this government. And then when US and Canadian and

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I-Saf, so the Allied forces. The western forces came in. These people

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not just Taliban. They do seem to have been Taliban there. But the local population were supportive.

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And so the main in the vineyards, the workers in the vineyards, were killed

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along with these others. And seems to, if we read the press reports at the time, some press say it's

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50-50-50% teleband, 50% local people. It's pretty hard to gauge from the on the ground reporting.

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But we look at events like this, like document shows. And we see something pretty disturbing.

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A lot of people killed very little time using indiscriminate fire. No investigation into 181

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people being killed. The biggest kill of single event in Afghanistan, post 2001.

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It doesn't smell right. It's suppose that those doing the killing,

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who I'm assuming they regard everybody as the Taliban or as insurgent.

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The patent, the- So who isn't? The pat- the patent we see in Iraq,

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kind of kind of kind of kind of the very clear patent. And it's not just me who sees this, but other

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war reporters. Is that anyone who's a man is and dead is an insurgent. That's how they are

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always listed on reports. And it's only after there's some investigation, usually stimulated by the press,

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or by competing the literary reporting on it. There's a sort of pull down from that number.

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Not any man who is dead is the surgeon of Taliban.

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Children, if their bodies are hold enough to see, and remember things like 30 millimeter cannon

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fire, I would decimate the body. Arlis stood as children, so they're not the citizen's

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surgeons, and women can go either way. And so as an example, if we look at Kundus, this is

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an era strike that occurred in Afghanistan last year, where it was called in by the German military.

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Petal tankers, about three kilometers away from German military positions, had been put in a riverbed,

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and the local people were unlaid, unleading the petrol from them, taking this off.

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Now the allegation is that the Taliban hijacked these petrol tankers, and was then giving

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the petrol to local population, which is quite possibly true. I mean, maybe they're trying to

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carry favour of local population, but the reality is there was over 100 people clustered around this

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tanker, taking the petrol, and they weren't going either, they're sitting there. So air strike was

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called in and killed most of these people. Yet, when we look at the internal military reporting

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by the United States, what we see is in these legal reports, 57 in search and skilled.

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When we look at the internal military reporting for the claddle murder, this Iraq

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massacre, which included two warriors journalists that have been in July 2007, what we see is

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14 people killed, and they were actually between 18 to 26 people killed, and all of them

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insurgents, except for two children who were wounded. So even the writers' camera man

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were listed as insurgents. And your warriors came in contact and said, hey, where's our camera man?

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I mean, for you to receive that volume of documentation suggests that there must be

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something of a rebellion going on within the system.

379
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Yes, I mean, it's the one hopeful thing. It's in fact, there are good people in the US military.

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There are good people in military intelligence organizations, and some of those people have had enough.

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And so they provide us with evidence of abuse. And I mean, that's um, it is sort of another way of being a

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conscientious objective. In fact, argue with your far more powerful way of objecting to the wall.

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And what about among journalists is there were rebellion amongst journalists. I mean, you said

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some time ago, I think the journalists need to respect their readers and viewers.

385
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How did journalists by a large react to WikiLeaks? Of course, some are very impressed, obviously.

386
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But you've described, for example, the reaction in the United States was CNN and NBC and CBS

387
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and so on. That's journalists being used to justify it. So how did journalists, how are journalists

388
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dealing with the arrival of WikiLeaks? Yeah, very interesting mixture. So, you know, it seems like

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all the good journalists support us and all the bad ones don't. But of course, maybe that's just my

390
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interpretation based upon this. Probably a good interpretation. But um, it does seem that the more

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accomplished and independent the journalists, the more they are likely to support us.

392
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The more they are able, in fact, to, the more established they are as an independent journalist with

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their own independent reputation that they can choose to take from one newspaper to another. They can

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choose to take from one network to another. If they're stopped around, it seems like the more they

395
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are able to state their support for us. Whereas the journalists who are not in that

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position of freedom, that are more part of the group of the company, that they're companymen,

397
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they're more likely to be critical. And because your very WikiLeaks is very threatening to systems

398
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and the BBC is a system, the network making this documentary, ITV is a system.

399
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So, individual journalists, as opposed to the organizations that they're working in, are supportive

400
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of us in that they may be able to collaborate with us or use our material. And that can be extremely

401
00:44:26,840 --> 00:44:32,200
important material. And some people have an ability to see that and they want to help them.

402
00:44:32,200 --> 00:44:37,800
And so, you get that material out to the public or bring extra angles in on it or use their

403
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existing understanding to help flinch it out. So, they see us as, you know, as colleagues.

404
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And then we have a group that sees us as competition, that sees us as a threat.

405
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And in the regular sort of competitive news competitive news ants, but also in that we

406
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are demanding certain standards. So, higher levels of information, harder to get information.

407
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And the use of primary sources in material that has been released in print. So, that makes

408
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them have to work harder. So, they see us as a threat. And then there's another group that

409
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appreciates what we're doing because we're drawing the fire. The we are the free press band guard.

410
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We are the sort of defender of whistleblowers. And we knew that whole field

411
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further out. And that creates a sort of a vacuum behind us into which these people can come.

412
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Which doesn't have any fire because we're attracting the opposition by pushing in for it. And that's

413
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quite nice because over the last four years we have been changing the standard. So,

414
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there's some degree we are now the status quo. We are something that exists. There's an economic

415
00:46:02,520 --> 00:46:10,440
and political social need. You're the main stream. Go quite that far, but there's an understanding

416
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of political and economic understanding. But there is a place for we heal this in this world. And

417
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that if we were to disappear, that would be something you. I'm just quite, yeah, it's quite interesting

418
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about how you've shifted in. I mean here, the guard in media pages, every year, and this

419
00:46:30,840 --> 00:46:37,160
100 most important media people, you've probably seen this. This year they've included you.

420
00:46:37,960 --> 00:46:43,880
Yeah, this year 58. But last year we went in there at all. That's quite an improvement.

421
00:46:44,680 --> 00:46:51,720
The fact that you're in there is interesting. Very interesting. I mean, it's true we do have

422
00:46:51,720 --> 00:46:57,240
some influence, but I think it's also the case that those people in the garden who have

423
00:46:57,240 --> 00:47:04,120
put that list together. I'm sure it's totally accurate, but I'm sure that's also a desire.

424
00:47:05,240 --> 00:47:11,560
There's a desire for us to be leading in that way. And they want to support.

425
00:47:12,520 --> 00:47:19,400
It's important. And see that we do something beneficial for them, which is to open up this space.

426
00:47:20,120 --> 00:47:26,840
I mean, there's clearly a big shift underway, and we've talked about this already.

427
00:47:29,320 --> 00:47:36,520
But the shift is from traditional, so-called mainstream journalists, journalism,

428
00:47:37,480 --> 00:47:48,040
to what has become known as citizen journalism. Is that a very significant shift now?

429
00:47:48,040 --> 00:47:55,800
Is it the whole nature of journalism likely to change because of this trend?

430
00:47:57,480 --> 00:48:05,960
It is changing. And the changes will be dramatic. But I'm not one to sell

431
00:48:06,920 --> 00:48:11,880
citizen journalism as being at the moment, being a great answer yet.

432
00:48:12,840 --> 00:48:21,480
And because what I see in the alternative press is very little journalism going on. In fact,

433
00:48:21,480 --> 00:48:31,800
what I see is people taking the front page in your times. Using that is the issue of the day

434
00:48:32,440 --> 00:48:40,040
and saying, I don't agree with it, or I do agree with it. And when our idea is that

435
00:48:40,040 --> 00:48:46,440
our material would spark tremendous amounts of citizen journalism. Because all these people who

436
00:48:46,440 --> 00:48:54,680
write opinion pieces on blogs and so on, when given the complaint, why are you doing any real journalism?

437
00:48:54,680 --> 00:48:59,320
Why are you going in researching, investigating something? And they say, well, it takes a long

438
00:48:59,320 --> 00:49:04,200
time to build up sources. So we don't have anything new to talk about. So we have to just

439
00:49:05,000 --> 00:49:13,000
analyze what the mainstream press are doing. But we have produced hundreds of thousands or millions

440
00:49:13,640 --> 00:49:22,760
of pages of new source material that these people could analyze and could report. And it's extremely

441
00:49:22,760 --> 00:49:31,080
rare that they do. So the specific example that I like to use is we got hold of a classified U.S.

442
00:49:31,080 --> 00:49:37,000
intelligence report into what happened in the war in Follusion. So this was a left course to let

443
00:49:37,000 --> 00:49:46,200
breed that invasion of the town of Follusion in Iraq in 2004, of course, Iraq itself had already

444
00:49:46,200 --> 00:49:52,360
been invaded, but Follusion was some kind of holdout to the New Government that had been put in place

445
00:49:52,440 --> 00:50:01,400
by the United States, the Coalition Parasional Authority. And that the circumstances of that invasion

446
00:50:01,400 --> 00:50:09,480
is some U.S. contractors going through this area had been killed. Anyway, so we're not wanting

447
00:50:09,480 --> 00:50:17,800
to go into the detail, but that was a very bloody invasion and it ended up with a pullout.

448
00:50:18,520 --> 00:50:26,200
And a reinvasion, some five months later. So what was the circumstances? Everyone knew that

449
00:50:26,200 --> 00:50:32,520
all sorts of tragedy had occurred in that town. This report, in fact, revealed both how things

450
00:50:32,520 --> 00:50:38,520
progressed militarily, how things progressed politically, spoke specifically about Paul Bremer,

451
00:50:38,520 --> 00:50:42,840
who was the head of the Coalition, the Regional Authority, the role of our Jazeera,

452
00:50:43,480 --> 00:50:49,960
in that town of the Media War, as well as the on the ground war, the different tribal regions,

453
00:50:49,960 --> 00:50:56,760
classified secret via U.S. Army, ground intelligence. So we took this classified U.S. intelligence

454
00:50:56,760 --> 00:51:05,400
report about Mlugia and released it. So all citizens in journalists, academics,

455
00:51:06,360 --> 00:51:13,400
employee journalists, we'd analyze it, write about it, call up the US military, ask them about it,

456
00:51:14,760 --> 00:51:20,600
ask the countries involved, human rights groups, what was going on etc. This was the raw

457
00:51:20,600 --> 00:51:30,200
primary ingredient that you needed to actually do some journalism. And mail this out to 3500 people

458
00:51:31,080 --> 00:51:40,920
on our mailing list. And the result was not a single citizen journalist did anything. The first

459
00:51:40,920 --> 00:51:49,400
person to publish was a print shown in the U.P.I. He was a national security reporter. And then another

460
00:51:49,480 --> 00:51:58,280
five professional press journalists, not all of them full-time journalists, some working for the

461
00:51:58,280 --> 00:52:03,880
Asia Times, half time and working for the K-to Institute, half time as an example of one of these

462
00:52:03,880 --> 00:52:13,480
five. But the bloggers, the political activists of all kinds, in fact, didn't do anything with

463
00:52:14,120 --> 00:52:17,160
this material. So I mean, that's interesting. So real information

464
00:52:18,920 --> 00:52:23,000
or can almost paralyze as if they don't know what to do with it.

465
00:52:23,640 --> 00:52:28,840
Well, over time we are seeing that we're sort of training people up a bit. So it's getting better

466
00:52:28,840 --> 00:52:32,760
over time. People are dying to become used to this emerging information and on the

467
00:52:32,760 --> 00:52:40,600
lecture, understanding that when we release it is definitely true. But yeah, it's a very surprising

468
00:52:40,600 --> 00:52:46,680
effect. I mean, that report, as an example, it looked good. It wasn't just that it had the

469
00:52:46,680 --> 00:52:54,760
important details. It wasn't too long. It was only 630 pages. It was accessible. It had a nice map

470
00:52:54,760 --> 00:52:59,720
of Felizur on the front, split into tribal words. And no one picked it up. No one picked it up.

471
00:53:00,440 --> 00:53:07,640
And eventually, professional press picked it up. You're making some very serious enemies.

472
00:53:07,640 --> 00:53:20,920
Not least of all, a government engaged in two repatious wars. How do you deal with what must

473
00:53:20,920 --> 00:53:27,880
be a sense of that danger? Do you ignore it or do you accommodate it within yourself?

474
00:53:28,280 --> 00:53:36,280
So, not at all. I think a lot of people say, we're very courageous in our work.

475
00:53:37,320 --> 00:53:46,040
And I wouldn't reject that label entirely. We're not uncharagers. But to me, courage is not the absence

476
00:53:46,040 --> 00:53:52,440
of fear at all. Courage is the intellectual mastery of fear of our understanding. So we just

477
00:53:52,440 --> 00:53:57,480
understand what the risks are and having understood them, labels navigate the path through them.

478
00:53:58,840 --> 00:54:03,320
One of my good friends who's a reporter for the standard newspaper in Kenya.

479
00:54:04,680 --> 00:54:11,080
Investigative head whenever he is about to publish a big story, exposing a changing government.

480
00:54:11,080 --> 00:54:16,680
And they were raped. The newspaper was rated by the police a couple of years ago. He publishes. He

481
00:54:16,760 --> 00:54:22,840
goes to Tanzania. He waits to see what happens. Eventually, he becomes clear what's going to happen.

482
00:54:22,840 --> 00:54:27,800
He comes back. If he doesn't understand the risks, he understands the risks, can he see such

483
00:54:27,800 --> 00:54:34,280
it's relatively low risk, then he publishes any states in Nairobi. And so that's how we work.

484
00:54:35,000 --> 00:54:43,720
What do you do? Because your public thought unlikely to go through the United States at the moment.

485
00:54:44,520 --> 00:54:56,760
Well, in July of 2010, I had three speaking engagements in the United States, including one of

486
00:54:56,760 --> 00:55:04,440
the investigative reporters in Editors' conference in Las Vegas. A panel there with Scott Ryzen,

487
00:55:05,080 --> 00:55:11,880
New York Times, National Security reporter, and Valerie Plain was also in the panel. I canceled my visit

488
00:55:11,880 --> 00:55:17,800
to United States because there's some information that was coming out from our sources.

489
00:55:18,680 --> 00:55:24,680
Within the US administration saying that it would be a danger to me to go to United States.

490
00:55:26,440 --> 00:55:32,680
In the Pentagon recently, I asked the Assistant Secretary of Defense Brian Whitman.

491
00:55:34,440 --> 00:55:40,120
This, I said, can you, as a senior official of the United States government,

492
00:55:40,600 --> 00:55:45,880
can you give a guarantee that the editors of WikiLeaks and the editor

493
00:55:45,880 --> 00:55:52,760
in chief himself who is not American, that you are not in danger, that they themselves will not be

494
00:55:52,760 --> 00:56:01,880
subjected to the kind of hunt that we've read about in the media. And his reply to Natural,

495
00:56:01,880 --> 00:56:07,320
well, first of all, it's not my position to give guarantees on anything.

496
00:56:08,280 --> 00:56:12,920
I mean, how do you feel about that?

497
00:56:14,200 --> 00:56:17,960
More of sounds like keeping all options on the table to me.

498
00:56:18,680 --> 00:56:24,040
And they're not good options, are they? I don't want to dramatize this too much, but

499
00:56:25,640 --> 00:56:31,160
you're in a sort of unique position in a way, aren't you?

500
00:56:31,880 --> 00:56:35,240
I don't know. We're in a WikiLeaks before.

501
00:56:35,240 --> 00:56:39,480
There hasn't, and they don't know how to deal with us. And there's no,

502
00:56:41,720 --> 00:56:43,880
something that has preserved us is that there's no

503
00:56:46,040 --> 00:56:51,240
in the United States or in any other country. There is no department to deal with WikiLeaks.

504
00:56:52,280 --> 00:56:56,600
Most of those government departments are split up into regional focuses.

505
00:56:57,560 --> 00:57:03,560
So there's no sort of specialists in dealing with what we are, or understanding what we are,

506
00:57:03,560 --> 00:57:09,880
or understanding how to deal with us. But I mean, a serious statement's coming out of the US administration

507
00:57:09,880 --> 00:57:14,760
under the surface that implied that they would not follow the rule of law.

508
00:57:16,760 --> 00:57:19,560
They would not follow the rule of law. They would not follow the rule of law.

509
00:57:19,560 --> 00:57:22,680
And that is a serious matter. It's a certain record there.

510
00:57:23,400 --> 00:57:27,880
And there were senior figures like Sihush giving me warnings.

511
00:57:28,840 --> 00:57:35,000
I've been a US national security reporter. And so I mean, we listened to those warnings and

512
00:57:35,000 --> 00:57:42,840
took appropriate security precautions. That said, I think our political position in countries

513
00:57:42,840 --> 00:57:51,560
like United Kingdom, Australia, Iceland, Germany, and other countries with less strength.

514
00:57:53,400 --> 00:57:59,320
Is such that it is impossible to, I mean, arrest me here and then I can do politically.

515
00:58:00,040 --> 00:58:07,640
It is just not possible to do that. And why some intermediary bureaucrat might do it and not understand

516
00:58:07,640 --> 00:58:16,440
the political risk. Eventually, the matter would be pushed up high enough. And people in

517
00:58:16,440 --> 00:58:23,000
with better understanding of politics will go do not do that. That's just going to create a terrible

518
00:58:23,000 --> 00:58:32,600
political dilemma for everyone concerned. Don't do it. I note your preemptive strike in response

519
00:58:32,600 --> 00:58:39,960
when you posted on WikiLeaks a leaked Pentagon document that says that the US intelligence

520
00:58:40,040 --> 00:58:47,080
intends to destroy WikiLeaks. And the words used are that they would want it to fatally marginalise

521
00:58:47,400 --> 00:58:55,640
the organization. And the story are center of gravity. They're using sort of military language,

522
00:58:55,640 --> 00:59:02,520
which is what they say is the trust that sources and public happiness. They can destroy that.

523
00:59:02,520 --> 00:59:08,280
Then they can stop US military whistleblowers coming to us. And they say the word whistleblowers.

524
00:59:08,360 --> 00:59:14,520
I mean, they're not talking about, or at least not just talking about unauthorized

525
00:59:14,520 --> 00:59:20,440
disclosures, which may or may not be revealing abuse. They are saying whistleblowers people who

526
00:59:20,440 --> 00:59:26,760
reveal abuse. They give examples. Examples given are Guantanamo Bay, when we released the main

527
00:59:26,760 --> 00:59:31,480
menace with this which revealed that they are hiding people from the Red Cross falsifying documents

528
00:59:31,800 --> 00:59:40,040
on. Felugia and abuses that we revealed there. And a number of other cases. So these are

529
00:59:41,080 --> 00:59:46,840
upset with us because we are revealing abuses and embarrassing the United States military.

530
00:59:48,600 --> 00:59:54,600
So we released that report which was written in 2008. We released this earlier in 2010.

531
00:59:54,680 --> 01:00:00:03,720
As maybe as a preempt to write, I mean it's putting them on notice. And by us releasing that

532
01:00:03,720 --> 01:00:12,520
there is an understanding that didn't come from nowhere that report clearly came from some

533
01:00:12,520 --> 01:00:18,360
intelligence inside the United States. We have support inside the US intelligence community.

534
01:00:19,160 --> 01:00:28,120
So it is difficult and dangerous for people within the US intelligence community to try and

535
01:00:28,120 --> 01:00:34,280
investigate us because they will be dissidents at the full step forward and reveal that. So they

536
01:00:34,280 --> 01:00:40,120
have to tread very carefully. What happens when you return to Australia, your homeland, because when

537
01:00:40,200 --> 01:00:51,720
you went back recently, they took away your passport saying that it was look worn and something

538
01:00:53,160 --> 01:00:58,760
you've perhaps needed a new one. But miraculously you didn't need a new one. They gave it back to you

539
01:00:58,760 --> 01:01:06,120
sometime later. And just a little bit after that they also searched my bags and made references

540
01:01:06,120 --> 01:01:11,880
to Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Australian Federal Police, specific information that had to

541
01:01:11,880 --> 01:01:20,520
come off their database file. So it's quite interesting. In Australia, I mean there is a sort of patriotism

542
01:01:20,520 --> 01:01:29,640
in Australia that is proud of what he looks and proud of me. And that is defensive. And as a result

543
01:01:29,720 --> 01:01:37,560
there have been very positive articles in the Fairfax press and in the Australian.

544
01:01:39,320 --> 01:01:46,280
So I'm told by politically connected people in Australia that it would be extremely difficult to

545
01:01:47,560 --> 01:01:55,320
arrest me to take me or deport me or are there volunteers in Australia? That said,

546
01:01:55,400 --> 01:02:07,480
there has been extensive spy on our people in that country, which I assume has been agreed to

547
01:02:07,480 --> 01:02:13,480
in some way by the Australian government and we have some information about the Australian government

548
01:02:13,480 --> 01:02:24,760
being involved in that. Is it hard after a while to keep these shadows at bay, do you get used to them?

549
01:02:24,840 --> 01:02:32,440
You must say to yourself, look, I can't become paranoid about this. I'm going to live a normal life.

550
01:02:33,480 --> 01:02:40,600
Is that difficult? I'd be come pretty easy. I mean we have some security precautions,

551
01:02:40,600 --> 01:02:44,680
we have some security procedures, we have different people doing different things,

552
01:02:44,680 --> 01:02:52,280
different places depending on their need for security. For me, it doesn't matter if I'm followed around,

553
01:02:52,440 --> 01:03:00,760
I've provided I'm not meeting with the source. Quite a few BBC journalists who have got in touch with me

554
01:03:02,120 --> 01:03:11,160
and want to talk about the pressure within the BBC. In other words, they represent the kind of rebellion

555
01:03:12,200 --> 01:03:21,640
that you're describing. What would you say to people like then in an institution like the BBC or

556
01:03:21,640 --> 01:03:31,240
indeed journalists who are led by their conscience or just by their professional integrity

557
01:03:31,240 --> 01:03:35,560
within certain organisations? What would you say to them? What can they do?

558
01:03:35,560 --> 01:03:41,880
When your stories are killed, get them to us and we'll publish them. It's the simplest one

559
01:03:41,880 --> 01:03:48,200
or when the primary source material is, is a press get them to us. You don't have to leave the

560
01:03:48,200 --> 01:03:54,440
institution. You can work on the inside and on the outside and keep this line between the two

561
01:03:54,440 --> 01:03:59,560
invisible. What they can't get on there and what they can't get in the paper, give to them.

562
01:03:59,560 --> 01:04:05,160
Okay, let's get on. Unfortunately, there's no so much career.

563
01:04:05,160 --> 01:04:11,240
Motivation do that because you're kind of sticking to your name on it. At the time, but later on,

564
01:04:11,240 --> 01:04:16,040
maybe you can put your name on it. When you leave the institution. What wouldn't you accept?

565
01:04:17,000 --> 01:04:22,680
What wouldn't you publish? What leak wouldn't you publish? Unlike every other

566
01:04:23,480 --> 01:04:31,400
news organisation, we say precisely in policy, what we will and will not accept

567
01:04:32,200 --> 01:04:40,040
the material that we publish. So we say to whistleblowers, we will take material that hasn't appeared before.

568
01:04:40,120 --> 01:04:45,240
It is been some force of pressing it legal or threat of violence or being fired.

569
01:04:46,520 --> 01:04:52,760
And the disobdip thematic, political, ethical, or historical significance. And you didn't write it

570
01:04:52,760 --> 01:05:00,120
so. So provided it fits that, we will publish it. Now, we might go through some harm in

571
01:05:00,120 --> 01:05:06,840
myisization process in the interim. So the only forms that has taken is, as things out with a

572
01:05:06,840 --> 01:05:12,440
British national party, when we publish their secret, membership lists. We contacted all these people

573
01:05:12,440 --> 01:05:18,360
ahead of time and we said, we're going to publish this in a few days. We're giving you the heads up,

574
01:05:18,360 --> 01:05:23,320
just in case this, you know, you telephone them with the public and so on and causes problems.

575
01:05:24,200 --> 01:05:32,680
You go and sort it out. So that has always worked so far, where aware of no incidents,

576
01:05:32,760 --> 01:05:38,600
where anyone has come to any sort of physical harm, as a result of anything we've published,

577
01:05:39,160 --> 01:05:42,840
we are aware quite a few results where people have been fired or lost elections,

578
01:05:43,640 --> 01:05:48,520
as a result of things that we've published, but that seem to be on the side of the angels.

579
01:05:51,240 --> 01:05:57,080
If it's some stage that policy doesn't seem to be working, then we'll create a new policy.

580
01:05:57,640 --> 01:06:02,120
Remember, our goal is just as our main sister and transparency. We don't confuse these two.

581
01:06:02,760 --> 01:06:11,560
The propaganda efforts of governments has become vast. I read an AP investigation that said the

582
01:06:11,560 --> 01:06:19,480
US was spending 4.7 billion over the last five years on basically winning half some minds,

583
01:06:19,480 --> 01:06:29,640
not of the enemy, but of its own people. This kind of information war and portrays general

584
01:06:29,720 --> 01:06:38,200
portrays in his counter-insurgency manual refers to wars of perception in which the media is one of the weapons.

585
01:06:41,480 --> 01:06:49,000
So information war has never been more important, but what happens when Wikki leaks runs into

586
01:06:49,400 --> 01:06:56,040
the United Kingdom, which has some of the most draconian secrecy laws in the world, such as the

587
01:06:56,120 --> 01:07:01,720
official secret sect. Isn't more difficult here to to mine information?

588
01:07:03,160 --> 01:07:10,840
We haven't found a problem publishing a UK information. I mean, when we look at the

589
01:07:10,840 --> 01:07:18,680
official secrets act, label documents, we see they state that it is an offense to

590
01:07:18,760 --> 01:07:27,080
retain the information and it is an offense to destroy the information. So the only possible outcome

591
01:07:27,080 --> 01:07:37,240
is that we have to publish the information. And that's which we have done on many many occasions.

592
01:07:37,240 --> 01:07:47,160
I noticed one of those that I had a personal interest in was one that from the Ministry of Defense

593
01:07:47,880 --> 01:07:53,640
classified document that equated terrorists with investigative journalists,

594
01:07:53,640 --> 01:07:59,400
so it's threat. And Russian spies? And Russian spies? Yes, as in fact many sections of that

595
01:07:59,400 --> 01:08:05,320
report, investigative journalists are the number one threat to the sort of information security

596
01:08:06,360 --> 01:08:13,720
of the Ministry of Defense. That was a two thousand page document on how to stop leaks

597
01:08:14,280 --> 01:08:20,440
of the Institute of Defense, which we leaked. I didn't know whether to be offended or honored.

598
01:08:21,720 --> 01:08:25,080
Well, it's nice to be having an impact.