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60 minutes rewind.

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Just a few months ago, most people had never heard of a website called WikiLeaks or of

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its mysterious and eccentric founder, Julian Assange.

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But in that short period of time, both have managed to rattle the worlds of journalism,

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diplomacy, and national security.

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WikiLeaks, which solicits and publishes secrets and suppressed material from whistleblowers

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around the world, has been under cyber-attack from governments that want to shut it down.

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And Assange is currently under legal attack from the US government, which would like

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to charge him with espionage for publishing volumes of classified material from the Pentagon

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and the State Department.

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We spent two days with him in Britain, where he is under house arrest, while fighting extradition

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to Sweden for questioning in two sexual assault cases, which he's called part of a smear campaign

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against him.

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His most extensive television interview to date, Assange talked to us about his work, his vision,

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and the prospect of facing criminal charges in the United States.

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I mean, you've been called a lot of names.

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You've been characterized as a hero and as a villain, a martyr, terrorists.

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I'm not yet a martyr.

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Right.

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Let's keep it that way.

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For now, Julian Assange is hold up on this view, college 600 acre English estate with an

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ankle bracelet, a 10 o'clock per few, and a slow internet connection.

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He declined to talk to us about the allegations in Sweden on the advice of his attorney.

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He has not been charged in proclaims his innocence.

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Well, I suppose if you have to be under house arrest, there could be worse places.

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Well, it's a guilty case.

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It's guilty.

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But when you're forced to stay somewhere, against your will, it does become something

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that you want to lead.

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It's a radical departure from the lifestyle that the parapotetic internet muck breaker

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is used to, bounding from city to city, country to country, and regularly changing his cell

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phones, hairstyles in general appearance.

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He says to elude surveillance and avoid being killed, kidnapped, or arrested.

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And there are reasons for his paranoia.

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In the last four years, WikiLeaks has published information that played some role in deciding

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the 2007 elections in Kenya, infusing the anger that recently brought down the government

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of Tunisia.

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It's to bold membership rules of a neo-Nazi organization in Britain and secret documents

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from the Church of Scientology.

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And that was before a song began publishing US secrets, provoking what he calls threatening

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statements from people close to power.

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Or what statements are you referring to?

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The statements by the vice president Biden saying, for instance, that I was a high-tech

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terrorist, Sarah Payland calling to our organization to be dealt with, like the Taliban and

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behind it down.

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There's either for my assassination or the assassination of my staff or for us to be kidnapped

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and renditioned back to the United States to be executed.

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Well, as you know, we have a first amendment and people can say whatever they want, including

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politicians.

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I don't think that many people in the United States took seriously the idea that you were

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a terrorist.

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I would like to believe that, on the other hand, the incitement to murder our serious

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issue.

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And unfortunately, there is a portion of the population that will believe in them and make

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carry them out.

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If nothing else, WikiLeaks is the latest demonstration that a small group of people with a

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powerful idea, can harness technology and affect large institutions.

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In WikiLeaks case, it was the idea to aggregate state-incorporate secrets, by setting

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up an online electronic drop box where whistleblowers around the world could anonymously

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upload sensitive and suppressed information.

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The secrets are stored on servers around the world, beyond the reach of governments

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or law enforcement, then released worldwide on the internet.

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The US does not have the technology to take the site down, because just the way the

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way out technology is constructed, the way the internet is constructed, it's quite hard to

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stop things reappear.

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So we've had a tax on particularly the main thing, there's little pieces of infrastructure

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knocked out, but we now have some 2,000 fully independent in every way.

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Websites where we are publishing around the world.

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WikiLeaks first caught the attention of most Americans last April when it released this

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video.

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It shows a US Apache helicopter crew in Iraq, opening fire on a group of suspected insurgents

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who were standing on a street corner in Baghdad.

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Some of them were armed.

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But two of them were journalists for moiders.

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It's just a lot of fire.

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It's just a lot of fire.

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It leased a dozen people were killed in the attack, some of them in a sense of billions.

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Then last July WikiLeaks released 76,000 classified field reports of US operations in Afghanistan.

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Provided a chaotic, in bleak, ground level view of the war.

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In October there were another 400,000 classified documents released from Iran, showing

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that civilian casualties there were much higher than the Pentagon had claimed.

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And finally in November, thousands of state department cables that lifted the veil on highly

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sensitive backroom diplomacy.

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The documents revealed that Arab leaders were lobbying the US to attack Iran.

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And that the state department had been secretly collecting intelligence on leaders at the

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United Nations.

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It triggered outcry as the dissonge was a political actor trying to damage the US government.

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Are you a subversive?

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I'm sure there are certain views amongst Hillary Clinton and her lot that we are subverting

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there authority.

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But you're right, we are subverting illegitimate authority.

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The question is whether the authority is legitimate or whether it is illegitimate.

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You consider the US State Department a legitimate authority?

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It's legitimate in so far is its actions a legitimate.

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It has actions that are not legitimate.

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And you've gone after the ones that you think are illegitimate.

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We don't go after.

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That's a bit of a misconception.

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We don't go off to a particular country.

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We don't go off to a particular organizational group.

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We just stick to our promise of publishing material that is likely to have a significant

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impact.

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To increase the impact of the US documents, a sange decided to share them with some of the

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leading news organizations in the world, including the New York Times, a relationship

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that grew testy when a sange published the first set of war logs without removing the

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names of Afghans who were cooperating with US forces.

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The most persistent criticism from within the press has been that you behave recklessly

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from time to time.

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And the example that they cite is that you've decided to release Afghan documents without

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rejecting the names of people who provided intelligence to the US government.

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There's no evidence or any credible allegation or even any allegation from an official body

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that we have caused any individual at any time to come to harm in the past four years.

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The Pentagon said that they've gone through all of these documents and they found the names

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of 300 people.

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Well, that's new public information to us.

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It's possible that there are 300 names in the publicly released Afghan material.

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We don't pretend that that process is absolutely perfect.

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We did hold back one in five documents for extra-harminization review.

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And we also improved our process.

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So when Iraq came around, there was not even a single name in it.

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I mean, there have been reports, people quoting Taliban leaders saying that they had the names

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of these people and that they weren't going to take retribution.

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The Taliban is not a coherent outfit, but we don't say that it is absolutely impossible

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that anything we ever publish will ever result in harm.

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We cannot say that.

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There's a perception on the part of some people who believe that your agenda right now

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is anti-American.

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It all, in fact, our founding values are those of the US revolution.

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There are those of people like Jefferson and Madison.

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And we have a number of Americans in our organization.

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If you're a whistleblower and you have material that is important,

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we will accept it, we will defend you and we will publish it.

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You can't turn away material simply because it comes from the United States.

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After the release of the State Department of Cables,

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the Attorney General Eric Holder condemned Wiki leaks for putting national security at risk.

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There's a real basis, there's a predicate for us to believe that crimes have been committed here.

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Holder announced that the Justice Department and the Pentagon were conducting a criminal

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investigation.

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They are reportedly looking at the espionage act of 1917 and other statutes to find a way to

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prosecute a song and expedite him to the US.

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It's completely outrageous.

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Are you surprised?

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I am surprised, actually.

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But you are screwing with the forces of nature.

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You have made some of the most powerful people in the world, your enemies.

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You had to expect that they might retaliate.

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Oh, you know, it fully expected that they retaliate.

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You took, you gathered, you stored all sorts of classified cables and documents and then

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released them to the world on the internet.

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They see that as a threat.

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And they want to put a they see it as highly embarrassing.

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I think what it's really about is keeping the illusion of control.

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It's a surprise about that.

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I am surprised at how the sort of flagrant disregard for US traditions.

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That is what I am surprised about.

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You're shocked.

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Someone in Australia in government said, look, if you if you play outside the rules,

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you can't expect to be protected by the rules and you play outside the rules.

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Oh, you have played outside the United States's rules.

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No, we've actually played inside the rules.

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We didn't go out to get the material.

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We operated just like any US publisher operates.

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We didn't play outside the rules.

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We played inside the rules.

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There are special set of rules in the United States for disclosing classified information.

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There is.

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There's a strong standing.

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There's special set of rules for soldiers,

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for members of the State Department who are disclosing classified information.

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There's not a special set of rules for publishers.

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There's closed class of information.

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There is the first amendment.

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It covers the case.

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And there's been no precedent that I'm aware of in the past 50 years of prosecuting a publisher for

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air spin arts.

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It is it is just not done.

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Those are the rules.

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You do not do it.

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No one has accused the song of stealing secrets.

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The Apache video and the classified documents were allegedly provided to wiki leaks by

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private first class Bradley Manning, a low-level intelligence analyst in Iraq,

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who is accused of copying them from a classified government network

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that a half a million people have access to.

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Manning is now in solitary confinement at a military prison in Virginia facing charges

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that could put him away for 50 years.

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You've called him a prisoner of conscience.

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Correct?

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I've said that if the allegations against him are true,

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then he is the foremost prisoner of conscience in the United States.

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And there's no allegation it was done for Manning.

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There's no allegation it's done for any other reasons.

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And a political reason.

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Now I'm sorry if people in the United States don't want to believe

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that they are keeping a political prisoner.

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But in Bradley Manning's case, the allegations are

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that he engaged in an illegal activity for political motivations.

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People in the United States think he's a traitor.

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That's clearly not true.

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Regardless of what happens to private Manning,

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any prosecution of the songs will be fraught with problems,

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because wiki leaks wasn't alone in publishing the classified material.

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The New York Times also published some of it.

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If the government were to try and prosecute wiki leaks enough to times,

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it would likely need to prove that a song was actively involved in a conspiracy

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to illegally obtain the documents.

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Did you encourage anyone to leak this material to you?

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Or have you done anything in connection with the US cases

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in terms of encouraging an individual to provide you with material?

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No, no.

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There are people that believe that it has everything to do with the next threat,

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that if they don't come after you now,

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that what they have done is essentially endorsed,

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small, powerful organization with access to very powerful information,

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releasing it outside their control.

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In a daylight, you get away with it, then they are in charge.

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I will have to have freedom of the press.

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Then they will encourage that it's encouragement to you

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and order some other organization.

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To every other publisher, absolutely correct.

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It will be encouragement to every other publisher to publish

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feellessly.

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That's what it will encourage.

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Publish information much more dangerous than this information.

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If we're talking about creating threats to small publishers,

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to stop them publishing, the US has lost its way.

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It has abrogated its founding traditions.

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It has thrown the first amendment in the bin,

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because publishers must be free to publish.

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The story will continue after this.

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Julian Assange is not your average journalist or publisher

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and some of our good that he's not really a journalist at all.

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He is an anti-establishment idealist with conspiratorial views.

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He believes large government institutions use secrecy to suppress the truth

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and he distrust the mainstream media for playing a law.

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Some people have called him an anarchist, which he denies.

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Assange prefers to be called a libertarian

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and believes that the only people who can adequately

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police the system are those on the inside who are in a position to notice the abuse

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and blow the whistle.

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While most reporters pride themselves in gathering information

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and interpreting it for a larger audience, the WikiLeaks model is different.

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It prefers to take raw data, make it available,

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and let others decide the meaning.

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Regardless of whether you agree with this idea or not,

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it beats close to the heart of the internet and a younger generation.

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It runs through the life of Julian Assange.

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You obviously have a mistrust of authority.

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Where does that come from?

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I think it comes from experience.

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We've various types of authorities.

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Assange gave us an example for his childhood.

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A story about him and his mother Christine, who is president one of his recent court hearings.

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She was a political activist to help scientists gather information

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about nuclear tests conducted by the British in the Australian Outback.

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He remembers them being stopped late one night in question by authorities.

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One of whom said,

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which he did for the next 10 years in order to make sure nothing happened to me.

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So that's a very early abuse of power and of secrecy that I saw in my life.

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His was an unconventional and sometimes tumultuous childhood.

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He was frequently uprooted and moved around the countryside

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and attended 37 different schools.

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So he's always been a little bit of an outsider.

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I've certainly when I was a child going from one school to another.

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You are the outside to begin with and you have to find your way in.

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But in most of the places where I stayed for long enough, I did find my way in.

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One of the first places Assange found his way into was populated by teenagers and computers.

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And he knew how to program them before most people had them.

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You got involved with computers pretty early.

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With hacking?

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Well, I first became involved with computers when I was 13 or so.

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And I was unusually adept.

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I saw a sort of intellectual opportunity understanding how to program and understanding how these complex machines work.

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And there was a part of a social culture in cracking codes to prove that you could do it.

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It's very actually normal and healthy amongst young men.

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You see it in skateboarders that are competing to show the day I cable and learning the best tricks.

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In your tricks where like breaking into computers at the Department of Defense and what's

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the most national laboratory, NASA, and Nortelle, some Canadian banks, all that happened.

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At age 20, Assange was arrested by the Australian Federal Police and eventually

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fled guilty to multiple counts of computer hacking.

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He managed to get off with no jail time because the judge concluded that he hadn't stolen in the

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information or done any damage.

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Is that still one of your primary skills?

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Not really, unfortunately, I've been sort of, you know, promoted up into management.

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So I don't get to do, I don't get to do that so much.

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But I know the terrain, which means I know what is possible.

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For example, Bill Gates could program, but he certainly doesn't program anymore, but he knows

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what is possible for other people to do.

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Except that Assange is not Bill Gates and WikiLeaks is not Microsoft.

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There's a shooting operation that created all the havoc as no permanent officers and as headquartered

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wherever Assange happens to be. WikiLeaks is a small, nonprofit organization with a handful of

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employees, a secret cadre of international programmers and a legion of worldwide volunteers.

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It's finances are administered by the Valhalla Foundation, based in Berlin,

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named after a famous hacker. According to its ledgers, WikiLeaks took in $1.3 million

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last year in donations with expenses of about $500,000.

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For somebody who abhor's secrets, you run a pretty secret organization.

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That's not true. What we want is transparent government, not transparent people.

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We are an organization who, one of our primary goals is to keep certain things secret,

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to keep the identities of sources secret.

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Sequency is an inherent part of our operation.

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The State Department would make the same argument. They have doing very sensitive work

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that they're trying to make peace and negotiate situations around the world very delicately.

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It's important that they do this in secrecy. What's the difference?

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We don't say that the State Department should have no secrets. That's not what we say.

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Rather we say that if there are people in the State Department,

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we say that there is some abuse going on. There's not a proper mechanism for internal accountability

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and external accountability. They must have a conduit to get that out to the public.

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And we are the conduit. Given all the attention that the Son just received,

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we were curious about how he thought he was being received in the United States.

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He told us he hasn't had the time to give it much thought.

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Do what I mean to give you my characterization of what I think people think?

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Sure. Mysterious. The little weird, a cult-like figure.

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Little paranoid?

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Well, you're repeating all the ad hominema tax by our critics.

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My role when I do something like speak about the death of 109,000 individual people in Iraq

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15,000 civilian casualties never before reported anywhere.

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That's a very serious role. That is not a role where I can engage in humour.

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So I'm not used to performing under the spotlight and I'm learning this as time is going by.

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You have shown a fair amount of contempt for the mainstream press over the years.

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Why did you decide to, as you use, the word partner with them in some of these most recent releases?

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We're a small organization. We're in a position say with cablegate where we have

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3,000 volumes of material that are very important to get out to the public in a responsible manner

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that have the potential for great change, for example, this recent revolution in Tunisia.

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It is logistically impossible. So instead, our organization delegates its excess

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source material to other journalists who will have more impact and will do a better job.

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There is an element of the press, most of the mainstream press, nobody wants to see you prosecuted

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because it could affect the way that they do their business. There's also a feeling within the community

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that you're not one of them, that you play a different game.

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We do play a different game and are hopefully in a new way.

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The point that they're making, I think, is that you're not a publisher, but you're also an activist.

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Well, we're a particular type of activist in the US context that seems to be

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a communist activist or something, so it's an educator.

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Somebody is a dirty, interested in it. It's a dirty word. People think that what you're trying to do

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is to sabotage the workings of government. We are not that type of activists.

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We are free press activists. It's not about saving the whales.

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It's about giving people the information they need to support whaling or not support whaling.

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Why? That is the raw ingredients that is needed to make adjustments in society. And without that,

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you're just sailing in the dock. There have been clear signs that a song under the threat of

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possible indictment by the Justice Department is moderated some of his views. Before releasing

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the last two batches of classified documents, a song and his lawyers contacted both the Pentagon

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and the State Department, offering to explore ways to minimize potential harm. In both cases,

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their offer was robust. A song's acknowledged that his fundraising has been heard by the decision

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of PayPal, Mastercard, Visa and Bank of America to cease handling donations. But he dismissed

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reports that WikiLeaks is wrapped by internal dissension and mass defection.

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We're talking about Daniel Darmashayberg, who was a German spokesperson, had a limited role in the

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organization. We had to suspend him some five months ago. Describes, he was being authoritarian,

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secretive, punitive. I'm the boss that suspended him. That's correct.

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You don't care to elaborate. I think I just did. You said you have this package of very damaging

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documents that sort of a poison pill that's going to be released if anything bad happens to you.

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That's not an old truth. That's some kind of media hype. What we do have is a system whereby

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we distribute encrypted backups of things we have yet to publish. There are backups,

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distributed amongst many, many people, 100,000 people. And that all we need to do is give them

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an encrypted key and they will be able to continue on. This was an intended to be a blackmail threat.

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Not at all. What would trigger that encryption code be a problem that prevented us from

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our ability to publish? Not just for a second, but prevented us significantly from being able to publish.

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You're a imprisonment, for example. If a number of people were imprisoned or assassinated,

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then we would feel that we could not go on. Other people would have to take over our work,

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and we would release those keys. One bank bank of America had a stock go down 3 to 5 percent

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based on a rumor, maybe it's rumor, maybe you know more about it, that you had the contents of

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five gigabyte hard drive belonging to one of its executives. Do you have a five gigabyte hard drive?

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I wouldn't make any comments in relation to that upcoming publication. You're certainly not denying it.

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Well, there would be a process of elimination if we denied some of the admitted others.

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So it might not be bank of America and you're just going to let them squirm until you get ready to.

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I think it's great. We have all these banks squirm and thinking maybe it's them.

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You seem to enjoy storing things up.

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Well, when you see abusive organizations suffer the consequences as a result of their abuse

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and you see victims elevated. Yes, that's a very pleasurable activity to be involved in.

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I mean, you see yourself as a check on the power of the United States and other big countries

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in the world and in the process of doing that, you have now become powerful yourself. Who is the check on you?

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It is our sources, who choose to provide us with information or not, depending on how they see

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our actions. It is our donors who choose to give us money or not. This organization cannot survive

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from more than a few months without the ongoing support of the public.