Julian Assange - Wikileaks: Warrior For True Part 9

Julian never had long conversations while working. He even talked to the team in a telegraphic manner.

While faith in their action gave WikiLeaks members an increased ability to work, Julian simply had an exceptional ability to concentrate. You could leave the house at night and find him exactly in the same place the next morning.

To better manage who did what, Rop and another activist organized the work using sticky notes on the kitchen counter.

Elsewhere in the house, people were translating the subt.i.tles in different languages, while others were making sure the servers would be able to handle the traffic caused by the announcement of the video.

Julian wanted the families of the Iraqis who died in this attack to be contacted and warned of the unavoidable a.s.sault by the media that would try to get as much additional information as possible. In agreement with the Icelandic National Broadcasting Service, he sent two Icelandic journalists to Baghdad to find them.

At the end of the week, the film was almost finished. By examining it frame by frame, details were revealed that could not be seen during a normal viewing.

The film editors were no longer smiling, having spent several days watching the last living moments of these people on the streets of Baghdad. It eventually brought them down and it was time for the group to finish their mission.

The film was eighteen minutes long and showed an obvious lack of human dimension in the attack. It started with a quote by George Orwell that fit the images perfectly; a quote that Julian had been using for a long time: "Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind."

The film gave information about the two journalists who were killed and the official explanations regarding the attack.

For the soundtrack, Julian worked with an editor and an Icelandic activist, GG, who asked him permission to use the dialogue between the helicopter pilots. "It'll provide some emotional appeal," he said.

"It's very choppy and difficult to understand," Julian observed.

"I'd like to insist, it's used all the time to incite emotion."

"At the same time, we're already portraying the soldiers as monsters. Do we really need to make it worse?" the film editor asked.

"But emotion is always real. I worked on the soundtrack of a movie that was nominated for an Oscar, I know what I'm talking about!" GG retorted.

"OK, what do you suggest?" asked Julian.

"Dialogues and helicopter noises interrupted by silence," said the activist.

The editor made the changes: he took out the voice of the soldiers in the opening sequence, but kept the radio sounds, the noises and a few distorted voices. Julian gave his final approval.

While the film was being edited, Julian was preoccupied with one of his constant worries: security.

Once the video went live, it had to be impossible to take offline. The www.collateralmurder.com site had to be impregnable and untraceable. Even though the issue of WikiLeaks' security was permanent, it was well managed thanks to some twenty servers installed throughout the world, with mirror sites also online to ensure that information couldn't be traced. A government that wanted to remove content from the WikiLeaks site would have to practically dismantle the entire Internet. There had to be maximum protection as much for those who sent information as for all the volunteers working on it.

Late on Sat.u.r.day night, shortly after the work was finally finished, Julian received an e-mail from the two special Icelandic correspondents in Baghdad: the soldiers who came to the scene after the attack found two children in the truck. The children lived in the neighborhood and were on their way to school with their father that morning. The journalists also found the owner of the building that had been attacked who said that several families lived there and that seven residents died during the attack. The owner, a retired English teacher, lost his wife and daughter.

In the war room, the discussion heated up. What to do with this last-minute news? Was it important to provide this information right away or was it better to just sit on it for now? If the military justified firing h.e.l.lfire missiles by arguing that there were no civilian causalities, WikiLeaks could strike back by unveiling this information. Sitting on this information made for a strong ambush.

Suddenly, Birgitta turned to Rop and said: "Are you crying?"

"Yes, I'm crying because they were just children and it's sad," he answered.

He quickly collected himself and continued the conversation. "Ah, s.h.i.+t!"

"Yeah, that's right, let's leave them in the s.h.i.+t," said one of the activists.

"Now they'll have to walk in it, that's the logical conclusion, isn't it?" Rop asked.

"I want to re-edit the film and put in the h.e.l.lfire attack," Julian said with conviction.

The eyes of the exhausted team were all on Julian. Many of them were almost in tears, hara.s.sed and shocked. The silence that ensued seemed to be hanging from the white ceiling of the little Icelandic house.

"There were three families living in the back... we can't just give up."

Then came the discussion of reason; re-editing the film was impossible. The team couldn't take it anymore, they did their absolute best, and in a few hours, it would be Easter.

The sympathizers left the little white house silently with mixed feelings. They firmly believed in the actions they executed, but the latest information they received from the journalists that were urgently sent to Baghdad left them confused. Why did they do that? Would it change anything? What would the response of the public be to the film? And what about American politicians? What they did know for sure was that it was a minefield.

The site had already received more than a hundred threats of legal action, but none of them had materialized.

This time, the images that would be placed on the site would have an impact that even Julian could not yet imagine. He worked day and night to show the partiality of the American government in this matter, and put the average Joe and Jane at the heart of the world's state secrets.

It was 10:30 a.m. the next morning. Rop opened the drapes and let the light s.h.i.+ne into the house. He was wearing a long T-s.h.i.+rt and a freshly washed pair of black pants. He fought to make sure that everyone met their deadlines. The final minutes were dedicated to looking for one of their contacts that might know a criminal defense lawyer in the United States.

Glued to his computer, Julian typed without stopping.

"Are we on time?" he asked in pa.s.sing.

"We still have three hours," Rop answered.

Worried, Julian turned back to his computer. He checked a copy of the rules of engagement used in Iraq since 2006. It was one of the American army doc.u.ments cla.s.sified 'defense secret' that he planned to post on the site with the video. WikiLeaks had to make sure there were no digital traces that could reveal their sources. Julian erased the doc.u.ments as quickly as possible.

The streets of Reykjavik were empty, and the cathedral bells were ringing. Julian was still at his computer.

Rop picked up all the sticky notes in the kitchen, removing any trace of their work.

Just before noon, they would distance themselves from the last traces of Project B and leave for the airport. Julian was not quite ready to leave, he hadn't shaved and his hair was a mess. It was time to drop the bomb and he was writing to the press: the detonator. Birgitta wanted to help. Julian asked her: "Do you want to cut my hair while I'm doing this?"

"Of course not, I'm not going to cut your hair while you're working."

She headed to the kitchen to make tea. Julian continued to type quickly on his keyboard. After a few minutes, she started to cut his hair with some hesitation. She stopped a second and asked: "If you get arrested, keep in touch with me, OK?"

Julian nodded. In the mean time, Rop had collected Julian's things and placed them in a bag. He paid the owner for the house. The dishes were washed, the furniture was put back the way it originally was.

The team piled into a single car and drove off.

Increasingly important information came in from Julian's sources. He had won the respect of those who were forced to stay silent. They were the witnesses of an invisible world so real that their human integrity pushed them to act. He was finally ready to face the enemies of the truth.

Immediate shock Published on 25 November 2010 by sophox Leave a comment Now I know more about Julian a.s.sange. Here's the video that has the United States scared and that has Mr. WikiLeaks at war with American politics. And I understand why. It's a real bomb. It was hidden, but they uncovered it.

I really wonder what planet I've been living on these past few months. I've just watched the Collateral Murder film edited by WikiLeaks. It's been online since April and many versions of it can easily be found. The entire film lasts 18 minutes and it's a shocker.

This is a wakeup call for the inhabitants of the 'another day, another dollar' planet. This video shows some American army guys shooting Iraqis without even being sure if they're armed or not. And in the end, they just shoot at will.

I'm still in shock. They're in the helicopter and the sound is eerie, with lots of noise and limited dialogue. Sometimes it gets choppy and we can hear the silence. It makes you think.

The images are quite blurry. In the beginning, I figured that from up there, on screen it's not easy to tell whether a civilian has a weapon or not. But they're trained to do this, right?

Once they start shooting, it's as if they've crossed over into another world, a world where killing humans is no big deal. These guys are so cool, congratulating themselves, that for a moment we think the civilians lying on the dusty ground will get up. But this first shot kills eight people, including two journalists.

Some highlights for you: "Request permission to engage"... After the shootout, one of them notices that there are "a bunch of bodies layin' there." "Oh, yeah, look at those dead b.a.s.t.a.r.ds," he adds. "Nice," his teammate replies. The conversation ends with "well, it's their fault for bringing their kids into a battle."

After they've shot civilians, a truck arrives to try and save them. Two men get out and we can see that there is still someone inside. Two children.

What kind of world do we live in where children become victims just like that? What was the war in Iraq all about anyway? Does anyone actually remember? I think this is as absurd as it gets in this kind of situation.

There are days when I know why I live in a neutral country.

I'm seriously wondering about this. Was it possible for them to detect a threat in this group of men? Sure, the big camera could look like a weapon, but the group doesn't look threatening. Am I being naive? Tell me what you think.

The dialogues are even more powerful than the images. We understand what these soldiers were trained to do. They don't hesitate; they cut straight to the chase. It probably seems like a routine exercise to them.

At no time does the group of men in the street seem to be afraid of this helicopter whirring above. They don't hide or run for cover behind walls. They appear quite calm, suspecting nothing. The helicopter is either very far up in the sky or they're so used to this display that they no longer pay any attention to it.

For these men the fight is not whether to shoot or not, but rather consists in showing that they are good little soldiers by hitting their 'target' with a minimum of bullets or as quickly as possible, I don't know. And then there's the humiliating, hurtful vocabulary. I understand that you have to be straight to the point when doing your job, but this sounds like they don't even think that they're dealing with equals or even humans anymore.

One of the "b.a.s.t.a.r.ds" isn't dead, as he tries to get up. It's one of the members of the Reuters team. We see the gunsight of the cannon hover over the injured body, and he doesn't seem to be carrying a weapon or scrambling to find one. Then we hear: "Come on, buddy. All you gotta do is pick up a weapon."

I've come to the conclusion that there's something weird about entrusting the military to keep the peace. These guys are trained to shoot and they want to shoot. That's all they want to do. And what happens after the blunder?

This blunder cost the lives of some 15 people, all civilians, including two members of the Reuters agency, a photographer and his driver. I read that it's highly likely that n.o.body would have been interested in the affair if Reuters hadn't tried everything it could to find out what really happened.

WikiLeaks put the famous video online. Reuters had been requesting it from incompetent authorities for years. Thanks to a leak. Thumbs up to the person who had the courage to leak these images! How can anyone cover up images like these and sleep well at night? I think the people who have to cover this up must have a tough time. And the soldiers? The entire hierarchy is involved.

In fact, were they told that they had only killed civilians? Were they tried, judged, sentenced, put into a psycho ward, or do they truly believe in their 'wonderful' almighty army and were just following orders?

Four million people have already seen this film. We have to keep spreading it. I know a lot of people who haven't seen it or don't talk about it. Here is the link to the main video: www.collateralmurder.com WikiLeaks, a.s.sange, continue to show us the true face of humans and of our governments. I'm following you...

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ALLIES, ENEMIES, DISSIDENTS.

A man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies.

Oscar Wilde.

16.

ICELAND.

Iceland could very well become Julian a.s.sange's new adoptive country. In fact, the country's history and Julian's history have been inexorably linked since the summer of 2009.

Iceland has been inhabited since the ninth century, and less than a century later in the year AD 930, Icelanders claimed their state was a free one, const.i.tuting the oldest parliament in the world. This republic lasted until the thirteenth century when Iceland was annexed to Norway, then Denmark, to which the island remained linked until 1944 when Iceland became an independent republic. Its economy is based on a mixed system featuring many corporations and a strong public sector. According to the human development index of 2006, Iceland was the second most developed country in the world after Norway.

But in 2008, Iceland was. .h.i.t by a major crisis, with the banks on the brink of bankruptcy. In October of that year, Iceland's Financial Supervisory Authority took control of Kaupthing, the country's largest bank after having nationalized the two other Icelandic banks, Glitnir and Landsbankinn. Iceland was then potentially bankrupt with a fifteen per cent inflation rate and a currency that lost sixty per cent of its value in one year. The crisis wasn't really visible, but when Icelanders heard about the situation of their banks, they were flabbergasted.

At end of July 2009 the Kaupthing bank was not declared bankrupt, although it was given a moratorium on payments from the District Court of Reykjavik. The State injected thousands of millions of euro into the bank.

For one year, the financial crisis only got worse, and a legal investigation was launched to find out whether the bank directors responsible for the disaster broke the law to get rich.

Kristinn Hrafnsson, investigative journalist on Iceland's RUV public television, had received an anonymous message that d.a.m.ning doc.u.ments on bankrupt Icelandic bankers had popped up on the Internet. The short message was followed by a link: www.wikileaks.org, a site he'd never heard about before.

He clicked on the link and couldn't believe what he saw. Stunned, he discovered the book of accounts of the Kaupthing bank as well as e-mails and minutes of secret meetings. Right before his eyes an internal doc.u.ment of the bank appeared, describing dubious loan contracts without coverage for astronomical amounts of money, which had been approved for the bank's main shareholders and officers just a few days before the nationalization.

Kristinn had evidence in front of him that the biggest borrowers were the bank owners themselves who had vouched for their own loans.

The journalist thought he was seeing things. After verifying the authenticity of the doc.u.ments, he prepared a series of reports on the affair. At the same time, the Kaupthing bank sent an injunction to WikiLeaks, demanding that the doc.u.ments be removed. This was their short response to the injunction: No. We will not a.s.sist the remains of Kaupthing, or its clients, to hide its dirty laundry from the global community. Attempts by Kaupthing or its agents to discover the source of the doc.u.ment in question may be a criminal violation of both Belgium source protections laws and the Swedish const.i.tution. Who is your US counsel?

On August 2 2009, just before the news started, the RUV received an injunction from the District Court of Reykjavik forbidding the broadcast of one of the reports for violating banking secrecy. Journalists elaborated on television what had just happened and showed viewers the URL of the WikiLeaks website.

The bankruptcy of banks was a very sensitive subject and Kristinn knew that the effect would be instantaneous. The entire population rushed to go online to download the doc.u.ments. Four days later, the Citizens' Movement had won over the power of the mighty banks and the court lifted the injunction. As of that moment WikiLeaks was elevated to the status of national hero.

Following this affair, Kristinn looked into the site whose goal was to act as global haven for whistleblowers on the Internet, where people could denounce illegal acts committed by their bosses, superiors or politicians. If they possessed the doc.u.ments proving their accusations but wanted to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals, they could send doc.u.ments very easily by way of a secure page on the website. All it took was a click.

The doc.u.ment then went on a long journey. "First it was encrypted and extracted from its software format to be stored on a server at the Internet access provider PRQ in Sweden in order to benefit from Swedish law on freedom of the press where journalists couldn't be forced to reveal their sources, and if they decided to do so, the revealed source could take them to court. Next, a copy of the doc.u.ments was sent to a server in Belgium, where the law on the protection of sources also applied to technicians who handled doc.u.ments. Finally, they were uploaded onto a server located in a third country that WikiLeaks kept secret, where it was then decrypted and published. WikiLeaks had implemented an international network of anonymous relay servers whose only function was to hide their tracks."21 Kristinn then learned that the site already had a troubled past in its two years of existence. Thousands of doc.u.ments had already been published denouncing corruption or misconduct: Swiss banks in the Cayman Islands, compromising files from the Church of Scientology or American doc.u.ments cla.s.sified as defense secrets on the fate of prisoners at Guantanamo.

Kristinn realized that this website was a wealth of information for an investigative journalist like himself. He then took a closer look at the people who started the organization and met with Julian. He started collaborating with WikiLeaks and it had been an unwavering collaboration up until today, as he was considered the spokesperson of the organization when Julian was unavailable.

Kristinn is a pleasant and easy-going person, we know, we talked to him on the phone. Although he didn't have much to say about Julian's personality, he was open with a good sense of humor. Ever since the storm that hit Julian, Kristinn had remained focused on the organization, explaining that they'd like to emphasize the leaks rather than WikiLeaks and continue to focus on the organization and less on its founder. He preferred to believe that the impact of Julian's arrest wouldn't have the impact many people thought it would have. "This isn't a one-man organization," he said, "we're continuing the work."

Kristinn is a committed journalist. While he worked with the entire WikiLeaks team on Collateral Murder, he asked the television station to send him to Iraq to check the facts and authenticate the damage described in the film. RUV accepted and hurried him off to Baghdad. Nonetheless, the station refused to broadcast the provocative film. Three months later, Kristinn was dismissed and left the RUV. The reason invoked was personal incompatibility with his superiors about the news segment. Nothing seemed to prove this and the question remained unanswered.

Back to 2009. The love story between WikiLeaks and Iceland had just begun when Kristinn prepared his stories on Kaupthing for the RUV.

In December, Smari McCarthy, who was in charge of the university a.s.sociation Icelandic Digital Freedom Society, invited the two figureheads of WikiLeaks, Julian a.s.sange and Daniel Domscheit-Berg, under the name Schmitt, for a conference in Reykjavik: Reykjavik Digital Freedoms Conference.

Smari was a young activist and committed anarchist. In 2008, he founded the a.s.sociation with a group of people linked to the Internet. A first, a very voluntary and provocative conference took place the same year on freedom within the scope of the Internet. The following year, when Julian and Daniel were guests, they brought the list of the laws that protect WikiLeaks in different countries. But Julian brought more than that: "an ambitious project that would make Iceland an inviolable sanctuary for the digital doc.u.ments threatened with censors.h.i.+p or destruction in other countries. To get that far, one had to start by profoundly changing national legislation regarding the freedom of expression."22 Julian's proposals rang true with Smari McCarthy, as well as with Birgitta Jonsdottir.

Birgitta Jonsdottir was a parliamentarian with character. She was an Internet pioneer and a talented blogger, an artist yet more of a poet. Some of her poems are on her blog where she can be seen as a modern-day viking warrior. She was also a rebel. Since 2009 she has led a party called 'The Movement,' which has three deputies in the Icelandic Parliament. She was attracted to the project Julian proposed as much as to the man with the magnetic charm. They started working right away with the volunteers. They addressed the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative (IMMI), a law that intended to make Iceland a haven for modern media.

"Their first task consisted of taking stock of the best laws on the freedom of expression around the world. They retained Swedish and Belgian laws on the protection of sources, an Estonian law on the transparence of administration, a New York state law that prohibits attacking media in a country not concerned by a matter in court, a California law protecting the media against unjustified lawsuits, as well as a French law on the regulations of press offenses after a period of ninety days."23 Besides legislative and technical work, the goal of the IMMI was almost a philosophical one. They wanted to define the freedom of information and expression today, taking into account the set of new information and communication tools available.

The original idea was that Internet could be seen as a 'distinct country,' the other, physical countries would then have the right to control who crosses the border, but not to interfere in the internal rules of 'Internet country.' The idea was to conceive that what goes on in 'real life' is answerable to the states and possibly to their courts, but that their representation on the Internet should not be censured as such.

Smari gave as an example pedophile images spread over the Internet. He estimated that what should be condemned was the act committed, as spreading images on the Internet was not the root of the problem and sometimes helped to track down the ringleader. He warned about the points of view of censors.h.i.+p and political control of the Internet that in turn curb freedom of expression. They often demonstrated politicians' lack of knowledge of the Internet and of new means of communication.