We Steal Secrets (2013) - full transcript

Anti-nuclear
groups go to court to try to

block Thursday's
scheduled lift-off

of the shuttle Atlantis with its
payload of radioactive plutonium.

The shuttle
and legal challenges.

NASA lawyers must
go to court tomorrow

to help the shuttle Atlantis
and its Galileo spacecraft

escape from a unique
environmental challenge.

The mission could be
stalled on the launch pad.

At the center of the
controversy is Galileo,

a plutonium-powered space probe

scheduled to be launched
from the shuttle's payload.



The argument's being made that
in the event of an accident,

cancer-causing plutonium
particles might be spread

over a wide area of Florida.

October 1989

It was a Monday morning,
a few days before launching Galileo.

My management grabbed me
as soon as I came in.

And they said that there was a
worm that had been detected

somewhere out on the network.

A worm is
a self-replicating program.

It actually breaks into a computer
and jumps from system to system.

At the time, they still
were very uncommon.

We didn't know what it would do.

We knew it was malicious.

If the worm got into a machine,



it would change the announcement
message and spelled out,

in little lines
and little characters,

W-A-N-K,

WANK, Worms Against
Nuclear Killers.

And below that, "You talk
of times of peace for all,

"and then prepare for war."

Oh, my God,
what the hell is this?

Most people didn't know
what the word "WANK" meant.

The worm made a panic.

You would be logged into your
machine and you'd get a message,

"Someone is watching you...
Vote anarchist!"

And suddenly they'd see,

"Deleted file-1, deleted
file-2, deleted file-3,"

and just keep going
and going and going.

And it would change the passwords,
so you couldn't get in to stop it.

It scared the hell out
of a lot of people.

They were afraid that WANK
would cause a launch failure,

where this nuclear
battery was suddenly

flying away from
an exploding spacecraft.

All systems are go.

Eleven, ten, nine...

How in the name of
hell are we going to stop it?

And how far has it gone already?

We have a
go for main engine start.

Six, five, four,

three, two, one.

We have ignition
and lift-off of Atlantis,

and the Galileo spacecraft
bound for Jupiter!

The shuttle
launched without incident.

But the WANK worm
continued to spread,

affecting over 300, 000 computer
terminals around the world.

Its purpose, as a warning, weapon, or
political prank, was never discovered.

Investigators traced the origins
of the WANK worm to Australia.

National police suspected
a small group of hackers

in the city of Melbourne,
and then the trail went cold.

But a key clue turned out
to be in the message itself.

There was a lyric from the
Australian band, Midnight Oil,

a favorite of the man

who would become the country's
most infamous hacker.

Yeah.

There's never been
anything quite like it.

A mountain of secrets dumped into
the public domain by a website...

Julian Assange.
Is he a hero to freedom

or is he a terrorist
who should be prosecuted?

He's an active enemy combatant

who's engaged in information warfare
against the United States...

Was it not once
considered patriotic

to stand up to our government
when it's wrong?

Should the United States
do something to stop Mr. Assange?

I think Assange
should be assassinated, actually...

No, he's a hero...

What he did
was extremely devastating...

This guy's
going to strike again.

Free Julian Assange!
Free Julian Assange!

What drives you?

Well, I like being creative.

I mean, I've been an inventor,

designing systems and
processes for a long time.

I also like defending victims.

And I'm a combative person,
so I like crushing bastards.

And so this sort of profession
combines all those three things.

So it is personally
deeply satisfying to me.

But is crushing bastards,
in its own right, a just cause?

Depends on the bastard.

I see the story entirely
as one man against the world.

One man against the world.

Julian is this very
radical visionary.

Julian was onto something
really extraordinary.

He's an extremely clever, brave,
dedicated, hard-working guy

with a brilliant idea
that he managed to execute.

Julian Assange
was obsessed with secrets,

keeping his own and unlocking those
of governments and corporations.

The Internet is not
a good place for secrets.

Cyberspace is like
a galaxy of passageways,

constantly moving
streams of data.

With a simple computer,
anyone can enter and explore.

That's what Julian Assange
liked to do, explore.

He liked to use trap doors to enter
where he wasn't supposed to go,

to find secrets and expose them.

He built a machine for leaking
secrets and called it "WikiLeaks."

The website boasted
an electronic drop box

that could receive
secrets sent by people

who didn't want to
reveal who they were.

Once WikiLeaks had the secrets,

it would publish them across
servers, domain names, and networks

so numerous that the information
could never be taken down.

So this is what you'll see if you go
to the front page of the website-

This is WikiLeaks, we help
you get the truth out.

We want to enable information
to go out to the public

that has the greatest
chance of achieving

positive political reform
in the world.

To get things to the public
you need to protect sources

who want to disclose,

and you also need to protect your ability
to publish in the face of attack.

His thinking is,
how can we destroy corruption?

It's the whistle-blower.

Julian Assange is neither a right-wing
libertarian nor a standard leftist.

I think he's
a humanitarian anarchist.

A kind of John Lennon-like
revolutionary,

dreaming of a better world.

If we are to produce a more civilized
society, a more just society,

it has to be based
upon the truth...

When I heard Julian speak,

I was struck by
his vaulting idealism

and forthrightness
about what he believed in.

Totally uncompromising
about freedom of speech.

I agreed almost entirely
with everything he said,

and I'd never experienced
that before.

So I thought he was amazing.

Every week
we achieve major victories

in bringing the unjust to
account and helping the just.

Before WikiLeaks
was front page news,

there were some
smaller successes.

The website published evidence
of a tax-evading Swiss bank,

government corruption
and murder in Kenya,

and a secret company report on
illegal toxic waste dumping.

One early leak was from the
National Security Agency.

Frantic text messages
from desperate workers

trying to save lives on 9/11.

9/11 turned out to be a watershed
moment for the world of secrets,

both for the leakers
and the secret keepers.

After 9/11 we were accused of not
being willing to share information

rapidly and facilely enough,

and we've pushed that
very far forward.

Michael Hayden
is an expert on secrets.

He's been the director of the
National Security Agency and the CIA.

In terms of our focus,

the default option, in a practical
sense, has been to sharing

rather than caging information and
making it more difficult to flow.

In the years after 9/11,
facing enemies it didn't understand,

the U.S. government started
sharing more information

between different agencies.

At the same time, the U.S. also started
to keep more secrets from its citizens.

In data centers that sprang
up all over the country,

NSA/CSS Cryptologic Center

the U.S. launched
a massive expansion

of its operations
to gather secrets.

The amount of classified documents per
year increased from eight million

Office of the Director of
National Intelligence

to 76 million.

The number of people with access
to classified information

NSA National Business Park

soared to more
than four million.

And the government began to
intercept phone calls and emails

at a rate of 60, 000 per second.

Nobody knows how
much money is involved,

it's a secret.

Not even Congress
knows the entire budget.

The classification system can be a
very effective national security tool

when it's used as intended,
when it's used with precision.

During the Bush Administration,

Bill Leonard was
the classification czar,

the man charged with overseeing
what information should be secret.

The whole information environment
has radically changed.

Just like we produce
more information

than we ever produced
in the history of mankind,

we produce more secrets than we've ever
produced in the history of mankind,

and yet we never
fundamentally reassessed

our ability to control secrets.

In this environment
of expanding secrecy,

Assange went fishing
for secrets to publish.

To bait whistle-blowers, he published
a list of the most wanted leaks.

Those of us who have been
in the business a long time

knew that this day would come,

knew that because we'd removed all
the watertight doors on the ship,

once it started taking on water,
it would really be in trouble.

In Iceland,
winter is never easy,

but this year much
of the pain is manmade.

Last October, all three of
Iceland's banks failed.

Normally stoic and proper
Icelanders have started protesting.

In July 2009, WikiLeaks
fueled a growing popular rage

when it published a confidential
internal memo from Kaupthing,

the largest failed
bank in the country.

WikiLeaks had got hold
of the Kaupthing loan book,

which showed what was going on in
a lot of those Icelandic banks.

They had credit ratings
which were completely at odds

with their actual
credit worthiness.

It was all insiders,

they took out billions
of dollars out of this bank

and bankrupted the thing shortly
before it went bankrupt anyways.

A German IT technician,
Daniel Domscheit-Berg,

became the second full-time
member of WikiLeaks.

We met online first, and
then we met personally in December 2007

at the Chaos Communication
Congress in Berlin.

He was not the stereotypical
hacker you would expect,

looked completely differently,

he was interested in
completely different topics.

For Daniel and Julian, the Kaupthing
leak was their biggest success to date.

The loan book came
out and took the country by storm.

RUV, the national broadcaster, was
going to do a big segment on it.

And they got slapped
with an injunction.

This evening, we had intended
on releasing a full report

regarding the enormous credit
facilities made available by Kaupthing

to the various companies
of its shareholders.

However, we are prevented from
doing so this evening...

It was
the first time in our history

that a gag order was placed on the
state TV not to produce that news

just before they were
supposed to produce it.

So instead of doing nothing they
decided to put the website up.

Up pops WikiLeaks-org

with this Kaupthing
loan book front and center,

and everybody goes online
and checks it out.

The guys at WikiLeaks definitely get
massive props for that.

Later that year, a group of
young cyber-activists from Iceland

invited representatives
of the WikiLeaks organization

to come speak at
a conference in Reykjavik.

Iceland and
WikiLeaks really fit.

This is something we really need in
our society, the media failed us.

So I was excited to meet them.

Up until the day
before the conference,

we didn't know
who was going to come.

It could be a massive organization
or it could be a tiny organization.

Hello? Um...

Does that work? Okay.

In the beginning
we had no funding at all,

we were not set up with
manpower nor organizationally,

so there was a lot to improvise.

WikiLeaks, we haven't mentioned
that what we are doing right now

is still a proof of concept.

So in technical terms, we are in
a beta stage, so it's just...

We're not in a beta stage.
Well...

We're not in a beta stage as far as...
We're in a Gmail beta stage.

So we 're not in a beta stage in terms
of our ability to protect people.

In terms of...

Um...

You could let me
finish my sentence.

Okay.

It was a really awkward
experience in some way

because we were just
so famous over there.

You work for WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks is now
very famous in Iceland

because of the big
Kaupthing leak.

We got this letter
from the Kaupthing lawyers,

telling us that under
Icelandic banking secrecy law

we deserved one year in prison.

So we thought we'd
come to Iceland...

And see for ourselves.

...and see for ourselves.

The banksters need to be
put on public trial

and given the justice
they deserve.

More power to you, Iceland!

Julian teamed up
with Birgitta Jonsdottir,

a poet turned politician,

to hatch a plan to turn Iceland into
a haven for freedom of information.

But Julian was also preoccupied
with a new source,

one with access to classified
U.S. government materials,

and a willingness to leak them.

See all those people
standing down there...

There's more that keep walking
by and one of them has a weapon.

We have five to six
individuals with AK-47s.

Request permission to engage.

It was an on board video of an Apache
helicopter gunship on patrol in Iraq.

I can't get 'em now because
they're behind that building.

A half-mile above the ground, it
was invisible to the people down below.

That's a weapon.

He's got an RPG.

We got a guy with an RPG.

I'm gonna fire.

You are free to engage, over.

Light 'em all up.

Keep shooting.

Keep shooting.

Keep shooting.

Oh yeah, look at those
dead bastards.

Two of the men killed
worked for the Reuters news agency.

Nice.

What had looked
like a weapon from the sky,

turned out to be
the long lens of a camera.

Bushmaster.

We have a van that's approaching
and picking up the bodies.

Yeah, we're trying to get
permission to engage.

This is Bushmaster-Seven.

Roger, engage!

One-Eight. Engage. Clear.

Come on.

Clear.

Clear.

We're engaging...

Oh, yeah, look at that.

Right through the windshield!

Inside the van
were two children,

who were wounded in
the hail of cannon fire.

It's their fault for bringing
their kids to a battle.

That's right.

In March 2010, Assange
and a team of Icelandic activists

holed up in a rented
house in Reykjavik

to edit and prepare
the video for publication.

We did most of our work here.

This was the operational table.

It was chaotic and hectic and
all sorts of varyingly frayed nerves.

Eventually I went out and
bought a bunch of Post-its

and kind of tried to figure
out what it was we needed to do.

My horrific task was to go
through the entire movie

and pull out the stills
to put on the website.

And at the same time I was
learning who these people were

that I could see their flesh
being torn off their bodies.

Photographs taken by US soldier

The Army
claimed it was engaged in

"combat operations
against a hostile force."

But it also began
a criminal investigation.

It turned out
that the driver of the van

had been a father taking
his children to school.

I think I just
drove over a body.

- Really?
- Yeah.

The curtains were drawn.

But I never had any sense that we
were being watched, not physically.

But we joked a lot about it.

We were becoming super paranoid.

It wasn't really
cloak-and-dagger stuff,

it was just yet
another cool project.

Everybody thinks that we were sort
of huddled over the computers

and it was all very serious.

We actually had
an incredible time.

The second last night
we all went out

and we were all wearing the same
silver snowsuits.

WikiLeaks!

Lava-leaks!

It was
an incredibly intimate time,

because we were all working closely,
we were working on something

that we knew that could get us
all in very serious trouble.

And we were all willing
to take that consequence.

So my name is Julian Assange.

I am the editor of WikiLeaks.

Could you spell your name?

Julian, with an A.

Assange.

What's clear about him
is he became a public figure

extraordinarily quickly.

It was really April 2010

where he went from
relative obscurity

into an absolutely
central world figure.

And he did it deliberately.
He knew what he was doing.

He decides to take on the
American state, in public.

The team posted the unedited
video on the WikiLeaks website.

They also posted
a shorter version

edited for maximum impact.

Julian titled it
"Collateral Murder."

And no surprise, it's getting
reaction in Washington.

Our military will take
every precaution necessary

to ensure the safety
and security of civilians.

The behavior of the pilots is
like they are playing a computer game.

Their desire was simply to kill.

The Pentagon says that it sees no
reason to investigate this any further.

Its own inquiry found that
the journalists' cameras

were mistaken for weapons.

But the rules of engagement
were followed.

If those killings were lawful
under the rules of engagement,

then the rules of
engagement are wrong.

Deeply wrong.

You've got this scene.

Some may be ethically
troubled by the scene.

Frankly, I'm not.

But I can understand someone
who's troubled by that

and someone who wants the
American people to know that,

because the American
people need to know

what it is their government is doing
for them. I actually share that view.

When I was director of CIA, there
was some stuff we were doing

I wanted all 300 million
Americans to know.

But I never figured out a way

without informing a whole
bunch of other people

who didn't have a right
to that information,

and who may actually
use that image or that fact

or that data or that message
to harm my countrymen.

From a national
security point of view,

there was absolutely no justification
for withholding that videotape.

Number one, gunship video
is like trading carols

amongst soldiers in
Iraq and Afghanistan.

It's freely exchanged
back and forth.

What's even
more disturbing is that

it was one in
a series of efforts

to withhold images
of facts that were known.

Reuters knew
its employees had been killed.

The news agency requested the
video, but the Army refused,

claiming the video
was classified.

The fact that innocent people were
killed in that helicopter attack,

that was a known fact
that was not classified.

A record of the incident

and a word-for-word transcript
of the pilots' conversation

had already been published in a
book called The Good Soldiers

by a writer embedded
with the Army.

The Army later confirmed that the
information was not classified.

Yet the Army would
prosecute the man

who leaked the video
to WikiLeaks.

What kind of games
was the Army playing?

Why was a transcript less
secret than a moving image?

We won't shoot anymore.

Clearly the government
recognizes the power of images.

But the ultimate power of image
is it helps people understand

what it is this fact
is that we all know.

Flag-draped coffins
help us understand

the consequences of sending
our children off to war.

Pictures of detainee
abuse in Abu Ghraib

help us understand exactly
what was taking place.

Video of that unfortunate occurrence
where innocent people were killed,

helps us understand that this is
an inevitable consequence of war.

How was the video obtained?

We can't discuss
our sourcing of the video.

Adrian Lamo was known
as "the homeless hacker,"

a couch-surfing
computer infiltrator

who had been convicted of hacking
into The New York Times.

In 2010, not long after the release
of the Collateral Murder video,

Lamo used Twitter to urge his
followers to donate to WikiLeaks.

Only one day later he was contacted
by someone with the screen name

"bradass87."

Frankly, I just didn't find what he
had to say all that interesting at first,

until he started making
references to spilling secrets.

At that point, I knew that
this wasn't some kind of game.

It was for real and that I was going to
have to make some very hard choices.

In Star Trek, every prospective
commanding officer

is expected to pass a test
called the "Kobayashi Maru."

Starship Enterprise
on training mission

to Gamma Hydra.

Alert. Klingon
torpedoes activated. Alert.

Evasive action!

Ah!

The test cannot be passed.

It is there to see how they
deal with a no-win situation.

A no-win situation's a possibility
every commander may face.

Has that never occurred to you?

No, sir, it has not.

In this case,
it was a no-win situation,

deciding what you're going to
do when no matter what you do,

you're going to screw
somebody over.

Unsure what to do,
Adrian contacted Tim Webster,

a friend and former Army
counterintelligence agent

Adrian called me and said,

"Hey, Tim, what would you do
if somebody had approached you

"and said, 'Hey,
I'm leaking secrets. "'

I thought it was
a pretty stupid question,

because of course Adrian knows exactly
what I would have done in that situation.

What would you have done?

Well, of course, turned them in.

There's no... There's nothing else
you can do in that situation.

But Adrian was on the
fence about it ethically.

On one hand, here was this kid leaking
all this classified information,

could potentially cost lives.

On the other hand, here was this
kid who had reached out to Adrian

in confidence and trusted him.

And Adrian took
that pretty seriously.

He indicated he didn't know
who this person was,

they were just a screen name.

So, very quickly, of course,
the first thing that

anybody would be interested
in is, who is this guy?

I first met Bradley
Manning at a New Year's Eve party.

It was a 1930s theme party.

I was the Prince of Wales.

And Brad showed up
without any kind of

costume or persona.

I looked at him and he was small

and had this kind of ingénue
expression on his face.

This bright blond hair. And so
I said, "Oh, Jean Harlow."

Wrote that on a name tag,
slapped it on his chest,

then we went on with
the rest of the evening.

When I met him at the party,

he made no mention to me
that he was in the Army.

This came as a surprise to me.

To get
government money for college,

Bradley Manning
enlisted in the Army.

In 2007, Manning
began basic training.

He was 19 years old.

Just weeks after he started, he
was sent to a discharge unit

to determine if he
should stay in the Army.

My locker was next to his
and that's when I met him.

Nobody puts their sister's picture
with him posing next to his sister.

It was kind of weird,
but... Oh, well.

But we knew right away he was gay.
It was so obvious. But, so...

Not that I have
a problem with it.

He was small, a little bit
effeminate and that made him

public enemy number one for drill
sergeants to beat the macho into him.

We're talking professional
Army, 30-40-year-old people

that would pick on him
just to torment him.

And what happened?
Did he get discharged?

No, the funny thing is, he was the
least Army material of anybody there.

And they all got
discharged and he didn't.

Instead of discharging Manning,

the Army decided to make him
an intelligence analyst.

There's a lot of components

that go with Intel analyst.

US Army Intelligence
Recruitment Video

I'm in charge of the security,
document security,

physical security, personal
security, like people's clearances.

Does it make me feel like
James Bond a little bit?

Yeah, to some degree.

What would I like the public
to know about the Army'?

We love what we do.

He was definitely what society

would label as a computer nerd.

He was constantly up all night
building specific computer programs.

So he was
unusually adept at computers?

He's probably the first person
in the military that I had met

that is as talented as
he was with computers.

But I had to pull him aside several
times for his lack of sleep.

He was desperately
addicted to soda.

He drank approximately a liter
to two liters every night.

So he literally did
not sleep, ever.

One time he was
late for a formation

and he had a very public
display, physically.

He was jumping up and down,
flailing his arms,

screaming at the top
of his lungs.

And to me, I had never
seen a soldier do that before.

It had to be something else.

A seizure or something like that

because it was very
radical body movement.

But it wasn't something else.
He didn't like messing up.

He had to have
everything perfect.

I actually recommended three
times that he not deploy.

Hi, you've reached Brad Manning
at my deployment phone number.

Please leave a message or call
me back later. Thank you.

In October 2009, Bradley
Manning was sent to Iraq,

posted at Forward Operating Base
Hammer, just outside of Baghdad.

Baghdad

We were the furthest FOB east
that you could go around the Baghdad area.

FOB Hammer

It was definitely the best,
most uneventful place

you could have been deployed to.

We never had any enemy fire.

We could walk around
without battle gear.

We had a full gym. There was pool tables.
There was a basketball court.

We had a little movie theater.

We had a Pizza Hut,
a Burger King.

A place to get your hair cut.
A place to get a massage.

We had air-conditioned
living quarters.

You could actually get cable
and Internet in your room.

It was literally just
a home away from home.

When you receive intel in,
it's extremely raw.

A lot of the times
it's even in Iraqi,

so we have to actually get it
translated and build a product

so that the commander can
actually make military decisions.

But much of the information
available to Manning's intelligence unit

had nothing to do with
day-to-day combat operations.

All of the analysts had access
to central computer networks

for the Armed Forces
and the State Department.

With a few key strokes, a
skilled user could gain access

to vast streams of
classified emails, memos

and reports from
around the world.

Why was it that Private
Manning had access to all that information?

9/11. Very simple.

The mindset changed after 9/11 from
a need-to-know to a need-to-share.

And the database
that he had access to

was a representation of the need
for one entity of government

to share broadly information
about its activities

with another agency
of government.

How many people had access?

It's a hard question to answer.

Manning was regarded
as one of the smartest

intelligence analysts
in the unit.

But more than others,

he became increasingly distressed
by the reports he was seeing.

He back-talked a lot.
He constantly wanted to debate.

He wanted to be the person
that disagreed with everybody.

We had a separate
little conference room.

It had a doorway but it didn't
have a door that you could close.

He'd go in there
and just scream.

Testing 1, 2, 3...

this is, uh...

reverse shot, audio only...

for Assange.

I was trying to chase him
after the Collateral Murder video,

but he's a pretty evasive guy.

He doesn't have a home, doesn't have
an office, so it was no easy task.

I'd been chasing him for weeks and
had one phone contact with him.

But I heard he was speaking in
Norway, so I jumped on a plane.

Turned up in Oslo and sort of

shadowed him for a few days
until things started to click.

This is not the liberal democracy
that we had all dreamed of.

This is an encroaching,
privatized censorship regime.

So embarrassing.

- What's that?
- Goddamn camera in my face.

Congratulations. Thank you.
Very, great chat, great speech.

At that time, he had an underground
following, of which I was aware.

He's Australian,
he's from Melbourne.

But he had no
public profile really.

WikiLeaks is not the first time

you've come to the attention
of the Australian public.

You had another
controversial period

when you were involved with
a group that was essentially

trying to penetrate

military computer systems.

What was the motivation there?

Well, it was two motivations.

One was just
intellectual exploration,

and the challenge to do this.

So if you're a teenager at this
time in a suburb of Melbourne,

and this was before there was
public access to the Internet,

this was an incredibly
intellectually liberating thing

to go out and explore
the world with your mind.

G'day, mate!

No, a hacker's not someone
that kills their victim,

dismembers them, and cuts
them into small pieces.

Hackers do far more
damage than that.

Hackers, the mystery
operators of the Internet.

In the eyes of the law,
they're criminal.

But who are they?

It was a really interesting period
in Melbourne in the early '90s.

There was a few places on earth

that really clicked into
the Internet, pre-internet.

There was also a sense
of rebelliousness,

sort of an alternative political
culture in Melbourne.

All those things converged.

And Julian was absolutely
the core part of...

It was almost the cliché,
the teen hacker.

Seventy-two million
people dead'?

Is this a game

or is it real?

Oh, wow.

Their struggle
was against the state.

And they thought that triumph
of intelligent individuals

over the possibility
of state surveillance,

that's the heart of
what they were doing.

And Julian Assange, who at
that point was a young hacker,

got into that world.

We're going to show 'em, baby.

And he became a central figure.

The group was called
the International Subversives.

Among them was Julian Assange,

known by the online
name of Mendax,

short for a Latin phrase
meaning "noble liar."

Hackers in Melbourne were also
suspects in the WANK worm attack,

though their involvement
was never proven.

Two years after the WANK worm,

Assange was implicated
in another hack.

Julian Assange allegedly
accessed computer systems around the world

through weak links
in the Internet system,

meaning, "The whole computer
opened up to him

"and he could walk around
like God Almighty."

Hackers have this belief that
we are getting a police state,

that information is being hidden
from the broad community...

Ken Day was an
Australian expert on hackers

and the first person to
investigate Julian Assange

as part of an undercover sting
called Operation Weather.

It was a very difficult case

because it was only
the second time we'd done

an investigation in this particular
style, so we were still learning.

What we did was capture the sound
going across the telephone line,

so we could see what was typed
and the signal coming back.

The hackers had broken into the
U.S. Air Force, the Navy,

and the U.S. defense network

that had the power to block entire
countries from the Internet.

We had a back door in U.S. military
security coordination center.

This is the peak security...

It's for controlling the security of
MILNET, the U.S. military Internet.

We had total control
over this for two years.

The Internet was a new frontier for
people to go out and express themselves

that "I am there, I am the
first, lam the all-powerful."

This is the common theme
with people that are hackers.

It was all ego-driven,
"I am the best."

Julian was charged with
29 counts of penetrating, altering,

and destroying government data.

The defense asked
the court to be lenient

because Assange had
lived a difficult childhood,

continually moving
from city to city

with no lasting relationships.

His only constant connection with
the outside world was the Internet.

After a five year
investigation and trial,

Julian pied guilty
to 24 hacking offenses.

He was sentenced
to three years of probation.

He believes that what
he was doing was not wrong,

and probably rues the day
that he pied guilty-

Julian does not
like being judged.

His rationalization is, "Yeah, I've
been convicted, but it was unjust.

"It's unfair. I'm a martyr."

He didn't accept it.

Julian always had
quite a rigid political view.

He's always believed that there's these
secrets that need to be discovered.

At 17, 18, Julian was looking at stuff
that he couldn't quite understand.

It's all in acronyms, it's descriptions
of movements here and there,

of weapons or of troops.

He wasn't ready to
do anything with it.

Indeed, he waited
20 years to see it again.

And when he saw it again,

he knew what to do
with it this time.

Months before he
received the helicopter video,

Assange was trolling through hacker
conferences, looking for leaks.

Why am I talking
to you guys at all?

Um... Well,

you have a "capture the
flag" contest here.

We have our own list of flags,

and we want you to capture them.

And so if you Google for
"WikiLeaks Most Wanted 2009,"

you'll see a list of documents.

If you are in a position or you
know someone who's in a position

to get this material, and get it,
give it to us, no questions asked,

you will help change history.

One month
into Manning's deployment,

WikiLeaks published
the 9/11 pager messages.

Manning took notice.

Only days later,

he saved Julian Assange's contact
information to his computer.

Then taking a cue from the
WikiLeaks Most Wanted List,

Manning began searching for CIA
detainee interrogation videos

on the classified networks
that were cleared for his use.

Like other potential
whistle-blowers,

he began to wonder if he had
access to secret information

the public should know.

In the course of his work

he had already downloaded
thousands of military reports

from Iraq and Afghanistan.

It was there that
he captured his flags.

A lot of flags.

While Manning was
playing with a new identity,

he was also imagining
a new role for himself.

He visited his
boyfriend in Boston

and went to a party at
a college hackerspace,

where he was caught on camera.

During this period,
maybe even at this moment,

Manning had in his possession nearly
500, 000 classified documents

about the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan.

While on leave, he contacted
The Washington Post

and The New York Times.

When neither showed interest

Manning sent the so-called
"war logs" to WikiLeaks.

Good morning. Him?

How would an Army private
allegedly gain access

to top secret information?

The Army has detained
a U.S. soldier

in connection with the leak
of this classified video.

The prime suspect is 22-year-old
Army Private First Class Bradley Manning.

For allegedly leaking this
classified gun camera video

of an Apache helicopter
attacking civilians.

Really in the
first few days after we heard

about this problem
with Private Manning,

it felt like the worst
possible scenario.

At that time not really
understanding what it means for us,

and what the hell
was actually going on.

Private First
Class Bradley Manning,

he found a former computer
hacker in Sacramento, California

and that former computer hacker
was growing increasingly alarmed,

eventually turning him in.

He needed a friend, and I wish
that I could have been that friend.

There was a responsibility
to the needs of the many

rather than simply
the needs of Bradley Manning.

Lamo met with federal agents

and gave them a copy of his
chats with Bradley Manning.

He also gave a copy
to Kevin Poulsen,

a friend and former
convicted hacker,

who is now an editor
at Wired. com.

I had just done a story
about Adrian being institutionalized.

While he was institutionalized,
they had adjusted his medications.

I almost had kind
of a suspicion that

maybe his new medications
weren't agreeing with him

and this was A Beautiful Mind situation,
and he was imagining all this.

Lamo gave Poulsen the
okay to publish the story,

Nobody wanted
Adrian to go to the media,

but apparently
it was already done.

And, well, he ended up approaching
a lot of media after that.

It just sort of exploded.

Did it make you feel patriotic
when you turned Manning in?

It made me feel very sad

that I could not have
interdicted this leak...

I believed that his actions
were endangering lives...

Adrian lives his life as
though he's writing it like a novel.

And every novelist
wants to be read.

It's my job to play the role that I'm
cast in to the very best of my ability,

the same as any other actor.

You can't possibly be
yourself in the public eye.

All of the little things
that make us human

don't stand up under the
scrutiny of the camera.

I'd like to also point out that
I think that this marks the end

of WikiLeaks's ability to say that
they have never had a source be outed.

So what's been the update
on Manning?

Gimme the news,
it's only two days old.

So he has been
charged with espionage.

The allegation being
that he has transferred

at least 50 classified
cables to another party.

The other party is not named.

After Bradley Manning
was arrested,

attention shifted very much to
Julian, it was no longer a secret.

The pressure through
this period was intense.

Julian won't say where
he got that material,

but he had the material, there
was no question about that.

We try extremely hard to
never know who our sources are.

So, all our encryption
technology is designed

to prevent us knowing
who our sources are.

Was it really possible

that Julian didn't know that
Bradley Manning was his source?

Or was saying so
an old Mendax tactic,

telling a lie for a noble cause?

Private First
Class Bradley Manning

is now said to have confessed

to passing more than 260,000
documents to WikiLeaks.

That's not true.

If he's the one, then that implies
there's much more to be released.

Stephen Grey for Channel 4 News.

Thanks, Stephen, thanks...

now I have every fucking gun
pointed at me.

Julian knew
how much more there was.

But now that Manning was
arrested, the question became,

would WikiLeaks put Manning
in greater jeopardy

by continuing to
release his materials?

It's certainly
a very problematic situation.

This is about as
serious as it can get.

We have a situation where
there's a young man, Bradley Manning,

who's alleged to be a source for
the Collateral Murder video.

We do not know whether Mr. Manning
is our source or not.

But what we do know is that
we promised the source

that we would publish everything
that they gave to us.

Even though his potential
source had been arrested,

Assange was undeterred
from the WikiLeaks mission.

And the hundreds of thousands of leaked
U.S. government secrets he possessed

were burning a hole
in his pocket.

Julian traveled around Europe
plotting his next move,

and in Brussels he was tracked down by
investigative journalist Nick Davies.

My pitch to Julian was,

instead of posting this secret
material on the WikiLeaks website,

he shared it with an alliance of The
Guardian and other media groups,

including The New York Times.

Who, A, have the impact of reaching
millions of people instantly

and also have natural political
connections in their own jurisdictions.

So we were trying to give him
a kind of political immunity

so that he could do
this clearly provocative

and somewhat dangerous thing

in relative safety and with
an assurance of success.

Recognizing that WikiLeaks
could benefit from a louder megaphone,

Julian agreed to
Nick's proposal.

So, how am I going to get
the documents back to London?

There was a little bit of a risk

that if the authorities were
monitoring his communications,

as they might well have been,

they would be aware
of my involvement with him,

they would arrest me as I came
back into the United Kingdom,

and take the material
if I had it on a laptop.

We thought about a memory stick,
maybe they won't spot that?

He came up with
a much better solution.

He said that
he would create a website.

In order to access the website,
I would need a password.

So he took a paper napkin that
was on the table in this café

where we were talking
in Brussels

and he hooked together several of
the words in the commercial logo

and wrote, "No capital letters."

I stuffed it in my pocket.

In the event that I was
arrested, people would assume

that it was something I was
going to blow my nose on.

And so it was I traveled
back to the United Kingdom,

and, as it happened, nobody
stopped me so itwas all cool.

Julian would also team up

with the London-based Bureau
for Investigative Journalism.

In a prearranged drop point
in Central London,

Julian met lain Overton.

We turned up
and Julian was there

wearing a bullet-proof vest

and we had
a Middle Eastern meal.

And he revealed that he had

the largest-ever military leak of
documents in the history of leaks.

In the midst of this spy story
was thrust Iain's young colleague,

a computer whiz
named James Ball.

About 1:00 in the morning
I took delivery on a USB stick

of 390,000 secret
U.S. military records.

I make to leave and Julian
asks me where I'm going.

I said, "Well, I was
going to go home."

He sort of pauses
and goes, "No, don't do that.

"I don't want your address
linked to this address-

"Can you find somewhere else to go
at least for four or five hours?"

I don't really think
I can go and hit a club.

I'd really hate having
to try and explain

losing 400,000 secret documents
because I got a bit drunk.

Nobody had
ever done this before.

How do you have teams of intelligent
people to go through this stuff?

Nobody in my experience
as a journalist

had ever been confronted with a tenth
of the mass of material he was.

We're talking in a half
a million lines of data.

If in the old days you had to take
half a million lines of data out,

you'd have had 16 wheelbarrows out
of the front door of the Pentagon.

This was the biggest leak
of secret material

in the history of
this particular planet.

Julian decided that
the first release of material

would be the Afghan War Logs.

But he had to
understand them first.

In London, The Guardian
set up a secret operation

with key military reporters

from The New York Times and the
German magazine Der Spiegel,

veteran journalists
who could penetrate

the arcane language
of the military.

You've got much more
information than you have in this.

But here's the key part...

During the four or five weeks

when the reporters were working
on the Afghan War Logs,

all of us became concerned that
there was material in there

which, if published, could get people
hurt on the ground in Afghanistan.

This huge attack goes
for 22 hours or something.

Starts here.

This particularly related
to ordinary Afghan civilians

who in one operation
or incident or another

had given information
to Coalition forces

and that was recorded in there in such a
way that those civilians were identifiable.

I raised this with Julian
and he said,

"if an Afghan civilian helps Coalition
forces, he deserves to die,"

and he went on to explain that they have
the status of a collaborator or an informer.

Now...

Are you sure about that?
That's definitely what he said?

I have absolutely
no doubt about it at all.

This was just me and him talking through
the detail of how we handle this.

And this problem, potential
problem, had already come up.

A, it's a moral problem,

we are not here to publish
material that gets people killed.

B, if you publish information which
really does get people hurt,

or could conceivably
get people hurt,

you lose your
political immunity,

you're terribly vulnerable to the
most obvious propaganda attack

which is waiting for us
in the wings

that you are helping
the bad guys.

Julian's a computer hacker,

he comes from that ideology
that all information is good,

and everything
should be published.

I asked Julian if he would publish
information sent to his website

WNYC - "On The Media" March 2009

that could lead to
the deaths of innocents,

such as how to release anthrax
into a town's water supply.

This is a man whose primary
way of interacting with the world

is a digital one.

It is to some degree unsullied by
the limitations of human nature.

He does sometimes reduce human
activity to something formulaic,

and he doesn't see the human
heart beating in there.

He just reduced it to that
very, very simple formula.

"They speak to an occupying
force, they must be bad,

"the informer deserves to die."

The coalition of journalists

weren't used to working with a
transparency radical like Assange,

and Assange was still learning
the ethics of journalism.

They could only agree
on one thing,

they were going to
release the documents.

In London, a deadline was
set for all the partners

to publish at the same time.

Julian finally agreed to redactions,
the blacking out of names,

and told his partners
he had a special process

which would eliminate the identity
of sources from the documents.

But with less than a week
before publication,

Assange had neglected to tell
Domscheit-Berg in Berlin.

So, there we were,

four days before releasing
90,000 documents

and no redactions made.

It is
effectively impossible for us

to notify some of these Afghanis in
their villages about this material.

It looks like we will have to
do a redaction of some of them.

Is that new for you?

You're effectively doing a
bit of censorship yourself.

Yeah, that would be new
for us, but remember...

Time was running out.

Just before the release,

Assange focused on a section
of 15,000 documents

that contained the most names.

In desperation, he turned to
an unlikely source for help.

It was reported that WikiLeaks has
asked the Department of Defense

for help in reviewing approximately
15,000 classified documents

that WikiLeaks obtained

in an unauthorized
and inappropriate manner

before WikiLeaks releases those
classified documents to the public.

Julian urged The New York
Times to send a letter to the Pentagon

asking if they want to
help with redactions,

and they refused,

and that was 24 hours
before the release.

...classified
and sensitive information...

This notion that he didn't care about
what was in that material is not true.

He was actually quite
tortured by this material

and with very few resources.

By himself, day and night,
he was consumed

with working out what to release
and what not to release.

WikiLeaks is a tiny organization
working on this huge scale.

It's going to make
some mistakes.

Is Spiegel "I-E" or "E-l"?

I-E.

All right. Fuck that end
of the press release.

He was without
any support structure,

and he was about to
do a press conference.

So, I'd say to him, "Julian,
you need someone there.

"I mean, someone's got to
write a press release

"or at least answer the phone."

So it was just in the
couple of days before that launch

that a couple of volunteer
students came in.

I'm going to go now,

but I just want to give you
something to think about, which is,

we've got this press
conference on, tomorrow.

We're going to be
totally inundated.

Completely totally inundated.

Let's talk about
WikiLeaks as an organization.

Mmm-hmm. Is this Apple
or IBM, or is this...

It's a corner gas station,

with some extremely
bright attendants.

It was true that he tried
to create an impression

that it was this very
large organization.

It was Julian Assange,
his $300 laptop,

10 SIM cards,

and a very cheap jacket

that he'd put on if he
had to do an interview.

He woke up late, of course.

I'm knocking on the door.
"Julian, come on, man."

He gets up.
Just his normal thing.

What's the time?
What's the time?

Twenty-five to.

I also need to prepare a little
list of things. All right.

I'll be two minutes.
How are you feeling?

Tired. I haven't been to sleep.

But, good.

Fourteen pages in The
Guardian this morning.

"Massive leak of secret files
exposes true Afghan war."

We tell our sources
maximum political impact,

and I think we got pretty close.

There's 10 trucks out there,

10 media trucks,
10 media trucks.

Yep.

It'll be a good outcome.

He walked out that door as
the sort of aging student hobo.

By the time he had made
this 50-yard walk,

he was a rock star.

He was one of the most
famous guys on the planet.

Holy fuck.

Most of you have read
some of the morning papers.

So, this is The Guardian
from this morning.

Fourteen pages about this topic.

It's clear that it will
shape an understanding

of what the past six years
of war has been like,

and that the course of
the war needs to change.

The war logs revealed a
conflict that was very different

from what citizens
had been told.

Civilian casualties were
much higher than reported.

America's supposed ally, Pakistan,
was playing a double game,

taking military aid
from the U.S.,

even while working with the Taliban
to plan attacks in Afghanistan.

The war logs also revealed the existence
of a secret American assassination squad,

with a terrible record of wounding
and killing women and children.

There is nothing that will have
greater consequences for our nation

than the unleashing
of the brutality of war.

To have those types
of decisions,

those types of deliberations,
done in secrecy

is a tremendous disservice
to the American people,

because these are things that
are being done in their names.

And whether you agree
with it or not,

to have a free back-and-forth
airing of these is essential.

All the material is
over seven months old,

so it's of no current
operational consequence.

Now, in what circumstances
wouldn't you publish information,

or are there any circumstances in
which you wouldn't publish it?

We have a harm
minimization process.

Our goal is just reform,
our method is transparency.

But we do not put
the method before the goal.

Sorry.

To my amazement,
Julian announced to the world,

"WikiLeaks always conducts
a harm minimization process."

Julian had no harm minimization
process in place at all.

So, on the WikiLeaks
side, were the redactions made?

No.

There were 15,000 documents
in the end got held back.

But 75,000 documents
were published,

and they contained
about 100 names.

The newspapers
published articles,

accompanied by only a few
hundred redacted documents.

But even after the holdbacks,
and despite Julian's promises,

WikiLeaks published 75,000
documents on its website

without redactions.

The battlefield consequences
of the release of these documents

are potentially
severe and dangerous

for our troops, our allies

and Afghan partners.

I do not know whether
anybody subsequently did get hurt-

The fact that
the material was there

and identifiable as
potentially dangerous

did the political damage.

When the material
was first published,

the world was indeed talking about
civilian casualties in Afghanistan,

and about the existence of a squad that
was going out and killing Taliban.

But the White House
managed the news,

and the story became "WikiLeaks
has got blood on their hands."

Mr. Assange
can say whatever he likes

about the greater good

he thinks he and
his source are doing,

but the truth is they might
already have on their hands

the blood of some young solider
or that of an Afghan family.

The people at WikiLeaks could
have blood on their hands.

He does clearly have
blood on his hands.

The blood is on their hands.

This is where we get
into the information war.

That speculative blood became more
important than the actual blood.

OPERATION ENDURING FREEDOM

3,936 Afghan
civilian deaths: 15,500 - 17,400

15,000 - 25,000

We already can see
all that terrible stuff.

We know about that.

Let's focus on your nightmares.

How all these people might die

because the government's
secrets have been unleashed.

As soon as
they pick up this line

about who's got
blood on their hands,

it's WikiLeaks being isolated,

and that, from
a political point of view,

was a clever move
by the White House.

They stepped all around
any kind of argument

with these big news
organizations

and isolated Julian.

By creating a distinction
between Assange and the newspapers,

the government avoided a war
with the mainstream media

and invented a perfect enemy,

the guy Bradley Manning called

"the crazy,
white-haired Aussie."

What was your name?

I don't know what it was,
I know what it is.

What is your name?

Julian.

Is this taking
some getting used to?

You've been pretty
much in the shadows

as far as the media's
concerned until recently.

We've grown a bit, so this is
now a time for me to do it.

WikiLeaks needs a face?

Yeah, the public demands
that it has a face.

And actually we'd much
sort of prefer,

I'd prefer, if it didn't
have to have a face.

And we tried to do
that for a while.

Urn...

And people...

Just the demand was sort of so great,
people just started inventing faces.

Some call him a hero,

some see him as a threat
to national security.

Julian, thank you
for joining us...

This afternoon I talked to
the man behind the leaks...

- Julian Assange.
- Julian Assange.

Mr. Assange,
good morning to you.

What have the leaks achieved?

We have published
more classified documents

than the rest of the
world press combined.

So it's journalistic.

I'm fond of the phrase,

"Lights on, rats out."

Do you feel you have
accomplished what you wanted to

with the release
of these documents?

Not yet.

You. What?

Jesus Christ.

So, two with you on the front.

My God, look...

Another double page spread.

I think that's the best photo.

That's not a bad photo.

I think it's really good.

And then you've got...
You've got your own banner

at the top here for three
pages, in The Times.

I'm untouchable now
in this country.

- Untouchable?
- Untouchable.

That's a bit of hubris.

Huh?

That's a bit of hubris.

Well, for a couple of days.

It can wear off. But the
next few days, untouchable.

The founder of WikiLeaks found
himself making news again today.

Sweden issued a warrant for
the arrest of Julian Assange.

Right now
Swedish authorities are

looking to question WikiLeaks
founder Julian Assange.

Swedish authorities have issued
a warrant for his arrest

on suspicion of molestation and
rape in two separate cases.

Saturday,
August the 21st, I woke up.

Another journalist
had sent an email

with a link to the website of the
Swedish newspaper Expressen.

I went to this website and I
thought, "Well, this is a joke,

"this is like
a spoof newspaper."

These huge headlines,
including one which claims

that Julian Assange has
sexually assaulted two women.

"What is this about?"

So, I phoned a guy in Stockholm

who is the main coordinator
for WikiLeaks in that city.

So I came up to this guy and I
said, "What on earth is going on?"

The man in
Sweden was Donald Bostrom,

an investigative journalist

who had agreed to help Julian Assange
while he was in the country.

It was...

kind of the new Mick Jagger.

Yeah. I mean, really, really.

Groupies, stalkers, media...

everyone had a big interest
in Julian at the time.

And he liked it.

He liked it? Mmm-hmm. Of course.

Assange had thought
of moving his base to Sweden,

where WikiLeaks
kept its servers.

Laws were more favorable
to press freedoms

and Assange had
a growing fan base.

Fame offered Assange a platform,

but it also made him
a visible target.

I said to Julian, "I think
you are on the list..."

"of undesirable people
for some governments."

"Recently, in Russia"

"some journalists
were compromised"

"by girls in short skirts."

"it's a very easy trick."

"So please, take it easy."

That was exactly one week
before everything happened.

Breaking news... REPORTER
2: Internet platform WikiLeaks...

The Australian
has denied the allegations

saying that
they are without basis...

Julian Assange denied having
had non-consensual relations

with the two women of
35 and 25 years of age.

She described Assange as violent

and said she tried to
refuse his advances.

She only consented to having sex

after he agreed to
wear a condom.

But the condom somehow broke.

An unknown source leaked
the police report to the press.

It included the
testimony of Assange,

the two women,
and, surprisingly,

a picture of a torn condom.

There were other
peculiar things going on.

The case of one woman was
dropped, and then reopened.

The general sense was, it's awful
curious that these charges would emerge

just after a very embarrassing
and damaging leak.

There were various
possibilities here.

One was that some women
who wanted to sell a story

to the newspapers
had set him up.

Another was that a really nasty
right-wing group in Sweden

had conspired to set him up.

Maybe some dark agency from the
United States has done this.

And way out on the extreme
ranges of possibility,

well, maybe he did it,
I don't know!

Did anything happen between
you and these two women

that could be construed
as sexual coercion or rape?

No words, no actions,
no violence.

There is nothing that could
be construed as rape.

Nothing at all.

Or sexual coercion?

Well, I don't know
what the hell that means.

There's no doubt that this
organization is under siege...

It was clearly
a smear campaign...

We were warned
by Australian intelligence

we would receive such an attack.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
is calling it a "smear campaign."

His supporters claim that the
warrant is a way of silencing him.

You're telling me this isn't a witch
hunt, this isn't a smear job? Come on.

One accuser apparently
worked with Cuban exiles

and there's a story around
that she's a CIA operative?

This whole thing stinks
to the high heavens, I gotta tell ya.

I've seen this enough times,

where governments
and corporations,

they go after people with
this kind of lie and smear.

This is all a bunch of hooey
as far as I'm concerned.

Well, it's certainly a
surreal Swedish fairy tale.

The only thing that hasn't walked
onto stage yet are the trolls.

And I'm waiting
for them to arrive.

It is my role
to be the lightning rod,

to attract the attacks against
the organization for our work.

One aspect of that has been the legal
situation for yourself in Sweden.

I'm not going to talk about
that in relation to this.

But it does affect WikiLeaks.

I will have to walk if you're...

Do you still...
You had once talked...

If you're going to contaminate
this extremely serious interview

with questions about
my personal life...

I'm not, what I'm asking is,

if you feel that it's
an attack on WikiLeaks.

Okay, sorry.

Julian, I'm happy to go
onto the next question.

All I'm asking is...

Sorry.

You blew it.

The case in Sweden
was still unresolved.

While the investigation
continued,

prosecutors permitted Assange
to leave Sweden

with the understanding
that he would reappear.

But Assange never went back.

Convinced Sweden was a trap,
he went underground in London.

Julian has a certain paranoia,

but in the time I was with him

I think that high security
awareness was actually relevant,

it was appropriate.

Mind you, he'd been
living like that

for the past, you know,
five or ten years

when it probably
wasn't appropriate.

Will there be anything
more coming from WikiLeaks

in the next two or three weeks?

You never have a
good reason to be paranoid.

You have good reason
to be careful.

Stakes are high so you need to be
meticulously careful every day.

He'd been trained for
this moment, in evasive tactics,

and changing phones and taking out
batteries and changing computers.

May have been a fantasy before,

but it served him well
because it became real.

He was the focus
of intense enemies.

Right now the Pentagon
reportedly searching for Julian Assange,

potentially on the verge
of releasing

a huge new stash
of confidential documents.

He was putting his head
above the parapet.

He was putting himself
in a dangerous position.

And I think, on the whole, he
handled the dangers pretty well.

There is a side to
this guy which is great,

and then there's this hidden side
which has been so destructive.

He's a natural
fabulist and storyteller

and lives intensely
in his imagination,

and to some extent that imaginary
world that he inhabits

becomes more real than the, as it were,
often mundane reality that we all live in.

Yes.

You talked about an aggressive
surveillance operation

against you and some
WikiLeaks employees?

We certainly were under
surveillance in Iceland.

I, personally, had chased people

who were surveilling me
with video cameras.

He traveled
to a conference in Oslo

and then made
these allegations that

two State Department officials had
been on the airplane to follow him,

but there is no proof.

And this is what got tiring
to a lot of us over time.

Julian was constantly propagating
how much we're in danger

and all of these things.

And this was just lies
and propaganda.

Maybe it's the fame,
maybe it's the attention,

maybe it's the pressures of working
in this kind of environment,

but somehow this
idealist that I met

became something else
somewhere through the story.

This whole topic just
headed into a really bad direction.

There was this
article in Newsweek.

That's what Julian took as a proof
that I had been speaking to the press.

From that day on
I was a traitor,

I was trying to
stab him in the back.

It boiled down to me being
suspended for, as Julian put it,

"disloyalty, insubordination and
destabilization in times of crisis."

Where did that
language come from?

I think, as much as I can tell, that's
from the Espionage Act of 1917.

That was a cruel irony.

Across the Atlantic, the United
States Department of Justice

was investigating whether it
could use the Espionage Act

to put Julian Assange in jail.

The Espionage Act is primarily
intended to address situations

where individuals pass national
defense information over to the enemy

in order to allow
the enemy to harm us.

It would be unprecedented if the
Espionage Act was being used

to attack individuals
who did not do anything more

than The New York Times or The
Washington Post does every day.

Do you want
to let them in first?

The next big releases
were the Iraq War Logs.

This time WikiLeaks had
worked with volunteers

to devise a computer program to
solve the redaction problems.

There were almost
400,000 documents

detailing that the U.S. military
had purposefully hidden information

about civilian casualties
and systematic torture.

President Obama sanctioned
the mass handover

of Iraqi prisoners of war

from the American troops over
to the Iraqi authorities.

And one of the things that is
against the Geneva Conventions

is you cannot hand over
a prisoner of war

to another authority who
you know commits torture.

But let me just say with
regards to the allegations

of not intervening when
coming across detainee abuse,

not true.

They had 1,300 allegations,

with medical evidence,
of quite horrific torture

by Iraqi army and police
against detainees.

We're talking about sodomy,

we're talking about abuse
using rubber hoses

and beating people,
we're talking about murder.

The sort of torture that supposedly
we were "liberating" Iraq from.

The U.S. Administration
under Bush and under Obama

continued turning over prisoners
despite knowing this.

That is against
the Geneva Convention.

The Obama administration appears
to have committed war crimes.

Who knew that before?

- Bradley Manning's
letter to WikiLeaks

What had Manning done?

Was his leak, as the Army had
said, a reckless data dump?

Or was this the act of a man

who had peeked behind the
curtain of a superpower

and decided that
what it was doing was wrong?

After the leaks, and just
before he was arrested,

Manning was trying to reckon

with what he had done
and where he was going.

There was never
even a possibility

that anyone could assume that
he had a female personality.

You mean that he
wanted to become a woman?

Well, we knew that he was at least
considering hormone therapy,

but no one cared.

It wasn't like,

"Okay, he's going to have to start
showering with the females."

Literally, nobody cared.

He would call me and cry.

Very loud sobbing

like a child just in
a state of just utter loss,

and he kept saying,
"I won't make it,

"I can't make it,
I can't do this."

I constantly asked him,
"Do you have someone?

"Do you have anyone to talk to,

"that's there, that you can
see on a daily basis?"

And he assured me
that he did not.

Manning did reach
out for help at least once,

in an email to
his master sergeant.

Manning attached to the email a picture
of himself dressed as a woman.

Several weeks later,
around dinnertime,

Manning was discovered
lying on the ground.

With a knife, he had scrawled
on a chair the words,

"I want."

Later that same evening, Manning
tried to go back to work.

I was off-shift,

and I had to come in
to find something

that he should have
been able to find.

And he was pacing back and forth
saying smart comments to me.

And I blatantly said,

"Manning, how 'bout you fix your
shit before you try to fix mine?"

And he screamed and
punched me in the face

while I was sitting down.

My adrenaline immediately
hit overload.

I stood up,
pushed my chair back.

He continued to try to fight me,

but I put him in, you know,
what UFC would call a "guillotine"

and pulled him on the floor,

and laid on top of him and
pinned his arms beside his head.

At that time, I can't
believe he messed with me,

I literally had 15-inch biceps.

I was the last person he
probably should have punched.

My superiors decided that

it was just escalating too
much and he had to be removed

and have his weapon
taken away from him.

At that point he never
came back in the office.

He had to go work with the first
sergeant in the mailroom.

In the mailroom, Manning
still had an Internet connection

to military networks.

His gun had been taken away,

but he still had access to
millions of classified documents.

We have personnel
security programs.

We try to take a look at the folks
to whom we give security clearances.

Should this young man have
been given that clearance?

In retrospect, certainly not.
In prospect, who knows'?

These are the kinds of decisions
that are difficult to make.

But let me put it
to you this way,

the American Army has had
incredibly stupid PFCs

for more than two centuries,

and PFCs occasionally
do incredibly stupid things.

I didn't see him get arrested.

But I saw him walk down the hall

with about four MPs.

He had a grin on his face,

like, "I'm on top of the world."

The last communication
I received from him

was that I was going to hear something
that would shock the world.

It was a pretty simple process,

dropping CDs into your tower

and downloading large
volumes of information.

It wasn't incredibly
sophisticated.

That's not quite true.

Manning turned his computers into
efficient exfiltration machines.

Over several months, Manning
made over 794,000 connections

with the State Department's
server.

He downloaded hundreds of
thousands of documents

without anyone noticing.

When he hit a snag,

he reached out to another hacker for
advice on how to crack passwords.

Later, Manning talked to him about
the progress of the uploads.

In Manning's buddy list, the address
was listed under a familiar name,

Julian Assange.

On November 28th, 2010,

WikiLeaks and its media partners

began to publish a small
fraction, carefully redacted,

of the State Department cables
supplied by Bradley Manning.

The day-to-day memos
of American diplomats

revealed a surprising honesty about
how the world really worked.

It was that whole
Wizard of Oz moment.

We all look at these politicians,
"Oh, wow, they're so powerful!"

And then it was the little dog
pulling the curtain away.

The cables exposed
criminal behavior and corruption

by tyrants in Egypt,
Tunisia, and Libya.

That in turn helped to fuel

an exploding popular anger
against repression,

the so-called Arab Spring.

They also told the truth

about the faults of
America's so-called allies

in ways that were
bound to reveal

that their power and legitimacy
were a kind of fraud.

This leak is industrial scale.

It touches every relationship
the United States has

with other countries
around the world.

Even as the United States and others
try to manage the impact of this,

it will be a wound that just keeps
opening up on a recurring basis.

The behavior of the
United States was also exposed,

as the cables revealed
criminal cover-ups

and a systematic policy of using
diplomats to spy on foreign governments.

Look, everyone has secrets.

Some of the activities
that nation-states conduct

in order to keep their
people safe and free

need to be secret
in order to be successful.

If they are broadly known,

you cannot accomplish your work.

Now look, let me be
very candid, all right.

We steal secrets.

We steal other nation's secrets.

One cannot do that aboveboard

and be very successful for a
very long period of time.

Disclosures
like these tear at the fabric

of the proper function
of responsible government.

People of good faith

understand the need for sensitive
diplomatic communications,

both to protect
the national interest

and the global common interest.

For the previous leaks,
the American government,

they were obviously angry,

but they suddenly decided,

"Right, now it's time to
get Draconian on their ass."

It's time that the Obama administration
treats WikiLeaks for what it is,

a terrorist organization.

What we should do is treat
Assange as an enemy combatant,

who's engaged in information
warfare against the United States.

He's a blackmail,
extortionist, terrorist.

...crackpot,
alleged sex offender...

He's a criminal and he
ought to be hunted down,

and grabbed, and put on trial.

We have a very serious criminal
investigation that's underway

and we're looking at all of
the things that we can do

to stern the flow
of this information.

He needs to be prosecuted to
the fullest extent of the law,

and if that becomes a problem,
we need to change the law.

We've got special ops forces.

A dead man can't leak stuff...

...illegally shoot
the son of a...

This little punk...
Now I stand up for Obama.

Obama, if you're listening today,
you should take this guy out.

I think Obama should put out a contract
and maybe use a drone or something.

That's what I'd like to see, a
little drone hit Assange, right.

All the threats
were aimed at Assange.

No one called for attacks on The
Guardian or The New York Times.

I found that astounding.

If Julian Assange
should be charged

with some offense
under American law,

then absolutely
The New York Times editor

should be in
the slammer with him.

Suddenly, only
two days after the release

of the first batch of
State Department cables,

Interpol issued a demand
for Assange's arrest,

for his failure to
return to Sweden

to answer questions
about sex charges.

I'm really rather
worried by the political motivations

that appear to be behind this.

Sweden was one of
those lickspittle states

which used its resources
and its facilities

for rendition flights
and torture.

You think if he goes to
Sweden, he may be sent to the States?

Certainly my mind is
very open about that.

And you may fight it on that basis?
Certainly.

There were rumors of a
sealed indictment against Assange.

In secret, a U.S. grand jury served
subpoenas targeting WikiLeaks supporters.

Under political pressure,

VISA and MasterCard stopped
processing donations to the website.

VISA and MasterCard
will happily process payments

for the Ku Klux Klan,

for all kinds of organizations
around the world,

and yet this one,

with no charges,
no warrants, no nothing,

they've not only blocked it themselves,
they won't let any intermediaries do it.

Meanwhile, WikiLeaks' founder is
still hiding from the police,

but today he did
speak out, online.

What happens to WikiLeaks
if Julian Assange is arrested?

This is carrying on, this is huge
material that is really important,

and everyone working on it
is getting it out there.

WikiLeaks' principal
spokesman always has been Julian,

but with Julian being in hiding,

I essentially filled in the gap.

Where is Julian Assange,
this mythic character'?

Honestly can't remember
where I last saw him.

I ended up doing
a lot of their television,

looking pretty much about 16.

You really did feel
a David and Goliath moment.

Do you consider your organization and
your website to be under attack?

Yes, all week it's
been under attack.

The WikiLeaks website
came under cyber attack

and kept falling offline.

In response, WikiLeaks supporters
began to mirror the site

on over 1,000 servers
around the globe.

It was impossible to remove
WikiLeaks from the Internet.

The Internet in a digital era

lets governments get more
information and more power

and more communication
than they've ever had before.

But, it lets citizens
do the same.

Governments are more powerful
and more vulnerable

at exactly the same time.

The fight on our hands is

who gets to control the Internet,
who gets to control information.

Hello. This is a
classified message from Anonymous.

After numerous attacks on the
truth-spilling platform of WikiLeaks,

ANONYMOUS hacker
collective video

including the shutdown
of its financing,

we have already
made it very clear

that we will fight for freedom
of speech and the free press.

We are Anonymous.

We are legion.

We do not forgive.

We do not forget.

In response to the
financial blockade on WikiLeaks,

the hacker collective Anonymous
launched cyber attacks,

taking down the websites of
VISA, MasterCard, and PayPal.

Free Julian Assange!

Free Bradley Manning!

End the war.

Off the road, please!

Off the road.

Political prisoner!

You've been warned already!

We love you!

Free speech!

One week after the
arrest warrant was issued,

Assange surrendered
to police in London.

Deemed a flight risk,

he was ordered held in jail,
pending a bail hearing.

Many people believe
Mr. Assange to be innocent,

and many people believe that this
prosecution is politically motivated.

Assange's arrest
had become a mythic moment,

but what was really going on?

Was Sweden acting as an
agent of the United States?

Would extradition to Sweden mean
a one-way ticket to Guantanamo?

Or had the mission of
WikiLeaks become confused

with a private matter
between one man and two women?

Talk about why
we're altering your appearance

and filming you in this way.

The reason I felt it
was important to be obscured

is mainly because of all
the threats I've received.

And I know that different
media have published my face

without my consent.

And a lot of online communities

started to have wild
speculations about who I was

and who the other girl was.

I feel that the less
my face is shown

and the less people
can recognize me,

the safer I will be.

Anna has been
advised not to talk

about any of the details of her
sexual encounter with Assange

until the legal case
has been resolved.

But there are a few facts
on which everyone agrees.

An organizer for a WikiLeaks
seminar in Stockholm,

Anna invited Julian to stay at her
apartment while she was out of town.

Then she decided
to come back early.

The following day
at the seminar,

Julian was approached by
another WikiLeaks volunteer.

Her name was Sofia.

Sofia wanted to see Julian,
wanted to touch Julian

wanted to be close to Julian.

Honestly, I think

he was a rock star

and he was picking the fruit.

The truth is the
first casualty of war.

One week after the seminar

Anna called me
and said, "Donald..."

"I was very proud to have
the hottest man on the planet"

"in my apartment,
in my bed even."

"But then something happened
I didn't like."

"He tore the condom."

"I feel very uncomfortable
about it."

And then she told me
Sofia called her

about the same thing.

She was very concerned
she's pregnant or catch HIV

because Julian had sex
with her without a condom.

They said if Julian
takes an HIV test

we won't go to the police.

I tried actually
to tell his friends

that we can get this over
with fast and with no fuss

because I really didn't want
this to be in the papers.

But he chose to make
a big deal out of it.

Julian had repeatedly
refused to have the test.

When he had finally changed his mind
and agreed to, it was too late.

By that time, the women had
already got too frustrated

and too angry with
Julian's refusals,

and they'd gone to the police.

They found out that
they were mutual lovers of mine,

they had had unprotected sex,
and they got into a tizzy

about whether there was possibility
of sexually transmitted diseases.

Ridiculous thing to go
to the police about.

When the women went to the police to
try to force Assange to take an HIV test,

their testimony raised questions
about possible criminal charges.

The police, on their own,
decided to investigate further.

The refusal to use a condom
took center stage.

If Assange had HIV and knew it,
it could be a case for assault.

“...Assange... firmly holding
arms and prying her legs open...”

“Anna is convinced that Assange...
broke the condom...”

“...and... continued having sex with
a subsequent ejaculation.”

The testimony of the women
raised another issue.

Did Assange refuse
to use a condom

because he wanted to
make the women pregnant?

Some pointed to the fact that he
had already fathered four children

with four different women
around the world.

This is a man who's elusive,

he's always flying around the
place, he doesn't have any roots.

And he's got a number of kids.

There might be some sort
of primary impulse in him

to want to just reproduce,

to want to have some sort
of bedrock in his life.

This is the ultimate
digital man,

and actually you can't just
live in a digital world.

"...was woken by the feeling
of penetrating her."

"He was already inside of her
and she let him continue."

"She immediately asked 'Are you wearing
anything' and he replied 'You."'

I have never said
that this is a honey trap.

I have never said that
it is not a honey trap.

He was claiming that he
didn't know who we were,

and that's not true.

He knew very well who we were,

and he knew we were going
to the police before we went.

There are powerful interests

that have incentives
to promote these smears.

What Julian did was to start
the little snowball rolling downhill,

that this was some
kind of a conspiracy.

And that was all he
had to do at that stage.

It rolled and it
picked up speed.

A lot of rumors were
made up and pure fantasies.

The wildest story of all
was that I was a CIA agent.

And I was like,
I couldn't really believe

that anyone would believe
such a weird story.

From outside I can understand

it must be a conspiracy.

But, I was in the middle of it.

Sorry to say it was not

two girls in short skirts

sent in from
the CIA or whatever.

They were just ordinary,
nice girls

admiring Julian and WikiLeaks.

You've been very
careful not to say anything.

Why?

Because this is a legal case,
and not a public debate.

Sweden! Shame on you!

Sweden! Shame on you!

The way Julian's private affairs
have been conflated with WikiLeaks,

I find quite troubling.

There was at one point an effort to
try and separate the two issues.

That was reversed

and the decision was made to
push the two causes together.

And so it just...

How was that reversed?
Was there a meeting?

Was there... Or it just
slid into that direction?

Julian reversed it.

Explicitly.

He very much wanted
what happened in Sweden

to be seen as part of
the transparency agenda.

And it worked.

I'm here because the U.S. government
and the Swedish authorities

are trying to gag the truth.

These charges are completely
politically motivated

and have nothing whatsoever
to do with the prosecution.

It's a persecution,
not a prosecution.

What is so extraordinary
is the way in which the two women

have been either
completely forgotten,

as though they had
no rights here at all,

or caricatured, vilified.

Web post by Assange supporter

I've been through two years

of different kinds of abuses.

People coming to my house,

people threatening,
or questioning

or following my friends
and family.

Some death threats,

but mostly sexual threats
that I deserve to get raped.

A lot of Twitter
accounts and blogs

that are very close to WikiLeaks

have been publishing things that
I know Julian knows is not true.

They admire him very much, and he
could have easily stopped that.

There was an enormous
amount of hype and misinformation

and bullshit that came out of
Julian Assange's supporters.

And the more that people realize

that they were lied
to by Julian,

the less moral and
political authority he has.

He's supposed to be about truth.

Information should be free!

This is not democracy!

We want free speech!

Hands off WikiLeaks!

We want free speech!

Hands off WikiLeaks!

What do we want? Free speech!

When do we want it? Now!

Free Julian Assange!

Free Julian Assange!

Good evening, and welcome
to this fundraising dinner

for freedom of speech.

While I cannot be with
you in person this evening

because I am under house arrest,

I can at least be
with you in spirit.

After nine days, Assange
was released from prison,

his supporters putting up
over $300, 000 in bail.

While Julian appealed
his extradition to Sweden,

a local journalist named Vaughan Smith
offered Julian a place to stay.

Ellingham Hall is
125 miles northeast of London.

It's a house that's been in my
family for 250 years or so.

We've got livestock, we've
got cattle, we've got sheep.

We've got game, obviously,
pheasant, partridge.

We shoot them and eat them.

Ellingham Hall
is a lovely place,

but it's right in
the middle of nowhere,

and we'd packed it with
about 15-20 people.

It's a sort of cross between Big
Brother and a spy thriller.

Part of Vaughan's plan
to keep the thing civilized

was setting strict rules
around meals,

and so Vaughan's very lovely housekeeper
would cook for us three times a day.

Even port served at dinner,

which was passed to the left, of course.

And now we are in a position

WikiLeaks fundraising video

where we are being
most aggressively censored

by the Washington establishment
of the United States.

To raise money
for his legal defense,

Assange began selling
a compelling package:

Dinner with Julian.

In exchange for a donation,

WikiLeaks would provide a
link to a video of Julian

to be played at home
on a laptop,

placed on a tablemat set
for the absent hacker.

And together, we make the world into a
place where all our dreams can play.

This Dinner for Free Speech

was in fact dinner for Julian's
sex offense defense fund.

No one knows now whether
money given to WikiLeaks

is going to Julian or elsewhere.

Julian's legal troubles
made him more famous than ever,

but they also intensified his differences
with his former media partners.

They defended his
right to publish

but began to turn
on Assange himself.

I've been close enough
to see the

wasps around the jam here.

He stirred the nest

and they've come to sting him rather
more than perhaps he expected.

In a January
piece, you described Assange as

"eccentric, " "elusive,"
"manipulative, " "volatile,"

"openly hostile, " "coy,"
an "office geek,"

a "derelict, " "arrogant,"
"thin-skinned, " "conspiratorial,"

and "oddly credulous."

Um, is that any way for a journalist
to talk about his sources?

He looked like
a bag lady coming in.

He was wearing kind of
a dingy khaki sports coat,

old tennis shoes,

with socks that were kind of
collapsing around his ankles.

And he clearly hadn't
bathed in several days.

The New York Times...
The hypocrisy of this act.

They wanted the material.

They were fully complicit in the
publication of the material.

But as soon as the heat came on,
they wanted to wash their hands.

I tried over many months to get
an on-camera interview with Assange.

After meetings and emails,

I was finally summoned
to the Norfolk mansion

for a six-hour negotiation.

Julian wanted money.

He said that the market rate
for an interview with him

was one million dollars.

When I declined,
he offered an alternative,

perhaps I would spy on my other
interviews and report back to him.

I couldn't do that either.

During his time under house arrest, he
had become more secretive and paranoid.

He railed against his enemies,

and I knew that he had tried
to get all his followers

to sign a non-disclosure
agreement.

The penalty for leaking,

$ 19 million.

I'd found this
a little bit awkward,

being asked by
a transparency organization

to sign exactly
the kind of document

used to silence whistle-blowers
around the world.

Seemed pretty troubling.
And so I refused.

All organizations
face two possible paths.

They can be open, honest, just,

or they can be closed, unjust,

and therefore not successful.

Had the secret-leaker
become the secret-keeper?

More and more fond of mysteries.

The biggest mystery of all was
the role of the United States.

Over two years
after the first leak,

no charges have been
filed by the U.S.

Assange claimed that the U.
S. was biding its time,

waiting for him to go to Sweden.

But there was no proof.

In fact, members of
Assange's legal team

admitted that it would be easier

for the U.S. to extradite
Assange from Britain.

Britain is the
one that's done this special deal

with the United States
on extradition.

But Sweden is
particularly strong

in seeing as sacrosanct that
business about handing people over.

They would hold to that perhaps
stronger than Britain would.

We think we've got a special
relationship with the United States.

Despite that
special relationship,

Assange desperately
fought extradition to Sweden

and lost every appeal.

Julian, we are with you!

His legal battle
drained his finances

and trapped him in a family
farm for over a year.

Hoped for funding didn't come, and
WikiLeaks suspended operations.

His international organization
had blown apart.

In Berlin, Daniel Domscheit-Berg
quit the organization.

So did the mysterious figure who had
built the secret submission system.

Assange no longer had
a drop box for new leaks.

In London, journalist Heather
Brooke was leaked unredacted copies

of all of the State Department
cables by a WikiLeaks insider.

There was the initial people
that Julian gave the information to

and then, how many people
did they give it to,

and then how many people
did they give it to?

Some of the cables also
leaked to a European dictator

who used them to target dissidents
and suppress free speech.

This is at the core
of where things went wrong,

and where ultimately
WikiLeaks has lost control

over the spread of
these documents.

In the end, all of the
cables leaked across the Internet

on mirrored versions
of WikiLeaks. org.

All Julian had left
was his celebrity.

How you doing, Mr. Assange?

That's my personal information

and you have no right
to know about it!

Julian extended his brand by hosting
a chat show for Russian state television.

Where are you? In England?

Lam in England, under house
arrest now for 500 days.

Five hundred days.

One of his guests was Rafael
Correa, the president of Ecuador.

Welcome to the club
of the persecuted!

Thank you, President Correa.

A month after the program aired,

Assange sought asylum
from his former TV guest.

This morning the sun
came up on a different world,

and a courageous Latin American
nation took a stand for justice.

Embassy of Ecuador
London, England

It was an ironic choice.

Ecuador had a record of
putting journalists in prison

and had been charged with
corruption in a WikiLeaks cable.

The United States must renounce
its witch hunt against WikiLeaks.

Despite no proof
of a US-Sweden plot,

Ecuador granted him asylum.

The British government pledged to arrest him
if he left the tight confines of the embassy,

so Assange prepared
for a long stay.

I saw the signs

"Free Bradley Manning"
and "Free Julian Assange,"

and I think it's ridiculous.

These two cases have nothing
to do with each other.

Julian, he's not
even imprisoned.

He has locked himself up
to avoid coming to Sweden

to answer a few pretty
simple questions.

There is a phenomenon
called Noble Cause Corruption.

Essentially, you do things which

if anyone else did you would
recognize aren't okay, aren't right.

But because you know
you're a good guy,

it's different for you.

I suppose you can't
accuse Julian

of not setting out from
the beginning what he may do.

Mendax by name,

Mendax by nature.

The same
extraordinary personality

which conceived of
and created WikiLeaks

is also the same personality

that has effectively
destroyed WikiLeaks.

WikiLeaks has become
what it detests

and what it actually tried
to rid the world of.

We must get away from this understanding
that we see Julian as a savior,

as some new guru, some new hero,

some new pop star or whatever,

that's going to
change all of it.

The credit is undue.

Everybody celebrating Julian
as a whistle-blower.

He's not.

Bradley Manning might
have been a whistle-blower,

and, if he was,
he is the courageous guy.

He is the one
that took all the risk

and in the end now has...
ls suffering.

Free Bradley Manning!

After his arrest, Manning
had been held for two months

in an eight-by-eight
foot cage in Kuwait.

Then he was transferred to the Marine
Corps brig in Quantico, Virginia.

Though Manning had not been
tried for any crime,

he was kept in solitary
confinement for nearly a year.

Shame! Sit yo' ass down!

Bradley Manning, the alleged
leaker is currently sitting in prison

2010 Hackers on
Planet Earth conference

and he could be locked up
for the rest of his life.

How do you feel about that?

He could be tortured.

I think that it's
a little bit ludicrous

to say that Bradley Manning's
going to be tortured.

We don't do that
to our citizens.

Free Bradley Manning!

A high-ranking general

authorized Manning's placement in
solitary confinement on suicide watch

against the protest
of prison doctors.

His clothes and blankets
were taken from him.

Lights in his cell
were always on.

When he questioned his treatment,
guards took away his glasses

and forced him to stand naked
during morning roll call.

At night, guards kept him
cold and woke him frequently,

a practice that recalled the sleep
deprivation program at Guantanamo.

Manning's supporters speculated

that the U.S. government
was trying to push Manning

to turn on Assange
and implicate him in a crime.

What was your reaction about

Bradley Manning's
treatment at Quantico?

It seemed to me that
sleep deprivation and nudity,

these were what I would call
"enhanced interrogation techniques."

They were being practiced on an individual.
No.

Look, I don't know
the specifics.

I don't know the rules
of confinement

for the Marine brig at Quantico.

But Bob Gates is an
incredibly honorable man.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mike
Mullen is an incredibly honorable man.

I defer very much
to their judgment

that whatever was done
was appropriate.

The treatment that
he was receiving at Quantico,

the level of solitary
confinement,

the fact that his clothes
were taken away at night,

it was inconsistent with our
values and our interests.

It was making Bradley Manning
a far more sympathetic figure

than I see him.

When I was asked about it
in a forum at MIT,

I gave a candid answer.

State Department
spokesman P.J. Crowley

said the treatment of Bradley
Manning by the Pentagon

is "ridiculous and
counterproductive and stupid,"

and I'm wondering
if you agree with that.

Uh...

I have actually
asked the Pentagon

whether or not the procedures
that have been taken

in terms of his confinement
are appropriate

and are meeting
our basic standards.

They assure me that they are.

I was appalled at that.

I was appalled at that with respect
to the President's responsibility

as Commander-in-Chief.

Any commander...

Any commander knows
that first and foremost

he or she is responsible
for the well-being

of each and every one
of their soldiers,

to include the ones
sitting in the brig.

I can't go into details
about some of their concerns,

but some of this has to do with
Private Manning's safety as well.

Do you disagree
with P.J. Crowley?

I think I gave you an answer
to the substantive issue.

Once my comments were brought
to the President of the United States,

I felt the only thing
I should do is resign.

I stand by what I said.

What was unsaid

was any consideration of holding
Manning's supervisors accountable

for permitting the greatest security
breach in American history.

Manning's commanding officer
only received a minor demotion.

The Army brought 22 charges
against Manning.

They included
"aiding the enemy,"

without naming just
who the enemy was.

For these charges,
Manning faced life in prison,

and a possible death sentence.

People who don't like the leak

try to say that it was
damaging national security.

Have you ever seen any evidence

that American national security has
been damaged in any way by this?

And if you look at what the whistle-blower
is saying in that online chat,

and look at what he doesn't say.

He doesn't say, "I want money."

He doesn't say, "I'm going
to go to Russia or China.

"I'm going to go to al-Qaeda
and give them this stuff."

It doesn't happen.

He says, "This is the material that the
people of the world need to have."

And it was naive to
dump the whole lot

without thinking ahead about how
that was going to be handled.

But you don't have to
lock this guy up for decades

and effectively put him
through forms of torture.

That's a politically motivated
act of vengeance

on somebody who hasn't
damaged national security,

he's caused embarrassment.

Let's be clear.

This disclosure is not just an attack
on America's foreign policy interests,

it is an attack on the
international community.

The American government
said, "You can't publish this.

"It's dangerous. It's going to damage
world affairs, diplomacy, etc."

But then you publish it anyway,

and it's for the greater good,

telling people
what they needed to know.

The question becomes, does
it matter and what changes?

I think really we have to say
that something has started,

and it's not going to be
about WikiLeaks.

It's going to be about
transparency and accountability,

and keeping power in check,

keeping governments responsible,

and who cares who does it
as long as someone does.

Information by its
very nature needs to flow.

In some regards, withholding information
is trying to repeal the laws of gravity.

You may succeed for
a short period of time,

but sooner or later
it's going to break free.

Now you're
talking just like a hacker.

I think Manning did
the right thing

and what you did
you have to live with!

I think you belong
in Guantanamo!

Whoa! Okay.

I care more about Bradley
than many of his supporters do.

We had a chance to be friends,
however briefly, and...

He opened up in a lot of ways

about his life,
his personal life,

and

he did it in a way
that someone only would do

to someone they
felt they could trust.

And I had to betray that trust

for the sake of

all of the people
that he put in danger.

And I wish to hell
that it had never happened.

It's going to be
a question for the ages,

why Bradley Manning reached out
to somebody he really didn't know

and entrusted him with such
a life-altering secret.

The only thing I can come up with is that
once he saw the results of the leak,

the need just to share that,
just probably grew and grew.

He just needed to tell anybody,

and he thought Adrian was
the right person to tell.

Whistle-blowing is
a really isolating act.

It's a courageous
and phenomenal thing to do,

but you are essentially
doing something

that your colleagues
and your friends

would not want you to do
and not understand.

It alienates you
further from them.

A source who needs
to talk to someone

and explain what they've done and
think through what they've done

needs someone safe
to do that to.

In the logs, Manning says,
he couldn't talk to WikiLeaks,

that's not how they work.

Does that protect
whistle-blowers

or does it protect WikiLeaks?

In the end,
everybody's just human.

If you're leaking
material to someone,

if you're telling
a reporter a good story,

something that really
makes a difference,

then I think just from
a human perspective,

it's really difficult not
to get any credit for it.

Because no one can tap you on the
shoulder and say, "Good job.

"Courageous thing you did."

And this is really the
complicated part about it.

How do you make sure that your source
doesn't compromise themselves?

In the chats, Manning
sent a link to "Pale Blue Dot,"

a famous photo of Earth he saw

while reading an essay
by the astronomer Carl Sagan.

"That's home," said Sagan.
"That's us.

"Every saint and sinner in the
history of our species lived there,

"on a mote of dust,

"suspended on a sunbeam.

"In our obscurity,
in all this vastness,

"there is no hint that help
will come from elsewhere

"to save us from ourselves.

"It is up to us."

After international outcry,

the US Army moved Bradley Manning
out of solitary confinement.

In February 2013, Manning pled guilty
to leaking documents to WikiLeaks.

The Army continued to prosecute
him for "aiding the enemy."

Bradley Manning was held without
trial for more than 3 years.

As of March 2013, Julian Assange
remained confined to a small room

in the Ecuadorian Embassy
in London.

He promised to publish
more documents

and announced his campaign
to run for Senate in Australia.