Assange on to balcony at Ecuadorian embassy, London

[crowd cheers]

00:13

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: Few people have had an impact on the history of this century quite like Julian Assange, and few have been as polarising.

00:21

Assange addresses crowd from balcony

Assange:  "Good evening, London."

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: To some, he’s a principled champion of free speech, to others he’s an irresponsible anarchist. Assange has sparked fierce debate about the power of information, over the right to know and the right keep secrets.

00:29

SCOTT SHANE, NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: I suppose very flawed personalities often are sort of the

00:45

Scott Shane 100%

engineers of history and I think Julian Assange is one.

00:50

Assange addresses crowd from balcony

P.J. CROWLEY, U.S. ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS, 2009 – 2011: I don't see Julian Assange as this great crusader of transparency.

00:53

Crowley 100%

I see him as a reckless narcissist.

00:58

Assange addresses crowd from balcony

ALAN RUSBRIDGER, EDITOR, THE GUARDIAN, 1995 – 2015: He's quixotic, charming, brilliant, intolerable, maverick, difficult, impossible, narcissistic, entrepreneurial,

01:04

Rusbridger 100%

vindictive. I mean, we could go on all night. He's all those things.

01:15

Assange addresses crowd from balcony

And that's, in a way, why we're here talking about him;

01:21

Rusbridger 100%

he's a very interesting man.

01:25

Press outside embassy

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: Julian Assange harnessed the technology of the digital age and challenged the supremacy of governments.

01:31

SCOTT SHANE, NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: He created, invented this mechanism by which people could be given a voice

01:37

Shane 100%

and not just a voice, but an outlet for information by the terabyte.

01:45

Assange being dragged from embassy to police van. Super:
RUPTLY

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: In April Assange was finally dragged from his sunless refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.  He’s now facing espionage charges and could spend the rest of his life in jail.

JENNIFER ROBINSON, LAWYER FOR JULIAN ASSANGE: He's now in prison facing extradition. This fight could go on for years. It's an incredibly sad story,

01:52

Robinson 100%

and it's disappointing to me that more people are not outraged by the treatment that an Australian citizen who has won awards for his publishing work is now being prosecuted for having made that information public.

02:18

Assange bundled into police van. Super:
RUPTLY

KRISTINN HRAFNSSON, EDITOR IN CHIEF, WIKILEAKS: A line has been drawn in the sand and either you are going to support Julian and fight this retribution and those indictments,

02:33

Hrafnsson 100%

or you basically step back and the lights will go out. That's how serious it is.

02:42

Ext. Ecuadorian embassy, London

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: From teenage computer hacker to a person of global influence, Julian Assange has become one of the most significant

02:52

Brissenden to camera outside embassy. Super:
MICHAEL BRISSENDEN

and divisive and figures of our time. Tonight on 4 Corners we look at how he harnessed the power of the digital era and we ask the question, is Assange a hero or a villain?

02:59

VFX: Photos of Assange. Title at 03:22:
HERO OR VILLAIN: The Prosecution of Julian Assange

Music

03:11

Wikileaks web page and film Super: April 2010
COLLATERAL MURDER
www.collateralmurder.com
© 2010 The Sunshine Press

US ARMY VOICE 1: "…this location and there's more that keep walking by and one of them has a weapon."

US ARMY VOICE 2: "Roger receive target fifteen."

03:35

Subtitles over leaked footage:
US ARMY VOICE 1: "See all those Photo.  Standing down there."

SUBTITLE: "Fucking prick. Fucking prick. Hotel Two-Six: this is Crazy Horse One-Eight. Have individuals with weapons.

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER:  In 2010 a little known organisation called Wikileaks exploded on to the world stage when it released classified US military footage, that revealed a shocking event during the war in Iraq.

03:50

SUBTITLE:  He's got a weapon too. Hotel Two-Six. Crazy Horse One-Eight. Have five to six individuals with AK47s. Request permission to engage."

DANIEL DOMSCHEIT-BERG, WIKILEAKS SPOKESPERSON 2007-2010: In this video you have this idea that basically you know something terrible is about to happen, and then it still builds up over some minutes.

04:04

Domscheit-Berg 100%. Super:
DANIEL DOMSCHEIT-BERG
WikiLeaks spokesperson 2001-2010

It's working, it's building up towards something terrible. You have this idea, and then suddenly all hell breaks loose in this video, and it just gets worse from there.

04:14

Leaked footage of helicopter attack continues.

SUBTITLED: 
"Just fuckin', once you get on 'em just open 'em up. All right."

"I see your element, uh, got about four Humvees, uh, out along…"
"You're clear."

"All right, firing."

Let me know when you've got them."

"Let's shoot."

"Light 'em all up. Come on, fire!"
"Keep shooting."

"Roger. I got 'em."

"Two-six, this is two-six, we're mobile."

"Oops. I'm sorry what was going on?"

"God damn it, Kyle."

"All right, hahaha. I hit 'em."

04:27

Music

05:04

SUBTITLES:
- "Good shoot'n."
- "Thank you."
- "All right, you're clear."
- All right. I'm just trying to find targets again."
- "Bushmaster Six, this is Bushmaster Two-Six."
- "Got a bunch of bodies layin' there."

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER:   The footage showed an attack on a group of men by US apache helicopters.  Twelve people including two Reuters news staff were killed. Two children were injured. The callous behaviour of the US troops exposed the brutality of the conflict to the world.

05:07

VOICES [subtitled]: "All right, we got about, uh, eight individuals."

"Yeah, we got one guy crawling around down there, but, uh, you know, we got, definitely got something. We're shooting some more."
"Roger."

DANIEL DOMSCHEIT-BERG, WIKILEAKS SPOKESPERSON 2007-2010: Collateral Murder in 2010

05:23

Domscheit-Berg 100%

was what gave us, let's say, world headlines in every major news publication anywhere in the world, which led to millions of people watching this video on YouTube. 

05:36

WikiLeaks footage

VOICES [subtitled]:
"Hey, you shoot, I'll talk."
"Hotel Two-Six. Crazy Horse One-Eight."

SCOTT SHANE, NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: WikiLeaks went from this obscure organisation, that very few people

05:48

Shane 100%. Super:
SCOTT SHANE
National Security reporter,
The New York Times

certainly outside the national security news business had ever heard of, to being talked about all over the world.

05:56

WikiLeaks footage

VOICES [subtitled]:
"Hotel Two-Six. Crazy Horse One-Eight."

"Oh, yeah, look at those dead bastards."
"Nice."
"Two-Six. Crazy Horse One-Eight."
"Nice."

KRISTINN HRAFNSSON, EDITOR IN CHIEF, WIKILEAKS: That video has since, of course, become iconic

06:05

Hrafnsson 100%. Super:
KRISTINN HRAFNSSON
Editor In Chief, WikiLeaks

as testimony of the Iraq War. It's like the napalm girl of the Vietnam War. It tells a bigger story than the video.

06:22

[Archival] RT Assange TV interview

06:33

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: The collateral murder video also made Julian Assange a household name. He was pursued and feted by media around the world.  Everyone wanted to know who this digital disruptor was.

06:41

NEWS HOST:  What does the release of this video say about the role of your website? Are you essentially now the new Fourth Estate? The watchdogs, so to speak.

06:54

JULIAN ASSANGE: Well, reporters that don't have new information, to some degree, have nothing useful to say. And what keeps people honest, and what keeps our management over civilisation going, is we understand how the world actually works.

07:06

Hrafnsson 100%

KRISTINN HRAFNSSON, EDITOR IN CHIEF, WIKILEAKS: The question was who was the source of this, and who is this guy, Julian Assange?

07:18

Rusbridger 100%. Super:
ALAN RUSBRIDGER
Editor, The Guardian, 1995-2015

ALAN RUSBRIDGER, EDITOR, THE GUARDIAN, 1995 – 2015: Suddenly this guy emerges who's a kind of hacker, developer. I mean nobody knew quite how to categorise him or how somebody like that would have access to Defense Department -- we assume that was where it had come from -- material. So he seemed to sort of have dark arts that the rest of us didn't have.

07:24

Domscheit-Berg 100%. Super:
DANIEL DOMSCHEIT-BERG
WikiLeaks spokesperson
2007-2010

DANIEL DOMSCHEIT-BERG, WIKILEAKS SPOKESPERSON 2007-2010: Everybody wanted to meet him. Everybody, you know, yeah. It was like having an audience with him. And not just a rock star, but it was combined with this whole secret agent type of vibe that it had to it. Everything was super secretive. The whole communication was complicated, so this was in itself also even more appealing to everybody who wanted to meet him. It was rock star combined with a James Bond type of vibe.

07:50

Domscheit-Berg on computer

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: Daniel Domscheit-Berg was one of the early members of Wikileaks.  He put his life savings into the group.

08:28

DANIEL DOMSCHEIT-BERG, WIKILEAKS SPOKESPERSON 2007-2010: Basically, Julian was living off my money for some time as well. I invested something around 50,000 euros or so into buying some service, buying laptops for people who needed to work.

08:38

Domscheit-Berg 100%

Then we had the situation in Reykjavik where we were all six people crashing in two rooms in a hotel for some time. In 2009, I put all my furniture into storage, and dissolved my apartment as well. We were just living on the road, basically. So it was people crashing on other people's couches or living in small-time hotel rooms in order to work on this project.

08:51

WikiLeaks Collateral Murder footage

SUBTITLES:
"This is Two-Six roger. I'll pop flares. We also have one individual moving. We're looking for weapons. If we see a weapon, we're gonna engage."

09:26

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: The Collateral Murder video changed everything.

09:35

SUBTITLES:
"Yeah Bushmaster, we have a van that's approaching and picking up the bodies."

09:39

Subtitles: "Bushmaster, Crazyhorse. We have individuals going to the scene, looks like possibly picking up bodies and weapons."

DANIEL DOMSCHEIT-BERG, WIKILEAKS SPOKESPERSON 2007-2010: The major thing that happened was that it became news all over the world.

SUBTITLES:
"Where's that van at?"
"Right down there by the bodies."
"Okay, yeah."

DANIEL DOMSCHEIT-BERG, WIKILEAKS SPOKESPERSON 2007-2010: There was no immediate backlash from the United States military to that. I mean, there was a reaction,

09:44

Domscheit-Berg 100%

but there was no backlash in the sense that there was a threat or suddenly anybody was worried that we would be arrested or so, but it was clear that we entered a whole new scene of people interested in what we do.

09:56

Subtitles:  "This is Bushmaster Seven, go ahead."
"Roger. We have a black SUV-uh Bongo truck picking up the bodes. Request permission to engage."
"Fuck."

SUBTITLES:
"Bushmaster, Crazyhorse One-Eight."

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: No one in the organisation knew the identity of the person who had uploaded the video or where it had come from. 

KRISTINN HRAFNSSON, EDITOR IN CHIEF, WIKILEAKS: The way WikiLeaks is structured, is

10:12

Hrafnsson 100%. Super:
KRISTINN HRAFNSSON
Editor In Chief, WikiLeaks

basically promising the protection of the source and the best protection is not knowing the source, and that's what we tried to achieve.

10:24

Collateral Murder footage/GFX Photo. Bradley Manning photo overlay

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: The source of the video was Bradley Manning a lonely 21 year old private, who later became Chelsea.  The private was stationed in an outpost in Iraq struggling with her identity and with the gravity of what she was seeing about US conduct in the war.

10:34

NANCY HOLLANDER, LAWYER FOR CHELSEA MANNING: She felt affronted by what she saw. She was also in a difficult period for her. She didn't really have friends there, people weren't friendly to her. She was having all these conflicts about who she was, whether she was Bradley a man, or Chelsea a woman.

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: Manning secretly downloaded masses of classified material.   Then she contacted Wikileaks.

10:57

Hollander 100%. Super:
NANCY HOLLANDER
Lawyer for Chelsea Manning

NANCY HOLLANDER, LAWYER FOR CHELSEA MANNING: Well, she reached out. She had the information. She was horrified by what she had seen, which many of us have seen now. And she wanted to get it out. She called The New York Times, she called The Washington Post. Nobody would even return her call. And she found WikiLeaks, nobody really knew about WikiLeaks in those days, but she found it online.

11:24

GFX: Jabber online chat/Photos. Assange and Manning

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: Assange and Manning corresponded on line in encrypted conversations. At this point neither knew the identity of the person they were speaking to.

NANCY HOLLANDER, LAWYER FOR CHELSEA MANNING: She did find someone with a like mind in Julian.

11:51

Hollander 100%

She found someone who cared about the public having information, who was worried about what happens in a war, and who believed that this information should get out. And there was no one around her who she could have that conversation with. No one.

12:08

GFX: Jabber online chat

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: The encrypted exchanges on the Jabber online chat service would later be collected as evidence against Manning and Assange. In one chat, as they worked on cracking a secret Defense Department password, Assange commented ‘no luck so far’.

12:24

Domscheit-Berg 100%

DANIEL DOMSCHEIT-BERG, WIKILEAKS SPOKESPERSON 2007-2010: We had a chatroom, naturally. You can see there was lots of chat going on, and today if I read the chat logs, if these are real chat logs, and I would guess they are, then the conversations between Julian and Chelsea certainly didn't help anybody.

12:41

GFX. Photo. Assange and Domscheit-Berg

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: Assange’s dealings with Manning would later be one of the factors that lead to a bitter split in Wikileaks.

DANIEL DOMSCHEIT-BERG, WIKILEAKS SPOKESPERSON 2007-2010: This is where, I think, on a next level,

13:01

Domscheit-Berg 100%

this was an abuse of responsibility maybe, where you were milking a source. That's how I read that, and this is not something we should've been doing, or Julian should've been doing.

13:12

GFX: Jabber online chat. On screen text:
PRIVATE MANNING:  “after this upload, thats all i really have got left”
JULIAN ASSANGE: “curious eyes never run dry in my experience”

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: Over a period of months, Manning and Assange bonded through their online conversations. Manning uploaded thousands of files. Assange was keen for more. At one point Manning said: “After this upload, that’s all I really have got left”. Assange replied:  “Curious eyes never run dry in my experience”.

13:25

Domscheit-Berg 100%

DANIEL DOMSCHEIT-BERG, WIKILEAKS SPOKESPERSON 2007-2010: There's little to nothing about, you know, 'be careful'. There's just a lot about 'what else can you provide?' And even when Chelsea says there's nothing else, then there's this really fucked up comment about how the curious eye never runs dry, and that's something, for me, even though I was not part of that conversation, it was happening at a time where in parallel I was having a conversation with Julian just in another window of his computer, and I didn't know about what was going on, and that's in itself a terrible thing also. Because it clearly shows how we were failing on an organisational level also to keep checks and balances within our own project.

13:49

Hrafnsson 100%

KRISTINN HRAFNSSON, EDITOR IN CHIEF, WIKILEAKS: I don't really care about the statement of Daniel Domscheit-Berg, who hasn't been associated with the organisation since he tried to basically push Julian out of it in the mid-summer of 2010.

14:44

Hrafnsson on phone on street

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: Icelandic journalist Kristin Hrafnsson is a collaborator and admirer of Assange. He’s now taken over as the Wikileaks editor in chief. 

14:55

KRISTINN HRAFNSSON, EDITOR IN CHIEF, WIKILEAKS: Has Chelsea Manning maintained that she was misled?

15:07

Hrafnsson 100%

No. Has she maintained that she would have wanted publications to be in another format? Not to my knowledge.

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: Quite the opposite, in fact.

KRISTINN HRAFNSSON, EDITOR IN CHIEF, WIKILEAKS: So, why would you listen to the voice of Daniel Domscheit-Berg? Just listen to Chelsea Manning.

15:11

Hollander 100%. Super:
NANCY HOLLANDER
Lawyer for Chelsea Manning

NANCY HOLLANDER, LAWYER FOR CHELSEA MANNING: I don't think Chelsea was played at all. I think she did what she did, Julian and WikiLeaks did what they did. They connected. And I've looked at those transcripts, and I think she was looking for an outlet for this information, she found it. I didn't see anything in those transcripts where anyone was tempting her. She had the information. She released it.

15:30

GFX: Manning arrest

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: Manning was arrested just eight weeks after the video was released. She was discovered after she confessed online to another hacker that she was the Wikileaks source.

DANIEL DOMSCHEIT-BERG, WIKILEAKS SPOKESPERSON 2007-2010: For many years, this was the lurking monster in the room,

15:58

Domscheit-Berg 100%

in the closet somewhere where we were so afraid that one day one of our sources would be arrested, that we make a mistake or so,

16:21

Manning in custody

but this was the total catastrophe.

NANCY HOLLANDER, LAWYER FOR CHELSEA MANNING: She was detained, she was taken to Kuwait, and then they sent her to Quantico and it was even worse.  It's closed now,

16:32

Hollander 100%

but it was a marine facility. That's the first thing you need to know. Marines have their own thing, as it were. And I'm sure they did not like the Bradley Manning who came in. And they treated her very badly. First of all, she was in solitary for 11 months, and they made her stand at attention naked.

16:41

Manning in custody, to military court

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: While Manning was detained in a military prison Wikileaks was still holding a huge cache of files that she'd delivered. The big media companies wanted to get their hands on whatever else Assange might have.

ALAN RUSBRIDGER, EDITOR, THE GUARDIAN, 1995 – 2015: On the basis of Collateral Murder, you thought, well, if he's got access to that kind of material, then of course we would like to see more of it.

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: Why do you think he decided that he would cooperate with you?

17:04

Rusbridger 100%. Super:
ALAN RUSBRIDGER
Editor, The Guardian, 1995-2015

ALAN RUSBRIDGER, EDITOR, THE GUARDIAN, 1995 – 2015: I can imagine there were a number of reasons jostling around in his mind. So I think it would've occurred to him that there he was on his own. He was metaphorically a fugitive. He was, when we first met him, he carried all his belongings in a couple of bags on his back. He had no fixed abode, and he was about to take on the mightiest government on the planet. He must've thought that was quite a frightening thing to do.

17:37

So there was a kind of protective element. I imagine that he was quite conflicted in his own mind about the relative virtues of wanting to be his own publisher, his own impresario, his own showman, his own editor, against working in a team with people who would be more experienced than him in handling this kind of material. So I think from the beginning he was quite conflicted about whether he should partner with someone like The Guardian, but in the end he decided it was worth it.

18:06

Shane 100%. Super:
SCOTT SHANE
National Security reporter,
The New York Times

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: The New York Times was also quick to get on board with Wikileaks.

18:48

SCOTT SHANE, NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: They seemed to be a shoestring operation, and Assange did seem to be a somewhat eccentric character, or extreme character. He was often making pronouncements about freedom of information that were very absolutist. But, I was happy to work with him. 

18:53

London GVs

Music

19:16

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: The data set delivered by Manning contained hundreds of thousands of classified files. It was a tantalising prize for any news organisation.

19:23

SCOTT SHANE, NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: There was this sort of gradual dawning that WikiLeaks had an enormous amount of material that the government didn't want out.

19:35

ALAN RUSBRIDGER, EDITOR, THE GUARDIAN, 1995 – 2015: There had, I think at that point, never been a leak of sensitive material on this scale.

19:45

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER:  But Julian Assange and the old mastheads were like oil and water. The partnership was difficult from the start.  Marred by disputes about what to publish and what should be redacted.

19:52

ALAN RUSBRIDGER, EDITOR, THE GUARDIAN, 1995 – 2015: Over time we were working Der Spiegel, and with Le Monde, with El País, with the New York Times. We were used to making quite nuanced and sensitive

20:06

Rusbridger 100%

decisions about redaction. What was safe to publish and what was not.  Then at the other extreme you had Julian who was, I don't know, less troubled by the process of redaction than we were. So I think he was quite suspicious of the way that we were working and very suspicious of any contacts with government.

20:17

London GVs

20:42

Assange press conference at Frontline Club. Super:
Afghan War Logs, July 2010

JULIAN ASSANGE: I assume most of you have read some of the morning papers. So this is The Guardian from this morning. Fourteen pages about this topic. Also concurrently in Der Spiegel, 17 pages…

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: In July 2010, Wikileaks and its collaborators went public with a massive leak. The Afghan War Logs came from a trove of 90,000 incident and intelligence reports. Among other things, they revealed the covert role of Pakistan in the war and the true scale of civilian casualties.

21:04

JULIAN ASSANGE: We have tried hard to make sure that this material does not put innocents at harm. All the material is over seven months old, so is of no current operational consequence, even though…

21:45

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: WikiLeaks published documents that contained names, places and dates that the main stream media partners had refused to include.

DANIEL DOMSCHEIT-BERG, WIKILEAKS SPOKESPERSON 2007-2010: In the middle of releasing the Afghani papers,

22:03

Domscheit-Berg 100%. Super:
DANIEL DOMSCHEIT-BERG
WikiLeaks spokesperson
2007-2010

we had this really complicated situation with our three collaborating newspapers: The New York Times, Guardian, and Der Spiegel, where we found out he made promises about redacting part of that publication, but no work was put into these redactions at all.

22:16

Crowley 100%. Super:
P.J. CROWLEY
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, 2009-2011

P.J. CROWLEY, US ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS, 2009–2011: I mean, just dumping hundreds of thousands of documents into the public space, that's not whistle-blowing to me. A whistle-blower is someone who knows the information, understands it, and then can make an informed judgement that the compromise of that information, the benefit of that outweighs the risk and the harm. Julian Assange was in no position to make that judgement.

22:34

Rusbridger 100%

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER:  Did you get the sense that perhaps he didn't even care? I mean, I know there's that quote that you often used about him where he's apparently sitting with a Guardian journalist and he says, he's not worried about not removing the names of Afghans, because they're informants and if they get killed, well, they deserve it.

23:05

Super:
ALAN RUSBRIDGER
Editor, The Guardian, 1995-2015

ALAN RUSBRIDGER, GUARDIAN EDITOR, 1995 – 2015: Well, I think if you are an information anarchist, which I think he is, then you think it's not my problem. He disputes that quote, but they're my colleagues and if they say he said it, I'm satisfied he said it.

23:19

7.30 Report excerpt. Assange

LEIGH SALES: Did you say that?

23:36

Super: 2011

JULIAN ASSANGE, WIKILEAKS FOUNDER: No, and we are suing them for libel and we have witnesses that show that is a libellous claim, and is an ongoing dispute, so there's a lot of vitriol in the top end of the news business and a lot of back-stabbing, and unfortunately we happen to be on the receiving end of it from this individual.

23:58

C-Span footage. Defense Department briefing

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: The stories rocked governments and intelligence establishments in capitols around the world. The US military claimed the leak had put lives at risk.

24:00

C-Span footage. Defense Department briefing Mullen

ADMIRAL MIKE MULLEN, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE:  Mr Assange can say wherever 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 soldier or that of an Afghan family. Disagree with the war all you want, take issue with the policy, challenge me or our ground commanders on the decisions we make to accomplish the mission we've been given, but don’t put those who willingly go into harm's way, even further in harm's way, just satisfy your need to make a point.

24:18

KRISTINN HRAFNSSON, EDITOR IN CHIEF, WIKILEAKS: You saw the men who were responsible for massacres and deaths and had

24:57

Hrafnsson 100%. Super:
KRISTINN HRAFNSSON
Editor In Chief, WikiLeaks

themselves been swimming in the pools of blood in two words: dirty wars, were now claiming that the journalists who exposed those atrocities might have blood on their hands. It was surreal, and it still is.

25:02

Shane 100%

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: Did you find him, in your dealings with him, did The New York Times find him, or you personally find him, that he sort of lacked a moral compass when it came to all of this stuff?

25:17

Super:
SCOTT SHANE
National Security Reporter,
The New York Times

SCOTT SHANE, NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES:  I'm a little bit hesitant to come down very hard on WikiLeaks and on Assange as sort of the founder of WikiLeaks, because all journalists, certainly including The New York Times and myself, are doing the same sort of balancing act all the time. We write stories all the time that people would rather not have us write and that cause people no end of grief and trouble and sometimes ends up with them in jail. And that's the nature of sort of informing the public about important things. Certainly though, Julian Assange drew the line in many instances in a different place than we would have drawn it. And sometimes he argued there was no line.

25:25

GFX: Photo. Assange

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: Increasingly, Assange himself was becoming a story his collaborators could not ignore.

SCOTT SHANE, NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: At some point, we wrote a New York Times Magazine story about Assange that

26:22

Shane 100%

talked about his dirty socks, and he took great offence. That did capture the tension in the relationship because, on the one hand, he was a very significant figure in the news and a very colourful figure in the news. And if you described him in a direct and honest way, the result was not always pretty.

26:38

Rusbridger 100%

ALAN RUSBRIDGER, EDITOR, THE GUARDIAN, 1995 – 2015: I mean, we all have our moments of vanity and I think Julian was not immune from vanity. But I also think he thought that actually by making himself a very high profile figure would be, in some sense, a defence shield.

27:13

London GVs

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: Questions of character and personal behaviour had left him exposed. Assange was despised by governments around the world. Retribution was coming.

27:26

2010 was a momentous year for Julian Assange – Wikileaks had made him a celebrated media identity,

27:42

Brissenden to camera, Westminster

but by the end of the year he was under house arrest here in the UK. The US had announced an ongoing criminal investigation into the WikiLeaks releases and Interpol had issued a red notice for his arrest in connection with sex crimes in Sweden.

27:49

London GVs

NEWSREADER 1:  The law enforcement around the world is turning up the heat on WikiLeaks…

NEWSREADER 2: … an international arrest warrant can now be issues for Julian Assange…

NEWSREADER 3:  One of these charges concerns an allegation of rape…

NEWSREADER 4:  Interpol has put him on a wanted list in connection with rape allegations in Sweden.

NEWSREADER 5:  Two charges of molestation and one of unlawful coercion…

JENNIFER ROBINSON, LAWYER FOR JULIAN ASSANGE: The Swedish prosecutor did not need to issue that warrant

28:05

Robinson 100%. Super:
JENNIFER ROBINSON
Lawyer for Julian Assange

because we were actively offering his cooperation and testimony. She got an arrest warrant for his questioning in circumstances when we were offering his testimony. It wasn't required at that time, and yet they sought it in the context of a major publication. That's why people ask questions about the timing.

28:30

London GVs

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: The sex allegations led to even greater tension within Wikileaks.

DANIEL DOMSCHEIT-BERG, WIKILEAKS SPOKESPERSON 2007-2010: For me, in any kind of a serious

28:49

Domscheit-Berg 100%. Super:
DANIEL DOMSCHEIT-BERG
WikiLeaks spokesperson 2001-2010

organisation, if your manager or your editor-in-chief or whoever has to face these types of accusations, in order to avoid damaging the project, you take a break. This was all that we suggested. Nobody ever wanted to take away the project from Julian or so. We just wanted, let's say, this to be a little bit more professional.

28:58

London GVs

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: The story was big news. Too big for his newspaper partners to ignore.

29:23

Rusbridger 100%. Super:
ALAN RUSBRIDGER
Editor, The Guardian, 1995-2015

ALAN RUSBRIDGER, GUARDIAN EDITOR, 1995 – 2015: We felt strongly that just because he was working with us, we couldn't pull our punches in a way that we covered whatever had happened in Sweden, and I think he didn't like that.

29:31

GFX. Photo. Assange

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: The rift in WikiLeaks became so bad that Daniel Domscheit-Berg and a number of others left.

DANIEL DOMSCHEIT-BERG, WIKILEAKS SPOKESPERSON 2007-2010: I think September or so 2010 is when me and the majority of the team quit the project.

29:43

Domscheit-Berg 100%

And when we left, the next phase of WikiLeaks became all kinds of people who were entering this project that had no experience, that were there because the project was so famous, that were there because they wanted this new type of guru or whatever, following a leader. It's very different. I think the biggest thing that changed is that there was nobody who was actually challenging Julian, his decisions, his position on things, his leadership.

30:02

Assange interview 100%. Super: 2011

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: Assange has always contested this view of events. 

JULIAN ASSANGE, WIKILEAKS FOUNDER:  He was suspended, insofar as a CEO is able to suspend employees that have problems.  Yes, that is the job, unfortunately, that someone has to take responsibility and suspend others.

30:39

Assange press conference. Super:
Iraq War Logs, October 2010

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: With a new team behind him Wikileaks released the Iraq war logs.

ASSANGE:  Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the UN High Commissioner on Torture, Human Rights First, and many others, have called for full and frank investigations. It is time the United States opened up instead of covering up. The United States is in grave danger of losing its way.

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER:  Almost 400,000 secret US military field reports painted a grim picture of the coalition's military activities, including torture and summary executions. The stakes became even higher.

31:04

Hrafnsson 100%

KRISTINN HRAFNSSON, EDITOR IN CHIEF, WIKILEAKS: You are exposing the dirty secrets of the most powerful war machine in our days, from a country that has decided it's above the law. It wants to create the reality it wants, and of course, we assumed that it would have strong reactions and repercussions.

32:01

Washington capitol GVs

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER:  The most politically embarrassing leak of all was about to surface.

32:28

NEWSREADER 1:  The online whistle blower site WikiLeaks is back at it today…

NEWSREADER 2:  This is the third huge release of largely classified US documents by WikiLeaks this year.

NEWSREADER 3:  First today, to what the US Government is calling a reckless and dangerous action.

NEWSREADER 4:  The United States Government is doing what it can to contain the damage…

NEWSREADER 5:  As well as releasing the documents on its website, WikiLeaks has done a deal with major newspapers, including the Guardian and The New York Times.

32:35

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER:  A huge cache of more than a quarter of a million US diplomatic cables that showed frank and often critical assessments of other governments.  Ahead of the release of the cables The New York Times followed its standard procedure and entered into negotiation with the government.

33:00

SCOTT SHANE, NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: I think I started by calling the White House and telling them, "By the way, we have a quarter million diplomatic cables," and they were somewhat perturbed.  The Washington bureau chief and another editor and another reporter

33:18

Shane 100%. Super:
SCOTT SHANE
National Security reporter,
The New York Times

and I, all went over expecting to meet with a couple of State Department officials. Instead, there was this rogues' gallery of fairly senior officials of, not just the State Department, all the intelligence agencies and the Defense Department and, behind them, maybe another 20 sort of underlings taking notes.

33:32

Crowley 100%. Super:
P.J. CROWLEY
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, 2009-2011

P.J. CROWLEY, U.S. ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS, 2009 – 2011: The first meeting was surreal. The New York Times' leadership arrives with classified cables in a manila folder. We arrive with the same classified cables in a binder with a cover sheet that says, 'Classified: Do not release to those not authorised to have it.' Tongue in cheek, the first thing I said was, "You are the recipient of stolen information. Please give it back." Obviously, The New York Times didn't.

33:57

But within that constraint, we had the ability over time to make a case as to the potential impact of reporting on information, the impact on national security, the impact on individual lives, the impact on intelligence operations, and The New York Times, on behalf of The Guardian and others in the consortium, gave us a fair hearing.

34:26

Washington capitol GVs

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: WikiLeaks saw this totally differently.  This was not so much cooperation as capitulation.

KRISTINN HRAFNSSON, EDITOR IN CHIEF, WIKILEAKS: They did take those stories and basically offered the powers in Washington

34:49

Hrafnsson 100%. Super:
KRISTINN HRAFNSSON
Editor In Chief, WikiLeaks

the opportunity to convince them not to publish them. And that’s taking it a bit further than the right of reply reaction.

35:05

Robinson 100%. Super:
JENNIFER ROBINSON
Lawyer for Julian Assange

JENNIFER ROBINSON, LAWYER FOR JULIAN ASSANGE: I will never forget when Julian first told me that he had a quarter of a million diplomatic cables and was going to publish them. I didn't understand the significance of what he'd told me or how big this story would be. But he fully understood, and he said, “They will chase me to the end of the earth and make my life absolute hell, but I have to do this because it is my obligation to the source. That is what WikiLeaks promises, that we will publish information in the public interest.” He said, "It's my obligation to make this material available to the public, and I'll do it anyway."

35:16

Clinton press briefing

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: Cablegate was a serious embarrassment for the Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and it hardened the U.S. Government's resolve to get Assange.

35:50

Super/s:
29 November 2010

HILLARY CLINTON
U.S. Secretary of State, 2009-2013

HILLARY CLINTON, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE, 2009 – 2013: Now, I am aware that some may mistakenly applaud those responsible, so I want to set the record straight; there is nothing laudable about endangering innocent people, and there is nothing brave about sabotaging the peaceful relations between nations on which our common security depends.

36:01

Holder at press briefing. Super:
ERIC HOLDER
U.S. Attorney General, 2009-2015

ERIC HOLDER, U.S. ATTORNEY GENERAL, 2009 – 2015: We have an active ongoing criminal investigation with regard to this matter. We are not in a position, as yet, to announce the result of that investigation, but the investigation is ongoing.

36:28

Prime Minister Gillard in radio studio

JULIA GILLARD, PRIME MINISTER OF AUSTRALIA, 2010–2013:  We have a whole process to go through all of this information. I mean, millions of pieces of information, and assess the implications…

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: Assange was condemned in Australia, too.

36:41

Super:
JULIA GILLARD
Prime Minister of Australia, 2010-2013

JULIA GILLARD, PRIME MINISTER OF AUSTRALIA, 2010–2013: I absolutely condemn the placement of this information on the WikiLeaks website.  It is a grossly irresponsible thing to do, and an illegal thing to do.

JULIAN ASSANGE, WIKILEAKS FOUNDER: Well, the prime minister and the attorney general are US lackeys.  It’s a simple as that.

36:54

Assange 100%

They had a whole of government taskforce, involving every intelligence agency and the Australian Federal Police and the Department of Defence trying to work out how to deal with WikiLeaks and me personally.

37:11

Assange with Hrafnsson to press, 2010

JULIAN ASSANGE, WIKILEAKS FOUNDER: It's very nice to be free for Christmas and smell the fresh air of Norfolk. Solitary confinement in the bottom of a Victorian prison is a significant experience…

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: In December 2010, Assange was briefly detained in a British jail following an extradition request from Sweden. He was held for questioning over the allegations of sex crimes. He has denied the allegations and has never been charged.

37:27

JULIAN ASSANGE, WIKILEAKS FOUNDER: It is extremely serious and one of the concerns that we've had since I've been in the UK, is whether the extradition proceeding to Sweden, which is occurring in a very strange and unusual way, is actually an attempt to get me into a jurisdiction which will then make it easier to extradite me to the United States.

37:55

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER:  By this time the relationship between Assange and the Guardian and The New York Times had deteriorated completely. Assange and the newspapers were now fighting for control of the story.

38:19

Rusbridger 100%

ALAN RUSBRIDGER, EDITOR, THE GUARDIAN, 1995 – 2015: Of course, you want to be in control. I mean, you have to be, you know? I'm not going to cede the Guardian and our editorial judgements to someone else. But maybe he hadn't thought that through when he sat down to work with us.

38:31

Hrafnsson 100%

KRISTINN HRAFNSSON, EDITOR IN CHIEF, WIKILEAKS EDITOR: Vanity came into play.  Individuals wanted this to be their big scoop and WikiLeaks sort of being in the background, the Guardian wanted this to be the Guardian's story.

38:45

Rusbridger 100%

ALAN RUSBRIDGER, EDITOR, THE GUARDIAN, 1995 – 2015: He's a bit megalomaniac, he's a bit narcissistic. In some sense, yeah, I think he thought proprietorially, 'This is my material. I got it. I brought it to you. You're ungrateful'. He's very suspicious of mainstream media anyway. So the whole thing was bristling with the potential for misunderstanding and breakdown, and in the end it did break down.

38:57

GFX: Photo. Assange

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: In September 2011, Assange decided to go it alone.  He published the entire trove of the US diplomatic cables unredacted.

KRISTINN HRAFNSSON, EDITOR IN CHIEF, WIKILEAKS: The ideology of WikiLeaks is basically offering all the documents to the public,

39:25

Hrafnsson 100%

so they can access it on every day and into the future. It's offering that as archive for history, which is very important. And not to be selective; it is like the scientist who offers access to all his scientific material. Journalists don't do that. They pick and choose, and you have to trust them.

39:43

Assange and Hrafnsson surrounded by photographers

There was little trust left between Julian Assange and the media he’d been working closely with now for more than year. Assange claimed he only decided to release the unredacted cables after a Guardian journalist published the password to the cable database.

40:08

[Archival] Assange 100%

JULIAN ASSANGE, WIKILEAKS FOUNDER: I assume it was probably not malicious the putting of the password in the book.  It was just extremely arrogant and careless.  We were never contacted to be asked whether this was at all acceptable to put the encryption password for Cablegate in a book.

ALAN RUSBRIDGER, EDITOR, THE GUARDIAN, 1995 – 2015: Well I think it's a complete smokescreen.

40:30

Rusbridger 100%

And Julian, I think, decided to use that as an excuse to publish it all. There was no sense in which he was compelled to do it. I think a responsible thing would've been to remove it rather than say, "Oh, poor me. I'm now being forced to publish the whole lot." I think it's a not very convincing excuse.

40:51

Capitol, Washington GVs

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: The decision to dump the unredacted cables drew fierce criticism.

ALAN RUSBRIDGER, EDITOR, THE GUARDIAN, 1995 – 2015: Well, it was obvious to us from the documents that

41:12

Rusbridger 100%

there was that the people could be placed in a difficult, possibly dangerous, situation if you just dumped it all there.

41:25

Hrafnsson 100%

KRISTINN HRAFNSSON, EDITOR IN CHIEF, WIKILEAKS: They had 10 months to anything that they needed to do if they felt that there was any danger. And it's very important to understand that nobody has been able to prove that there has been any harm.

41:36

Crowley 100%. Super:
P.J. CROWLEY
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, 2009-2011

P.J. CROWLEY, U.S. ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS, 2009 – 2011: He doesn't know. We can tell you that people's lives were uprooted. People were jailed. There are people who were subject to these reports who are now dead. Now, were they killed because of the leak? I can't say that. Were they killed because of what they were doing that came to the attention of another government? Quite possibly. But those are facts. There was real harm to real people as a result of what WikiLeaks did.

41:52

Statue of Freedom on Capitol building

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: Inside the corridors of power in Washington, the government was desperate to find a way to shut WikiLeaks down and punish Assange.

MATTHEW MILLER, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, DIR. PUBLIC AFFAIRS, 2009-2011: There was this big discussion inside the government about whether Julian Assange could be prosecuted,

42:28

Miller 100%. Super:
MATTHEW MILLER
Dir. Public Affairs,
U.S. Department of Justice, 2009-2011

either for the publication of the materials that Chelsea Manning stole, or for helping her steal it. That was ultimately the kind of tension in the investigation, and the decisions we came to was that if you could find sufficient evidence that Assange had helped steal the materials, that he had conspired to hack into government computers, or he had helped actually extract materials, that was a charge you could bring. But if you were just going to charge him with the publication of materials, that wasn't a charge that the administration either was comfortable in bringing, or that ultimately thought would hold up in U.S. courts.

42:44

Miller in office

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: Matthew Miller was helping to co-ordinate the strategy inside the Department of Justice, which had established a secret grand jury.

43:27

Justice Dept building. Miller looks out window

MATTHEW MILLER, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, DIR. PUBLIC AFFAIRS, 2009-2011: A secret grand jury is a jury of American citizens that the Department of Justice uses to conduct investigations. If the government wants to indict someone,

43:36

Miller 100%

to charge them of a crime, the government can't just do it on its own volition, it has to present these charges to a grand jury and then the grand jury makes a decision about whether to indict someone or not.

43:45

Shane 100%. Super:
SCOTT SHANE
National Security reporter,
The New York Times

SCOTT SHANE, NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Generally speaking, they wouldn't be willing to say, "Yes, we have a grand jury, we're looking at something." In this case they were willing to confirm that on background. There was a great deal of unhappiness across the government at the State Department, to some degree out in the public; a lot of sort of angry calls for Julian Assange to be arrested, executed, killed in a drone strike. There were some hotheads out there, including members of congress were calling for that kind of thing. And so I think the Obama administration was not unhappy to let it be known that at least they were on the case, they were investigating.

43:54

London GVs/Ecuadorian embassy

44:35

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: In the UK, Assange could sense the net was closing.  On a quiet day in June 2012, Assange made a fateful decision that would turn this London terrace into one of the most closely watched buildings in the world.

JENNIFER ROBINSON, LAWYER FOR JULIAN ASSANGE: Julian sought asylum in 2012 in the Ecuadorian embassy, because he didn't have assurances that once in custody, to face extradition to Sweden, he wouldn't be served with the US extradition request.

44:41

Robinson 100%. Super:
JENNIFER ROBINSON
Lawyer for Julian Assange

We had asked the Australian government to seek those assurances. The Australian government had refused to do so. It was only then that he sought asylum, which was his right as a matter of international law.

45:08

Narváez 100%. Super:
FIDEL NARVÁEZ
Consul, Ecuadorian Embassy, London, 2010-2018

FIDEL NARVÁEZ, CONSUL, ECUADORIAN EMBASSY, LONDON, 2010-2018: Julian Assange was the most hunted man on earth when he came to our embassy.  And it was, I think, his last resort, political asylum.  He knocked our door, we knew that it was right to protect him, and we took that bet.

45:18

Westminster. London GVs

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: In June 2012 Julian Assange was a man under pressure – wanted for questioning in Sweden over allegations of sexual assault and the subject of an ongoing investigation in the United States over the publication of huge tranches of classified information.

45:47

Exterior. Ecuadorian embassy balcony

On a spring day, he made his way here to the Ecuadorian embassy in London, seeking asylum.

JENNIFER ROBINSON, LAWYER FOR JULIAN ASSANGE: Julian sought asylum in 2012 in the Ecuadorian embassy, because

46:04

Robinson 100%. Super:
JENNIFER ROBINSON
Lawyer for Julian Assange

he didn't have assurances that once in custody to face extradition to Sweden, he wouldn't be served with the US extradition request. We had asked the Australian government to seek those assurances. The Australian government had refused to do so. It was only then that he sought asylum, which was his right as a matter of international law.

46:18

Embassy steps

FIDEL NARVÁEZ, CONSUL, ECUADORIAN EMBASSY, LONDON, 2010-2018: Julian arrived around 1 PM. It's publicly known that he was disguised as a deliveryman. He had his

46:35

Narváez 100%. Super:
FIDEL NARVÁEZ
Consul, Ecuadorian Embassy, London, 2010-2018

request for asylum written and ready. He handed it over to us.

46:46

Narváez looking out window

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: Fidel Narváez was consul at the embassy when Ecuador took him in.

46:54

FIDEL NARVÁEZ, CONSUL, ECUADORIAN EMBASSY, LONDON, 2010-2018: We were challenging the major superpower in the world, and some of his closest allies.

47:01

Narváez 100%

A small nation took that bet. It was going to be a very, very tough fight.

47:11

Ext. Ecuadorian embassy. Crowd and police gathered

NEWSREADER 1: First to breaking news tonight. The diplomatic high drama surrounding Julian Assange's asylum bid.

NEWSREADER 2:  The New York Times is reporting the government of Ecuador is prepared to allow WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to remain in its embassy in London indefinitely.

47:20

Police outside embassy

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: Approving the asylum request was a bold and provocative decision.

FIDEL NARVÁEZ, CONSUL, ECUADORIAN EMBASSY, LONDON, 2010-2018: The embassy was surrounded by no less than 50 to 60 British armed police. The main street was closed.

47:36

Narváez 100%

They were outside every window of the embassy, the inside of the building, everywhere.

47:54

Cat in rainbow tie in embassy window/Assange reads statement on balcony. Super at 05:02:
19 August 2012

JULIAN ASSANGE:  Inside this embassy after dark, I could hear teams of police storming up into the building through its internal fire escape. But I knew there would be witnesses. And that is because of you. The world was watching. And the world was watching because you were watching.

48:03

Embassy exteriors

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: The embassy would be Assange’s home for nearly seven years. 

48:30

Still. Assange looks out through embassy window

FIDEL NARVÁEZ, CONSUL, ECUADORIAN EMBASSY, LONDON, 2010-2018: Julian slept in the floor in an inflatable mattress for more than four months, at least. We needed to adapt some working spaces for him to be able to work as well.

48:35

Narváez 100%

We needed to adapt all our routines in order to allow him to have the many, many visitors from all over the world that wanted to come and see him.

48:53

And Julian himself is a workaholic. He was always working, doing something. Either working with his computer, either having meetings with his team, with his visitors, with his legal team, giving conferences, giving interviews.

49:05

Embassy exteriors. Night

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: From inside the embassy Assange continued to challenge governments around the world. Over the next three years, WikiLeaks published more than two million foreign government emails, the details of international trade agreements and evidence of how America’s National Security Agency was tapping the phones of foreign leaders.

49:29

MATTHEW MILLER, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, DIR. PUBLIC AFFAIRS, 2009-2011: I think there was always a lot of anger at Julian Assange for accepting and publicising United States national security information.

49:56

Miller 100%. Super:
MATTHEW MILLER
Dir. Public Affairs,
U.S. Department of Justice, 2009-2011

I think there was never a sense inside the Justice Department that Julian Assange was a journalist, or that he was just trying to publish national security information for any whistle blowing purpose, but that he just kind of wanted to take what he could get and publish it without any wonder. Without any care whether it would do damage to the United States national security interest or not.

50:07

RT/Ruptly report

JULIAN ASSANGE, WIKILEAKS FOUNDER: In the work that we do, the work that WikiLeaks does…

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: Assange continued to broadcast to the world through an interview program aired on the Russian government TV channel, Russia Today.

50:29

JULIAN ASSANGE, WIKILEAKS FOUNDER: …you have fought against a hegemony of the United States.

50:40

KRISTINN HRAFNSSON, EDITOR IN CHIEF, WIKILEAKS: A production company is created who produces this program. It's offered for sale.

50:44

Hrafnsson 100%. Super:
KRISTINN HRAFNSSON
Editor In Chief, WikiLeaks

The only TV station that actually wanted to negotiate that deal was RT, had no editorial control over the material simply bought the packets. So, that is the essence of the cooperation between Julian and RT. 

50:50

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: When the criticism is made about that about RT, you don't believe it is essentially an arm of the Putin administration?

KRISTINN HRAFNSSON, EDITOR IN CHIEF, WIKILEAKS: Well, I mean, who cares.

51:12

I mean, you were working on a certain platform. You don’t want anybody to question your integrity. My God, this was a program being created and sold on the markets without any editorial control, so who cares where it was published? And what to read into that?

51:24

Shane 100%. Super:
SCOTT SHANE
National Security Reporter,
The New York Times

SCOTT SHANE NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: What's Julian Assange, this crusader against oppressive government, doing getting in bed with the Russian government? That didn't last terribly long, but it was sort of a red flag. I think even people who had been sticking up for WikiLeaks and Assange all along began to get chills about who is this guy really? And we didn't know. He did seem to have a blind spot when it came to Russia.

51:45

Tanden 100%. Super:
NEERA TANDEN
Former advisor to Hillary Clinton

NEERA TANDEN, FORMER ADVISOR TO HILLARY CLINTON: The fact that Julian Assange has been working hand in glove with Russia Today, RT, seems to indicate to me that he has less journalistic enterprises behind him, and more goals of undermining democracy, achieving the aims of the Russian government.

52:23

Trump campaign rally

DONALD TRUMP:  Ladies and gentlemen, I am officially running for President of the United States. And we are going to make our country great again.

52:41

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: By the middle of 2015, the US was heading into what would be a bitterly contested presidential election campaign.

52:59

Clinton campaign rally

HILLARY CLINTON:  I will be the youngest woman president in the history of the United States.

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER:  Julian Assange had been highly critical of Hillary Clinton when she was Secretary of State.

53:08

Clinton 100%. Super:
HILLARY CLINTON
U.S. Secretary of State, 2009-2013

HILLARY CLINTON, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE, 2009 – 2013: Well, I had a lot of history with him because I was Secretary of State when WikiLeaks published a lot of very sensitive information from our State Department and our Defense Department.  And you know, I think that whatever claim to transparency and openness that he may have started with, I can’t judge.  But now I think he’s very clearly is a tool of Russian intelligence.

53:25

Shane 100%

SCOTT SHANE NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: She had a lot of pretty harsh things to say about WikiLeaks and Julian Assange, in part because she was Secretary of State when they put out 250,000 diplomatic cables. So it's not surprising that she didn't have any warm feelings for him and he returned the favour.

53:51

Capitol building with GFX text overlay. Super:
Source: Mueller Report

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: Internal WikiLeaks chats left no doubt about what Assange believed to be the best political outcome in the coming presidential election. It would be much better for a Republican win he says – Clinton is a bright, well connected, sadistic sociopath.

54:14

Assange WikiLeaks website. Super: 2016

JULIAN ASSANGE, WIKILEAKS FOUNDER: American liberal press are falling over themselves to defend Hillary Clinton, are erecting a demon that is going to put nooses around everyone's necks as soon as she wins the election, which she is almost certainly going to do.

54:34

GFX: Clinton State Department emails. Super:
Source: Mueller Report

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER:  In March 2016, WikiLeaks released a searchable archive of more than 30,000 emails obtained through freedom of information. The emails were from Clinton’s private email server while she was Secretary of State.

Internal WikiLeaks correspondence said the purpose of creating the archive was “because it's useful and will annoy Hillary” and because “we want to be seen as a resource or player in the US election.”

54:49

London TV report. Interview with Assange

REPORTER:  You've been taking an interest, I understand, in the whole issue of the emails she sent using her private server. Do you have any of the undisclosed emails?

55:18

JULIAN ASSANGE:  Well, taking an interest I think is putting it mildly. We've published 32,000 of them, and some analysis. We have upcoming leaks in relation to Hillary Clinton. Wikileaks has a very big year ahead.

REPORTER:  Some of the ones that have not yet come into the public domain, you are planning to put out?

55:28

JULIAN ASSANGE: We have emails relating to Hillary Clinton, which are pending publication, that is correct.

55:48

Moscow GVs. Night

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER:  In Moscow, the Russians had begun their own campaign to undermine Hillary Clinton. The Russian military intelligence agency, the GRU, established a secret cyber operations unit. In April 2016, the hackers attacked the Democratic National cCommittee and stole tens of thousands of emails.

55:56

Ext. Democratic National Headquarters

SCOTT SHANE NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: I have to hand it to the GRU, Russian Military Intelligence, which eventually was

56:23

Shane 100%. Super:
SCOTT SHANE
National Security Reporter,
The New York Times

quite clearly identified as the organisation that hacked into Hillary Clinton's campaign and into the Democratic National Committee, stole all these emails and the Russian government was named as sort of the prime suspect.

56:28

Moscow GVs. Night. DC Leaks overlay

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: The Russians established a website called DC leaks to begin publishing the emails and in an attempt to cover their tracks created a new online persona called Guccifer 2.0

56:47

Shane 100%

SCOTT SHANE NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Up on the web pops this sort of blog, never heard of before, from somebody calling himself Guccifer 2.0, this sort of antic voice in English eventually saying, "I'm a Romanian hacker." A big message he wanted to convey from the very beginning, from that first day, was, "I hacked the DNC, and they point at the Russian state, ha ha ha. Actually, it wasn't that hard. I'm just a lone hacker and I did it myself." So Guccifer 2.0 seemed very eager to point the finger away from the Russian government. That was a big theme, but it was a brilliant move. As it turned out, of course, the GRU had created Guccifer 2.0 and this was sort of a fig leaf for Russian intelligence.

57:02

Kremlin. GFX Correspondence overlay
Source: Netyskho Indictment

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: WikiLeaks wanted whatever Guccifer had. Correspondence revealed in the US indictment of the Russian hackers, shows that on June 22nd WikiLeaks sent Guccifer a private message on Twitter: “Send any new material here for us to review and it will have a much higher impact than what you are doing.”

57:52

Kremlin

SCOTT SHANE NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: WikiLeaks was there for them. It was a huge boon

58:20

Shane 100%

to distribute those emails through WikiLeaks which had a sort of established audience in the millions around the world.

58:23

Kremlin. GFX WikiLeaks Twitter

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: Two weeks later, WikiLeaks sent another message to Guccifer. “If you have anything Hillary related we want it in the next two days preferably, because the Democratic National Convention is approaching”. Soon after, Guccifer sent WikiLeaks an encrypted file.

58:31

Tanden 100%. Super:
NEERA TANDEN
Former advisor to Hillary Clinton

NEERA TANDEN, FORMER ADVISOR TO HILLARY CLINTON: So, the DNC emails were hacked. The DNC emails go public right before the Democratic Convention, at a time to create the maximum pain.

58:55

Hrafnsson 100%.

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: Was the convention taken into consideration in the timing of the release of those e mails?

59:05

Super:
KRISTINN HRAFNSSON
Editor In Chief, WikiLeaks

KRISTINN HRAFNSSON, EDITOR IN CHIEF, WIKILEAKS: I'm sure it was, because journalists have taken into consideration timing of their release of the information of stories. And any journalist who will be denying the fact that they want to maximise the impact of their story is either telling a lie or basically being dishonest, because every journalist wants to maximise the impact of the story, and timing comes into play.

59:09

Clinton at Democratic National Convention

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: WikiLeaks’ release of the stolen emails threw the Democratic National Convention, into uproar.

59:41

REPORTER 1: It's a major embarrassment for Democrats on the eve of their nominating convention.

REPORTER 2:  Just when Hillary Clinton was hoping to put the whole notion of an email controversy behind her…

REPORTER 3:  A WikiLeaks email dump suggests Bernie Sanders may have been right. The primary system was rigged against him.

59:49

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER:  The convention was supposed to be Hillary Clinton’s springboard into the presidency,

1:00:07

Sanders' supporters

but the emails showed the DNC had favoured Clinton over Bernie Sanders all along. The revelations outraged Sanders' supporters.

1:00:13

NEERA TANDEN, FORMER ADVISOR TO HILLARY CLINTON: People were chanting, "Lock her up," yelling, creating staged demonstrations on the floor.

1:00:30

Tanden 100%

It was, you know, a fair amount of maelstrom.   

1:00:37

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: Neera Tanden was a policy director for the Clinton campaign and one of the top ranking Democrats whose emails were leaked.

1:00:40

NEERA TANDEN, FORMER ADVISOR TO HILLARY CLINTON: People could see the level of emotional intensity created by this leak, and it was accomplishing the ends that the Russians had, which was to undermine Hillary Clinton, to undermine the Democratic Party, to help Trump, to help the Republican Party.

1:00:48

Capitol building. Sunset

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: While in Washington it was now widely accepted that the Russians had been behind the DNC hack,

1:01:04

NBC News. Meet the Press Assange interview. Super:
31 July 2016

Assange refused to be drawn on his source.

INTERVIEWER: It is helpful to know if a foreign government is involved. Isn't that crucial information to civilians?

18:01

JULIAN ASSANGE:  I think that is an interesting question. The difficulty that WikiLeaks has of course is that we can't go around speculating on who our sources are. That would be irresponsible.

INTERVIEWER: You can speculate. You know the answer. Mr Assange, you say you can't go around speculating, do you not know the answer?

18:15

JULIAN ASSANGE:  We don't give any material away as to who our sources are.

18:36

Washington. Night. Traffic

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER:  Instead Assange chose to cast more shadows.

18:40

GFX. Photo. Seth Rich

He implied the source might have been a young DNC staffer called Seth Rich who had been murdered in a suspected late night robbery.

18:45

View of Capitol building. Night

JULIAN ASSANGE:   There's a 27 year old who works for the DNC,

18:57

Van Rosenthal-Assange interview. Super:
9 August 2016

who was shot in the back just two weeks ago for unknown reasons, as he was walking down the street in Washington.

VAN ROSENTHAL:  That was just a

19:00

robbery I believe, wasn't it?

JULIAN ASSANGE:  No. There's no finding. So…

VAN ROSENTHAL: What are you suggesting?

JULIAN ASSANGE:  I’m suggesting that our sources take risks and they become concerned to see things occurring like that.

VAN ROSENTHAL: But was he one of your sources then?

JULIAN ASSANGE:  We don't comment on who our sources are.

VAN ROSENTHAL: Then why make the suggestion about a young guy being shot in the streets of Washington?

19:09

SCOTT SHANE, NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: I mean he was all but naming Seth Rich as his source, and I saw that as completely underhanded and really kind of cruel to Seth Rich's family.

19:40

Shane 100%. Super:
SCOTT SHANE
National Security reporter,
The New York Times

I think he was just trying to protect his own reputation by refuting, using Seth Rich to refute the idea that he'd become a sort of witting tool of the Russian state.

19:51

Washington GVs

Music

20:05

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: WikiLeaks was a perfect weapon for a presidential candidate seeking political advantage.

20:15

Brissenden to camera

The possibility that Assange might have even more damaging information on Clinton was tantalising, but it also presented a potential opportunity for a circus of shady political operatives hoping to be noticed by the Trump campaign.

20:20

Stone into car surrounded by protestors and press

Chief amongst those shady characters was Roger Stone, a former Trump advisor and veteran Republican operative. In 2016 he was keen to jump on the WikiLeaks bandwagon to bolster Trump.

20:37

SCOTT SHANE NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Roger Stone is sort of a legendary character in American politics who goes all the way back to Richard Nixon and

20:54

Shane 100%

has been sort of synonymous with political dirty tricks going way, way back. And so it was perhaps not surprising to learn that he was also a kind of buddy of Donald Trump and sort of surfaced in the Trump campaign as a fervent supporter of Donald Trump and ready to do whatever it took to get Trump elected.

21:02

CCTV footage. Stone arrest

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: Stone was arrested in an FBI raid earlier this year. He is currently facing charges including witness tampering and giving false statements in connection with the investigation into Russian interference.  The charges relate to his attempt to work with WikiLeaks during the campaign.

21:32

Shane 100%

SCOTT SHANE NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: There's this question of whether it was Roger Stone somehow inside, and Stone said no, he had a friend who knew Julian Assange and there's been more public information from Robert Mueller's investigation and other sources. And certainly it suggests that Roger Stone wasn't working with Russian intelligence, that it was probably more like what one would predict from Roger Stone's entire career, which was, he was sort of an opportunist. And he saw an opportunity to sort of promote Trump and promote himself at the same time and became part of the process of building an audience for, and building suspense about, these dumps of emails hacked by the Russians and essentially designed to undermine Clinton's campaign.

21:55

GFX Stone indictment and Stone photo

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: According to the indictment of Stone, in July 2016, a senior Trump campaign official was directed to contact Stone to find out what else WikiLeaks had on the Clinton campaign. Stone then asked a contact to go to the Ecuadorian embassy to get the “pending [WikiLeaks] emails … they deal with the [Clinton] Foundation, allegedly.”

22:48

Stone speaking at Republican organisation (SWBRO). Super:
8 August 2016

ROGER STONE 8 AUGUST, 2016: I actually have communicated with Assange. I believe the next tranche of his documents pertain to the Clinton Foundation, but there’s no telling what the October surprise may be.

23:15

Stone. C-Span excerpt

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: Stone Soon changed his story and instead said he had a back-channel to Assange.

23:30

Stone C-Span. Super:
18 August 2016

ROGER STONE 18 AUGUST, 2016: No I have not spoken to Mr Assange, I have not met with Mr Assange and I never said I had. I said we communicated through an intermediary, somebody who is a mutual friend.

23:38

Credico crossing street with dog

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: The friend and intermediary he referred to was Randy Credico. Credico is a fringe radio host who had once interviewed Julian Assange.

RANDY CREDICO, RADIO HOST: I’m a political satirist, impressionist ,

23:50

Credico 100%

and they call me a satirist-activist.

24:07

Credico with lawyer

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: Randy Credico is now preparing to be the star witness in the trial of Roger Stone.

24:14

The trial will focus on a series of communications between Stone and Credico that suggested they both had advance knowledge of what WikiLeaks was planning to publish. Credico now says he never had contact with Assange and Roger Stone was all talk.

24:38

Credico 100%. Super:
RANDY CREDICO
Radio Host

RANDY CREDICO, RADIO HOST: I don't think he had a back channel. I mean if you put a gun to my head and said, "You have to guess correctly; did Stone have or not have a back channel? Otherwise, we're going to pull the trigger." I would, if my life is at stake, I'd say, he never had a back channel, but he was just out there, the guy is a self-promoter, he's in show business. Maybe he did, but I can't imagine that, why would there need to be a back channel when Assange could just go directly to the campaign? He didn't need to have Stone in the middle, but Stone needed to be in the middle so Stone could elevate his profile.

24:55

Washington Monument. Sunset. GFX: Email overlay

Super/s:
Source: Roger Stone Indictment

Randy Credico
27 August 2016

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: Messages from late 2016 between Credico and Stone showed they were in regular contact with each other about what WikiLeaks might have. Credico told Stone Assange 'has kryptonite on Hillary'. Four weeks later he said, 'Hillary’s campaign will die this week'.

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: People are talking about this 'October Surprise', how did you know that it was coming?

25:30

Credico 100%

RANDY CREDICO,  RADIO HOST: I said on October 1st, "It's going to be a bad week for Hillary based on what I had seen over the previous six weeks, eight weeks, that this is going to be a bad week for Hillary and her campaign's going to be finished." But of course, that was hyperbole.

25:27

WikiLeaks broadcast

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: On its tenth anniversary,

26:11

Super:
4 October 2016

WikiLeaks was busy preparing for another big data dump.

JULIAN ASSANGE, WIKILEAKS FOUNDER:  Now, upcoming publications. We hope to be publishing ever week for the next ten weeks. Now we have, on schedule – and it's a very hard schedule – all the US election related documents to come out before November 8.

26:14

INTERVIEWER:  Do we have any comment on whether the upcoming publications to do with the US elections will destroy Clinton or not?

JULIAN ASSANGE, WIKILEAKS FOUNDER:  There has been a lot of misquoting of me and WikiLeaks publications. In this particular case, the misquoting has to do with that we intend to harm Hillary Clinton, or that I intend to harm Hillary Clinton, or I don't like Hillary Clinton. All those are false.

26:45

Access Hollywood Trump footage. Subtitles:
Trump: I moved on her and I failed. I'll admit it. I did try and fuck her. She was married.
And I moved on her very heavily in fact I took her out furniture shopping.
She wanted to get some furniture. I said I'll show you where they have some nice furniture.

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER:  On October 7, just a month before polling day the Trump campaign was hit with the most consequential and potentially damaging story of the election.

27:21

SUBTITLES CONTINUED:
Trump: I took her out furniture. [sic] I moved on her like a bitch, but I couldn't get there, and she was married.

Then all of a sudden I see her, she's now got the big phony tits and everything. She's totally changed her look.

Bush: Sheesh, your girl's hot as shit. In the purple.

A secretly recorded conversation Trump had several years earlier with the host of a TV show called Access Hollywood.

27:35

SUBTITLES CONTINUED:

Trump: You know, I'm automatically attracted to beautiful – I just start kissing them. It's like a magnet. Just kiss. I don't even wait.  And when you're a star they let you do it. You can do anything.

Bush: Whatever you want.

Trump: Grab them by the pussy. You can do anything.

27:43

Capital building. Sunset

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER:  It could have been a knock-out blow, but less than an hour after the video was published WikiLeaks released its next dump of the emails hacked from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta.

27:57

Democratic National Headquarters exteriors

REPORTER 1:  WikiLeaks has posted thousands of emails hacked from Hillary Clinton's campaign manager, and they could offer a new perspective on her relationship with Wall Street.

28:11

REPORTER 2:  Hillary Clinton and her campaign are dealing with a slow drip, drip, drip of revelations about the campaign's internal workings.

REPORTER 3:  WikiLeaks posted more than 2,000 additional emails from Hillary Clinton's campaign chair, John Podesta. This is the #podestafile, I think, online.

28:17

Clinton 100%

HILLARY CLINTON, U.S. SECRETARY OF STATE, 2009 – 2013 (interviewed by Four Corners in 2017): WikiLeaks, which in the world in which we find ourselves promised hidden information, promised some kind of secret that might be of influence, was a very clever, diabolical response to the Hollywood Access tape.  And I’ve no doubt in my mind that there was some communication, if not coordination, to drop those the first time in response to the Hollywood Access tape. 

28:35

Hrafnsson 100%. Super:
KRISTINN HRAFNSSON
Editor In Chief, WikiLeaks

KRISTINN HRAFNSSON, EDITOR IN CHIEF, WIKILEAKS: That’s simply not correct, and there is evidence to counter that. This was being worked in collaboration with other media, and you have to plan ahead. I mean, clearly, the evidence is there that the timing of day was decided the day before, not as a quick reaction.

28:59

Trump at campaign rally

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: The leaks dominated the campaign.

DONALD TRUMP:  WikiLeaks. I love WikiLeaks.

SCOTT SHANE NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Instead of dumping out all 50,000 emails at once, for the entire last month of the campaign, Assange doled them out day after day after day.

DONALD TRUMP:  She's crooked folks. She's crooked as a three dollar bill.

29:20

Shane 100%

SCOTT SHANE NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES:  And so every day, people who were covering that race would look at the latest WikiLeaks dump, find the juicy stuff, write about it. So I think it did prevent the Clinton campaign from ever sort of righting itself.

29:44

Trump/Clinton debate. Super:
9 October 2016

HILLARY CLINTON: Our intelligence community just came out and said in the last few days, that the Kremlin, meaning Putin and the Russian government, are directing the attacks, the hacking, on American accounts, to influence our election. And WikiLeaks is part of that, as are other sites.

29:56

Washington GVs

Music

30:19

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: As the leaks continued, WikiLeaks contacted Trump’s son, Donald Jr.

30:29

GFX White House/Twitter text

“Hey Donald, great to see you and your dad talking about our publications … there’s many great stories there the press are missing and we’re sure some of your followers will find it.” Fifteen minutes later Donald Trump sent out a tweet. “Very little pick-up by the dishonest media of incredible information provided by WikiLeaks. So dishonest! Rigged system!” 

30:33

Trump campaign rally

DONALD TRUMP: We only found out about it through this whole deal with WikiLeaks.

30:57

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER:  Donald Trump mentioned WikiLeaks at least 130 times in the final month of the campaign.

DONALD TRUMP: …released by WikiLeaks…

31:02

Tanden 100%

NEERA TANDEN, FORMER ADVISOR TO HILLARY CLINTON: It is hard to imagine that negative news that came out daily in the month preceding the election was not instrumental in the defeat of Hillary Clinton.

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: So you'd go as far as to say that WikiLeaks stole the election from Hillary Clinton?

NEERA TANDEN, FORMER ADVISOR TO HILLARY CLINTON: I would say that WikiLeaks was a central reason of why Trump was elected.

31:10

Hrafnsson 100%

KRISTINN HRAFNSSON, EDITOR IN CHIEF, WIKILEAKS: The Democratic Party decided that it was the Russians who stole their victory, and have similarly been unable to get into the reflection of the possibility that they actually just produced a candidate that the people didn't want to elect.

31:28

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: They say, straight up, that WikiLeaks was working with Russia to sow discord.

KRISTINN HRAFNSSON, EDITOR IN CHIEF, WIKILEAKS: That has been answered by Julian Assange, and I don't question that. I mean, his source was not a state entity and not Russian. Period.

31:51

Trump and family election day. Super:
8 November 2016

CHANT:  USA…USA… USA…

32:09

Trump at podium

DONALD TRUMP:  Thank you. Thank you very much everybody. I've just received a call from Secretary Clinton. She congratulated us – it's about us – on our victory. And I congratulated her and her family on a very, very hard fought campaign. And I mean she fought very hard.

32:18

MATTHEW MILLER, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, DIR. PUBLIC AFFAIRS, 2009-201: I think his actions in the 2016 U.S. presidential election where Julian Assange was essentially functioning as an arm of the Russian intelligence service, I think  colours his legacy quite a bit.

32:57

Miller 100%. Super:
MATTHEW MILLER
Dir. Public Affairs,
U.S. Department of Justice, 2009-2011

He essentially -- whether through intention, or just being used -- allowed himself to be the tool of a foreign intelligence service to interfere in our political process. Which I think is very different from just publishing government secrets.

33:09

Trump inauguration

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: If Assange thought that Trump as president would protect him, he was mistaken. Once taking office, Trump would reverse Obama’s decision not to pursue a prosecution over WikiLeaks’ earlier release of classified information.

33:22

New York Times exteriors

MATTHEW MILLER, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, DIR. PUBLIC AFFAIRS, 2009-2011: We looked at this case for a long time and ultimately couldn't see how you could charge Julian Assange with the publication of national security information and not have that same argument used to charge journalist at the New York Times, or Washington Post, or other media outlets.

33:41

Miller 100%

That's not to say we thought that Julian Assange was a journalist. We didn't, but U.S. government law doesn't really make any provision, or any protections that are specific to someone who is called a journalist. There's not even a definition of journalist anywhere in U.S. law or regulation. So if you could charge Julian Assange with publishing material, you could use those same arguments to charge an actual journalist, and we thought that was a dangerous precedent to set.

33:58

Hrafnsson 100%

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER:  This question about whether he's an activist or a journalist comes up all the time. Where do you sit?

34:22

KRISTINN HRAFNSSON, EDITOR IN CHIEF, WIKILEAKS: It's a ridiculous question. Journalism has gone astray. Thereby, when you practise real journalism, it's called activism, it's called politics. And it is activism today. Telling the truth is a revolutionary act they say these days. That's true. But the question of whether he's a journalist is a very serious one for a very obvious reason, because those who say that he isn't a journalist are those who are in power who want to decide who is a journalist and thereby, basically, what is news and what is the truth.

34:28

Washington GVs

35:13

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: Six weeks after Trump took office WikiLeaks published Vault7, a series of documents that detailed the electronic surveillance capabilities of the CIA. The Trump administration hit back.

35:17

Pompeo. Super:
MIKE POMPEO
CIA Director, 2017-2018

MIKE POMPEO: WikiLeaks walks like hostile intelligence service and talks like a hostile intelligence service. It's time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is – a non-state hostile intelligence service, often abetted by state actors like Russia

35:33

Robinson 100%. Super:
JENNIFER ROBINSON
Lawyer for Juilan Assange

JENNIFER ROBINSON, LAWYER FOR JULIAN ASSANGE: Donald Trump might have said 'I love WikiLeaks' during the course of the election, but his administration has aggressively pursued this indictment. Mike Pompeo ,as head of the CIA, and now Secretary of State said that WikiLeaks is a hostile non-state intelligence agency, and that Julian Assange need to be taken down. This is terrifying language for the Trump administration to be using about an Australian citizen and a publisher.

35:47

Capitol building

P.J. CROWLEY, U.S. ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS, 2009 – 2011: There's an irony here that Julian Assange helped get Trump elected,

36:10

Crowley 100%. Super:
P.J. CROWLEY
U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, 2009-2011

and yet now the President wants to prosecute him. It comes into the category of, 'Be careful what you wish for'.

36:17

GFX: Jabber online chat/ Photos. Assange and Manning

Music

36:25

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: The Trump administration reignited the investigation into Assange’s dealings with US Army Private Chelsea Manning, the source of WikiLeaks’ massive classified data leaks in 2010.

36:32

Fürstenberg railway station, Germany

The US Justice Department started tracking down former associates of Assange.

36:43

Domscheit-Berg on computer

DANIEL DOMSCHEIT-BERG, WIKILEAKS SPOKESPERSON 2007-2010:  Basically, the FBI wanted to come here to Germany and question me about the relationship between Julian and Chelsea Manning.

36:51

Domscheit-Berg 100%. Super:
DANIEL DOMSCHEIT-BERG
WikiLeaks spokesperson 2007-2010

And it is about the illegal reception and publication of secret information. 

37:03

Rainy London

Music

37:11

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: The barometer began to shift in London, too.

37:17

Ecuadorian embassy ext.

Years of confinement in the embassy were taking their toll on Assange.

37:20

CCTV footage. Assange in embassy excercising

Leaked CCTV footage showed his at times odd behaviour and his struggle to keep fit and healthy. Reports also began to emerge of his questionable hygiene standards.

FIDEL NARVÁEZ, CONSUL, ECUADORIAN EMBASSY, LONDON, 2010-2018: What it shows those videos, basically they show

37:25

Narváez 100%. Super:
FIDEL NARVÁEZ
Consul, Ecuadorian Embassy, London, 2010-2018

that he was being surveilled all the time, every moment, every movement, every minute of Julian's stay was recorded.

37:46

CCTV footage. Assange in embassy excercising

JENNIFER ROBINSON, LAWYER FOR JULIAN ASSANGE: He didn't have any access to any outdoor area. There was no garden, nowhere for him to exercise, no way for him to leave to get medical treatment.

38:03

Robinson 100%

And it became more and more tense after the change of government in Ecuador. He was under constant surveillance, video footage recordings of him, which have now been released to the media. It was a very difficult time.

38:16

GFX: Photo. Assange with fist raised

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: While he was still in the embassy, Assange was secretly charged with a single count of conspiring with Chelsea Manning to hack a classified government password.

38:32

Domscheit-Berg 100%

DANIEL DOMSCHEIT-BERG, WIKILEAKS SPOKESPERSON 2007-2010: Up to a few weeks ago, they claimed it was not about espionage, it was not about the publication work we did, it was not about any kind of a journalistic angle, but that it was about computer crime. And one and a half years ago already, we have proof that a totally different type of investigation was going on. And this is very important, I think, to keep in mind for what is to come.

38:45

Exterior. Embassy

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: Assange’s asylum in the embassy came to an end after a change of government in Ecuador.

FIDEL NARVÁEZ, CONSUL, ECUADORIAN EMBASSY, LONDON, 2010-2018: The new government, basically,

39:11

Narváez 100%

decided that the protection of Julian Assange was in the way of the good new relationship that they were seeking with United States, and they decided to end that protection.

39:22

Exterior. Embassy

JENNIFER ROBINSON, LAWYER FOR JULIAN ASSANGE: I was actually due to see Julian in the embassy that day and was getting ready to go down to the embassy when I got the call that he'd been arrested.

39:38

Robinson 100%

Basically, what happened is he was called into the ambassador's office. The ambassador gave him a letter and said his asylum was over and asked him to leave.

39:46

Embassy window

When he refused, saying it was unlawful, the British police were invited into an embassy, which is extraordinary, and arrested him and took him out of there.

39:54

Assange being dragged from embassy to police van. Super:
11 April 2019

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: Defiant to the end, Julian Assange was physically carried out of the embassy and into a waiting police van.  He was taken into custody in a London prison to serve a 50 week sentence for jumping bail. Six weeks later the US Justice Department announced it was seeking his extradition on one hacking charge and 17 espionage charges.

40:03

Police van speeds away

BARRY POLLACK, LAWYER FOR JULIAN ASSANGE: They are going after this with both barrels blazing.

40:29

Pollack 100%. Super:
BARRY POLLACK
Lawyer for Julian Assange

Each count of the espionage act carries a potential 10 year prison sentence and they can be consecutive. And then there's also the conspiracy to violate the unauthorised computer access statute, which is a five year offence. So, you add that all together, that's 175 years.

40:37

Robinson 100%

JENNIFER ROBINSON, LAWYER FOR JULIAN ASSANGE: We warned about that since 2010. It's why he sought asylum inside the Ecuadorian embassy. The moment he stepped out of the embassy, precisely what we warned about happened. He was served with the US extradition request for publishing truthful information. This is an incredibly damaging precedent for free speech.

40:53

Pollack 100%

BARRY POLLACK, LAWYER FOR JULIAN ASSANGE: There is a very realistic possibility that if Mr. Assange were extradited to the United States and convicted of these charges, that he could spend the rest of his life in prison. And there is no parole in the federal system of the United States.

41:10

Still. Assange in police van gives thumbs up

He could die in prison and he could spend that time in a high security maximum security facility, largely, if not entirely in solitary confinement.

41:24

Truck with #FreeManning/#FreeAssange billboard. Protestors

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: The charges against Assange  relate to the classified military files leaked by former Private Chelsea Manning. After seven years in prison, Manning was pardoned by President Obama,

41:34

Manning press conference

but this year was arrested again for refusing to cooperate with the prosecution of Assange.

41:49

Super: 16 May 2019

CHELSEA MANNING:  Attempting to coerce me with a grand jury subpoena is just not going to work. I will not cooperate with this or any other grand jury. So it doesn't matter what it is, or what the case is, I'm just not going to comply or cooperate. Facing jail again, potentially today, doesn't change my stance. 

41:54

Manning with photographers

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: Chelsea Manning has now been jailed again.

BARRY POLLACK, LAWYER FOR JULIAN ASSANGE: It does not appear that there is any reason why they have a need for Chelsea Manning's testimony at this point. But

42:18

Pollack 100%

in addition to being concerned about prosecutorial overreaching generally, it certainly concerns me, because I do think it is a symptom of the disease of how far this administration is willing to go in its pursuit of Mr. Assange.

42:29

Assange supporters outside Westminster Magistrates Court

42:43

Police and reporters outside court

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: Regardless of how Assange is now viewed by many, the charges have sent a chill through the media and free speech advocates around the world.

42:50

Assange supporters outside Westminster Magistrates Court

ALAN RUSBRIDGER, EDITOR, THE GUARDIAN, 1995 – 2015: I don't like him. I deplore some of the things he's done. I don't agree with him about some of the ways in which he handled information. But as charged, I think we have to stand with him, because

43:04

Rusbridger 100%. Super:
ALAN RUSBRIDGER
Editor, The Guardian, 1995-2015

journalism isn't espionage. I mean, whatever Julian was up to, I don't think it was espionage.

43:17

Assange supporters outside Westminster Magistrates Court

SCOTT SHANE NATIONAL SECURITY REPORTER, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Once you choose to charge Assange with publishing information that the government said was secret,

43:24

Shane 100%

it's not a huge step to charge the New York Times or a New York Times reporter or editor with publishing information the government said should be secret.

43:35

Plane past Capitol building

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: The Trump administration’s aggressive pursuit of Assange reveals just how far the reach of America extends.

43:42

MATTHEW MILLER, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, DIR. PUBLIC AFFAIRS, 2009-2011: I think the Trump administration doesn't have the same concerns about journalism and the threat to journalism that the Obama administration did. They're

43:53

Miller 100%

not concerned about being seen as being tough on journalists. I mean, the president talks about journalists as the enemy of the people. He talks about fake news, so I don't think they lose any sleep at all over threats to journalism.

44:02

Rusbridger 100%

ALAN RUSBRIDGER, EDITOR, THE GUARDIAN, 1995 – 2015: Julian's not American. He's Australian. So if we are saying that somebody who's not a citizen of a country that he's writing about is bound by  their official secrecy laws and can be extradited to their country to spend time in their prisons, where does that leave us?

44:16

Assange being dragged from embassy

MICHAEL BRISSENDEN, REPORTER: While history will remember Julian Assange as the first significant digital information activist, even his detractors now fear that if he is ultimately convicted for espionage Assange’s activism could herald a new media environment with even less freedom, and not just in the United States.

44:40

Exteriors. US Supreme Court building

P.J. CROWLEY, U.S. ASSISTANT SECRETARY OF STATE FOR PUBLIC AFFAIRS, 2009 – 2011: I'm very concerned that the decision to revisit the Assange case, the decision to ask for a formal extradition will have an impact in terms of

45:08

Crowley 100%

the ability of the United States to be an advocate for journalism around the world, for freedom of speech around the world.

45:19

Dept of Justice building

BARRY POLLACK, LAWYER FOR JULIAN ASSANGE: I hope that he will be remembered as a

45:30

Pollack 100%

very courageous individual who published information fearlessly,

45:31

VFX: Photos of Assange.

from a sincere and heartfelt -- and I think what history will judge as a correct -- belief that the public had a right to know this information.

45:38

Credit start [see below]

45:55

Outpoint after credits

46:19