It becomes quickly evident to anyone who starts to follow the Wikileaks story, especially over the course of the last year, that there are some rather pernicious falsehoods in circulation.
The established media is not immune to promulgating these. In fact, the established media in many cases appears to be their primary vector. The result is a general public misinformed at even the most basic level on the purpose and impact of Wikileaks and its efforts. The phenomenon is illustrative to anyone who cares to remain informed. It paints a telling picture of the state of modern journalism.
Falsehoods are rarely entirely novel. They are often introduced as speculation, or by interested parties, and then passed on lazily, or embellished by successive journalists.
Analysis as to the reasons for the general inability/reluctance of the established press to stick to the facts on this story is a matter for elsewhere on this site and others. It suffices to note that the press genuinely seems unable or reluctant to stick to the facts on Wikileaks. Wikileaks is a matter on which the press is clearly either drastically negligent or pointedly mendacious. At a point in history when its services are most crucially needed, the journalistic profession has (with some exceptions) failed in its duty to the world’s people.
This page is an attempt to serve the historical record more faithfully.
The aim is
We aim to show the means by which we have arrived at our conclusions, through methods of citizen journalism and investigative reading. This section will be revised over time. The situation develops daily, and our task is to work back through the press record to document what has already happened, while also covering new developments.
During its War Log Releases, Wikileaks carelessly/wantonly/maliciously failed to redact the names of soldiers/informants. As a a result, NATO/Allied troops and/or Afghan/Iraqi informants and/or their families were endangered/killed.
This allegation has been made in various forms since Wikileaks released the Afghanistan War Logs, and with renewed intensity after the Iraq War Logs.
The particular phrase, "Wikileaks has blood on its hands," can be traced to the press release statements of high ranking US officials. Both Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Admiral Mike Mullen, in the days following the release of the Afghanistan war logs, made highly publicized statements to this effect.
The quote was quickly seized by news outlets. Glenn Greenwald, in an excellent article, has documented the process of whispers by which the press eventually came to report that Wikileaks indeed does have blood on its hands. The phrase "Wikileaks has blood on its hands" received approx. 2,650,000 search results in Google, at the time of publishing this article.
To date, no name of any casualty directly or arguably attributable to the War Log releases has been mentioned. Overwhelming evidence abounds, and has been reported in the mainstream press, that nobody has been either hurt or killed because of the disclosures. The officials who made the allegations themselves have acknowledged the falsehood of these claims.
2010-10-17: CNN reported that the Department of Defense had concluded that the "online leak of thousands of secret military documents from the war in Afghanistan by the website WikiLeaks did not disclose any sensitive intelligence sources or methods."
The assessment, revealed in a letter from Gates to the Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Carl Levin (D-Michigan), comes after a thorough Pentagon review of the more than 70,000 documents posted to the controversial whistle-blower site in July. The letter, provided to CNN, was written August 16 by Gates in response to a query by the senator regarding the leak of classified information. Gates said the review found most of the information relates to "tactical military operations." "The initial assessment in no way discounts the risk to national security," Gates wrote. "However, the review to date has not revealed any sensitive intelligence sources and methods compromised by the disclosure." The defense secretary said that the published documents do contain names of some cooperating Afghans, who could face reprisal by Taliban. But a senior NATO official in Kabul told CNN that there has not been a single case of Afghans needing protection or to be moved because of the leak.
The above story can be verified in any other major news source.
2010-08-17: The Associated Press reported that "there is no evidence that any Afghans named in the leaked documents as defectors or informants from the Taliban insurgency have been harmed in retaliation."
Some private analysts, in fact, think the danger has been overstated. "I am underwhelmed by this argument. The Pentagon is hyping," says John Prados, a military and intelligence historian who works for the anti-secrecy National Security Archive. He said in an interview that relatively few names have surfaced and it's not clear whether their present circumstances leave them in jeopardy.
2010-08-11: The Washington Post reported a statement by Pentagon Spokesman Geoff Morrell clarifying that no harm has come as a result of the disclosure. Morrell can be heard to make the statement in the video of the Pentagon press conference.
"We have yet to see any harm come to anyone in Afghanistan that we can directly tie to exposure in the WikiLeaks documents," Morrell said. But, he asserted, "there is in all likelihood a lag between exposure of these documents and jeopardy in the field."
If Morrell's latter statement is to be believed, the lag continues to grow. All of these statements, and the substantive truths they evidence, can be verified for anyone who cares to look.
See also this article from June 2011.
The prominent and mainstream rebuttal of the claim has not prevented the falsehood being conveniently treated as if it were well known fact. It remains as a ready-to-hand premise for far reaching and radical arguments on the part of journalists and politicians hostile to Wikileaks.
Beyond getting people killed, WikiLeaks' actions make it less likely that Afghans and foreign intelligence services (whose reports WikiLeaks also exposed) will cooperate with the United States in the future. And, as former CIA director Mike Hayden has pointed out, the disclosures are a gift to adversary intelligence services, and they will place a chill on intelligence sharing within the United States government. The harm to our national security is immeasurable and irreparable. And WikiLeaks is preparing to do more damage. Assange claims to be in possession of 15,000 even more sensitive documents, which he is reportedly preparing to release. On Sunday, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told ABC News that Assange had a "moral culpability" for the harm he has caused. Well, the Obama administration has a moral responsibility to stop him from wreaking even more damage.Assange is a non-U.S. citizen operating outside the territory of the United States. This means the government has a wide range of options for dealing with him. It can employ not only law enforcement but also intelligence and military assets to bring Assange to justice and put his criminal syndicate out of business.
This is one of the more pernicious falsehoods surrounding the Wikileaks releases, and serves to discredit it in, particularly, the eyes of the American public. A rigorous review of the evidence, however, exposes it as one of the more obvious falsehoods.
During its Afghanistan War Log Releases, WikiLeaks carelessly/wantonly/maliciously failed to redact the names of soldiers/informants, or hold back more sensitive information that might endanger lives.
The allegation has circulated that WikiLeaks would not consider any restraints in the release of its Afghanistan War Log releases, and its Iraq War Log releases. It is now considered common knowledge that WL released both sets of War Logs without any provisions for protecting sensitive identities within them. This is simply not true.
This falsehood was developed opportunistically by the Pentagon, and by media organizations friendly to official Washington. The falsehood was afterwards propagated by careless repetition by other news sources, and was passed on by netizens in internet communities and on comment streams, with little regard for its veracity.
The claim is false. WikiLeaks has clearly conducted harm minimization on all of its War Log releases. These harm minimization measures included:
Redaction Process
During the press conference for the Afghan War Log release, which was held in London's Frontline Club, on July 25th 2010, Julian Assange outlined clear and principled policy reasons for harm minimization:
Assange:We have a harm minimization process. Our goal is just for reform. Our method is transparency, but we do not put our method before the goal. If we have a serious endeavour, we do things in policy; we do not do things in an ad hoc way. And so far our harm minimization process has always worked. To our knowledge, no one has ever been physically harmed by the material we have released. Even though we have caused the change of governments and many other serious reforms.
Later, Assange commented on the specific harm minimization measures, as regards the Afghan War Log release:
Assange:[W]e have released to the public some 76,000 reports from this set of material. the set itself comprises over 91,000 reports. We have held back about 15,000 reports of a particular type to undergo a further harm minimization review. Some of those reports will be redacted and released as soon as we are able to get through them and others will be withheld until the security situation in Afghanistan means that it is safe to release them.
Later Assange further disclosed more details of the harm minimization process. Since the logs were of a vast quantity, harm minization had been conducted using the metadata of the logs in question. Logs in sensitive categories were held back for further review.
Assange:It is an enormous compendium of material that will affect many different people in many different ways. We as a journalistic group, the four media groups who worked on this, have really only scratched the surface. I think between us we have probably read about a thousand or two thousand of these reports properly. So it's going to take the rest of the world press and academics to look at the statistics that come out of this.
Journalist:Sorry can I just follow up? I just want to understand you correctly. so you say that you have only gone through and detailed 2000 of these...
Assange:Yes.
Journalist:How do you square that, then, with your argument that this is a responsible publication, and that you've done all of the harm minimization that you said you had?
Assange:The documents are in many different categories. They are tagged with different categories. So we can see that some categories do not have the type of material that would, as an example, identify innocent informants.
Development of Falsehood Through Spin
The Pentagon capitalized on the fact that the documents had not been processed individually, and managed to spin the story so as to present WikiLeaks as having made little effort to minimize harm. During an August 3rd Press Conference, Pentagon spokesperson Geoff Morrell belittled the harm minimization measures. (Transcript Available Here)
Morrell:
They claimed initially to have reviewed these documents, then we find out afterwards they only looked at 2000 of them, so they don't really know what's in all of them.
Morrell also made a comment on the 15,000 documents withheld by WikiLeaks.
Morrell:Obviously these 15,000 documents which they claim to be withholding as part of a harm minization exercise are not in our possession. We don't know for sure which 15,000 documents they are referring to. We have some ideas and are doing some proactive work, some prophylactic work in the event that the docs we suspect they could be, or indeed the docs that they are threatening to post... but that's where i'll leave it now.
Morrell made a comment implying that WikiLeaks had not offered to collaborate with the Pentagon in redaction of the material, by denying that WikiLeaks had contacted the Pentagon directly, rather than through the New York Times, which was the agreed intermediary of all of the media organizations collaborating in the Afghanistan War Logs release.
Morrell:On Tuesday it was reported that WikiLeaks has asked the Department of Defense for help in reviewing approximately 15,000 classified documents that WikiLeaks obtained in an unauthorized and inappropriate manner, before WikiLeaks releases those classified documents to the public. WikiLeaks has made no such request directly to the Department of Defense. These documents are the property of the U.S. government and contain classified and sensitive information. The Defense Department demands that WikiLeaks return immediately to the U.S. government all versions of documents obtained directly or indirectly from the Department of Defense databases or records.
Media organizations did not pick up on the "directly" qualification in Morrell's statement, despite the fact that Morrell specifically referred to the New York Times contact later in the press conference. The result was distributed coverage that reported that WikiLeaks had not contacted the Pentagon in an effort to redact the material. His further comments on the matter seemed to intimate that the Pentagon was willing to collaborate with WikiLeaks on the matter, while also, contradictorily, restating the position that the Pentagon was unwilling to cooperate in any meaningful way.
Morrell:They claim to have reached out to the U.S. government for assistance in harm minimization, and then we find out that, no, it was through their "partner" the New York times. I don't know whether the NY times would consider itself their partner. This is an opportunity for them to turn the page. To recognize the situation that they have created and to try to rectify it. If indeed these claims that they have made through these third parties... these spokesmen... communications to use through the news media, are serious. If they are serious about engaging with us they should reach out to us directly. And we will consider how to proceed once something like that happens. The easiest way, however, to solve this... I mean, we're not looking to have a conversation on harm minimization. We're looking to have a conversation about how to get these perilous documents off the website as soon as possible, return them to the rightful owners and explunge them from their records. That will help minimize harm that has already been created.
WikiLeaks' further efforts to offer the Pentagon a collaborative role in ensuring the disclosures would be comprehensively safe were met with categorical refusal. The emerging impression is of a transparency organization willing to go to extraordinary lengths to ensure that the material was safe for release, and a U.S. government that refused to cooperate.
Imperfect Redaction
It arose later that WikiLeaks' redaction process had not been perfect. The names of certain informants had made it unredacted into the final releases. Mainstream media were content merely to report this fact. More dedicated investigatory coverage fell to more independent internet publications and blogs, although Mark Hosenball, of Newsweek, covered the issue in detail. Glenn Greenwald gave the issue full treatment. Sean Paul Kelley, who writes The Agonist, indicated in a post some of the names that had come to light in the War Logs. However, Kelley's discovery of documentary proof that the Pentagon was consistently refusing to aid the redaction of the logs led him to retract his condemnation of the leaks.
I was wrong. WikiLeaks, based on the evidence that the DoD has presented, did its level best to work with the DoD to redact any names that might harm innocent Afghans. The Pentagon not only lied about it, but has even refused to cooperate going forward... The blood, if there is to be any, is on the Pentagon's hands. It's that simple.
To date, no informant has been harmed by the release of the documents. A review of this claim is contained in 2010-01-21 Debunked: "WikiLeaks Has Blood On Its Hands"
In summary, for the Afghanistan War Logs, WikiLeaks
It is therefore manifestly false that WikiLeaks performed no harm minimization efforts on this release. The disclosure of the names of informants in the releases must be understood in the context of the U.S. Government refusal to aid in redacting the documents. To date, there have been no reported casualties as a result of these disclosures. WikiLeaks responded to criticism of these disclosures by implementing an even more thorough harm minimization strategy for the Iraq War Logs release.
Wikileaks' release of 250K diplomatic cables constitutes an act of treason against the United States, and renders Julian Assange and other Wikileaks staffers liable to charges punishable by capital punishment.
This falsehood is quite straightforward, and has become a talking point in the mainstream media since Cablegate broke. It finds form in the belief that Julian Assange is a "traitor," or is involved in "treason," or that, more generally, Wikileaks is involved in treason. The falsehood can only be held along with a profound ignorance of the law of treason, or of the relevant facts.
This falsehood has become so prevalent in United States media since Sunday 28 November that it is impossible to trace a comprehensive origin. It emerged from a media climate of growing hyperbole, from veiled suggestions of extrajudicial action from Marc Thiessen and Christian Whiton during the last releases, to the public calls for assassination that are now becoming prevalent.
One prominent airing of the view was by Republican and Representative of the 3rd Congressional District of New York, Peter King, who is also Chairman for the House Homeland Security Committee.
It violates espionage laws. I consider it treason. The fact is, whatever happened here and whoever gave them that information is guilty, to me, of the most detestable, contemptible crime, and we have to take it seriously.
King may have intended to attribute treasonous actions only to the source of the leaks, and not to Wikileaks, but if this is the case, he did not choose his words delicately enough. The subtlety of the distinction between Assange and his source was lost on a great many individuals. The falsehood has now propagated through the social media and the blogosphere, where discussion by civilians is played out. To anyone listening to the tweets of middle America, it is plain that this falsehood is rather prevalent.
A Google search for "Assange Traitor" will now turn up countless articles like this one, from a blogger whose internet publication career betrays associations with David Horowitz and Andrew Breitbart.
The claim is so clearly false as to be comical. Three simple propositions illustrate its absurdity.
It's worth having a look at some American law on treason. The United States Code, Title 18, Part I, Chapter 115, § 2381 states:
Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years and fined under this title but not less than $10,000; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.
The crime of treason is limited by the United States Constitution, Article 3, Section 3, which states:
Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.
The Congress shall have power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.
The above restraint on the definition of treason entails that even were Assange an American citizen, he could not be held to be guilty of treason, since the express goal of Wikileaks' activity as regards the United States is not to make war against the United States, nor to give aid or comfort to its enemies, but variously, reform, the cessation of illegal activity within the United States government, a more informed public, a stronger press, and the adherence of the United States to the laws set out in its own Constitution, which Assange has personally cited on countless occasions.
[W]e are an organization that tries to make the world more civil and act against abusive organizations that are pushing it in the opposite direction...
So if you want to talk about the law, it's very important to remember the law is not what, not simply what, powerful people would want others to believe it is. The law is not what a general says it is. The law is not what Hillary Clinton says it is. The law is not what a bank says it is. The law, rather, is what the Supreme Court in [the] land in the end says it is, and the Supreme Court in the case of the United States has an enviable Constitution on which to base its decisions. And that Constitution comes out of a revolutionary movement and has a Bill of Rights appraised by James Madison and others that includes a nuanced understanding for the balancing of power of [the] states in relation to the government. Now, whether the Supreme Court makeup now is such that it keeps to its traditions or proposes a radical reassessment of the power of the First Amendment and the U.S. Constitution remains to be seen. However, the U.S. Espionage Act is widely viewed to be overbroad, and that is perhaps one of the reasons it has never been properly tested in the Supreme Court. I think it was maybe found to be unconstitutional and struck out. Now we understand that there are attempts by [Attorney General Eric] Holder and others in the U.S. Administration to shoehorn the Espionage Act, Section G in particular, onto legitimate press functions. Those efforts are dangerous in the sense that they may give rise to a Supreme Court challenge, which throws out the Espionage Act, or at least that section, in its entirety. If that succeeds, that will of course only be good business for WikiLeaks, because the rest of the U.S. press will be further constrained and people will simply come to us.
It is manifestly false that Julian Assange is a traitor, or that Wikileaks is engaged in activity against the United States that, were it an American entity, would render it liable to prosecution for treason.
Addendum: Some might claim that Assange might still be a traitor, since Cablegate contains sensitive diplomatic material pertaining to Australian interests. On this matter, and also the matter of whether Assange or Wikileaks have violated any Australian law, please see this article, by legal scholar Ben Saul.
While claiming to be an organization interested in global justice, Wikileaks is really a virulently anti-American organization.
This falsehood is quite straightforward. Its propagation in the media, especially the U.S. media, has vastly increased since Sunday 29 November, on which date Wikileaks began its Cablegate releases. The falsehood normally relies on a group of subsidiary falsehoods, such as the idea that "Wikileaks won't release information on China or Russia."
This falsehood is hard to trace to an original source, since its use has been so frequent. One can only point to prominent sources, and look at these as representative of, or causative of, the falsehood's popularity. In a now very famous post on her Facebook page, former governor of Alaska, and former vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin, wrote a single short sentence which managed to include two frequent falsehoods in only ten words:
He is an anti-American operative with blood on his hands.
The substance of the allegation, though, consists in the belief that Wikileaks publishes no material on other entities. This argument has been made in the Telegraph, by George Grant.
If Assange is genuinely committed to shining light into the darkness, and exposing real corruption and human rights abuse, we must ask ourselves, where are the ‘Chinese Embassy Cables’? What has become of the ‘Iran Files’? Whither the ‘Chechnya War Logs’?...
The ... answer to this question could just as easily be, however, that Assange is not really all that interested in exposing corruption and human rights abuse at all, rather his objective is to embarrass and weaken the US and its Western allies because he hates them for what they are and what they stand for.
Following on from arguments like this, one finds the question "Why doesn't Wikileaks focus on other countries?" repeated all over the internet, with little concern over the falsehood of its premise, and little worry that it funds an inference to a new falsehood.
There are many ways to approach debunking this falsehood. One thing it is important to say from the outset: there is little reason to rely on allegation and rumour from American punditry, when there is already a thorough and articulate defense of Wikileaks' activities by its various spokespersons. We advise that even a cursory attempt to engage with Wikileaks' now plentiful literature on its own activities will comprehensively answer many of the worries raised by media personalities with a proven history of rhetorical mendacity. At the very least, criticisms of Wikileaks ought to address Wikileaks strong and intellectually penetrating arguments, and there has been very little attempt to do that by American news networks and mainstream publications.
A prominent misconception about Wikileaks is that it proactively acquires its material, and therefore must have deliberately sought material on the United States. This is false. The first thing that must be understood is that Wikileaks does not proactively acquire its leaks. Assange on the matter:
We’re totally source dependent. We get what we get. As our profile rises in a certain area, we get more in a particular area. People say, why don’t you release more leaks from the Taliban. So I say hey, help us, tell more Taliban dissidents about us.
All of Wikileaks' material has been sent to it, by insider whistleblowers, who felt that it was necessary to disclose something. Wikileaks can therefore only choose what to publish from what has already been submitted to it.
Before its old website was taken down, (a newer version can be consulted here) Wikileaks publicly stated it would only accept leaks of the following sort:
- Classified, censored, or otherwise restricted material of political, diplomatic, historical or ethical significance.
- WikiLeaks does not accept rumour, opinion, or other kinds of first hand reporting or material that is already publicly available.
- Areas of documents leaked thus far have covered government, trade, corporate, war, killings, torture, detention, suppression of free speech and free press, diplomacy, spying, counter-intelligence, ecology, climate, nature, sciences, corruption, finances, taxes, trading, censorship and internet filtering, cults, religious organizations, abuse, violence, violations.
Wikileaks agrees, therefore, to accept material that concerns more than just the United States. The organization concerns itself with a broad range of materials.
On this point, it is also worth observing that though it may have changed policy as it grew, in the past, Wikileaks proclaimed a predominant interest in 'Third World' leaks.
Our primary interest is in exposing oppressive regimes in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we also expect to be of assistance to people of all regions who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations. We aim for maximum political impact.
Another common assumption is that Wikileaks has only published material on the United States. Given the availability of Wikileaks' previous publications, this is perhaps understandable. Nevertheless, it is false. Wikileaks' publishing history in fact bears out its stated remit of pursuing materials of signifiance to the historical record. Because of DDOS attacks and corporate webhost divestment from Wikileaks, the original MediaWiki site from which Wikileaks draws its name is no longer available (originally at wikileaks.org). A copy of that site still exists in Google Cache. There, a vast number of leaks is visible, relevant to a wide variety of corporate and national entities. A selection includes:
- CIA Red Cell Memorandum on United States "exporting terrorism", 2 Feb 2010
- ABC Foreign Correspondent video report on Thailand, 13 April 2010
- Loveparade 2010 Duisburg planning documents, 2007-2010
- WikiLeaks reveals Pentagon journalist murder-coverup in Iraq / army airstrike video, 5 Apr 2010
- U.S. Embassy profiles on Icelandic PM, Foreign Minister, Ambassador, 29 Mar 2010
- CIA report into shoring up Afghan war support in Western Europe, 11 Mar 2010
- U.S. Intelligence planned to destroy WikiLeaks, 18 Mar 2008
- Over 40 billion euro in 28167 claims made aganst the Kaupthing Bank, 23 Jan 2010
- BBC High Court Defence against Trafigura libel suit, 11 Sep 2009
- Icelandic Icesave offer to UK-NL, 25 Feb 2010
- Cryptome.org takedown: Microsoft Global Criminal Compliance Handbook, 24 Feb 2010
- Classified cable from US Embassy Reykjavik on Icesave dated 13 Jan 2010
Tiger Woods UK media gag order, 10 Dec 2009- Big Pharma inside the WHO: confidential analysis of unreleased WHO Expert Working Group draft reports, 8 Dec 2009
- Draft Copenhagen climate change agreement, 8 Dec 2009
- US Transportation Security Administration: Screening Procedures Standard Operating Procedures, 1 May 2008
- Yahoo compliance guide for law enforcement, 23 Dec 2008
- Microsoft COFEE (Computer Online Forensics Evidence Extractor) tool and documentation, Sep 2009
- Rechtsanwalt Solmecke unzensierter Blogeintrag zu Abmahnanwaelten und deren Geschaeftspraktiken, 25 Nov 2009
- WikiLeaks to release over half a million 9/11 text pager intercepts
- Toll Collect Betreibervertrag, 5 Jun 2002
- Toll Collect AGES International Kooperationsvertrag, 20 Sep 2002
- Toll Collect Sachverstaendigenvertrag Dr.-Ing. Schwerhoff, 23 May 2003
- Rechtsanwalt Seibert droht WikiLeaks mit Strafverfolgung wegen Ratiopharm Ermittlungsakte, 20 Nov 2009
- Climatic Research Unit emails, data, models, 1996-2009
- Davenport Lyons and DigiProtect Actionpoints for filesharers, 14 Jan 2009
- Davenport Lyons and Kornmeier Monetary and Working Correspondence, 19 Mar 2008
- Ermittlungsakte Landespolizeidirektion Tuebingen gegen die Ratiopharm GmbH wegen Untreue und Bestechung, 12 Mar 2008
- Controversial holocaust historian David Irving emails, Nov 2009
- EU draft council decision on sharing of banking data with the US and restructuring of SWIFT, 10 Nov 2009
- Suppressed video of Thai Crown Prince and Princess at decadent dog party
- Spring Design Inc lawsuit against Barnes and Nobles, Nov 2009
- Removed paper on Internet censorship trails in Australia, NZ, UK with NetClean Whitebox, 2009
- British National Party membership list and other information, 15 Apr 2009
- UK MoD Manual of Security Volumes 1, 2 and 3 Issue 2, JSP-440, RESTRICTED, 2389 pages, 2001
- Times TOP50 work places for women, due to appear on 7 Oct 2009, looks like a fraud, internal docs, Aurora, 2007-2009
- UK Ministry of Defence continually monitors WikiLeaks: eight reports into classified UK leaks, 29 Sep 2009
- Corruption in Norway, Ghana or both? Statoil v. BioFuel and the Kroll Inc. private intelligence report, Feb 2009
- FDP Arguliner zu Aenderungen beim Kuendigungsschutz, 8 Sep 2009
Lycos Deutschland Suchmaschinen Zensurliste- Product placement hell: Cisco "bribes" 24, CSI, House, Heroes, the Office, and more
- Yale pharmacology chair Joseph Schlessinger suppressed site exposing sexual, financial misconduct, 14 Sep 2009
Further confirmation of this publishing history is available on the Wikileaks Official Twitter feed, which records the history of Wikileaks as it developed since February 2009. An archive of this twitter feed is available here on WLcentral, which may be easier to peruse. The Twitter feed is invaluable for exploring the history of each of these leaks in great detail, as well as the fuller history of the Wikileaks organization.
The third point to consider is that 2010 has been a year of "megaleaks" with an emphasis on the United States. Why is this, if Wikileaks is not deliberately targeting the United States?
In an interview with Andy Greenberg, for Forbes, Julian Assange explains this quite reasonably.
Greenberg:To start, is it true you’re sitting on trove of unpublished documents?
Assange:Sure. That’s usually the case. As we’ve gotten more successful, there’s a gap between the speed of our publishing pipeline and the speed of our receiving submissions pipeline. Our pipeline of leaks has been increasing exponentially as our profile rises, and our ability to publish is increasing linearly...
Greenberg:You’ve been focused on the U.S. military mostly in the last year. Does that mean you have private sector-focused leaks in the works?
Assange:Yes. If you think about it, we have a publishing pipeline that’s increasing linearly, and an exponential number of leaks, so we’re in a position where we have to prioritize our resources so that the biggest impact stuff gets released first.
Greenberg:When will WikiLeaks return to its older model of more frequent leaks of smaller amounts of material?
Assange:If you look at the average number of documents we’re releasing, we’re vastly exceeding what we did last year. These are huge datasets. So it’s actually very efficient for us to do that. If you look at the number of packages, the number of packages has decreased. But if you look at the average number of documents, that’s tremendously increased.
Greenberg:So will you return to the model of higher number of targets and sources?
Assange:Yes. Though I do actually think…[pauses] These big package releases. There should be a cute name for them.
Greenberg:Megaleaks?
Assange:Megaleaks. That’s good. These megaleaks…They’re an important phenomenon, and they’re only going to increase. When there’s a tremendous dataset, covering a whole period of history or affecting a whole group of people, that’s worth specializing on and doing a unique production for each one, which is what we’ve done.
We can therefore understand that the dominant leaks of 2010, Collateral Murder, the Afghanistan and Iraq War Logs and Cablegate, were larger and of more urgency than other material in Wikileaks' possession, such that it was necessary to prioritize these leaks. This has been a consistent message throughout 2010. Assange made a similar statement during the press conference for the Afghanistan War Logs in July.
Wikileaks is on a bit of publishing hiatus in order to do significant reengineering to cope with the level of submissions we are receiving and the level of public interest in our site. It's actually a very hard engineering task to supply 2-5% of the entire world internet connected population at a single moment with material. And so we are a small organization trying to understand how to do that an do that in a secure way. As a result we have built up during that period an enormous backlog of whistleblower disclosures. Additionally after the Collateral Murder tape came out which revealed how two Reuters journalists were killed in Baghdad, along with 16-26 other people, we received a substantial increase in the number of submissions. Now we have an enormous range of material we are trying to get through and keep our promise to our sources in achieving the maximum political impact for that material. This is one of those cases. This is one of the cases of us getting through our backlog. So we have released to the public some 76000 reports from this set of material. The set itself comprises over 91000 reports. We have held back about 15000 reports of a particular type to undergo a further harm minimization review. and some of those reports will be redacted and released as soon as we are able to get through them and others will be withheld until the security situation in Afghanistan means that it is safe to release them. And by safe, I do not mean safe for military forces, I mean safe for the local population of Afghanistan.
Another important thing to note from the above quote is that Wikileaks' limited resources have been entirely occupied with the task of preparing 2010's United States leaks for publication, and that leaks with more diverse subject matter will necessarily have been postponed until these leaks have been fully published.
The final point to consider is Wikileaks' spokespeople's explicit statements about the purpose of the United States releases, and their attitude towards the United States. Wikileaks upholds founding values of the United States as inspirational to its own project, and celebrates the freedom of speech tradition consistently defended by the United States Supreme Court:
Publishing improves transparency, and this transparency creates a better society for all people. Better scrutiny leads to reduced corruption and stronger democracies in all society's institutions, including government, corporations and other organisations. A healthy, vibrant and inquisitive journalistic media plays a vital role in achieving these goals. We are part of that media.
Scrutiny requires information. Historically, information has been costly in terms of human life, human rights and economics. As a result of technical advances particularly the internet and cryptography - the risks of conveying important information can be lowered. In its landmark ruling on the Pentagon Papers, the US Supreme Court ruled that "only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government." We agree.
Julian Assange is known to have a sophisticated view of the United States, illustrated clearly in this interview in TIME Magazine:
The United States has some immutable traditions, which, to be fair, are based on the French Revolution and the European Enlightenment. The United States' Founding Fathers took those further, and the federalism of the United States also, of relatively powerful states trying to constrain federal government from becoming too centralized. Also added some important democratic controls and understandings. So there is a lot of good that has historically come from the United States. But after World War II, during World War II, the federal government of the United States started sucking the resources to the center, and the power of states started to diminish. Interestingly, the First Amendment started overriding states' laws around that time, which I see as a function of increasing central power in the United States. I think the problems with the United States as a foreign power stem from, simply, its economic success, whereby it's, historically at least, a very rich country with a number of people and the desire left over as a result of ... Let me explain this a bit better. The U.S. saw the French Revolution and it also saw the behavior of the U.K. and the other kings and dictatorships, so it intentionally produced a very weak President. The President was, however, given a lot of power for external relations, so as time has gone by, the presidency has managed to exercise its power through its foreign affairs function. ... But as the United States has grown economically, that has led to a situation where the foreign affairs power is latched on to by central government to increase the power of the government, as opposed to state government. The U.S. is, I don't think by world standards, an exception, rather it is a very interesting case both for its abuses and for some of its founding principles.
Wikileaks consistent mission, throughout its 4 year existence, has been to promote justice through transparency and the advocacy of a strong press. These principles are consonant with founding values of Western democracy, in particular, those of the United States. Where Wikileaks has been in conflict with United States authorities over the last year, Wikileaks has advocated the values of the United States Constitution against those in the U.S. Government who would erode those values. This analysis is borne out for anyone who cares to examine the events of 2010.
In conclusion, while it is a fair observation that the predominant focus of Wikileaks' public activity in 2010 has been the United States, it is roundly untrue that this represents an anti-American agenda on the part of the organization. The idea that Wikileaks is anti-American is straightforwardly false, with reference to the fact that:
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WikiLeaks' release of 09STATE15113 represents a gross failure of due diligence, presenting a list of targets for terrorist operatives, and endangering the lives of US nationals and national security.
Official attacks on WikiLeaks over 2010 have taken a twofold and often contradictory nature.
The present falsehood is the 'smoking gun' in the "sensitive information" argument, in light of the fact that WikiLeaks has an immaculate record in journalistic responsibility thus far. WikiLeaks' release of 09STATE15113 is lately the sole example raised in support of the idea that WikiLeaks endangers national security. It contains a list of sites compiled by the State Department, and designated as "critical to national security." The document is said to provide enemies of the United States with a useful list of targets.
The cable in question was released on the 5th of December, 2010. The story originally broke the next day in The Times (UK), in response to comments by Sir Malcolm Rifkind and it was the source for other articles. The Times article is behind a paywall, but it was syndicated in The Australian, for anyone who wishes to read it. From these origins, it became a global story, and a major talking point on the American news networks, mostly without any need to make actual reference to the content of the document.
The endangerment of national security assets, or lives, is likely to be exaggerated.
Concerted efforts by officials to play up the seriousness of the disclosure have been undermined by
The military intelligence database from which the present cable releases were drawn, SIPRNET, contained information with a maximum classification level of "SECRET." This is regarded as a relatively low classification. As a result, access to the documents in question was extended to individuals of a relatively low clearance level, numbering in total approximately 2.5 million people. Even non nationals were given access to SIPRNET.
As a result, it is not credible that WikiLeaks' publication (with its media partners) of 09STATE15113, or any of the other cables, discloses anything new to the foreign intelligence community, nor to well organized terrorist organizations. Defense Secretary Robert Gates' has observed, in connection with the present cable release:
Let me just offer some perspective as somebody who’s been at this a long time. Every other government in the world knows the United States government leaks like a sieve, and it has for a long time.
It emerges from a balanced appraisal of the sensitivity of the information released in Cablegate that there is little danger of disclosing anything new to foreign governments, or any organization likely to have been expending capital and effort to gain access to classified US information.
A familiarity with the realities of how espionage is conducted, which is attainable by a careful reading of the accounts of former spies like Robert Baer, recommends the following line of reasoning:
This argument, which is not conclusive by any means, still encourages us to regard the official outrage about Cablegate not as deriving from any risk that foreign intelligence agencies or terrorists have learned anything new, but that the public has been given an insight into things that a global and borderless elect would prefer it didn't know.
In general terms, it also causes us to regard with suspicion the hysterical soundbites of British, Canadian and U.S. officials reported in the press, with reference to 09STATE15113.
The above analysis is borne out in a December 12th article by STRATFOR, in which the media interest in 09STATE15113 is described as a "frenzy," concludes that "[m]edia interest aside, STRATFOR does not see this document as offering much value to militant groups planning attacks against US targets abroad."
"The sites listed in the cable," writes STRATFOR, "are either far too general, such as tin mines in China; are not high-profile enough to interest militants, such as undersea cables; or already represent well-known strategic vulnerabilities, such as the Strait of Malacca."
STRATFOR indicates that the information available in the cable is unlikely to have been unknown to any well-funded and highly organized terrorist organization, and as a result, is not nearly as sensitive as it has been reported to have been.
STRATFOR has discussed how many of the sorts of targets mentioned in the cable do not necessarily lend themselves to successful terrorist attacks...
Instead of an earth-shattering list of sites vulnerable to terrorist attacks, the list leaked this week is really a more revealing look at the inner bureaucracy and daily activities of the US security community and at how diplomats around the world contribute to assessing threats to US interests. This does not mean listed sites will not ever be attacked, but that experienced militants do not rely on DHS studies to provide targeting guidance.
The article is behind a registration wall at STRATFOR's site (which didn't work for this author), but has been syndicated by The Manilla Times, and can be read there.
The conclusion recommended by this analysis is that the disclosure of 09STATE15113 represents even less of a national security threat than the accidental publication of THE LIST OF SITES, LOCATIONS, FACILITIES, AND ACTIVITIES DECLARED TO THE INTERNATIONAL ATOMIC ENERGY AGENCY by the U.S. Government Printing Office, in June 2009.
Based on a credible analysis of the classification level of the material of which 09STATE15113 is a part, the realities of the intelligence community, the apparently lax information security of the United States military, and the informed opinions of professional analysts, it is very likely that reportage on 09STATE15113 tends towards the sensational, and that this cable does not constitute the smoking gun that critics of WikiLeaks desperately need in order to substantiate their claims that WikiLeaks "endangers national security."
ADDENDUM: There is also some merit to the idea that attacks on critical infrastructure would be a move away from the modus operandi of the global terror movement.
Where attacks such as the Madrid and London bombings, and the attacks on the 11th of September 2001, were calculated so as to kill as many civilians as possible, and to be as symbolic as possible, thereby spreading terror, and (successfully) causing the Western establishment to attack its own tradition of civil and political freedoms, attacks on infrastructural targets would appear to be rather less symbolic, stand less of a chance of massive civilian casualties, and would appear to harmonize rather more closely with what are considered legitimate forms of warfare by any major party to a war in the last 200 years.
This does not vindicate or condone any such attack; it constitutes instead a recognition that it would be rather more difficult to distinguish in kind between an Al Qaeda attack on critical infrastructural U.S. targets, and the U.S. attacks on critical infrastructure which are well documented in every major military engagement the U.S. conducted in the 20th and 21st centuries, from Vietnam through the Gulf conflicts to the ongoing war in Afghanistan. If Al Qaeda chose to target U.S. infrastructure, rather than centres of civilian activity, it would have moved away from acts of terror, and towards only slightly less reprehensible acts of war. The moral distinction between the parties to the "War on Terror" would become even less clear.