About the Book
It was the biggest leak in history. WikiLeaks infuriated the world’s greatest superpower, embarrassed the British royal family and helped cause a revolution in Africa. The man behind it was Julian Assange, one of the strangest figures ever to become a worldwide celebrity. Was he an internet messiah or a cyber-terrorist? Information freedom fighter or sex criminal? The debate would echo around the globe as US politicians called for his assassination.
Award-winning Guardian journalists David Leigh and Luke Harding have been at the centre of a unique publishing drama that involved the release of some 250,000 secret diplomatic cables and classified files from the Afghan and Iraq wars. At one point the platinum-haired hacker was hiding from the CIA in David Leigh’s London house. Now, together with the paper’s investigative reporting team, Leigh and Harding reveal the startling inside story of the man and the leak.
Inside Julian Assange’s
War on Secrecy
David Leigh and Luke Harding
with Ed Pilkington, Robert Booth and Charles Arthur
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Epub ISBN 9780852652404
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Published by Guardian Books 2011
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David Leigh and Luke Harding have asserted their right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the authors of this work
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First published in Great Britain in 2011 by
Guardian Books
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90 York Way
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www.guardianbooks.co.uk
A CIP catalogue for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-0-85265-239-8
CONTENTS
Cast of characters
Introduction
Chapter 1: The Hunt
Chapter 2: Bradley Manning
Chapter 3: Julian Assange
Chapter 4: The rise of WikiLeaks
Chapter 5: The Apache video
Chapter 6: The Lamo dialogues
Chapter 7: The deal
Chapter 8: In the bunker
Chapter 9: The Afghanistan war logs
Chapter 10: The Iraq war logs
Chapter 11: The cables
Chapter 12: The world’s most famous man
Chapter 13: Uneasy partners
Chapter 14: Before the deluge
Chapter 15: Publication day
Chapter 16: The biggest leak in history
Chapter 17: The ballad of Wandsworth jail
Chapter 18: The future of WikiLeaks
Appendix: US Embassy Cables
Acknowledgements
CAST OF CHARACTERS
WikiLeaks
MELBOURNE, NAIROBI, REYKJAVIK, BERLIN, LONDON, NORFOLK, STOCKHOLM
Julian Assange – WikiLeaks founder/editor
Sarah Harrison – aide to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange
Kristinn Hrafnsson – Icelandic journalist and WikiLeaks supporter
James Ball – WikiLeaks data expert
Vaughan Smith – former Grenadier Guards captain, founder of the Frontline Club and Assange’s host at Ellingham Hall
Jacob Appelbaum – WikiLeaks’ representative in the US
Daniel Ellsberg – Vietnam war whistleblower, WikiLeaks supporter
Daniel Domscheit-Berg – German programmer and WikiLeaks technical architect (aka Daniel Schmitt)
Mikael Viborg – owner of WikiLeaks’ Swedish internet service provider PRQ
Ben Laurie – British encryption expert, adviser to Assange on encryption
Mwalimu Mati – head of anti-corruption group Mars Group Kenya, source of first major WikiLeaks report
Rudolf Elmer – former head of the Cayman Islands branch of the Julius Baer bank, source of second major WikiLeaks report
Smári McCarthy – Iceland-based WikiLeaks enthusiast, programmer, Modern Media Initiative (MMI) campaigner
Birgitta Jónsdóttir – Icelandic MP and WikiLeaks supporter
Rop Gonggrijp – Dutch hacker-businessman, friend of Assange and MMI campaigner
Herbert Snorrason – Icelandic MMI campaigner
Israel Shamir – WikiLeaks associate
Donald Böstrom – Swedish journalist and WikiLeaks’ Stockholm connection
The Guardian
LONDON
Alan Rusbridger – editor-in-chief
Nick Davies – investigative reporter
David Leigh – investigations editor
Ian Katz – deputy editor (news)
Ian Traynor – Europe correspondent
Harold Frayman – systems editor
Declan Walsh – Pakistan/Afghanistan correspondent
Alastair Dant – data visualiser
Simon Rogers – data editor
Jonathan Steele – former Iraq correspondent
James Meek – former Iraq correspondent
Rob Evans – investigative journalist
Luke Harding – Moscow correspondent
Robert Booth – reporter
Stuart Millar – news editor, guardian.co.uk
Janine Gibson – editor, guardian.co.uk
Jonathan Casson – head of production
Gill Phillips – in-house head of legal
Jan Thompson – managing editor
New York Times
NEW YORK, LONDON
Max Frankel – former executive editor
Bill Keller – editor
Eric Schmitt – war correspondent
John F Burns – London correspondent
Ian Fisher – deputy foreign editor
Der Spiegel
HAMBURG, LONDON
Georg Mascolo – editor-in-chief
Holger Stark – head of German desk
Marcel Rosenbach – journalist
John Goetz – journalist
El País
MADRID, LONDON
Javier Moreno – editor-in-chief
Vicente Jiménez – deputy editor
Other Media
Raffi Khatchadourian – New Yorker staffer and author of a major profile of Assange