Just weeks prior to unveiling a giant cache of leaked U.S. State Department cables, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange threatened to sue the Guardian newspaper in Britain over publication of the documents, according to a fascinating Vanity Fair article published Thursday that explores in detail the often rocky relationship between WikiLeaks and the newspapers with which it partnered last year.
After receiving the database of a quarter-million cables from Assange under embargo last August, the Guardian obtained a second copy of the database from a WikiLeaks insider without conditions ? which led the newspaper to conclude it was no longer bound by a signed agreement with Assange that it wouldn?t publish the documents until he gave the go-ahead.
Assange, suddenly faced with having lost control of documents that WikiLeaks itself had received from a source, asserted that he owned the information and had a financial interest in how and when it was released, the magazine reports.
Assange was pallid and sweaty, his thin frame racked by a cough that had been plaguing him for weeks. He was also angry, and his message was simple: he would sue the newspaper if it went ahead and published stories based on the quarter of a million documents that he had handed over to The Guardian just three months earlier?. Assange?s position was rife with ironies. An unwavering advocate of full, unfettered disclosure of primary-source material, Assange was now seeking to keep highly sensitive information from reaching a broader audience. He had become the victim of his own methods: someone at WikiLeaks, where there was no shortage of disgruntled volunteers, had leaked the last big segment of the documents, and they ended up at The Guardian in such a way that the paper was released from its previous agreement with Assange ? that The Guardian would publish its stories only when Assange gave his permission. Enraged that he had lost control, Assange unleashed his threat, arguing that he owned the information and had a financial interest in how and when it was released.
A marathon negotiation ensued between Assange and the Guardian. Some at the Guardian wanted to sever their relationship with Assange entirely, but the two sides managed to reach an uneasy agreement. However, the already precarious relationship never fully recovered from this and other bones of contention, according to writer Sarah Ellison, who also wrote the book War at the Wall Street Journal.
Ellison spoke with editors of the Guardian and the New York Times for her Vanity Fair story, as well as with WikiLeaks insiders to compile a look at how the unprecedented media partnership progressed. [Editor's note: Vanity Fair and Wired.com are both owned by Cond� Nast.]
The relationship began when Guardian investigative reporter Nick Davies tracked Assange down last June, about two months after WikiLeaks had published its first significant leak -? a classified video showing a U.S. helicopter shooting and killing civilians in Iraq ? and shortly after the arrest of suspected leaker Pfc. Bradley Manning. Davies sought out Assange to propose a partnership with the Guardian to publish other documents Assange might possess. He asked Assange for a description of what kinds of documents he had in his cache.
Assange replied, in his slow baritone, ?I have a record of every single episode involving the U.S. military in Afghanistan for the last seven years.? Davies said, ?Holy Moly!? Indeed, Assange went on, he had more than that: ?I have a record of every single episode involving the U.S. military in Iraq since March 2003.? Assange also made reference to a third cache of documents ? diplomatic cables ? and to a fourth cache, containing the personal files of all prisoners who had been held at Guant�namo.
The last reference ? ?the personal files of all prisoners who had been held at Guant�namo? ? potentially explains once-puzzling statements made by Manning in his May 2010 chats with Adrian Lamo, the ex-hacker who turned him in.
Detainees walk around the exercise yard in Camp 4, the medium security facility within Camp Delta at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. Photo: Department of DefenseManning told Lamo that his leaks to WikiLeaks included something he called the ?Gitmo Papers? and ?the JTF GTMO papers? ? references to Guant�namo. He didn?t specify the nature of the documents, and Lamo appeared to assume Manning was referencing two Guant�namo operation manuals WikiLeaks famously published in 2007.
But those 2007 leaks occurred years before the time Manning claimed to have begun providing material to WikiLeaks. Assange?s statements describing a new and more significant Guant�namo leak could explain what Manning meant by the offhand comments ? that he?d leaked the files of Guant�namo prisoners. At the height of its operation, the Guant�namo facility held more than 700 prisoners.
The Vanity Fair article is silent on any plans to publish the Guant�namo files, so it?s not clear if the Guardian brokered a deal with WikiLeaks to publish them, or if WikiLeaks has any plans to release the documents with other media partners or on its own. (See update below.)
Once Assange and Davies came to agreement over the other documents Assange mentioned in their discussion, Assange passed Davies a password he could use to get at the initial trove, the magazine reports.
They agreed that they wouldn?t talk about the project on cell phones. They agreed that, in two days, Assange would send Davies an e-mail with the address of a website that hadn?t previously existed, and that would exist for only an hour or two. Assange took a paper napkin with the hotel?s name and logo and circled various words. At the top he wrote, ?no spaces.? By linking the words together, Davies had his password.
It didn?t take long after this exchange for cracks in the relationship to appear, not only between Assange and the media outlets in general but between Assange and Davies personally. The two have both said publicly that they had a falling out and no longer speak to each other, but have never explained the nature of it.
According to Ellison, the dispute involved the first cache of documents the media partners published from a database of approximately 90,000 events from the Afghan war. The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Speigel all agreed with WikiLeaks they would begin to publish their stories on Sunday, July 25. But on July 24, Davies discovered that Assange had also passed the entire Afghan database to Britain?s Channel 4 television network without consulting the newspapers.
?Davies was livid,? Ellison writes. ?Assange got on the phone and explained, falsely, according to Davies, that ?it was always part of the agreement that I would introduce television at this stage.? Davies and Assange have not spoken since that afternoon.?
The article clears up one other issue as well, regarding public statements Assange made about the diplomatic cables he possessed. The timing of events chronicled in the piece makes clear that while Assange was publicly denying having them, he was privately making plans to publish them with WikiLeaks? media partners.
Last June, when Threat Level broke the news that Manning had discussed leaking 260,000 U.S. State Department cables to WikiLeaks, the organization issued a denial the same day on Twitter:
?Allegations in Wired that we have been sent 260,000 classified US embassy cables are, as far as we can tell, incorrect,? Assange or someone else connected to the group wrote. The group also tweeted: ?If Brad Manning, 22, is the ?Collateral Murder? & Garani massacre whistleblower then, without doubt, he?s a national hero.?
Assange repeated the denial at the TEDGlobal conference in Britain in July, after he had already told Davies privately that he possessed a cache of diplomatic cables. When asked by TED curator Chris Anderson (not related to Wired magazine editor-in-chief Chris Anderson) if he possessed the cables (Anderson mistakenly said 280,000 cables instead of 260,000), Assange replied, ?Well, we have denied receiving those cables.?
Anderson then started to say, ?if you did receive thousands of U.S. embassy diplomatic cables ?,? when Assange jumped in and replied, ?We would have released them.?
WikiLeaks has since acknowledged it has 251,287 U.S. State Department cables. The organization began to publish them in November with its media partners.
[UPDATE 1.6.2011:] The New York Times, in a story published last month, provided some information on what the Guant�namo papers likely contain. The paper quoted a U.S. government official saying authorities believe Assange possesses a set of ?threat assessment? reports for nearly 800 Guant�namo prisoners.
The assessments were compiled by the Pentagon during the Bush administration and were used to determine whether each detainee was of sufficient threat to the United States that he should remain detained at Guant�namo or whether he could be transferred to another country for detention or released.
Photo: Julian Assange
Lily Mihalik/Wired.com
See also:
Report: Federal Grand Jury Considering Charges Against WikiLeaks? Assange
Unpublished Iraq War Logs Trigger Internal WikiLeaks Revolt
Newspapers Reveal Diplomatic Cables Provided By WikiLeaks
Suspected Wikileaks Source Described Crisis of Conscience Leading to Leaks
U.S. Intelligence Analyst Arrested in Wikileaks Video Probe
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