Julian Assange - WikiLeaks (24 page)

Daniel was the public face of WikiLeaks, while Julian continued to travel the world from conference to conference. He talked about having published the 500,000 text messages from mobile phones and pagers on September 11, 2001 during the collapse of the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. He took the floor during the online release of 6,780 reports of the CRS (Congressional Research Service), analytical reports on different subjects of interest to the US Congress. It was with Julian that he covered the Icelandic affair linked to the bankruptcy of the Kaupthing bank.

Together they returned to the 26C3 on December 30, 2009, the twenty-sixth Chaos Communication Congress. Their conference first presented the WikiLeaks project in its original concept, in its heyday. It specifically showed a dynamic duo of speakers and brothers in arms.

In front of a few hundred people, the main stage of the Berliner Congress Center had a lectern on the right-hand side of
a big screen. It was 5:15 p.m., Daniel Schmitt was at the lectern looking a bit glum and wearing black pants and a black shirt. On stage there was Julian Assange standing casually in a white shirt with silver hair, his hands in the pockets of his brown pants.

The presentation was entitled “WikiLeaks Release 1.0,” referring to a numbering system used in programming to confirm that the software was matured, was without bugs and was ready to be used before a new updated version was released with additional functionalities.

The conference started with a brief summary of WikiLeaks' foundations and then Daniel Schmitt announced: “
The National
[English-language newspaper of the United Arab Emirates] wrote that we have probably produced more scoops in our short life than
The Washington Post
has in the past 30 years.” The room applauded. And Daniel added: “Thanks, we're just getting warm.” While Daniel spoke, Julian contemplated this already convinced audience and smiled.

Daniel wasn't comfortable delivering speeches in front of large audiences, as press relations were more his thing. Conferences really intimidated him. He experienced shortness of breath and his sweaty palms made him drop his notes when handing over the floor to his partner. Julian, on the other hand, had world-class experience: he didn't have notes and didn't look at the screen, and eased the mood, or rather his co-speaker, with lines like: “When we were putting this together
earlier today
...”

Julian Assange briefly introduced the events of 2009 by joking that people could look it up on Wikipedia. Daniel then very seriously summarized the description of the leaks published that year: the murdering of Afghan civilians in Kunduz led by the German armed forces supposedly engaged in a peace keeping mission. Very focused, he talked about the reports of the European
Institute for Security Studies (European think tank of security experts).

Imagine watching a very balanced duo, like yin and yang, the black solid on his positions, pragmatic and direct, with the white lyrical in his explications, strolling on stage, joking here and theorizing there.

Protected behind his lectern, his hands held close to his laptop, people listened to him carefully. He commented on his notes that envision a future police unit of Europe surrounded by a virtual wall to block immigration. He said, “Do we give our silent consent? Is that the world we want to live in the future?”

The two men presented the improvements they wanted to make to the system: an opening to citizens and an access tunnel to ‘good' journalists to create more legibility from this mountain of information they'd been publishing, and increase its impact.

Then they got into a long presentation of a project initiated by Julian: a haven for information, based on the idea of offshore fiscal paradises. They started off with the Icelandic affair. Julian told of the misadventure of the public television station RUV. The station wasn't able to broadcast its report on the financial scandal exposed by WikiLeaks, as it had received a legal injunction a few minutes before the broadcast. Julian then said that instead it would broadcast WikiLeaks' homepage for several minutes, which allowed them to point to the story they wanted to break. The audience applauded enthusiastically. The reaction of the two representatives in front of this ovation was typical of them: Daniel hid behind the screen of his computer as to contain his excitement while Julian, head held high, soaked up this beneficial energy.

Julian explained his project, alone, arms crossed, like a preacher in front of his flock. He knew what he was talking about. It was his idea and he didn't need anybody. At one point he tried
to include Daniel who mumbled while putting back the bottle of water he was drinking from. Julian took over. It was only after ten minutes of monologue that Daniel concluded on a humoristic note: “To convince those people in Iceland that did not understand it yet – they have conservative parties too – that this is the way to go.” There was laughter in the room.

The conference ended with a tribute given by Julian to all the sources and their courage. He added, causing a slight uncomfortable silence in the room that he wanted to thank traditional media, as “There are some very, very good people.”

As usual, Daniel closed the show with a “Thanks for your patience.” After a standing ovation that lasted minutes, the questions were punctuated by a testimony from Jérémie Zimmermann, spokesperson from La Quadrature du Net, a French advocacy group that promotes the rights and freedoms of citizens on the Internet: “First of all I want to tell you how much I admire you. You're my heroes.” One more time, Julian radiated while Daniel got to the point by saying: “the project, please.”

At the beginning of 2010, aged thirty-two, Daniel had already spent the last two years working for the organization. He quit his job at the start of 2009 to fully commit himself: “I have invested a considerable amount of time, money and energy into WikiLeaks. WikiLeaks grew totally exponentially, ‘too quickly.'”

The leaks came in every day, and Daniel thought that some of them were very interesting at the local level. For him, the platform mustn't discriminate and truth is good, whether it had a regional, national or global impact. But one project monopolized most resources of this small organization.

In February 2010, they received a shocking video of an army helicopter in Iraq attacking civilians. Julian saw the need to leverage this in order to attract attention to the company. A
video always says more than a report with hundreds of pages. He complained that citizens didn't willfully read leaks, dreaming of
Impact Maximization
(taken from a slide of the 26C3 presentation). He now had the means to carry out that kind of impact. He recruited a team of communication and video experts as well as video and sound editors for a real media project. They produced the documentary
Collateral Murder
that had Julian facing the world.

Daniel was moderately involved. Tired of traveling the world, he took on his role as spokesperson by giving interviews to newspapers, mainly German ones. He also had to deal with stopping the site for lack of cash, which was tough for him. It was a maneuver aimed at shaking up public opinion to motivate fundraising that also hid a more pressing reality. The site's infrastructure with its multiple mirror installations needed to be reviewed to switch to a more industrial model, which required investments and resources. As an engineer and technician who worked to save failing IT projects, he wanted this to be a priority. Unfortunately, the attention was diverted to
Project B
and the planetary launch of this video, as nothing else mattered to Julian.

The divorce was announced. Daniel showed up alone on April 22, at re:publica 2010, a German congress on new media. He started his presentation by announcing Julian's absence, ‘our public representative,' who was still in the United States after a press conference he had given.

What was going through Daniel's mind at the time? His role was to answer to press, to represent the organization and be a spokesperson. Now he found himself in the speaker's role. While Julian took on the public mask of the organization, as people talked as much about the captivating, mysterious and magnetic man as the organization, Daniel has always wanted to disappear behind
the project, keep a discrete attitude and a pragmatic discourse as to not attract attention and only be a voice for the team.

His presentation that day was quick and quite monotonous. Daniel stated the list of major leaks of the last six months in front of an attentive yet a lot less playful audience than at a C3. He surprised himself having finished his presentation in thirty-five minutes. The applause was still warm and the Q&A session lasted almost fifteen minutes, allowing him to come back to the infrastructure problems that were obviously bothering him. He was also heckled about the video and questioned about the fine line between publishing raw sources and a less objective editorial line of the information. Someone grabbed the microphone and shouted, “You're hidding!”

Daniel stayed calm, but his eyes opened wide, his breath was short, and he answered: “No, the names are clearly in there [in the video]. And again, what I said before, I think it was from my personal perspective, I think it was suboptimal that this line was not drawn clearly enough. That there's WikiLeaks who is publishing an unedited raw video and that there is a journalist piece, which is
Collateral Murder.
”

He left the stage thanking the audience and saying: “Have a nice rest of re:publica. I hope there's more important stuff to hear about.”

Daniel appeared at this conference in a different state of mind than usual. He felt like things were slipping away, and that reality was going to be even crueler.

In April 2010, the organization had never had so much media coverage, as the press was all over them. Questions came in from everywhere, and they had to avoid taking attacks and smoking theories about links with secret services too seriously. Daniel continued to answer as the spokesperson.

They were receiving almost twenty-five document submissions a day, but in February they received, along with the video and a set of American documents, such a huge quantity of explosive information that there wasn't enough time to go through it all.

Julian knew that they had to profit from the energy of the video to bring WikiLeaks to the level he aspired to. He decided to put aside all other documents they had received. They had to focus on the American leaks and edit the
Afghanistan War Logs
, known simply as the
War Logs
. The associates produced it while bottling up their frustrations because nobody had time to argue.

It was a huge amount of work: review a database of 92,000 documents while trying to remove the names of Afghan informers and collaborators who worked with the US armed forces during the period covered by these notes from 2004 to 2009. The entire world was working on it, volunteers and associates alike.

In June 2010, they found out about the arrest of the alleged source of the February delivery. His name was Bradley Manning, a young soldier of the US armed forces posted in Iraq. The shock was big, it was the first time that a source was identified and arrested. Daniel was reminded of Julian's words during the 25C3, the one that had got him so much applause: “We have never had a source exposed. We have never had a source prosecuted.”

The
Afghanistan War Logs
finally came out on July 25. They hadn't been able to analyze all the documents and 15,000 were left aside for subsequent publication. The information was immediately picked up by major names of the international press such as
The Guardian, The New York Times
and
Der Spiegel
. Daniel shared with Julian the idea that it was necessary to call upon the traditional press for a better coverage of their actions. However, Julian was furious when he saw that
The New York Times
hadn't inserted a link to the source of the information. Daniel
wasn't surprised; it was actually the system that they wanted to automate in the future on the platform, a content management method called ‘syndication.'

The tension started to rise in the ranks of WikiLeaks following criticism from organizations like Reporters Without Borders and even the Pentagon. They left a few names in the documents, putting the lives of the people mentioned in danger. The team was on edge. Everything was happening so quickly.

Daniel thought that he had to take some distance. Review the infrastructure, consolidate the organization, work on the communication of financing and publish local information.

Julian was less and less present. He was often in London, participating in conferences, round table discussions, and television shows. He appeared alone at TED, a program of conferences broadcast in video on the Internet. His appearance had changed, his hair was cut and he wore a quality gray suit.

The summer of 2010 was decisive for WikiLeaks. In August when Julian was accused of having allegedly raped two women in Sweden, the team panicked. What impact would that have on WikiLeaks? He had just started bringing the project up to an international level for a larger audience when these accusations were confirmed. Daniel contained the press. Some journalists had already forgotten this spokesperson. Karl Ritter of the
Associated Press
introduced him as “A WikiLeaks spokesperson that says he goes by the name of Daniel Schmitt in order to protect his identity.” Daniel declared that these were “[E]xtremely serious allegations.” He said that he didn't know where Julian was and, “that he's smart enough to know what he has to do.”

But Daniel had had enough. The 15,000
Afghanistan War Logs
were ready, but Julian didn't want to publish them. Why?
Nobody knew. He had also just found out that Julian negotiated a publishing date for the
Iraq War Logs
they had been preparing for several weeks, but then again, he didn't know anything more about it. He thought that it was time Julian stayed out of the spotlight and managed his personal affairs.