Julian Assange - WikiLeaks (30 page)

At the same time, he was in contact with a
Wired
journalist to whom he offered an exclusive on his chats, with the condition that he would have to give the green light on the article about him. Without Lamo and the journalist knowing it, Manning was called out on May 26 2010.

At the start of July, Manning was accused of eight criminal counts and four violations of the military code. He was accused
of the ‘transfer of confidential data on his computer and the download of the electronic program not allowed on a classified secret information system' and illegally obtaining ‘more than 150,000 diplomatic cables.' If he is to be found guilty, he would be looking at fifty-two years in jail.

In the following months, the American government tried to prove that there had in fact been a link between Bradley Manning and Julian Assange. In the mean time, the newspapers sifted through the diplomatic cables, while the media extensively discussed the American government's embarrassment, and while other countries laid low. The United States had Manning, and in the name of world diplomacy, it wanted to use him to bring down Julian Assange. Manning had become the Wikileaks' collateral damage.

On July 5 2010, the young man was incarcerated in Kuwait, in the Theater Field Confinement Facility, a short-term detention center. On July 29, he was transferred to the military base in Quantico, Virginia.

Julian publicly maintained that WikiLeaks couldn't know if the source of the leaked documents that were received in those past months came from Bradley Manning. “Our technology means we don't know who is submitting us materials. But the name Bradley Manning was first heard by us when we read an article about his arrest in
Wired
magazine,” Julian said. He qualified the allegations that WikiLeaks conspired with Manning as nonsense.

Some media wrote that Assange and WikiLeaks left the young twenty-three-year-old soldier to his own devices without giving him any help for his defense while Assange's defense costs hundreds of thousands of euro, dollars or pounds. Help would be to recognize the link between the two and guarantee a court martial for the boy-faced soldier.

Manning is currently suffering isolation twenty-three hours a day in a cell. The prisoner was judged potentially suicidal, which helped reinforce and exaggerate his detention conditions. David House, researcher at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) is one of the rare persons to have met him since he was incarcerated at Quantico. He sounded the alarm in mid-January 2011, after having visited the prisoner again, accompanied by American blogger and producer Jane Hamsher.

Bradley Manning was placed on suicide watch in order to reinforce his detention conditions. Commander James Averhart, who has authority over his conditions, admitted his mistake on January 25 2011.

By putting him on suicide watch, Manning is fed antidepressants, has to strip down to his underwear at night and give his clothes to the guards before sleeping under an anti-suicide blanket. He explained to David House that it was “similar in weight and heft to lead aprons used in X-ray laboratories, and similar in texture to coarse and stiff carpet.” Manning “expressed concern that he had to lie very still at night to avoid receiving carpet burns.”

Manning explained that he hasn't seen daylight for four weeks, and that he only had contact with other people a few hours on the weekend. Jane Hamsher reported that the prisoner “was beginning to exhibit some of the damaging symptoms of prolonged isolation, including emotional withdrawal and impaired cognitive function. He seemed slow to respond when they spoke, and could not process information as quickly as he normally did.”

This confinement may last until the end of the investigation by authorities. Given the treatment inflicted to the soldier, Julian declared that Manning could be considered a political prisoner.

Despite the army's efforts, no link has yet been found between Assange and Manning.

At the start of 2011 Manning was called a victim in the war on truth, while Julian continues his fight, like a knight in shining armor on a crusade for freedom.

Brussels, Thursday, January 13 2011: in a café down the street from the European Parliament – meeting with Ian Traynor, journalist and correspondent in Brussels for the
Guardian.

Monday, June 21 2010 in Brussels, headquarters of the European Parliament
.

June is usually a hot, sunny and dry month. That day, Julian was in Brussels to speak at the conference ‘(Self) Censorship New Challenges for Freedom of Expression in Europe'. He was invited by German Parliamentarian Alexander Graf Lambsdorff and Dutch Parliamentarian Marietje Schaake of the Group Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe. The other speakers that day were Birgitta Jónsdóttir, Lars Vilks, Naema Tahir, Flemming Rose and Alastair Mullis. The theme was “What happens in Europe doesn't just affect Europe. It's used as justification for even more extreme forms of abuse around the rest of the world.” In this panel discussion, Swedish artist Lars Vilks, and Dutch author Naema Tahir shared their personal experiences with freedom of expression in Europe. Professor Alastair Mullis, UK
Defamation Law expert, Julian Assange and Birgitta Jónsdóttir spoke on the legal and political questions concerning freedom of expression.

For the second part of the seminar, Birgitta explained the idea behind the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative as well as the collective and legal process that convinced Parliament to adopt it. Julian described how abandoned alliances that guaranteed the protection of values from the European enlightenment had been disappearing since the end of the Cold War. He gave some examples of British libel law cases that he called “realization of Orwellian horrors” just like in the novel
1984
, and explained how secret state censorship blacklists, politically framed to combat child pornography, are used to gag dissident voices.

Julian appeared for the first time in public since Manning was arrested, and was just back from Iceland. He came in relaxed. He sat down and adjusted the microphone, which was giving him some trouble. He turned this incident into an introduction, joking in order to ease the tension. He then slipped into his intervention.

In the hall of the European Parliament, among others, there were Ian Traynor and Christian Engström, European Parliamentarian of the Pirate Party and his assistant, Henrik Alexandersson.

Julian was very comfortable. He spoke with poise, arms crossed and placed on the desk, sitting behind the console to the right of Lambsdorff. Having flown in straight from the North, he was still wearing a thick wool sweater with gray patterns.

Here's a telegraphic style overview of his intervention:

Julian introduced his speech with a summary of his classic subjects: IMMI, the Kaupthing Bank affair and the injunction of the RUV in Iceland.

He continued with a small allegory on authoritarianism defeated by a historic alliance between liberals and democrats, an alliance that no longer exists today. However, authoritarianism still exists on the Internet.

Later, he explained how the
Guardian
was obliged to delete articles from its archives because of a legal European loophole.

He pointed out the similarities it had to Orwell's novel
1984
in which The Ministry of Truth changes the archives to meet its needs. In fact, all you have to do is hire a big prestigious London law firm to delete a part of its journalistic heritage. He explained that during the manipulation of newspapers' archives, the removal as such is not clearly specified, but a ‘file not found'-type error appears to quell any curiosity.

A collision between two ships in the night can inflect the state of the sea. An interaction between states on the Internet can create backwash in other states. If laws are created to regulate the Internet, and the activity thereupon, and avoid this turmoil, it will block the communication of newspapers with their readers, parties with their partisans, as all exchanges will go through the Internet.

In Australia, one of the first leaks from WikiLeaks published the list of sites blocked by a national firewall. The justification was to block pedophile sites, but in fact, there was only thirty-two per cent of said sites, the rest were sites deemed inappropriate by the government itself.

Parallel relative to the laws: the ones applied in Africa come from the Commonwealth; every country has an influence on the rest of the world.

“Can we do in Europe what we did in Iceland?” Julian doubted it, but he asked the audience anyway.

Brussels. Tuesday, January11 2011: European Parliament – meeting with Christian Engström and his assistant Henrik Alexandersson.

Back to Monday, June 21 2010, back in the United Kingdom.

Nick Davies works in the UK. He knew that Julian was in Brussels for this seminar. The next day he was taking the Eurostar high-speed train from London to Brussels and within two hours he would be meeting up with his colleague, Ian Traynor.

Nick Davies was a well-known investigative journalist in the United Kingdom. He has been in the business since 1976, as a freelancer, working regularly as a correspondent for
The Guardian
. He was their star journalist. He was also an author and documentary maker for television. He has been named Journalist of the Year, Reporter of the Year and Feature Writer of the Year for his investigations on crime, drugs, poverty and other social ills. Hundreds of journalists attend his master classes on investigative techniques. He has also won a European Journalism Award for his work on the politics of drugs. He has published four books, including
White Lies
about a legal error based on racism in Texas and
Dark Heart
on poverty in Great Britain. His latest book,
Flat Earth News
is controversial. It exposes lies, distortion and propaganda in news that is related by and through the media. In November 2009, the University of Westminster made him an honorary fellow for service to journalism.

At the beginning of June 2010, Davies heard of the Pentagon leaks that WikiLeaks had in their possession. At the same time, he had also read an article in
The Guardian
on Bradley Manning's arrest. The star journalist was determined to find Julian. He then contacted the Number One of the association to see what could be published, but to no avail. The rumor was that Julian had been arrested or attacked. He couldn't be found. Finally, one of Julian's friends tipped Davies about his intervention in Brussels at the European Parliament.

Nick called his colleague Ian Traynor, a political journalist and correspondent of
The Guardian
in Brussels for four years. Ian Traynor remained very humble and discreet about his intervention that day. Following his colleague's call, he went to the conference of the European Parliament to listen to Julian and speak to him. He found out that the founder of WikiLeaks had two million documents.