WikiLeaks (13 page)

“Tor?”

“Tor + SSL + SFTP… I even asked the NSA guy if he could
find any suspicious activity coming out of local networks. He shrugged and said, ‘It’s not a priority,’ went back to watching
Eagle’s Eye
. So, it was a massive data spillage, facilitated by numerous factors, both physically, technically, and culturally. Perfect example of how not to do Infosec … Listened and lip-synched to Lady Gaga’s ‘Telephone’ while exfiltrating possibly the largest data spillage in American history … Weak servers, weak logging, weak physical security, weak counter-intelligence, inattentive signal analysis – a perfect storm. >sigh< Sounds pretty bad huh? … Well, it SHOULD be better! It’s sad. I mean what if I were someone more malicious? I could’ve sold to Russia or China, and made bank!”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because it’s public data. It belongs in the public domain. Information should be free. Because another state would just take advantage of the information, try and get some edge. If it’s out in the open, it should be a public good, rather than some slimy intel collector. I’m crazy like that. I’m not a bad person, I keep track of everything. I watch the whole thing unfold from a distance. I read what everyone says, look at pictures, keep tabs, and feel for them since I’m basically playing a vital role in their life without ever meeting them. I was like that as an intelligence analyst as well. Most didn’t care, but I knew I was playing a role in the lives of hundreds of people, without them knowing me. But I cared, and kept track of some of the details, made sure everybody was OK. I don’t think of myself as playing ‘god’ or anything, because I’m not: I’m just playing my role for the moment. I don’t control the way they react. There are far more people who do what I do, in state interest, on daily basis, and don’t give a fuck – that’s how I try to separate myself from my (former) colleagues … I’m not sure whether I’d be considered a type of ‘hacker’, ‘cracker’, ‘hacktivist’, ‘leaker’, or what. I’m just me, really … I couldn’t be a spy. Spies don’t post things up for the world to see.”

*

Right after Lamo denounced him, Manning was arrested, and flown out of Iraq to a military jail at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait. A few weeks later, he was charged with “transferring classified data on to his personal computer and adding unauthorised software to a classified computer system in connection with the leaking of a video of a helicopter attack in Iraq in 2007”, and “communicating, transmitting and delivering national defence information to an unauthorised source and disclosing classified information concerning the national defence with reason to believe that the information could cause injury to the United States.” Later, he was flown back to the US and has been imprisoned since at the Quantico Marine Corps Base in Virginia, 30 miles south-west of Washington DC. Although he has not been tried or convicted, he is being made to suffer under harsh conditions. He spends 23 hours a day alone in a 6ft by 12 ft cell, with one hour’s exercise in which he walks figures-of-eight in an empty room. According to his lawyer, Manning is not allowed to sleep after being wakened at 5am. If he ever tries to do so, he is immediately made to sit or stand up by the guards, who are not allowed to converse with him. Any attempt to do press-ups or other exercise in his cell is forcibly prevented.

“The guards are required to check on PFC Manning every five minutes by asking him if he is OK. PFC Manning is required to respond in some affirmative manner. At night, if the guards cannot see PFC Manning clearly, because he has a blanket over his head or is curled up towards the wall, they will wake him in order to ensure he is OK. He receives each of his meals in his cell. He is not allowed to have a pillow or sheets. However, he is given access to two blankets and has recently been given a new mattress that has a built-in pillow. He is not allowed to have any personal items.”

Manning’s friends say he is being subject to near-torture in an effort to break him and have him implicate Assange in a conspiracy charge. David House, one of only two people allowed to visit Manning, says he has witnessed the soldier’s deterioration, both
mental and physical, over the months of incarceration. House says that every time he has seen Manning in the brig the prisoner has been a little less fluid in his speech, a little less able to express complex ideas and put them eloquently. “Each time I go, there seems to have been a remarkable decline. That’s physical, too. When I first saw him he was bright-eyed and strong like he was in early photographs, but now he looks weak, he has huge bags under his eyes and his muscles have turned to fat. It’s hard watching someone over the months sicken like that.”

The US army says that it prods him every five minutes for Manning’s own welfare. Because he is potentially suicidal, they say he has been placed under a prevention of injury order. Manning himself may well be recalling what he told his interlocutor in the chat logs: “We’re much more subtle, use a lot more words and legal techniques to legitimise everything. It’s better than disappearing in the middle of the night, but just because something is more subtle, doesn’t make it right.” He is allowed books, and late in 2010 asked to be sent in Kant’s
Critique of Pure Reason
.

Hotel Leopold, Place Luxembourg, Brussels
9.30pm, 21 June 2010

“
I felt this was the biggest story on the planet
”
N
ICK
D
AVIES

Three men were in the Belgian hotel courtyard café, ordering coffee after coffee. They had been arguing for hours through the summer afternoon, with a break to eat a little pasta, and evening had fallen. Eventually, the tallest of the three picked up a cheap yellow napkin, laid it on the flimsy modern café table and started to scribble. One of those present was Ian Traynor, the
Guardian
’s Europe correspondent. He recalls:

“Julian whipped out this mini-laptop, opened it up and did something on his computer. He picked up a napkin and said, ‘OK you’ve got it.’

“We said: ‘Got what?’

“He said: ‘You’ve got the whole file. The password is this napkin.’”

Traynor went on: “I was stunned. We were expecting further very long negotiations and conditions. This was instant. It was an act of faith.”

Assange had insouciantly circled several words and the hotel’s logo on the Hotel Leopold napkin, adding the phrase “no spaces”. This was the password. In the corner he scrawled three simple letters: GPG. GPG was a reference to the encryption system he was using for a temporary website. The napkin was a perfect touch, worthy of a John le Carré thriller. The two
Guardian
journalists were amazed. Nick Davies stuffed the napkin in his case together with his dirty shirts. Back in England, the yellow square was reverently lodged in his study, next to a pile of reporters’ notepads and a jumble of books. “I’m thinking of framing it,” he says.

Just a few days earlier, Davies had been sitting peacefully in that study, glancing up from his morning paper to his garden and the Sussex landscape. Davies is one of the
Guardian
’s best-known investigative journalists. In a career spanning more than three decades, he has worked on many stories exposing the dark abuses of power. His book
Flat Earth News
was an acclaimed account of how the newspaper industry had gone badly wrong, abandoning real reporting for what he memorably dubbed “churnalism”.

Davies was currently embroiled in a long-term investigation into a phone-hacking scandal at the
News of the World
during the editorship of Andy Coulson. Coulson – who was as a result forced to resign in January 2011 as the public relations boss for Conservative prime minister David Cameron – denied all knowledge of his staff illegally hacking the phones of celebrities and members of the royal family.

Today, however, Davies’s attention was caught by the
Guardian
’s foreign pages: “American officials are searching for Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, in an attempt to pressure him not to publish thousands of confidential and potentially hugely embarrassing diplomatic cables that offer unfiltered assessments of Middle East governments and leaders.”

The story continued: “The
Daily Beast
, a US news reporting and opinion website, reported that Pentagon investigators are trying to track down Assange – an Australian citizen who moves frequently between countries – after the arrest of a US soldier last week who is alleged to have given the whistleblower website a classified video of American troops killing civilians in Baghdad. The soldier, Bradley Manning, also claimed to have given WikiLeaks 260,000 pages of confidential diplomatic cables and intelligence assessments. The US authorities fear their release could ‘do serious damage to national security’.”

Davies was thunderstruck. An unknown 22-year-old private had apparently downloaded the entire contents of a US classified military database. Manning was held in prison in Kuwait. But was there any way the
Guardian
could lay its hands on the cables? “I felt this was the biggest story on the planet,” says Davies. He searched online for “Bradley Manning”, and found the transcripts published by
Wired.com
. These detailed the conversations with former hacker Adrian Lamo, in which Manning apparently confirmed he had illicitly downloaded more than a quarter of a million classified documents, talked of “almost criminal political back-dealings” by the US, and said: “Hillary Clinton and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack.”

If only a fraction of what Manning said was true, WikiLeaks was now sitting on hundreds of thousands of cables detailing dubious diplomatic operations, war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq, and God knows what else. It was a goldmine. “There was clearly a bigger story here. It wasn’t hard to see,” Davies says. His reporter’s radar was bleeping with excitement. But amazingly, nobody else on what used to be known as Fleet Street seemed to have yet worked out the massive potential dimensions.

The key to accessing the cables – and to the stories they contained – had to be Julian Assange. Davies himself had never met him but was aware of Assange’s website: he had come across
WikiLeaks during the
Guardian
’s 2009 investigation into tax evasion and Swiss banks. He wanted to get to Assange fast, before the Pentagon investigators or anyone else. But where was he? The
Daily Beast
reported that Assange had cancelled a US public appearance in Las Vegas due to “security concerns”; a group of former US intelligence officers had warned publicly that Assange’s physical safety was at risk. There were few clues.

Davies sent a series of exploratory emails to Assange. He offered to assist on Manning, and to publicise the 22-year-old’s plight. On 16 June, he wrote: “Hi Julian, I spent yesterday in the
Guardian
office arguing that Bradley Manning is currently the most important story on the planet. There is much to be done, and it will take a little time. But right now, I think the crucial thing is to track and expose the effort by the US government to suppress Bradley, you, WikiLeaks, and anything that either of you may want to put in the public domain.” The email went on: “Can you communicate with me about that; or hook me up with somebody who can? Maybe one possibility might be for me to talk to any lawyer who has been helping Bradley. Good luck, Nick.”

This tentative pitch elicited a reply from Assange – but not a very helpful one. Assange merely sent back a press release describing how WikiLeaks had persuaded Icelandic parliamentarians to build a “new media haven” in Iceland.

Davies went up to the
Guardian
office in London to consult David Leigh, a colleague and old friend. Leigh had met Assange earlier in the year and, having failed to reach a deal over the Apache helicopter video, was sceptical. He warned Davies that the Australian was unpredictable. He doubted Assange would be willing to co-operate. But, Leigh added, “You’re welcome to try.”

Davies persevered. He sent Assange another email offering “to travel anywhere to meet you or anybody else, to take any of this forward”. This time Assange was more forthcoming. He sent
back the contact name of Birgitta Jónsdóttir, the Icelandic parliamentarian who had co-produced the Apache video, and whose tweets the US department of justice would later attempt to subpoena. He also mentioned Kristinn Hrafnsson, his loyal deputy. Assange signed off: “I’m a bit hard to interview presently for security reasons, but send me ALL your contacts.” Davies sent further emails to Jónsdóttir, Hrafnsson and other WikiLeaks players, and spoke to several of them on the phone. He felt he was beginning to make progress. But he was also painfully aware that if he simply demanded that WikiLeaks share its information, Assange would see him as yet another representative of the greedy, duplicitous mainstream media – or MSM, as it is derisively described on much of the internet. Something more subtle was called for – something that ultimately gave the
Guardian
access to the cables, but perhaps also offered Assange a way to resolve his own problems.

On the evening of Sunday 19 June, Davies received a phone call. His informant said, “Don’t tell Julian I told you, but he’s flying to Brussels to give a press conference tomorrow at the European parliament.” Excited, Davies called Leigh, who was at home in London. Leigh was absorbed in a television detective serial, and seemed far from impressed by the development. Davies promptly dialled the editor of the
Guardian
, Alan Rusbridger. The pair had started on the paper together in 1979 as junior reporters, and had lived in neighbouring flats in London’s Clerkenwell. Rusbridger trusted Davies completely, and had given him free rein to pursue investigative projects, believing he would always bring back something of value.