WikiLeaks
Authors: Luke Harding,David Leigh
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
This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
Version 1.0
Epub ISBN 9780852652404
Published by Guardian Books 2011
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Copyright © The Guardian
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
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
First published in Great Britain in 2011 by
Guardian Books
Kings Place
90 York Way
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A CIP catalogue for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-0-85265-239-8
Chapter 4: The rise of WikiLeaks
Chapter 9: The Afghanistan war logs
Chapter 12: The world’s most famous man
Chapter 16: The biggest leak in history
Chapter 17: The ballad of Wandsworth jail
Chapter 18: The future of WikiLeaks
WikiLeaks
M
ELBOURNE
, N
AIROBI
, R
EYKJAVIK
, B
ERLIN
, L
ONDON
, N
ORFOLK
, S
TOCKHOLM
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
L
ONDON
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
N
EW
Y
ORK
, L
ONDON
Max Frankel
– former executive editor
Bill Keller
– editor
Eric Schmitt
– war correspondent
John F Burns
– London correspondent
Ian Fisher
– deputy foreign editor
Der Spiegel
H
AMBURG
, L
ONDON
Georg Mascolo
– editor-in-chief
Holger Stark
– head of German desk
Marcel Rosenbach
– journalist
John Goetz
– journalist
El País
M
ADRID
, L
ONDON
Javier Moreno
– editor-in-chief
Vicente Jiménez
– deputy editor
Other Media
Raffi Khatchadourian
–
New Yorker
staffer and author of a major profile of Assange
Saeed Chmagh and Namir Noor-Eldeen
– Reuters news agency employees accidentally killed by US army pilots in 2007
David Schlesinger
– Reuters’ editor-in-chief
Kevin Poulsen
– former hacker, senior editor at
Wired
Gavin MacFadyen
– City University professor and journalist, London host to Assange
Stephen Grey
– freelance reporter
Iain Overton
– former TV journalist, head of Bureau of Investigative Journalism
Heather Brooke
– London-based American journalist and freedom of information activist
Bradley Manning
Bradley Manning
– 23-year-old US army private and alleged WikiLeaks source
Rick McCombs
– former principal at Crescent high school, Crescent, Oklahoma
Brian, Susan, Casey Manning
– parents and sister
Tom Dyer
– school friend
Kord Campbell
– former manager at Zoto software company
Jeff Paterson
– steering committee member of the Bradley Manning support network
Adrian Lamo
– hacker and online confidant
Timothy Webster
– former US army counter-intelligence special agent
Tyler Watkins
– former boyfriend
David House
– former hacker and supporter
David Coombs
– lawyer
Julian Assange
Christine Hawkins
– mother