Inside WikiLeaks

by Daniel Domscheit-Berg

  The rumors that he was being followed originated in part from his overactive imagination. But they also had the advantage of giving him the aura of someone in dire peril, increasing the collective anticipation of every new leak. Julian didn’t need a marketing department. Marketing was something he himself knew best.

  JULIAN and the others began to work on the “Collateral Murder” video while still in Iceland. Involved were Birgitta, Rop, and two or three Icelanders who primarily did technical work. Our techies and I worked from home. The others rented an old house on the outskirts of Reykjavík. There they sequestered themselves, drawing the curtains and preparing the video for release.

  Two of our collaborators got promoted to regular members of the WikiLeaks team during this phase: the Icelandic journalists-filmmakers Kristinn Hrafnsson and Ingi Ragnar Ingason. It was undoubtedly due to their influence that our next release would be more journalistic than any of those previous. Both came from television, and they convinced Julian to process the video material like a documentary film.

  Kristinn quickly understood what WL could mean for him personally as a journalist. Today, he is WL’s new spokesman. I think he brought along Ingi and later the seventeen-year-old guy who would eventually become something like Julian’s personal assistant. Exactly what he was never became clear to me. Julian called upon Kristinn in many of the later accusations he made against me. “Kristinn can confirm that you stirred up the others, Kristinn this, Kristinn that.”

  We had a tacit agreement at this point that I would not be returning to Iceland. I didn’t ask to come back, and I sensed that Julian didn’t want me around. It was no problem for me to work for WL from Berlin, and I had good reason for wanting to stay in the German capital: Anke.

  Julian and I never resolved how things would continue between us. I tried to engage him in a discussion, but he steadfastly refused. We only ever communicated in the chat room, although a lot of people were saying that we simply should have gotten together and repaired our relationship.

  Our chat conversations were getting more and more bizarre. In May, I made another one of my many attempts to clear the air with Julian.

  D: i need to understand what we can do to get back to a level of mutual trust j

  D: whenever you have a minute to talk about this, let me know

  D: just need a constructive conversation

  J: i don’t know where to start. and if I had to explain it, what would be the point?

  D: the point would be that we want to keep going?

  D: and i still think i am one of the few persons you can trust, like really trust

  D: and there are not too many of these around

  D: for what the last 3 years have been worth, it should be worth it

  J: pathological liars always have great faith in their own honnesty, that is what helps them lie

  D: why do you think i am a liar?

  D: i cant recall i ever lied to you, ever

  D: i feel like you are listening to lies others tell

  D: and dont even bother to ask me about it

  D: i on such a fundamental level dont get why you would think i am a liar

  D: boy, thats so way beyond what i even imagined

  J: you have fucked up in so many ways and you want me to enumerate them. but what is the point if you can’t see things things for yourself?

  J: I want you to work it out yourself.

  D: because i challenge that list

  D: i cant work it out myself, because at least half of it is not even true

  D: its stuff that has never happened and you think it did

  D: so how would i be able to work it out?

  J: These are direct observations. Not 3rd hand information.

  D: then i get it even less

  J: I already gave you a giant list of why I was pissed off at you six weeks ago.

  D: that list that included that my suit is well pressed most of the time?

  D: i really dont get it

  The list. My God, that was truly insane. Julian had made me a list of what he felt had been my many shortcomings in the preceding months. One of them was the perfectly ironed pleats on my suit pants. We got dressed up perhaps once every three months. We had some public appointments where I was convinced we could achieve more in conservative attire than in the normal slacker stuff we wore. Solid in appearance, subversive in performance, that was my motto.

  Julian, by the way, also started wearing suits far more frequently in his later public appearances. Perfectly ironed suits. I found that appropriate. There’s a great quote from Daniel Ellsberg, the famous whistle-blower who in 1971 leaked secret Pentagon documents on the Vietnam War to the media: “I always like to wear a suit when I think I’m going to be arrested, because it shows that even men in suits aren’t above the law.”

  Julian also took exception to the fact that my name was now on the doorbell of Anke’s apartment. I always asked myself why he got so worked up about that. He said I was endangering my own security. But I always had my name on the doorbell, even before moving into Anke’s apartment. That was the case in Wiesbaden, and Julian had lived with me there for two months. Whenever I moved, I also replaced the locks, buying new and more secure ones. It wasn’t easy to break into my apartment. Any lock can be picked, of course, but I’d taken care that if someone did invade my space, I would know about it.

  I had recently bought a year-long rail pass that allowed me to go wherever I wanted by train. The money for the pass, 3,800 euros, came from the sum that had accumulated at the Wau Holland Foundation. I could just get onboard, and there were no credit-card transactions to betray where I was at any given time. I was safer than ever before.

  It had been a long time since Julian had had a permanent residence. He’d move here and there, always finding a place to crash.

  What is also probably true is that he and his mother moved around a lot during his childhood, never staying anywhere for long, always fleeing her boyfriend, who was a member of an Australian New Age sect.

  I had experienced for myself for much of 2009 how it feels to be without a home. I had given up my apartment in Wiesbaden in July 2009 and hadn’t had a permanent place to live for seven months, right up until I moved in with Anke. In the beginning, I might have thought it would be interesting to share Julian’s lifestyle, and it was an interesting feeling to be without any ballast. But by “in the beginning” I mean only the first month.

  I quickly grew to hate not having a home. I missed my kitchen the most—a place where my food, spices, and groceries were, where my sense of organization ruled and where I could cook whenever I was hungry. I had stored my things—two vanloads full, one for my kitchen appliances and one for my hardware—with my parents. My plan was to retrieve my possessions once I had found a place in Berlin. I was always on the go with a giant backpack, staying in cheap guesthouses during conferences or just crashing with friends. But I couldn’t find an apartment, because I never had time to look for one.

  Then I met Anke. It took around a week for it to become clear that I was moving in with her. I think that when she later saw the red sofa I slept on at the computer club, she was glad she had taken me in. Her apartment was spacious and comfortable. There was a cuddly corner of cushions in the living room, and her kitchen was a gift from heaven to my starved, nomadic soul. It’s possible that Julian was a far greater nomad, and that this didn’t bother him. But my time on the sofa at the club made me sympathetic to anyone who wanted a home.

  I also became a father. My new stepson was named Jacob, and he was ten. We actually got along perfectly, right from the start. From my new home base, I resumed working for WL with a second wind.

  At first, things calmed down in the chat room. The others seemed to have so much to do with the video that they had no time. But then the first debates erupted—chiefly about media strategies and donations.

  Julian would later claim that the work on “Collateral Murder” had cost $50,000 and say that he wanted to re
coup that sum in donations. He also asserted that a lot of the work had gone into decrypting the videos. I knew for a fact that this was not entirely true. We did occasionally receive encrypted videos, but with this one, we had the password. The resolution only had to be augmented to improve the video quality, and that was done mostly by volunteers. In essence, Julian’s costs would have been not much more than rent for the house in Iceland and the price of his plane ticket. Others provided the capacity for the servers free of charge.

  Julian sent Ingi and Kristinn to Iraq to talk to eyewitnesses and do background research. They later contacted me and asked me to reimburse the cost of their flights to Baghdad. They had paid for them themselves, and Julian had promised to refund the costs. But he turned around and told them they just should set up their own foundation in Iceland. He said it would be child’s play to earn back the money. Apparently Julian had discovered that WL was a fantastic business model, capable of earning large sums of money. I asked the Wau Holland Foundation to reimburse the two Icelanders for their flights and gave them the money.

  In conjunction with the “Collateral Murder” video, the question of rights arose for the first time. TV stations were calling us to ask if they could use the video, whether a higher-resolution version was available, and how much it would cost. We agreed that they should make a donation or, if their statutes prohibited such contributions, pay us a fee for being interviewed.

  The issue of getting money in return for the video left a bad taste in my mouth, and I wasn’t the only one who felt that way. But Julian always cut off any discussions between me and the others. “Do not challenge leadership in times of crisis,” was one of his favorite answers to any critical questions we asked.

  Together with Rop, Julian flew to Washington to hold a press conference in the National Press Club about the “Collateral Murder” video. Before the flight, he took his leave from us in the chat room with the words: “I’m off to end a war.”

  A short time later, there was some talk about WikiLeaks being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. The architect told me that Julian had mentioned this to him. I was amazed. Then the same message came in from Julian himself. “There’s a chance we’re getting the Nobel Peace Prize.” I subsequently did in fact discover a message in our in-box from a Swedish supporter, who wrote that he knew two university professors who were allowed to nominate people for the Nobel Prize. He could ask them if they thought WL deserved to be on the list of nominees. But, of course, we weren’t really about to follow in the footsteps of Dr. Martin Luther King, Mother Teresa, and Barack Obama.

  From Berlin, I had taken care of the invitations, the space, and the live stream for the Washington press conference about the “Collateral Murder” video. When the chips were down, we still worked well as a team. Or to put the matter the other way around: three days before the event, nothing in Washington had been organized in any serious way. If I hadn’t taken care of the details, Julian would have had to address the journalists in the hallway of the National Press Club. Or in front of the building. That is, if anyone knew that the press conference was being held at all.

  When Anke and I decided to get married, Julian was the first person I told. That was in March 2010. Julian and I may have been going through a difficult phase, but he was still one of the most important people in the world to me. After Anke and I had set a date, I told him I’d be really glad if he would come. He never answered. We were fighting at the time about money and the future direction of WL, and some hard words had been exchanged in the chat room. Afterward, I never mentioned the wedding. I didn’t want to open myself up to the disappointment of his saying no. In fact, there was nothing I wanted more than to have Julian there.

  On the eve of the wedding, he then kicked up a huge fuss about how I hadn’t invited him. Meanwhile, he was the very first person I invited! “I never received a written invitation,” he complained. “Where the hell was I supposed to send it?” I replied. What’s more, we had decided against printed invitations anyway.

  • • •

  On April 5, “Collateral Murder” went online. It was viewed more than ten million times on YouTube alone. It is shot from the gun turret of a military helicopter and shows American soldiers killing Iraqi civilians. Two Reuters journalists also died in the gunfire. The video was our definitive breakthrough. Afterward, just about everyone knew our website. Reuters had for years tried to get the video. Outrage was the response around the world at the soldiers’ cynical comments as they shot at civilians who rushed to help the two journalists and the other victims in a small bus that had been driving by. Outrage, and a more realistic picture of what was supposedly a “clean” war.

  “Collateral Murder” might have been a good title in a literary sense. But we also got a lot of criticism for it. We had given up our position of neutrality. By cutting together our own video from the raw material and subtitling the soldiers’ comments and radio transmissions, we were ourselves manipulating public opinion. But what caused the most umbrage was the title of the video and the quote from George Orwell on the page: “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.”

  The questions people raised were precisely the ones that we had always discussed among ourselves: How much did we have to process the material to ensure it would have an effect? Were accusations of partiality an acceptable price to pay for attracting such huge public attention to a leak? What could we leave to journalists, and what should we be doing ourselves? We had put a bit of distance between the website with the processed video and WikiLeaks to indicate that this was not original source material. We had created a separate domain, CollateralMurder.com, where the video was posted, and then linked it to WL. One thing is clear: in their raw form, the film sequences would have had far less of an effect.

  Nonetheless, in my view, this strategy for stirring up public interest was a mistake. A lot of people immediately watched the video only to feel, when they examined it more closely, that they were being led around by the nose.

  We were always experimenting with our role. We constantly made mistakes and tried to learn from them. But as long as you admit your mistakes, I think that’s all right.

  THE next lesson we were forced to learn was a very hard one indeed. In May 2010, the American intelligence analyst and private first-class Bradley Manning was arrested. In a chat, someone whom American authorities believed to be Manning had told the former hacker Adrian Lamo that he had passed on confidential military documents to us. Among the material that this person had allegedly copied from US military servers were the sequences we had used for our “Collateral Murder” video and the cables sent by US diplomats.

  We learned of Manning’s arrest from the news. I was sitting at my computer when the first reports came through on online media. It was the worst moment in the history of WikiLeaks.

  Manning, who was formerly stationed in Iraq, was sent to an American jail, and according to a report by Glenn Greenwald in Salon magazine in December 2010, he hasn’t been treated particularly well. He allegedly sleeps without a pillow or a blanket, is subject to round-the-clock surveillance, and spends twenty-three hours a day in solitary confinement. He’s purportedly not even allowed to do simple exercises like push-ups—a guard personally assigned to him ensures that he doesn’t break any of the rules.

  At least one American Congressman, Mike Rogers (R-MI), has called for Manning to face the death penalty, and prosecutors have demanded that he be sentenced to no fewer than fifty-three years’ imprisonment. We realized immediately that the US government was not going to let the opportunity pass to make an example of someone. From that point forward, anyone who considered passing on material to us would think of Manning and the potential consequences the young soldier was facing.

  When we learned of Manning’s situation, we let it be known that we would support him in any way possible—be it by providing money and legal representation or by mobilizing publi
city on his behalf. None of these offers confirmed in any way whether Manning was, in fact, our source.

  We ourselves actively did not want to know who our sources were—that was part of the WikiLeaks security concept. All we asked from our whistle-blowers was a reason why they thought their material was worth publishing. Their rationales varied in the extreme. Whistle-blowers could be frustrated employees, unsuccessful job applicants, or individuals motivated solely by moral concerns. The spectrum was broad. We wanted to prevent our platform from being misused for personal acts of revenge. Protecting our informants, though, was our top priority. At least, we aimed to protect them. Whether in retrospect we did everything correctly was another issue. And we couldn’t necessarily protect them from themselves.

  For the first time, we were seeing the social shortcomings of our project. No matter how well prepared we were for various crisis scenarios or how much we always talked about security measures, be they Cryptophones or solid locks on our doors, we hadn’t devoted enough attention to this topic. At WikiLeaks, recognition and risk were unequally distributed. While we basked relatively safely in the spotlight of public interest, our sources knew no fame and ran a far greater risk for doing what they did. WL depended on whistle-blowers secretly scanning or copying sensitive documents and sending them to our platform. Without their courage and the documents they secretly reproduced, we would not have been able to offer the public such unique views of what went on behind closed doors.

  We considered a variety of technical solutions to the problem of unfairness. Perhaps we could give whistle-blowers a kind of token with a personal code: After all the statutes of limitations had expired, the source could then redeem the token for a premium. After twenty years, he could buy a T-shirt, a certificate, or—rather unconventionally—WL underpants he could wear unnoticed under his normal clothes.