The German contingent, too, were able to make a crucial contribution to the verification process. As the broker of the original deal with the Guardian and the New York Times, Nick Davies had not at first been entirely pleased with the arrival of Der Spiegel – a prospect that had only been tentatively mentioned at the Brussels meeting by his colleague Ian Traynor. Assange told him that lunch with Der Spiegel was taking place in Berlin. Then, in a phone call from a man calling himself Daniel Schmitt – actually Assange’s then No 2, Daniel Domscheit-Berg – he was told not only Der Spiegel but also a German radio station would be full “media partners” on the war logs. “I felt very confused. My first instinct was to say no,” Davies recalled. “A deal is a deal. Security is very important. I felt: ‘You can’t come in.’” Davies eventually agreed that while German radio was out, Der Spiegel could be in. Their reporters John Goetz and Marcel Rosenbach flew over to the war room.
“They fitted in very well. We liked them as people. They had lots of background expertise on Afghanistan,” Davies says. Crucially, Der Spiegel sources had access to the German federal parliament’s own investigation into the war in Afghanistan, including secret US military material. This proved vital in confirming that the details in the database the Guardian had been given were authentic.
The papers had another headache. Normally, with a story of this magnitude, the practical thing to do was to run it over several days. This maintained reader interest and helped sell more copies. In a previous campaign, on corporate tax avoidance, the Guardian had run a story a day non-stop for two weeks. This time, such a strategy was going to be impossible. For one thing, the two dailies in London and New York were now yoked to a weekly magazine in Germany. With only one shot at it, Der Spiegel would want to get all its stories out on Day One.
Secondly, and more gravely, none of the editors knew whether they would be allowed a Day Two at all. The US government’s response might be so explosive that they sent their lawyers in with a gag order. So it was decided that, in the Guardian’s case, the paper would run everything they had over 14 pages, on the day of launch. There was, of course, a downside to the approach: although the launch of the Afghan war logs was to cause an immense uproar, it was difficult to find anyone in London the next day who had actually ploughed through all 14 pages. It was simply too much to read. For the Iraq logs, by which time it was clear the US government was not going to seek court injunctions and gag orders against the media, publication was to be more comfortably spread over a few days.
The knottiest problem surrounded redactions. The papers planned only to publish a relatively small number of significant stories, and with them the text of the handful of relevant logs. WikiLeaks, on the other hand, intended simultaneously to unleash the lot. But many of the entries, particularly the “threat reports” derived from intelligence, mentioned the names of informants or those who had collaborated with US troops. In the vicious internecine politics of Afghanistan, such people could be in danger. Declan Walsh was among the first to realise this:
“I told David Leigh I was worried about the repercussions of publishing these names, who could easily be killed by the Taliban or other militant groups if identified. David agreed it was a concern and said he’d raised the issue with Julian, but he didn’t seem concerned. That night, we went out to a Moorish restaurant, Moro, with the two German reporters. David broached the problem again with Julian. The response floored me. ‘Well, they’re informants,’ he said. ‘So, if they get killed, they’ve got it coming to them. They deserve it.’ There was, for a moment, silence around the table. I think everyone was struck by what a callous thing that was to say.
“I thought about the American bases I’d visited, the Afghan characters I’d met in little villages and towns, the complex local politics that coloured everything, and the dilemmas faced by individuals during a bloody war. There was no way I’d like to put them at risk on the basis of a document prepared by some wet-behind-the-ears American GI, who may or may not have correctly understood the information they were receiving. The other thing that little exchange suggested to me was just how naive – or arrogant – Julian was when it came to the media. Apart from any moral considerations, he didn’t seem to appreciate how the issue of naming informants was likely to rebound on the entire project.”
Davies, too, was dismayed by the difficulty of persuading Assange to make redactions. “At first, he simply didn’t get it, that it’s not OK to publish stuff that will get people killed,” Davies said. The Guardian reporter had been studying Task Force 373, a shadowy special operations group whose job was to capture or kill high-ranking Taliban. One war log was especially troubling: it described how an unnamed informant had a close relative who lived an exact distance south-east of the named target’s house and “will have eyes on target”. Clearly it was possible to work out these identities with the help of some local knowledge, and to publish the log might lead to the Taliban executing both Afghans. But Assange, according to Davies, was unbothered. For all his personal liking of the WikiLeaks founder, says Davies: “The problem is he’s basically a computer hacker. He comes from a simplistic ideology, or at that stage he did, that all information has to be published, that all information is good.”
In fairness to Assange, he eventually revisited his view, despite the technical difficulties it posed for WikiLeaks. And by the time the US state department cables were published, five months later, Assange had entirely embraced the logic of redaction, with his role almost that of a mainstream publisher. Short of time before the Afghan launch, he removed wholesale the 15,000 intelligence files, listed as “threat reports”, which were most likely to contain identifying details. This left some identities still discoverable in the main body of the cables, a fact which Rupert Murdoch’s London Times published prominently. Despite their supposed disapproval of WikiLeaks, the paper had pointed to information that could have helped the Taliban to murder people. By the time the Iraq logs were launched, Assange had time to construct a more sophisticated editing programme, which redacted a vast number of names. And when it came to publishing the diplomatic cables, on the face of it at least, Assange had abandoned his original ambition to dump out everything. He contented himself during the course of 2010 with only publishing a small fraction of the cables – those whose text had already been individually redacted by journalists from the five print media partners.
In the end, then, all these anxieties about the fate of informants remained purely theoretical. By the end of the year in which WikiLeaks published its huge dump of information, no concrete evidence whatever had surfaced that any informant had suffered actual reprisals. The only reports were of defence secretary Robert Gates telling a sailor aboard a US warship in San Diego, “We don’t have specific information of an Afghan being killed yet.” CNN reported on 17 October that, according to a senior Nato official in Kabul, “There has not been a single case of Afghans needing protection or to be moved because of the leak.”
As Walsh had predicted, the enemies of WikiLeaks nevertheless did their worst. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, was among the first. “The truth is they might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family,” Mullen told a Pentagon news conference four days after the leak. This slogan – “blood on their hands” – was in turn perverted from a speculation into a fact, endlessly repeated, and used as a justification for bloodlust on the part of some US politicians, who seemingly thought they might profit in votes by calling for Assange himself to be murdered. Particularly repellent was hearing the phrase being used by US generals who, as the WikiLeaks documents revealed, had gallons of genuine civilian blood on their own hands.
Assange was starting to prove a volatile partner in several respects. Nick Davies was his chief contact, and the man who had reeled him in for the Guardian. So it was a jolt when the pair fell out. Davies believed he and Assange had developed a rapport, cemented over dinners, jokes, late-night philosophical deba
tes and al fresco dinners in Stockholm’s island old town. “I thought he was clever and interesting and fun to hang around with. The two of us were involved in this rather exciting, very important adventure.” But the day before the Afghan war logs launch, Davies’ phone rang. On the other line was Stephen Grey, a freelance reporter. Grey began: “Guess what? I’ve just been with Julian Assange.” Grey explained that Assange had given him an exclusive TV interview about the blockbusting Afghan war logs. He had also provided material for Channel 4’s website. And there was more bad news: Grey said that Assange had approached CNN and Al Jazeera offering them an interview as well. Davies was fuming. Assange, however, insisted: “It was always part of our agreement that I was going to do this.”
This quarrel did not bode well for the future. Nor did Assange’s growing friction with the New York Times. The NYT were refusing to link directly to the WikiLeaks cable dump from their own website. Bill Keller played it differently to the Guardian and Der Spiegel, who, after some debate internally, both decided to post a link to the WikiLeaks site in the normal way. The New York Times took the equally defensible view that readers – and indeed their own hostile US government – would not see the paper’s staff as detached reporters if they directed readers to WikiLeaks in such a purposeful manner. Keller says: “We feared – rightly, as it turned out – that their trove would contain the names of low-level informants and make them Taliban targets.” Assange was angered at what he saw as pusillanimity by the Americans. He went about declaring in his Australian twang, “They must be punished!” The editor of the New York Times, in turn, came to see Assange as “a self-important quasi-anarchist” Keller recalls. “I talked to Assange by phone a few times, and heard out his complaints. ‘Where’s the respect?’ he demanded. ‘Where’s the respect?’ Another time he called to tell me how much he disliked a profile we had written of Bradley Manning … Assange complained that we had ‘psychologicalised’ Manning and given short shrift to his ‘political awakening’.”
Beneath the surface, all these tensions simmered. But to the public, the launch of the first tranche of war logs about Afghanistan represented a smooth and well-orchestrated media coup. It gave the three papers massive exposure, and turned Julian Assange, for a time, into the world’s most famous man. It was the biggest leak in history – until it was followed by an even bolder set of disclosures about Iraq. These were the two immensely controversial wars which the United States had inflicted on the world, and now, at last, it seemed possible to lift the lid on them.
CHAPTER 9
The Afghanistan war logs
Cyberspace
25 July 2010
“We are saddened by the innocent lives that were lost as a result of militants’ cowardice”
US ARMY MAJOR CHRIS BELCHER, AFGHANISTAN
One night in Afghanistan, five heavy rockets, fired from a new type of weapon, came shrieking out of the darkness on to a religious school, a madrassa, completely reducing it to rubble. When the assault helicopters landed and US special forces came tumbling out, they discovered they had killed seven children. Their real target, a top al-Qaida fighter, escaped. This event, one of many during the benighted Afghan war, took place on 17 June 2007, and was described in the following way by the US army’s special operations command news service:
Airstrike in Paktika
BAGRAM AIRFIELD, Afghanistan.
Afghan and Coalition forces conducted an operation in Paktika Province’s Zarghun Shah District late Sunday, which resulted in several militants and seven civilians killed and two militants detained. Credible intelligence named the compound, which contained a mosque and a madrassa, as a suspected safehouse for al-Qaida fighters.
Coalition forces confirmed the presence of nefarious activity occurring at the site before getting approval to conduct an airstrike on the location. Following the strike, residents of the compound confirmed that al-Qaida fighters had been present all day.
Early reporting [suggests] seven children at the madrassa died as a result of the strike. “This is another example of al-Qaida using the protective status of a mosque, as well as innocent civilians, to shield themselves,” said Army Maj Chris Belcher, a Combined Joint Task Force-82 spokesman. “We are saddened by the innocent lives that were lost as a result of militants’ cowardice.”
The real story only emerged from the text of a leaked military log obtained by WikiLeaks three years later, and published worldwide by the Guardian and its partners the New York Times and Der Spiegel. The field report was among the 92,000 allegedly turned over to WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange by US soldier Bradley Manning.
The log disclosed that there had actually been no “airstrike” (whose reconnaissance cameras might indeed have been less inaccurate). Instead, what had happened was a trial of a powerful, if potentially indiscriminate, new missile system – a GPS-guided rocket volley that could be fired from the back of a truck up to 40 miles away, known as HIMARS (high mobility artillery rocket system). The assault was not launched by ordinary “Afghan and Coalition forces” but by a shadowy troop of US killers known as Task Force 373, whose targets were written on a special list. And the rocket attack was not prompted by general “nefarious activity”, but by the hope that a top listed target, Commander Al Libi, was on the premises.
The leaked war log gave the following account (abbreviations have been expanded):
Date 2007-06-17 21:00:00
Type Friendly Action
Title 172100Z[ulu time] T[ask] F[orce] 373 OBJ[ective] Lane
Summary
NOTE: The following information (TF-373 and HIMARS) is Classified Secret / NOFORN. The knowledge that TF-373 conducted a HIMARS strike must be kept protected. All other information below is classified Secret / REL[ease] ISAF. [International Security Assistance Force]
Mission
S[pecial] O[perations] T[ask] F[orce] conducts kinetic strike followed with H[elicopter] A[ssault] Force raid to kill/ capture ABU LAYTH AL LIBI on N[amed] A[rea of] I[nterest] 2.
Target
Abu Layth Al Libi is a senior al-Qaida military commander, Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) leader. He is based in Mir Ali, Pakistan and runs training camps throughout North Waziristan. Collection over the past week indicates a concentration of Arabs I[n] V[icinity] O[f] objective area.
Result
6 x E[nemy] K[illed] I[n] A[ction]; 7 x N[on] C[ombatant] KIA 7 x detainees
Summary
H[elicopter] A[ssault] F[orce] departed for Orgun-E [base] to conduct link-up and posture to the objective immediately after pre-assault fires. On order, 5 rockets were launched and destroyed structures on the objective (NAI 2). The HAF quickly inserted the assault force into the H[elicopter] L[anding] Zone. I[intelligence] S[urveillance] R[econnaissance] reported multiple U[n]I[dentified] M[ale]s leaving the objective area. The assault force quickly conducted dismounted movement to the target area and established containment on the south side of the objective. During the initial assault, dedicated air assets engaged multiple M[ilitary] A[ge] M[ale]s squirting off the objective area. G[round] F[orce] C[ommander] assessed 3 x EKIA squirters north and 3 x EKIA squirters south of the compound were neutralised from air asset fires. The assault force quickly manoeuvred with a SQ[ua]D[ron] element on the remaining squirters. The squirter element detained 12 x MAMs and returned to the objective area. GFC passed initial assessment of 7 x NC KIA (children). During initial questioning, it was assessed that the children were not allowed out of the building, due to UIMs presence within the compound. The assault force was able to uncover 1 x NC child from the rubble. The MED[ical] T[ea]M immediately cleared debris from the mouth and performed CPR to revive the child for 20 minutes. Due to time restrictions, TF C[omman]D[e]R launched Q[uick] R[eaction] F[orce] element to action a follow-on target (NAI 5). They quickly contained the objective and initiated the assault. The objective was secured and the assault force initially detained 6 x MAMs. The GFC recommended that 7 MAMs be detained for additional questioning. The TF CDR asses
sed that the assault force will continue SSE. The local governor was notified of the current situation and requests for assistance were made to cordon the A[rea of] O[perations] with support from A[fghan] N[ational] Police and local coalition forces in search of H[igh] V[alue] I[ndividual]. A P[rovincial] R[econstruction] T[eam] is enroute to AO.
1) Target was an A[l] Q[aida] Senior Leader
2) Patterns of life were conducted on 18 June from 0800z 1815z (strike time) with no indications of women or children on the objective
3) The mosque was not targeted nor was it struck initial reports state there is no damage to the mosque
4) An elder who was at the mosque stated that the children were held against their will and were intentionally kept inside
UPDATE: 18 0850Z June 07
– Governor Khapalwak has had no success yet in reaching President Karzai (due to the President’s busy schedule today) but expects to reach him within the hour (P[resident] o[f] A[fghanistan] reached later in the afternoon ~ 1400Z)
– The governor conducted a Shura [consultation] this morning, in attendance were locals from both the Yahya Yosof & Khail Districts
– He pressed the Talking Points given to him and added a few of his own that followed in line with our current story
WikiLeaks Page 12