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How Wikileaks Shone Light on World's Darkest Secrets
How does a website run by just five full-time staff generate so many scoops? Archie Bland investigates
When the Ministry of Defence first came across Wikileaks, staffers were stunned. "There are thousands of things on here, I literally mean thousands," one of them wrote in an internal email in November 2008. "Everything I clicked on to do with MoD was restricted... it is huge." The website, an online clearing house for documents whose authors would generally prefer them to stay in the private domain, has since been banned from the MoD's internal computers, but it did no good: eventually, that email ended up on Wikileaks. And when a US Army counter-intelligence officer recommended that whistleblowers who leaked to the site be fired, that report ended up on Wikileaks too.
The authorities were right to be worried. If any further proof were needed of the website's extraordinary record in holding the authorities to account, it came this week, in the release of shocking video footage of a gung-ho US helicopter attack in Iraq that killed 12 people, including two unarmed employees of the Reuters news agency.
The US government had resisted Freedom of Information requests from Reuters for years. But when an anonymous whistleblower passed the video on to Wikileaks, all that quickly became futile. An edited version of the tape had received almost 4 million hits on YouTube by last night, and it led news bulletins around the world.
"This might be the story that makes Wikileaks blow up," said Sree Sreenivasan, a digital media professor at New York's Columbia Journalism School. "It's not some huge document with lots of fine print - you can just watch it and you get what it's about immediately. It's a whole new world of how stories get out."
And yet despite Wikileaks' commitment to the freedom of information, there is something curiously shadowy about the organisation itself. Founded, as the group's spokesman Daniel Schmitt (whose surname is a pseudonym) put it, with the intention of becoming "the intelligence agency of the people", the site's operators and volunteers - five full-timers, and another 1,000 on call - are almost all anonymous. Ironically, the only way the group's donors are publicly known is through a leak on Wikileaks itself. The organisation's most prominent figure is Julian Assange, an Australian hacker and journalist who co-founded the site back in 2006. While Assange and his cohorts' intentions are plainly laudable - to "allow whistleblowers and journalists who have been censored to get material out to the public", as he told the BBC earlier this year - some ask who watches the watchmen. "People have to be very careful dealing with this information," says Professor Sreenivasan. "It's part of the culture now, it's out there, but you still need context, you still need analysis, you still need background."
Against all of that criticism, Wikileaks can set a record that carries, as Abu Dhabi's The National put it, "more scoops in its short life than The Washington Post has in the past 30 years". By earning its place as the natural destination for anyone with sensitive information to leak who does not know and trust a particular journalist - so far, despite numerous court actions, not a single source has been outed - Wikileaks has built up a remarkable record.
Yes, it has published an early draft of the script for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and Wesley Snipes' tax returns; but it has also published the "Climategate" emails, an internal Trafigura report on toxic dumping in Ivory Coast, and the standard operating procedures for Guantanamo Bay.
Whatever the gaps in its procedures, there is little doubt that the website is at the forefront of a new information era in which the powerful, corrupt and murderous will have to feel a little more nervous about their behaviour. "There are reasons I do it that have to do with wanting to reform civilisation," Assange said in an interview with salon.com last month. "Of course, there's a personal psychology to it, that I enjoy crushing bastards. I like a good challenge."
Full disclosure: What we wouldn't know without Wikileaks
Trafigura's super-injunction
When commodities giant Trafigura used a super-injunction to suppress the release of an internal report on toxic dumping in the Ivory Coast in newspapers, it quickly appeared on Wikileaks instead. Accepting that the release made suppression futile, Trafigura lifted the injunction.
The CRU's 'Climategate' leak
Emails leaked on the site showed that scientists at the UK's Climate Research Unit, including director Phil Jones, withheld information from sceptics
The BNP membership list
After the site published the BNP's secret membership list in November 2008, newspapers found teachers, priests and police officers among them. Another list was leaked last year. The police has since barred officers from membership.
Sarah Palin's emails
Mrs Palin's Yahoo email account, which was used to bypass US public information laws, was hacked and leaked during the presidential campaign. The hacker left traces of his actions, and could face five years in prison.
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24 Comments so far
Show AllI deal in the bottom line in truth--there should be an agency for the people that would inform on abuses of power--god knows there has been so much dishonesty in gov--where were they about that sell-out bitch Obomber?
Truth, I was so afraid we had lost it. Now that Paul Craig Roberts has retired. Oh I'm sure there other honest writers, I just am not aware. So I applaud wikileaks in thier attempts to let the truth be known.
This is the kind of journalism we need.
Wikileaks also exposed the names of the Investors in the Icelandic Banks who are using their Governments to force the Government of Iceland to repay monies lost.
This would come on the back of the taxpayers.
Prominent amongst those Investors are such fine Institutions as Goldman Sachs.
The list a who's who of the Worlds Wealthiest all demanding the servitude of the Icelandic peoples for the next 50 years to "work off their debts".
I cannot afford much, but I can afford the lies I get from the system less. We need this kind of agency and it needs our support.
So many on CD always frustratedly ask "what can we do to make it better or to make it right?"
Here is an agency you can donate to, to make sure that whistle-blowers have a safe and independent media to get the truth published. Sometimes get it into the public domain can save their life. You might be killed if you know it, but you won't be killed once everyone knows.
We cannot bring those 12 Iraqis back to life. But the fact that someone had the guts to get that footage to Wikileaks and they could decode it and get it to us has made a difference for so many many Iraqis and others. What about the thousands who have died in similar circumstances, but it was seen only by their murderers?
Some of these documents can save lives now and in the future too.
I'm sure it made a difference in the Pentagon. It made a difference to me too. So I support them. Now it is up to you, people to do something.
You can donate at , http://wikileaks.org/
Good post. After downloading the murder videos, I sent them $50.00.
. . . says Professor Sreenivasan " . . . you still need analysis, you still need background."
Sure. Background is what the leaks provide. Analysis is what they enable.
More leaks than WaPo in 30 years? Let WaPo zip up its fly.
Agreed. You need primary sources. Then you can do your own analysis.
Joe
"more scoops in its short life than The Washington Post has in the past 30 years".
Surely the impotence of the American press is partially self-inflicted. Example: the NYT sitting on the illegal wiretapping story for a year at Bush's request, until after his reelection.
And now you have CNN showing only the least violent, and pertinent bits of the helicopter video, and even then with a big black square covering most of the image.
Soon, we on the outside of the US, may become your last best source information about what is going on in your own country and what your occupation troops are doing abroad.
Power to the People!!! Information IS Power.
Denouncing gov't's bureaucrats is one petty thing, get the top mafia as Goldman Sacks and the billionaire tribes of Wall Street is another, a lot more dangerous is to get over the thousand of war contractors and its sponsors in the Industrial-Military complex and even at higher level of danger is to go after the arms, human traffiking and drug dealers.
So, we have to be aware of the truly nature of our society, corrupted so pervasively, wide and deep that the Pacific Ocean seems like a street pond in a small town. In our society, one million dollars in the pocket of shareholders of global corps., including the powerful corp. called Roman Catholic Church, cost to our species one hundred of innocent lives. The Wester Christian Culture is the culture of death, it has been build at the top of an always growing mountain of tears, lies, deception, suffering, bones, flesh, blood and lives. It is time for our species to be extinct for the sake of our planet.
I always like to provide this info about Wikileaks:
The site gets hacked a lot. When it's down, you can sometimes access it in its home domain, Wikileaks.be
When that doesn't work, you can always get it by putting 88.80.13.160 in your http address line.
At least for now you can get it, until...
These folks are my new heroes. Excellent.
From the archives of the "Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Publish No Facts" Department:
The above article states: "Wikileaks can set a record that carries, as Abu Dhabi's The National put it, 'more scoops in its short life than The Washington Post has in the past 30 years'."
What readers here should know is that the Washington Post has been controlled by the Graham family for a very long time. Here's what the now deceased Katherine Graham stated in the foyer of the CIA in 1988 to some of the staff there:
"We live in a dirty and dangerous world. There are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn't. I believe democracy flourishes when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets, and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows."
See: http://www.namebase.org/davis.html
***
For a fascinating look at how much of the U.S. corporate media has been controlled directly or indirectly by government intel agencies, I strongly encourage readers to familiarize themselves with Carl Bernstein's 1977 article, "The CIA and the Media":
http://www.carlbernstein.com/magazine_cia_and_media.php
***
After reading these items, you'll have a perfectly clear idea why no "scoops" attacking the corporate elites have been allowed to be published in the Washington Post in decades. And you might also begin to agree with me that the "outing" of Richard Nixon in the Watergate affair quite possibly had more to do with the fact that Nixon was the last progressive President in the nation and that by creating such agencies as EPA, and embracing such concepts as "endangered species" and earned income tax credits for the poor, that Nixon alienated the capitalist/corporate elite and they did him in because he was bad for the business elites. Not, to the contrary as it was portrayed, because he was a danger to democracy.
how funny when an article on journalism that releases information for the world to know... is the news of the day.
Wikileaks ha an impressive track record so far. It is also interesting to note that in the comments received so far, it has seemed to received commendation from both the political right and left in the U.S. Now, I'd like for them to begin a deep and thorough examination of the JFK, RFK and M.L.King assasinations, including CIA complicity a la Lamar Waldron, Thom Hartman ("Legacy of Secrecy"), Russ Baker ("Family of Secrets") plus all of the material that has been compiled on the wrong(or deceitful) information of the "Official 9/11 Commission Report" plus all the work that has been done on the incomplete and erroneous work on the 9/11 disaster by david Ray Griffin, Steven Jones and the ongoing work of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth.
The material done by the aforementioned people and groups already should have been enough to have created several official investigations, by Congress and/or the Department of Justice, but perhaps one more authoritative group with impressive resources might begin to start a real move toward bringing justice to the fore in terms of the powers that are running the U.S., and make a real move toward restoring "power to the people".
Okay. I will log onto their site in a minute and give them what I can. Will you do the same? These are true heroes, and like all heroes, the government and its shills will try its best to discredit them. That video is worth a thousand 'stories from the front lines'. the only rational answer to this is to fire, with no further benefits, every officer above those pilots and 'warriors', all the way to the Joint Chiefs. Fire them all. Maybe the message would come across. But, of course, we all know that will not happen. Pricks protect pricks. Always.
"Fire them all."
no - lock them up!
and don't stop at the Joint Chiefs.
Yes,
These guys deserve fifty bucks.
So does the EFF Electronic Frontiers Foundation who is struggling to keep Net Neutrality concepts from being monopolized by the likes of greedmasters at Comcast and Att. These scumbag telecoms plan to hijack the net and slow down and block sites they don't like.
That means us.
www.eff.com
and CD just had the news of what these scumbags are planning for us:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/04/07-12
Sign the petition for the FCC to reclassify broadband as off limits to telecom dictatorship.
https://secure.freepress.net/site/
Advocacy?cmd=display&page=UserAction&id=437
Thanks you guys,
You comment bloggers are the greatest heros known to me.
TJ
I am going to assume the BNP acronym refers to the extreme right-wing British National Party?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_National_Party
Mein Fuhrer, I can valk!
just excellent
Gates: "The Wikileaks video was taken out of context". Yeah, I am sure if we could see the whole context Mr. Gates, the two Reuters camera men; the innocent Iraqi's; and the children that were killed and maimed; would no doubt be justified! The corrupt American leaders and their fawning parasites always go on the offensive with their self-righteous, exculpatory, mendacities!
I'm almost out of money and i sent these people some of what's left. this type of reporting is the usa's last best hope. information is power,,,i would add that video information is the only power that the general population will respond to. got tape?? ,,,no?,, you have nothing.
I'm almost out of money and i sent these people some of what's left. this type of reporting is the usa's last best hope. information is power,,,i would add that video information is the only power that the general population will respond to. got tape?? ,,,no?,, you have nothing.