The End Of Secrecy_ The Rise And Fall Of WikiLeaks Part 1

The End of Secrecy.

The Rise and Fall of WikiLeaks.

by David Leigh and Luke Harding.

INTRODUCTION.

Alan Rusbridger

Back in the days when almost no one had heard about WikiLeaks, regular emails started arriving in my inbox from someone called Julian a.s.sange. It was a memorable kind of name. All editors receive a daily mix of unsolicited tip-offs, letters, complaints and crank theories, but there was something about the periodic WikiLeaks emails which caught the attention.

Sometimes there would be a decent story attached to the emails. Or there might be a doc.u.ment which, on closer inspection, appeared rather underwhelming. One day there might arrive a diatribe against a particular journalist or against the venal cowardice of mainstream media in general. Another day this a.s.sange person would be pleased with something we'd done, or would perambulate about the life he was living in Nairobi.

In Britain the Guardian Guardian was, for many months, the only paper to write about WikiLeaks or to use any of the doc.u.ments they were unearthing. In August 2007, for instance, we splashed on a remarkable secret Kroll report which claimed to show that former President Daniel Arap Moi had been siphoning off hundreds of millions of pounds and hiding them away in foreign bank accounts in more than 30 different countries. It was, by any standards, a stonking story. This a.s.sange, whoever he was, was one to watch. was, for many months, the only paper to write about WikiLeaks or to use any of the doc.u.ments they were unearthing. In August 2007, for instance, we splashed on a remarkable secret Kroll report which claimed to show that former President Daniel Arap Moi had been siphoning off hundreds of millions of pounds and hiding them away in foreign bank accounts in more than 30 different countries. It was, by any standards, a stonking story. This a.s.sange, whoever he was, was one to watch.

Unnoticed by most of the world, Julian a.s.sange was developing into a most interesting and unusual pioneer in using digital technologies to challenge corrupt and authoritarian states. It's doubtful whether his name would have meant anything to Hillary Clinton at the time or even in January 2010 when, as secretary of state, she made a rather good speech about the potential of what she termed "a new nervous system for our planet".

She described a vision of semi-underground digital publishing "the samizdat of our day" that was beginning to champion transparency and challenge the autocratic, corrupt old order of the world. But she also warned that repressive governments would "target the independent thinkers who use the tools". She had regimes like Iran in mind.

Her words about the brave samizdat publishing future could well have applied to the rather strange, unworldly Australian hacker quietly working out methods of publishing the world's secrets in ways which were beyond any technological or legal attack.

Little can Clinton have imagined, as she made this much praised speech, that within a year she would be back making another statement about digital whistleblowers this time roundly attacking people who used electronic media to champion transparency. It was, she told a hastily arranged state department press conference in November 2010, "not just an attack on America's foreign policy interests. It is an attack on the international community." In the intervening 11 months a.s.sange had gone viral. He had just helped to orchestrate the biggest leak in the history of the world only this time the embarra.s.sment was not to a poor east African nation, but to the most powerful country on earth.

It is that story, the transformation from anonymous hacker to one of the most discussed people in the world at once reviled, celebrated and lionised; sought-after, imprisoned and shunned that this book sets out to tell.

Within a few short years of starting out a.s.sange had been catapulted from the obscurity of his life in Nairobi, dribbling out leaks that n.o.body much noticed, to publishing a flood of cla.s.sified doc.u.ments that went to the heart of America's military and foreign policy operations. From being a marginal figure invited to join panels at geek conferences he was suddenly America's public enemy number one. A new media messiah to some, he was a cyber-terrorist to others. As if this wasn't dramatic enough, in the middle of it all two women in Sweden accused him of rape. To coin a phrase, you couldn't make it up.

Since leaving Nairobi, a.s.sange had grown his ambitions for the scale and potential of WikiLeaks. In the company of other hackers he had been developing a philosophy of transparency. He and his fellow technologists had already succeeded in one aim: he had made WikiLeaks virtually indestructible and thus beyond legal or cyber attack from any one jurisdiction or source. Lawyers who were paid exorbitant sums to protect the reputations of wealthy clients and corporations admitted in tones tinged with both frustration and admiration that WikiLeaks was the one publisher in the world they couldn't gag. It was very bad for business.

At the Guardian Guardian we had our own reasons to watch the rise of WikiLeaks with great interest and some respect. In two cases involving Barclays Bank and Trafigura the site had ended up hosting doc.u.ments which the British courts had ordered to be concealed. There was a bad period in 2008/9 when the high court in London got into the habit of not only banning the publication of doc.u.ments of high public interest, but simultaneously preventing the reporting of the existence of the court proceedings themselves and the parties involved in them. One London firm of solicitors over-reached itself when it even tried to extend the ban to the reporting of parliamentary discussion of material sitting on the WikiLeaks site. we had our own reasons to watch the rise of WikiLeaks with great interest and some respect. In two cases involving Barclays Bank and Trafigura the site had ended up hosting doc.u.ments which the British courts had ordered to be concealed. There was a bad period in 2008/9 when the high court in London got into the habit of not only banning the publication of doc.u.ments of high public interest, but simultaneously preventing the reporting of the existence of the court proceedings themselves and the parties involved in them. One London firm of solicitors over-reached itself when it even tried to extend the ban to the reporting of parliamentary discussion of material sitting on the WikiLeaks site.

Judges were as nonplussed as global corporations by this new publishing phenomenon. In one hearing in March 2009 the high court in London decided that no one was allowed to print doc.u.ments revealing Barclays' tax avoidance strategies even though they were there for the whole world to read on the WikiLeaks website. The law looked a little silly.

But this new form of indestructible publishing brought sharp questions into focus. For every Trafigura there might be other cases where WikiLeaks could be used to smear or destroy someone. That made a.s.sange a very powerful figure. The fact that there were grumbles among his colleagues about his autocratic and secretive style did not allay the fears about this new media baron. The questions kept coming: who was this shadowy figure "playing G.o.d"? How could he and his team be sure of a particular doc.u.ment's authenticity? Who was determining the ethical framework that decided some information should be published, and some not? All this meant that a.s.sange was in many respects more, perhaps, than he welcomed in a role not dissimilar to that of a conventional editor.

As this book describes, the spectacular bursting of WikiLeaks into the wider global public eye and imagination began with a meeting in June 2010 between the Guardian Guardian's Nick Davies and a.s.sange. Davies had sought out a.s.sange after reading the early accounts that were filtering out about the leak of a ma.s.sive trove of military and diplomatic doc.u.ments. He wanted to convince a.s.sange that this story would have more impact and meaning if he was willing to ally with one or two newspapers however traditional and cowardly or compromised we might be in the eyes of some hackers. An agreement was struck.

And so a unique collaboration was born between (initially) three newspapers, the mysterious Australian nomad and whatever his elusive organisation, WikiLeaks, actually was. That much never became very clear. a.s.sange was, at the best of times, difficult to contact, switching mobile phones, email addresses and encrypted chat rooms as often as he changed his location. Occasionally he would appear with another colleague it could be a journalist, a hacker, a lawyer or an unspecified helper but, just as often, he travelled solo. It was never entirely clear which time zone he was on. The difference between day and night, an important consideration in most lives, seemed of little interest to him.

What now began was a rather traditional journalistic operation, albeit using skills of data a.n.a.lysis and visualisation which were unknown in newsrooms until fairly recently. David Leigh, the Guardian Guardian's investigations editor, spent the summer voraciously reading his way into the material. The Guardian Guardian's deputy editor in charge of news, Ian Katz, now started marshalling wider forces. Ad hoc teams were put together in a.s.sorted corners of the Guardian Guardian's offices in King's Cross, London, to make sense of the vast store of information. Similar teams were a.s.sembled in New York and Hamburg and, later, in Madrid and Paris.

The first thing to do was build a search engine that could make sense of the data, the next to bring in foreign correspondents and foreign affairs a.n.a.lysts with detailed knowledge of the Afghan and Iraq conflict. The final piece of the journalistic heavy lifting was to introduce a redaction process so that nothing we published could imperil any vulnerable sources or compromise active special operations. All this took a great deal of time, effort, resource and stamina. Making sense of the files was not immediately easy. There are very few, if any, parallels in the annals of journalism where any news organisation has had to deal with such a vast database we estimate it to have been roughly 300 million words (the Pentagon papers, published by the New York Times New York Times in 1971, by comparison, stretched to two and a half million words). Once redacted, the doc.u.ments were shared among the (eventually) five newspapers and sent to WikiLeaks, who adopted all our redactions. in 1971, by comparison, stretched to two and a half million words). Once redacted, the doc.u.ments were shared among the (eventually) five newspapers and sent to WikiLeaks, who adopted all our redactions.

The extent of the redaction process and the relatively limited extent of publication of actual cables were apparently overlooked by many commentators including leading American journalists who spoke disparagingly of a w.i.l.l.y-nilly "ma.s.s dump" of cables and the consequent danger to life. But, to date, there has been no "ma.s.s dump". Barely two thousand of the 250,000 diplomatic cables have been published and, six months after the first publication of the war logs, no one has been able to demonstrate any damage to life or limb.

It is impossible to write this story without telling the story of Julian a.s.sange himself, though clearly the overall question of WikiLeaks and the philosophy it represents is of longer-lasting significance. More than one writer has compared him to John Wilkes, the rakish 18th-century MP and editor who risked his life and liberty in a.s.sorted battles over free speech. Others have compared him to Daniel Ellsberg, the source of the Pentagon Papers leak, described by the New York Times New York Times's former executive editor Max Frankel as "a man of incisive, devious intellect and volatile temperament".

The media and public were torn between those who saw a.s.sange as a new kind of cyber-messiah and those who regarded him as a James Bond villain. Each extremity projected on to him superhuman powers of good or evil. The script became even more confused in December when, as part of his bail conditions, a.s.sange had to live at Ellingham Hall, a Georgian manor house set in hundreds of acres of Suffolk countryside. It was as if a Stieg Larsson script had been pa.s.sed to the writer of Downton Abbey Downton Abbey, Julian Fellowes.

Few people seem to find a.s.sange an easy man with whom to collaborate. Slate's media columnist, Jack Shafer, captured his character well in this pen portrait: "a.s.sange bedevils the journalists who work with him because he refuses to conform to any of the roles they expect him to play. He acts like a leaking source when it suits him. He masquerades as publisher or newspaper syndicate when that's advantageous. Like a PR agent, he manipulates news organisations to maximise publicity for his 'clients', or, when moved to, he threatens to throw info-bombs like an agent provocateur. He's a wily shape-shifter who won't sit still, an unpredictable negotiator who is forever changing the terms of the deal."

We certainly had our moments of difficulty and tension during the course of our joint enterprise. They were caused as much by the difficulty of regular, open communication as by a.s.sange's status as a sometimes confusing mix of source, intermediary and publisher. Encrypted instant messaging is no subst.i.tute for talking. And, while a.s.sange was certainly our main source for the doc.u.ments, he was in no sense a conventional source he was not the original source and certainly not a confidential one. Latterly, he was not even the only source. He was, if anything, a new breed of publisher-intermediary a sometimes uncomfortable role in which he sought to have a degree of control over the source's material (and even a form of "ownership", complete with legal threats to sue for loss of income). When, to a.s.sange's fury, WikiLeaks itself sprang a leak, the irony of the situation was almost comic. The ethical issues involved in this new status of editor/source became more complicated still when it was suggested to us that we owed some form of protection to a.s.sange as a "source" by not inquiring too deeply into the s.e.x charges levelled against him in Sweden. That did not seem a compelling argument to us, though there were those it is not too strong to call them "disciples" who were not willing to imagine any narrative beyond that of the smear.

These wrinkles were mainly overcome sometimes eased by a gla.s.s of wine or by matching a.s.sange's extraordinary appet.i.te for exhaustive and intellectually exacting conversations. As Sarah Ellison's Vanity Fair Vanity Fair piece on the subject concluded: "Whatever the differences, the results have been extraordinary. Given the range, depth, and accuracy of the leaks, the collaboration has produced by any standard one of the greatest journalistic scoops of the last 30 years." piece on the subject concluded: "Whatever the differences, the results have been extraordinary. Given the range, depth, and accuracy of the leaks, the collaboration has produced by any standard one of the greatest journalistic scoops of the last 30 years."

The challenge from WikiLeaks for media in general (not to mention states, companies or global corporations caught up in the dazzle of unwanted scrutiny) was not a comfortable one. The website's initial instincts were to publish more or less everything, and they were at first deeply suspicious of any contact between their colleagues on the newspapers and any kind of officialdom. Talking to the state department, Pentagon or White House, as the New York Times New York Times did before each round of publication, was fraught territory in terms of keeping the relationship with WikiLeaks on an even keel. By the time of the Cablegate publication, a.s.sange himself, conscious of the risks of causing unintentional harm to dissidents or other sources, offered to speak to the state department an offer that was rejected. did before each round of publication, was fraught territory in terms of keeping the relationship with WikiLeaks on an even keel. By the time of the Cablegate publication, a.s.sange himself, conscious of the risks of causing unintentional harm to dissidents or other sources, offered to speak to the state department an offer that was rejected.

WikiLeaks and similar organisations are, it seems to me, generally admirable in their single-minded view of transparency and openness. What has been remarkable is how the sky has not not fallen in despite the truly enormous amounts of information released over the months. The enemies of WikiLeaks have made repeated a.s.sertions of the harm done by the release. It would be a good idea if someone would fund some rigorous research by a serious academic inst.i.tution about the balance between harms and benefits. To judge from the response we had from countries without the benefit of a free press, there was a considerable thirst for the information in the cables a hunger for knowledge which contrasted with the occasional knowing yawns from metropolitan sophisticates who insisted that the cables told us nothing new. Instead of a kneejerk stampede to more secrecy, this could be the opportunity to draw up a score sheet of the upsides and drawbacks of forced transparency. fallen in despite the truly enormous amounts of information released over the months. The enemies of WikiLeaks have made repeated a.s.sertions of the harm done by the release. It would be a good idea if someone would fund some rigorous research by a serious academic inst.i.tution about the balance between harms and benefits. To judge from the response we had from countries without the benefit of a free press, there was a considerable thirst for the information in the cables a hunger for knowledge which contrasted with the occasional knowing yawns from metropolitan sophisticates who insisted that the cables told us nothing new. Instead of a kneejerk stampede to more secrecy, this could be the opportunity to draw up a score sheet of the upsides and drawbacks of forced transparency.

That approach a rational a.s.sessment of new forms of transparency should accompany the inevitable questioning of how the US cla.s.sification system could have allowed the private musings of kings, presidents and dissidents to have been so easily read by whoever it was that decided to pa.s.s them on to WikiLeaks in the first place.

Each news organisation grappled with the ethical issues involved in such contacts and in the overall decision to publish in different ways. I was interested, a few days after the start of the Cablegate release, to receive an email from Max Frankel, who had overseen the defence of the New York Times New York Times in the Pentagon papers case 40 years earlier. Now 80, he sent me a memo he had then written to the in the Pentagon papers case 40 years earlier. Now 80, he sent me a memo he had then written to the New York Times New York Times public editor. It is worth quoting as concise and wise advice to future generations who may well have to grapple with such issues more in future: public editor. It is worth quoting as concise and wise advice to future generations who may well have to grapple with such issues more in future: 1. My view has almost always been that information which wants to get out will get out; our job is to receive it responsibly and to publish or not by our own unvarying news standards.2. If the source or informant violates his oath of office or the law, we should leave it to the authorities to try to enforce their law or oath, without our collaboration. We reject collaboration or revelation of our sources for the larger reason that ALL our sources deserve to know that they are protected with us. It is, however, part of our obligation to reveal the biases and apparent purposes of the people who leak or otherwise disclose information.3. If certain information seems to defy the standards proclaimed by the supreme court in the Pentagon papers case ie that publication will cause direct, immediate and irreparable damage we have an obligation to limit our publication appropriately. If in doubt, we should give appropriate authority a chance to persuade us that such direct and immediate danger exists. (See our 24-hour delay of discovery of Soviet missiles in Cuba as described in my autobiography, or our delay in reporting planes lost in combat until the pilots can perhaps be rescued.)4. For all other information, I have always believed that no one can reliably predict the consequences of publication. The Pentagon papers, contrary to Ellsberg's wish, did not shorten the Vietnam war or stir significant additional protest. A given disclosure may embarra.s.s government but improve a policy, or it may be a leak by the government itself and end up damaging policy. "Publish and be d.a.m.ned," as Scotty Reston used to say; it sounds terrible but as a journalistic motto it has served our society well through history.

There have been many longer treatises on the ethics of journalism which have said less.

One of the lessons from the WikiLeaks project is that it has shown the possibilities of collaboration. It's difficult to think of any comparable example of news organisations working together in the way the Guardian Guardian, New York Times New York Times, Der Spiegel Der Spiegel, Le Monde Le Monde and and El Pais El Pais have on the WikiLeaks project. I think all five editors would like to imagine ways in which we could harness our resources again. have on the WikiLeaks project. I think all five editors would like to imagine ways in which we could harness our resources again.

The story is far from over. In the UK there was only muted criticism of the Guardian Guardian for publishing the leaks, though the critics' restraint did not always extend to WikiLeaks itself. Most journalists could see the clear public value in the nature of the material that was published. for publishing the leaks, though the critics' restraint did not always extend to WikiLeaks itself. Most journalists could see the clear public value in the nature of the material that was published.

It appears to have been another story in the US, where there was a more bitter and partisan argument, clouded by differing ideas of patriotism. It was astonishing to sit in London reading of reasonably mainstream American figures calling for the a.s.sa.s.sination of a.s.sange for what he had unleashed. It was surprising to see the widespread reluctance among American journalists to support the general ideal and work of WikiLeaks. For some it simply boiled down to a reluctance to admit that a.s.sange was a journalist.

Whether this att.i.tude would change were a.s.sange ever to be prosecuted is an interesting matter for speculation. In early 2011 there were signs of increasing frustration on the part of US government authorities in scouring the world for evidence to use against him, including the subpoena of Twitter accounts. But there was also, among cooler legal heads, an appreciation that it would be virtually impossible to prosecute a.s.sange for the act of publication of the war logs or state department cables without also putting five editors in the dock. That would be the media case of the century.

And, of course, we have yet to hear an unmediated account from the man alleged to be the true source of the material, Bradley Manning, a 23-year-old US army private. Until then no complete story of the leak that changed the world can really be written. But this is a compelling first chapter in a story which, one suspects, is destined to run and run.

London, 1 February 2011 Alan Rusbridger is the editor of the Guardian Guardian

CHAPTER 1.

The Hunt.

Ellingham Hall, Norfolk, England November 2010

"You can't imagine how ridiculous it was"

JAMES B BALL, WIKILEAKS.

Glimpsed in the half-light of a London evening, the figure might just have pa.s.sed for female. She emerged cautiously from a doorway and folded herself into a battered red car. There were a few companions among them a grim-visaged man with Nordic features and a couple of nerdy youngsters. One appeared to have given the old woman her coat. The car weaved through the light Paddington traffic, heading north in the direction of Cambridge. As they proceeded up the M11 motorway the occupants peered back. There was no obvious sign of pursuit. Nonetheless, they periodically pulled off the road into a lay-by and waited lights killed in the gloom. Apparently undetected, the group headed eastward along the slow A143 road. By 10pm they had reached the flatlands of East Anglia, a sepia landscape where the occasional disused sugar factory hulked out of the blackness.

Fifteen miles inland, at the unremarkable village of Ellingham, they finally turned left. The car skidded on a driveway, and drove past an ancient dovecote before stopping in front of a grand Georgian manor house. The woman stepped from the car. There was something odd about her. She had a kind of hump! If a CIA agent or some other observer were hidden in the woodland along with the pheasants, they could have been forgiven for a moment of puzzlement.

Close up, however, it was obvious that this strange figure was Julian a.s.sange, his platinum hair concealed by a wig. At more than 6ft tall, he was never going to be a very convincing female. "You can't imagine how ridiculous it was," WikiLeaks' James Ball later said. "He'd stayed dressed up as an old woman for more than two hours." a.s.sange was swapping genders in a pantomime attempt to evade possible pursuers. With him were also his young aide, Sarah Harrison, and his deputy, the Icelandic journalist Kristinn Hrafnsson. On that evening, this small team was the nucleus of WikiLeaks, the whistleblower website a.s.sange had launched four years earlier.

In a breathtakingly short time, WikiLeaks had soared out of its previous niche as an obscure radical website to become a widely known online news platform. a.s.sange had published leaked footage showing airborne US helicopter pilots executing two Reuters employees in Baghdad, seemingly as if they were playing a video-game. He had followed up this coup with another, even bigger sensation: an unprecedented newspaper deal, brokered with the Guardian Guardian newspaper in London, to reveal hundreds of thousands of cla.s.sified US military field reports from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, many of them d.a.m.ning. newspaper in London, to reveal hundreds of thousands of cla.s.sified US military field reports from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, many of them d.a.m.ning.

a.s.sange, a 39-year-old Australian, was a computer hacker of genius. He could be charming, capable of deadpan humour and wit. But he could also be waspish, flaring into anger and recrimination. a.s.sange's mercurial temperament sp.a.w.ned groupies and enemies, supporters and ill-wishers, sometimes even in the same person. Information messiah or cyber-terrorist? Freedom fighter or sociopath? Moral crusader or deluded narcissist? The debate over a.s.sange would reverberate in the coming weeks in headlines the world over.

a.s.sange and his team had fled here from the Frontline Club, a hang-out for foreign correspondents and other media types in west London. Since July and the launch of the Afghan war logs, a.s.sange had slept, on and off, in the club's accommodation at Southwick Mews. The club's founder, Vaughan Smith, had become a sympathiser and ally, and invited a.s.sange and his coterie to his ancestral home, Ellingham Hall, tucked away in a remote corner of East Anglia. And here these unlikely refugees had now arrived.

Smith was a former captain of the Grenadier Guards, an elite regiment of the British army, who went on to become a freelance video journalist with Frontline TV. His adventures in war zones Iraq during the first Gulf war, where he bluffed his way in disguised as a British army officer; Bosnia, with its ma.s.sacres and horrors; Afghanistan; and Iraq again had demonstrated a spirit of maverick independence. Smith was no anarchist. His family had served in the British army for generations. His paper of choice was Britain's conservative, crusty Daily Telegraph Daily Telegraph. Smith was also brave. In Kosovo, his life was saved when a deadly bullet lodged in his mobile telephone.

But in common with other right-wing libertarians, he had a stubborn sense of fair play and believed in sticking up for the underdog. In this instance that meant a.s.sange, who had become a hate figure for the bellicose US right. They wanted him arrested. Some were even calling for his a.s.sa.s.sination. Smith broadly supported a.s.sange's crusade for transparency at a time when as Smith saw it journalism itself had moved uncomfortably close to government, and was in danger of becoming mere PR fluff.

When a.s.sange settled in to work at Ellingham Hall, already living in the manor house were Pranvera Shema, Smith's Kosovo-born wife, and their two small children. Aged five and two, their bikes stood outside the hall's imposing porte-cochere entrance. Also in residence on the estate were Vaughan's upper-cla.s.s parents. Vaughan's father, too, had served in the Guards; a portrait of him as a young officer in a scarlet tunic hung in the dining room. Smith Sr could be seen holding a white pouch: a discreet reference to his career as a Queen's Messenger. The role involved travelling around the world on Her Majesty's business, hand-carrying diplomatic secrets. It was clear that Smith Sr took a dim view of a.s.sange, who was believed to be in possession of an astonishingly large number of secret diplomatic dispatches.

Smith Sr would take to patrolling the estate with its twin lakes and cedar trees armed with a rifle. The rifle was fitted with a sniper-sight. The sniper-sight was camouflaged. Normally he fired at partridge and grouse. The temptation, however, to take a shot at the paparazzi that would soon encamp themselves outside the manor or indeed at the unwashed radicals inside it must have been considerable. Asked two days before Christmas whether he was enjoying playing host to the group of international leakers who were here, he answered through gritted teeth. "I wish they weren't." It was one of many ironies that would pepper the tension-filled weeks.

Among the WikiLeakers at Ellingham was 24-year-old James Ball, whom a.s.sange had recruited, one of the few collaborators to receive a salary. Ball's talent was for dealing with large data sets. A cool young man, he was experiencing a giddy rise. Within a matter of months he went from a job as reporter on the Grocer Grocer trade magazine to being a spokesman for WikiLeaks, and even debating with the US diplomat John Negroponte on BBC World's trade magazine to being a spokesman for WikiLeaks, and even debating with the US diplomat John Negroponte on BBC World's Hardtalk Hardtalk programme. Ball's first task was urgent: to go into Norwich, 15 miles away, and head for a branch of the John Lewis department store for technical equipment. He set off, carrying several thousand pounds in cash (a.s.sange's preferred medium of exchange), emerging with several laptops, a router, and cabling and leaving a bemused shop a.s.sistant in his wake. "Have you ever tried spending programme. Ball's first task was urgent: to go into Norwich, 15 miles away, and head for a branch of the John Lewis department store for technical equipment. He set off, carrying several thousand pounds in cash (a.s.sange's preferred medium of exchange), emerging with several laptops, a router, and cabling and leaving a bemused shop a.s.sistant in his wake. "Have you ever tried spending 1,000 cash in John Lewis? Honestly, the a.s.sistant looked scared of 50 notes," Ball reflected. "It was a surreal experience."

The team began setting up an anonymous internet ident.i.ty. Their connection was designed to give the electronic impression that the WikiLeaks team sitting in rustic England was actually based in Sweden. The preoccupation with security was paramount: WikiLeaks was believed to be a permanent target for US surveillance and potentially crippling cyber-attacks. On trips outside the manor house, the team used the same counter-surveillance techniques they had employed during the journey to Norfolk. This may have been prudent. But it meant Ball was sometimes left hanging round for several hours at minor B-roads and other freezing rendezvous points, waiting for a lift.

Ensconced in a grand living room with a log fire, decorated with more portraits of Vaughan Smith's forebears, a.s.sange got to work. Typically, he would spend between 16 and 18 hours a day in front of his laptop, sometimes staying up for a 48-hour period before crashing out on the floor. Other WikiLeaks staff would rouse him, and prod him towards the upstairs bedrooms. He would sleep for a couple of hours. Then he would carry on. a.s.sange's cycle was nocturnal. He was at his most accessible at 3am or 4am. "I found it easier to do stuff at night when you could sometimes get Julian's attention. He's entirely capable of ignoring someone for five minutes while they're calling at him, 'Julian! Julian!'," says Ball. Other WikiLeaks a.s.sociates Sarah Harrison and Joseph Farrell, both recent journalistic interns managed his email and diary.

a.s.sange saw his role as that of a chief executive. His job was to monitor WikiLeaks' vast footprint in cybers.p.a.ce, and to keep in touch with the organisation's collaborators in the other jurisdictions and time zones. Smith says: "He is obsessed with his work. Julian needs to understand what is written about WikiLeaks and the story. He describes it as monitoring the temperature."

To the right of the fireplace was a striking portrait of Vaughan Smith's great-great-grandfather, "Tiger" Smith. Smith acquired his sobriquet after killing 99 tigers, lugging many of them back to Ellingham Hall. Two stuffed beasts sat in gla.s.s boxes; others had been chucked out after mouldering. The entrance lobby was decorated with crossed sabres, old rifles with bayonets and other memorabilia from forgotten colonial skirmishes. There was a stuffed deer head, a pair of antlers, and a large painting depicting two stags charging furiously towards each other against an unusual pistachio background. If an American film director wanted the quintessential English country pile for his period movie, he could hardly have done better than Ellingham.

The WikiLeaks team quickly adapted to the rituals of English country house life. Ellingham Hall had a housekeeper; there was a kitchen with a raised central square table where staff would make meals; chops and sausages were piled up in a cardboard box. The estate had an organic farm (whose produce was also served in the restaurant of the Frontline Club back in London). Vaughan Smith had a decent cellar its contents selected by the former Guardian Guardian wine critic Malcolm Gluck. At mealtimes a.s.sange and his co-workers sat in Smith's splendid dining room beneath a venerable circular table. There was port pa.s.sed to the left by the cyber-radicals, in accordance with English convention. a.s.sange insisted that n.o.body drank more than a gla.s.s a night, forcing his companions to cut side deals with the kitchen staff. wine critic Malcolm Gluck. At mealtimes a.s.sange and his co-workers sat in Smith's splendid dining room beneath a venerable circular table. There was port pa.s.sed to the left by the cyber-radicals, in accordance with English convention. a.s.sange insisted that n.o.body drank more than a gla.s.s a night, forcing his companions to cut side deals with the kitchen staff.

a.s.sange's own habits were ascetic: he paid little attention to what he ate. His otherworldliness extended to his wardrobe. He didn't appear to possess any clothes of his own. At one point the WikiLeaks team decided a.s.sange needed to remove himself from his screen and take some exercise. They bought him a red Adidas top: once a day a.s.sange would jog through the parkland a flash of brightness in a rural palette of browns and greens. Soon, Smith would transmogrify a.s.sange further into the more muted shades of a country gentleman: he lent him a green parka and the tweed jacket with asymmetrical pockets that Smith had worn as a (trimmer) young man of 19. a.s.sange also tried his hand at fishing.

From the outside few would have guessed what was really going on inside Ellingham Hall's high bay windows. a.s.sange had gone to ground in this way, like a fox, because he was preparing, along with the Guardian Guardian and four other major international papers, to broker publication of the most spectacular leak in history. He had confided he was a little scared. There had been nothing like it, not even the Pentagon papers the publication of the secret record of America's war in Vietnam almost 40 years earlier. At one point the local hunt clattered across the grounds of Ellingham Hall; huntsmen and hounds crashing through the Spion Kop woods. It was the kind of pursuit that a.s.sange seemed to sense he was involved in. Was he, too, the hunted animal, with prosecutors and US intelligence agents the red-coated huntsmen, riding to the sound of a blowing bugle, surging closer and closer? and four other major international papers, to broker publication of the most spectacular leak in history. He had confided he was a little scared. There had been nothing like it, not even the Pentagon papers the publication of the secret record of America's war in Vietnam almost 40 years earlier. At one point the local hunt clattered across the grounds of Ellingham Hall; huntsmen and hounds crashing through the Spion Kop woods. It was the kind of pursuit that a.s.sange seemed to sense he was involved in. Was he, too, the hunted animal, with prosecutors and US intelligence agents the red-coated huntsmen, riding to the sound of a blowing bugle, surging closer and closer?

CHAPTER 2.

Bradley Manning.

Contingency Operating Station Hammer, 40 miles east of Baghdad, Iraq November 2009

"I should have left my phone at home"

LADY G GAGA.

After the punishing heat of summer, Iraq in November is pleasantly warm. But for the men and women stationed at Camp Hammer, in the middle of the Mada'in Qada desert, the air was forever thick with dust and dirt kicked up by convoys of lorries that supplied the capital a constant reminder that they were very far from home. One of those was Specialist Bradley Manning, who'd been sent to Iraq with the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division a few weeks earlier. About to turn 22, he was the ant.i.thesis of the battle-hardened US soldier beloved of Hollywood. Blue-eyed, blond-haired, with a round face and boyish smile, he stood just five feet and two inches tall and weighed 105 pounds.

But he hadn't been sent to Iraq because of his bulk. He was there for his gift at manipulating computers. In the role of intelligence a.n.a.lyst Manning found himself spending long days in the base's computer room poring over top-secret information. For such a young and relatively inexperienced soldier, it was extremely sensitive work. Yet from his first day at Hammer, he was puzzled by the lax security. The door was bolted with a five-digit cipher lock, but all you had to do was knock on it and you'd be let in. His fellow intelligence workers seemed to have grown bored and disenchanted from the relentless grind of 14-hour days, seven days a week. They just sat at their workstations, watching music videos or footage of car chases. "People stopped caring after three weeks," Manning observed.

After a few months Manning had grown scathing about the culture of the base. "Weak servers, weak logging, weak physical security, weak counter-intelligence, inattentive signal a.n.a.lysis ... a perfect storm," he would later write. He approached the National Security Agency officer in charge of protecting information systems and asked him whether he could find any suspicious uploads from local networks. The officer shrugged and said, "It's not a priority."

It was a culture, as Manning later described it, that "fed opportunities". For Manning, those opportunities presented themselves in the form of two dedicated military laptops which he was given, each with privileged access to US state secrets. The first laptop was connected to the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network (SIPRNet), used by the department of defence and the state department to securely share information. The second gave him entry to the Joint Worldwide Intelligence Communications System (JWICS), which acts as a global funnel for top-secret dispatches.

That such a low-level serviceman could have had apparently unrestricted access to this vast source of confidential material should surely have raised eyebrows. That he could do so with virtually no supervision or safeguards inside the base was all the more astounding. He would spend hours drilling down into top-secret doc.u.ments and videos, wearing earphones and lip-synching to Lady Gaga. The more he read, the more alarmed and disturbed he became, shocked by what he saw as the official duplicity and corruption of his own country. There were videos that showed the aerial killing from a helicopter gunship of unarmed civilians in Iraq, there were chronicles of civilian deaths and "friendly fire" disasters in Afghanistan. And there was a mammoth trove of diplomatic cables disclosing secrets from all around the world, from the Vatican to Pakistan. He started to become overwhelmed by the scale of the scandal and intrigue he was discovering. "There's so much," he would later write. "It affects everybody on earth. Everywhere there's a US post there's a diplomatic scandal that will be revealed. It's beautiful, and horrifying."

From there it was but a short step to thinking that he could do something about it. "If you had unprecedented access to cla.s.sified networks 14 hours a day, seven days a week for eight-plus months, what would you do?" he asked. What he did, it is alleged, was to take the rewritable CD which carried his Lady Gaga music and erase it, then copy onto the disc other, far more dangerous, digital material. He was about to embark on a journey that would lead to the largest leak of military and diplomatic secrets in US history.

Crescent, Oklahoma, is flat and off the beaten track, just like the Mada'in Qada desert. But there the likeness ends. A small town in the middle of a rural bread basket, 35 miles to the north of Oklahoma City, its skyline is dominated by a large white grain stack. "This is a tight-knit, very conservative community," says Rick McCombs, the recently retired princ.i.p.al of Crescent high school.

Born on 17 December 1987, Bradley Manning spent the first 13 years of his life in Crescent, benefiting from its small-town intimacy, suffering from the narrow-mindedness that went with it. He lived outside town in a two-storey house with his American father, Brian, his Welsh mother, Susan, and his elder sister, Casey. His parents had met when Brian was serving in the US navy and stationed at the Cawdor Barracks in south-west Wales.

From a young age, Bradley displayed the dual qualities that would set him apart from others and set him on a path that would lead, tragically for him, to a locked cell in Quantico marine base, Virginia. He possessed a lively inquiring mind and a tendency to question the prevailing att.i.tude. McCombs recalls that Bradley not only played a mean saxophone in the school band but also appeared in the school quiz team alongside much older children. "He was very, very smart. He was also very opinionated but only up to a point. He never got in trouble. Not once was Bradley disciplined for any reason."

Manning had an early pa.s.sion for computer games, playing Super Mario Bros with a neighbour. He was also fiercely independent of spirit. He was one of very few inhabitants of Crescent who openly professed doubts about religion not an easy position for a child to take in a devoutly Christian town with no fewer than 15 churches. He used to refuse to do homework that related to the Bible and remained silent during the reference to G.o.d in the Pledge of Allegiance. Crescent, Manning once quipped, had "more pews than people".

From his father, who spent five years in the navy working on computer systems, Bradley inherited two important qualities: a fascination for the latest technology, and a fervent patriotism and belief in service that would stay with him despite the harrowing treatment he was to experience later at the hands of the military police. In one of the few statements he has been allowed to make since his arrest in May 2010, Manning put out a message on Christmas Eve 2010 in which he asked his supporters to take the time "to remember those who are separated from their loved ones at this time due to deployment and important missions". He even spared a thought for his jailers at Quantico Confinement Facility "who will be spending their Christmas without their family".

His father was by all accounts a strict parent. Neighbours reported that Brian's severity contributed to Bradley growing introverted and withdrawn. Such introversion deepened with p.u.b.erty and Bradley's dawning realisation that he was gay. Aged 13, he confided his s.e.xuality to a couple of his closest friends at Crescent school.

The entry to teenage years was a tumultuous time. In 2001, just as Manning was beginning to come to grips with his h.o.m.os.e.xuality, his father returned home one day and announced he was leaving his mother and the family home. Within months, Manning's life in Crescent had been uprooted, his friendships torn asunder, and his life transplanted 4,000 miles to Haverfordwest in south-west Wales, where his mother decided to return following the bitter break-up.

In Wales Manning had to acclimatise to his new secondary school, Tasker Milward, which, with about 1,200 pupils, was the size of his old home town. And he was its only American student.

"He was p.r.o.ne to being bullied for being a little bit different. People used to impersonate him, his accent and mannerisms," remembers Tom Dyer, a friend of Manning's at Tasker Milward. "He wasn't the biggest kid, or the most sporty, and they would make fun of him. At times he would rise to the provocation and lash out."

Perhaps as a means of reviving his self-esteem, he grew increasingly pa.s.sionate about computers and geekery. He spent every lunchtime at the school computer club, where he built his own website.

"He was always doing something, always going somewhere, always with an action plan," says Dyer. "He would get exasperated if things went wrong, his mind always racing. That made him come across as a little bit quirky and hyperactive."

Dyer also notes that by the age of 15 Manning had begun to formulate a clear political outlook that, irrespective of his enduring patriotism, was increasingly critical of US foreign policy. When the invasion of Iraq happened in March 2003 they would have long conversations about it. "He would speak out and say it was all about oil and that George Bush had no right going in there."

That political sensibility developed further when, at the age of 17 and having left school, he was packed off back to Oklahoma to live with his father. He took up a job in Zoto, a photo-sharing software company.

"He struck me as wise beyond his years," recalls Manning's boss at Zoto, Kord Campbell. "This was the Bush era, and n.o.body in the computer software world liked that president. Brad would go on about his political opinions, which was unusual for a kid."

Campbell says that his employee "was smart. He learned like n.o.body's business." But the maverick side to Manning was also growing more p.r.o.nounced. "He was quirky, there was no doubt about it. He was quirky as h.e.l.l." On a couple of occasions he remembers Manning falling into what Campbell describes as a "thousand-mile stare". "He would be silent and wouldn't talk to me or recognise me." Four months in, concerned that Manning's personal issues were affecting his work, Campbell fired him.