WikiLeaks (23 page)

The conference was arranged for 1 November, at the
Guardian
’s London offices near King’s Cross station, with an initial meeting to go through the material in detail, trying to reach agreement on a possible day-by-day running order. Assange was supposed to join around 6pm – but a series of text messages to deputy editor Ian Katz indicated he was running late. Around 7pm, Rusbridger’s phone rang. It was Mark Stephens, a British libel lawyer he’d known for years. He said he had something to tell him: could he come straight round? Twenty minutes later Stephens burst through the door of the editor’s office, followed by Assange himself, along with his dour Icelandic lieutenant Kristinn Hrafnsson, and a young woman lawyer, later introduced as a junior solicitor in Stephens’ office, Jennifer Robinson. It looked, and felt, like an ambush.

Assange had barely sat down before he started angrily denouncing the
Guardian
. Did the
New York Times
have the cables? How did they have them? Who had given them to them? This was a breach of trust. His voice was raised and angry. Every time Rusbridger tried to respond, he pitched in with another question. When he finally paused for breath Rusbridger pointed out that the
Spiegel
people and other
Guardian
executives were waiting. Why didn’t we tell them to come in to continue the discussion? But Assange’s fury returned: this matter had to be settled first. He needed to know the truth about the
New York Times
. “We are getting the feeling that a large organisation is trying to find ways to step around a gentlemen’s agreement. We’re feeling a bit unhappy.”

Rusbridger responded that things had changed. WikiLeaks had sprung a leak itself. The cables had fallen into the hands of Heather Brooke. Things would soon move out of our control unless they decided to act more quickly. Assange didn’t look well. He was pale and sweating and had a racking cough. Rusbridger stuck to the line that he hadn’t given anyone the cables – which was perfectly true – and eventually persuaded Assange that it was better to deal with the larger group.

David Leigh immediately objected, however, to the presence of Stephens and Robinson. This was an editorial meeting, he protested. If Assange was going to have lawyers there, the
Guardian
needed lawyers. Rusbridger went off to try and raise a lawyer. The
Guardian
’s head of legal was cycling home and could not hear her BlackBerry ringing, so Geraldine Proudler, from the legal firm Olswang, who had fought many battles on behalf of the
Guardian
in the past, was interrupted at her gym and jumped in a taxi.

The argument – for the moment without lawyers – began again with the
Spiegel
team of editor-in-chief Georg Mascolo, Holger Stark and Marcel Rosenbach. Assange seemed obsessed with the
New York Times
, however, and launched into repeated denunciations of the paper.

“They ran a front-page story – the front page! – a front-page story which was just a sleazy hit job against me personally, and other parts of the organisation, and based upon falsehoods. It wasn’t even an assemblage of genuine criticism, assembling criticism without any balance. Their aim is to make themselves look impartial. It is not enough to simply
be
impartial. It is not enough to simply go: ‘That’s the story’ and put it through – they actually have to be actively hostile towards us, and demonstrate that on the front page, lest they be accused of being some kind of sympathiser.”

The Burns profile had dwelt, among other things, on the continuing police investigation into the Swedish sex allegations.
Assange was quoted saying: “They called me the James Bond of journalism. It got me a lot of fans, and some of them ended up causing me a bit of trouble.”

Burns had written that WikiLeaks staff had turned against Assange in the scandal’s wake. They complained, he wrote, that their founder’s “growing celebrity has been matched by an increasingly dictatorial, eccentric and capricious style”. To one defector, 25-year-old Icelander Herbert Snorrason, Assange messaged: “If you have a problem with me, you can piss off.” Assange had announced: “I am the heart and soul of this organisation, its founder, philosopher, spokesperson, original coder, organiser, financier, and all the rest.” Snorrason riposted stoutly: “He is not in his right mind.”

Burns’ piece actually omitted the full facts: Assange’s key lieutenant, Daniel Domscheit-Berg, was also privately denouncing Assange’s “cult of stardom”. The German would write later: “It is not for nothing that many who have quit refer to him as a ‘dictator’. He thinks of himself as the autocratic ruler of the project and believes himself accountable to no one. Justified, even internal, criticism – whether about his relations with women or the lack of transparency in his actions – is either dismissed with the statement ‘I’m busy, there are two wars I have to end’ or attributed to the secret services’ smear campaigns.”

Round the
Guardian
editor’s table, the others now sat silently as Assange fulminated against Burns and the
New York Times
in the strangely old-fashioned declamatory baritone he used when angry. He returned to his questions. Did they have the cables? How?

The problem, interjected Rusbridger, was that the paper now had a second source for the cables. It was negotiating with Heather Brooke for her to join the
Guardian
team. Otherwise she would be free to take them to any paper – which would mean the
Guardian
losing all access, control and exclusivity. Assange turned on Rusbridger. This wasn’t a second source. Brooke had
stolen the cables. It had been done “by theft, by deception … certainly unethical means”. He knew enough about the way she had operated to “destroy” her. The climax came when Assange (the underground leaker of illegal secrets) threatened that his lawyers could sue for the loss of WikiLeaks’ “financial assets”.

“I’d look forward to such a court case,” said the
Guardian
’s editor with a smile. None of this tirade made sense to Rusbridger. Brooke was a professional journalist: she had stolen nothing. More to the point, either the
Guardian
had a second source – in which case it no longer had to rely on Assange’s copy – or it all originated, as Assange claimed, from a single source, WikiLeaks, in which case WikiLeaks had broken its agreement to make a copy only for the
Guardian
, and Assange was in a poor position to be ranting at others.

Katz asked what other copies of the database existed: for instance, was it correct that Ellsberg had one? Assange shot back: “Daniel Ellsberg’s is an encrypted back-up copy of the database which he was to give the
New York Times
in a piece of political theatre.”

Assange returned to his favourite theme of how a gentleman leaker would behave: “People who aren’t behaving like gentlemen should start behaving like one. On the basis that the
Guardian
has given this to the
New York Times
, why should we collaborate with the
Guardian
?”

Assange began suggesting deals with other American papers. The
Washington Post
was hungry for this stuff. Under questioning, he elaborated a little, admitting that he had already been in discussion both with the
Post
and the US McClatchy newspaper group about possible co-operation.

Assange launched into the
NYT
again: “The strategy that the
New York Times
engaged in was … not very gentlemanly … They wrote a terrible piece about Bradley Manning and this terrible, terrible piece about me on the front page by John F Burns. He
says that he has received the most criticism of anything that he has ever written in his entire journalistic career over that piece, from senior people, and there’s a reason for that.

“We’re willing to engage in
realpolitik
if necessary, but that’s an organisation whose modus operandi is to protect itself, by destroying us. I do advise you to read it. It is obvious to anyone who reads it that it is designed to be a smear. It uses unnamed sources to quote some random person who has never had anything to do with our organisation except running some chat room, saying that I’m mad, etcetera, etcetera. It really is bad journalism. I’m not asking much. We are asking for the
Times
to follow its own standards. The standards that it follows for other people, because those standards apply, and the
Times
should not go out of its way to produce a negative, sleazy hit-piece and place it on the front page.”

Katz asked him directly how far he had got in negotiation with the
Washington Post
. “I haven’t made an agreement. Though I think we’ll probably go with the
Post
unless we get a very good counter-offer, because the
Times
has defiled the relationship.”

Rusbridger suggested a short break. When they reassembled, still without lawyers (Stephens and Robinson were sitting outside the room, Proudler down the corridor) the temperature had lowered a bit. Rusbridger suggested they look at some of the issues around the sequencing of stories. Ian Katz led Assange through the work they had done earlier in the day on which items should run in which order. Assange listened calmly. Gone was the aggression and finger-pointing. In its place there was a new engagement – as though his brain had flicked a switch to channel the rational, highly strategic zones which had been missing in the early confrontation.

He was, however, now insisting on yet further delay. The journalists asked how WikiLeaks would ideally release the cables. He replied, “Our ideal situation is not till next year. Anything before
one month is semi-lethal even under emergency conditions. We have woken a giant by wounding one of its legs [the US defence department] and the release of this material will cause the other leg [the state department] to stand up. We are taking as much fire as we can but we can’t take any more.” He stressed that he wanted the cables to be released in an orderly way and not in a “big dump”. Ideally, a “gradual release played out over two months”. But he was willing to see the launch in as soon as a month’s time: “We can gear up to attempt to be in a position such that we can survive, in a month.”

Assange had already spoken, only half-jokingly, of his need to have a safe refuge in Cuba before the cables came out. Now he said the ordering had to be arranged so that it didn’t appear anti-American. He didn’t want WikiLeaks to seem obsessed with America. The stories in the cables had far wider significance – so it was important to establish a running order which would make people realise that this wasn’t simply about the US.

“There are security exposés and abuses by other countries, these bad Arab countries, or Russia,” he said. “That will set the initial flavour of this material. We shouldn’t go exposing, for example, Israel during the initial phase, the initial couple of weeks. Let the overall framework be set first. The exposure of these other bad countries will set the tone of American public opinion. In the initial couple of weeks the frame is set that will colour the rest of it.”

Assange then made another startling announcement. He wanted to involve other newspapers from the “Romance languages”, to broaden the geopolitical impact. He mentioned
El País
and
Le Monde
. The others in the room looked at each other. This was going to double the complexities of an arrangement that was difficult enough to co-ordinate. How could they possibly do a deal between an American daily on a different time zone, with a French afternoon paper, a Spanish morning paper and a German weekly?

But by now there was at least a negotiation about the means to go forward. It was nearly 10pm. The discussions had been going relentlessly for nearly three hours. Rusbridger produced a couple of bottles of Chablis. The mood eased. Everyone readily agreed it could all be settled over some food at the Rotunda restaurant downstairs at Kings Place. The journalists moved, meeting Mark Stephens, Geraldine Proudler and Jennifer Robinson still sitting patiently outside the editor’s office.

Dinner was more relaxed, though Assange was still obsessed with the
New York Times
and its behaviour. Asked under what conditions he would now collaborate with the Americans, he said he would only consider it if the paper agreed to run no more negative material about him and offered him a right to reply to the Burns piece with equal prominence. “Good relationships extend to good people, they don’t extend to bad people. Unless we see a very serious counter-offer [from the
New York Times
] they have lost their exclusivity … Is the
NYT
a lost cause or is it a credible media outlet? Have things got that bad?”

The others decided to ignore that for the time being. They talked in more detail about how they could draw up a publication schedule, with agreed themes for each day. Assange was keen for the period of exclusivity to continue beyond the new year, or “the Christian calendar”, as he put it. He said WikiLeaks had already redacted the cables “and if there is a critical attack against us we will publish them all”.

By midnight the restaurant was empty and closing. It was decided that Rusbridger would go and ring Bill Keller in New York while the others relocated – taking the wine with them – to another meeting room back upstairs in the
Guardian
. Rusbridger had known Keller for about 10 years, which helped shortcut what was bound to be a slightly surreal conversation. “I’m going to tell you what Assange is demanding,” said Rusbridger. “I know what you’re going to say, but I have to go back and say I’ve put this to you.”

“Go ahead,” said Keller.