WORLD NEWS | JULY 27, 2010
WikiLeaks Rolled Dice to Raise Its Profile
Website Collaborated With Mainstream Media on Afghan Leaks After Previous Scoops Failed to Win Enough Attention
By JESSICA E. VASCELLARO
WikiLeaks, frustrated at the lack of splash of recent leaks on its whistle-blowing website, has rolled the dice to try to raise its profile by teaming up with news organizations in its latest dump of classified documents.
The site's secretive founder Julian Assange surfaced in London on Monday to give a rare news conference as part of that new strategy. The white-haired Australian computer hacker schooled a packed room of reporters on how to navigate the 76,000 documents just released, arguing they contained evidence of war crimes and could work as "deterrents" to further abuses.
WikiLeaks was launched in 2007 by self-described Chinese dissidents and Internet hackers as a warehouse of leaked documents. Through its bare-bones site Wikileaks.org, it has landed big scoops, including its most infamous disclosure—video footage of American soldiers shooting down a group of people in Iraq in 2007. Representatives for the site have repeatedly declined to say how they obtain their material and their activities have prompted investigations by federal authorities.
People familiar with the matter say Mr. Assange is frustrated that some of the site's other disclosures, such as a database of military procurements in Iraq and Afghanistan, didn't garner more attention. Some senior members of the group also want to combat the perception that the site is veering into the realm of opinion, one of the people said. The site took flak from some commentators for editing the 2007 Iraq video and for dubbing the video "Collateral Murder."
Mr. Assange launched a new plan this summer in a Brussels cafe. He offered a U.K. newspaper, the Guardian, advance access to documents the site planned to release about the war in Afghanistan, according to the Guardian's account. They came up with a password for accessing the trove based on the logo on the cafe's napkins.
Monday, the Guardian, along with the New York Times and German weekly Der Spiegel, published a flood of stories based on mostly raw field reports, citing WikiLeaks as the source. They say they weren't told how the site obtained them but tried to verify them independently.
A spokesman for WikiLeaks said the group didn't pay for the leaked documents.
Mr. Assange told reporters on Monday that he limited his outreach to these three organizations out of expediency and that more collaborations with traditional media are on the horizon. "We had hoped to partner with a network to do a more significant investigation, but limited time and resources eclipsed that," he said. "We do hope to do that next time."
The release of the documents raises legal questions about WikiLeaks' approach and legal experts said the site could be investigated. The U.S. Constitution protects organizations that publish classified material if they did nothing to influence obtaining it, legal experts say.
"It is clearly illegal, to put it bluntly, to steal classified documents. It is clearly protected by the First Amendment to publish documents obtained illegally as long as the publisher has not been involved in illegality," said Frederick Schauer, a law professor at the University of Virginia. "That is the lesson of the Pentagon Papers." In 1971, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the First Amendment allowed the New York Times and Washington Post to publish sections of the Pentagon Papers, a classified study of U.S. involvement in Vietnam.
It might be difficult, said Jack Balkin, a Yale University law professor, for the Department of Justice to gain jurisdiction against a foreign entity like WikiLeaks, which has an Australian mailing address and is rumored to be based in Sweden. Even if it did—and then won a judgment against it—the judgment could be hard to enforce.
WikiLeaks has long been shrouded in secrecy. At the beginning, its organizers were anonymous, soliciting documents and eventually vetting them before selecting what to put up, according to members of the group. More recently, Mr. Assange, who is in his late 30s, has emerged as its chief spokesman and refers to himself as the site's "editor-in-chief" and as a journalist. He and other organizers have been trying to raise money for lawyers and to keep the site functioning. Monday, the site was inaccessible much of the day, overwhelmed by traffic.
Bob Steele, the director of the Prindle Institute for Ethics at DePauw University, said that if WikiLeaks founders are fashioning themselves as journalists, they should be more open and transparent about their methods.
Mr. Assange said on Monday that WikiLeaks had controlled the embargo date. The New York Times and the Guardian said the publications worked independently. Each also said WikiLeaks had no involvement in the publication of their articles.
The editors discussed the WikiLeaks deal among themselves, Mr. Assange said. Guardian reporter Nick Davies brokered arrangements to an editor at the Guardian who reached out to Der Spiegel and the New York Times.
WikiLeaks and the new "Pentagon Papers"
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Originally Posted by ']['ear
They basically destroyed the life of someone they knew was troubled just to get some juicy documents. Is this really any different to terrorist groups getting mentally ill people to become suicide bombers?
