In 2015,the statute of limitations on the allegations of molestation and coercion expired,and they were discontinued. The rape case was also dropped in 2017,because,according to Swedish prosecutors,Assange’s position in the embassy meant that “all prospects of pursuing the investigation under present circumstances are exhausted”.
This might have looked like a victory for Assange,who claimed his situation was a human rights violation. Some – even some of his supporters – doubted this. “The women in question have human rights,too,and need resolution,” wrote Jemima Khan,who stood bail for Assange during one of the English trials,but later broke with him over her involvement in a documentary about WikiLeaks. “Assange’s noble cause and his wish to avoid a US court does not trump their right to be heard in a Swedish court.”
After Assange was removed from the embassy,the rape case was reopened by the Swedes at the request of the second woman’s lawyer. But it was dropped in November by Swedish prosecutor Eva-Marie Persson,who said “the evidence has weakened considerably due to the long period of time that has elapsed since the events in question”. Elisabeth Massi Fritz,a lawyer for the woman in question,also made a statement,saying her client felt the decision was “unjust”. “My client has fought hard for many years and she has stood up for her rights even though it often felt like the whole world was against her,” Fritz said. “Today there are no words to describe how difficult this nine-year-long process has been for her.”
Fritz went on to say that she and her client would discuss whether to request a review of the decision. But at this point,we are left with only one incontrovertible fact. Whatever happened during those long-ago events in Sweden,and whatever you think of his behaviour since,Assange has long since lost the presumption of innocence the judicial process depends on. Whatever he faces next,he will do so carrying the inescapable reputational damage of the Swedish cases.
Speaking of reputational damage brings us to the second issue facing Assange. Redactions:the removal of people’s identifying details from information before it’s published,in order to protect them.
Redactions occur regularly in journalism,and clearly involve a whole series of value judgments. Whose identity needs to be protected? What level of risk or harm is material? How valuable is individual privacy? In the past decade,Assange’s attitude to redaction has varied dramatically. At times,he’s redacted material personally. Australian journalist Mark Davis was with him during the preparation of WikiLeaks’ original 2010 releases. “It is irrefutable that Julian redacted the most dangerous material from the Afghan war logs,” he says. “I was with him the evening he did so;I’m aware that he redacted 10,000 names – that’s not an inconsequential number. It took him a whole day and all night and into the next morning.”
But at other times,WikiLeaks has published great swathes of people’s private information that has seemed irrelevant to the public’s right to know. In the Saudi diplomatic cables releases of 2016,124 medical files were released,describing patients with psychiatric conditions,seriously ill children and refugees. Other documents have revealed the identities of teenage rape victims in Saudi Arabia,anti-government activists in Syria,and dissident academics in China. They’ve also revealed people’s credit card details,personal email accounts,social security numbers,and voicemails from their children at the zoo.
Many people find Assange’s attitude to redactions uncomfortable. In conversation withThe New Yorker’s Raffi Khatchadourian,who has written about Assange many times since 2010,Assange admitted some leaks risked hurting innocent people,“collateral damage,if you will”,but that he could not weigh the importance of every detail in every document. “In any case,we have to understand the reality that privacy is dead.”
Military and government sources,moreover,have often claimed that WikiLeaks’ revelations have led to innocent deaths. Given the nature of the material,this seems prima facie reasonable. But,in fact,no public evidence of such deaths has ever been produced. In the US in 2013,Manning was sentenced to 35 years’ prison for disclosing classified information. (In 2017,her sentence was commuted by then US president Barack Obama. She was jailed again in March this year for refusing to testify to a federal grand jury investigating WikiLeaks.) During Manning’s original sentencing,Brigadier-General Robert Carr,the senior counter-intelligence officer in charge of the investigation into WikiLeaks’ impacts,admitted to the court that he couldn’t name a single person who’d lost their life. “I don’t have a specific example,” he said.
The American result was echoed in Australia,where a declassified report from the Department of Defence concluded in 2010 that it was “unlikely” that Australian or allied forces were directly endangered by the leaks. WikiLeaks’ disclosures,says this report,did not contain “any significant details about operational incidents involving Australians beyond that already publicly released ... No Afghans with whom Australia has worked are identifiable,other than those who work with Australia openly,such as officials and community figures.” In conclusion,“The investigation found that the leaked documents are unlikely to have an adverse impact on Australia’s national interests.”
Assange’s supporters also point to WikiLeaks’ positive impacts. Its disclosures have played a part in encouraging democratic uprisings,notably in late 2010,when the people of Tunisia became the first in the Arab world for a generation to take to the streets and oust a leader,after WikiLeaks cables exposed government corruption and repression. Their actions,in turn,helped to spark the Arab Spring. In 2009,Amnesty International gave WikiLeaks its Media Award for exposing “extra-judicial killings and disappearances” in Kenya;and WikiLeaks-obtained documents have been submitted as evidence in human-rights cases around the world. At times,in places without democratic process or a free press,WikiLeaks has been an invaluable,sometimes unique,window into the way things really are.
![After visiting Assange in prison in May,actor Pamela Anderson told the waiting press,“He is an incredible person. I love him.”](https://static.ffx.io/images/$width_300%2C$height_150/t_crop_auto/t_sharpen%2Cq_auto%2Cf_auto/57a3c764818c8066f8b75303f1c4c4a651ce903b)
After visiting Assange in prison in May,actor Pamela Anderson told the waiting press,“He is an incredible person. I love him.”Credit:AAP
Conversation about redaction often leads to conversation about journalism. This begs the question:is Julian Assange a journalist? And frankly,does he even want to be? Assange has always had a vexed relationship to journalists,and to mainstream journalism itself. He’s won many journalism awards over the years,and at times – especially in the early years,when releases likeCollateral Murder were carefully edited over extended periods by teams of people;when information was independently verified (by physically sending two journalists to Baghdad,for example);when those affected were contacted personally in an attempt to protect them – he has acted according to journalism’s highest standards.
But after partnering with some of the most influential journalism publications in the world –The Guardian,The New York Times,Der Spiegel andEl País – over the Manning leaks,he’s spent much of the past decade violently opposed to most traditional journalistic endeavour. As early as 2010 he toldThe New Yorker’s Khatchadourian he had no interest in turning WikiLeaks into a journalistic operation. “We come not to save journalism but to destroy it,” he said. “Doesn’t deserve to live. Too debased. Has to be ground down into ashes before a new structure can be formed. The basic asymmetric information between writer and reader just encourages lying.”
What Assange appears to value is total transparency. WikiLeaks has admitted it reads only a tiny fraction of the material it releases,which often means that basic journalistic functions:context,analysis,editorial balance and right-of-reply,may all be lacking. To supporters,this is a refreshing change from editorial interference and spin;to others,it suggests that though Assange is many things,he’s not a journalist.
“No journalistic entity I have ever heard of – none – simply releases to the world an elephantine amount of material it has not read,” says prominent First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams of Harvard and Princeton law schools,referring to WikiLeaks’ general operation. Abrams maintains that WikiLeaks is “an organisation of political activists,a source for journalists,and a conduit of hacked information to the press and the public”. Assange himself,according to formerThe New York Times editor Bill Keller,is “a complicated source”,but not a journalist.
A slightly different view is that Assange is,via WikiLeaks,a publisher,even if he’s not personally a journalist;and that as a publisher he’s delivering on one of journalism’s key values:disseminating important information that is in the public’s interest to know. Even Assange’s most inveterate enemies acknowledge the significance of some WikiLeaks revelations,and none of its material,however occasionally problematic its sourcing,has ever been proven to be false. In a world of fake news,this matters.
In Australia,it can be hard to feel the relevance of this debate,because most WikiLeaks disclosures have had no direct connection to us. But in fact,it may matter more here than anywhere. In a national climate of government raids on individual journalists and journalistic organisations,and in the midst of a Senate inquiry into press freedoms,Australians are being asked more seriously than ever before to decide how much we have a right to know,and who gets to tell us.
Though it might sound melodramatic,Andrew Fowler,former ABCFour Corners reporter and author,believes that “we’re verging on authoritarianism in this country. We have passed more counterterrorism and surveillance and security laws in Australia since 2001 than any other Western country. And yet we don’t have the journalistic protections of either the UK,through the European Court of Human Rights,or the US via the First Amendment[which protects journalists and the freedom of the press]. So we’re mirroring the laws of our intelligence-sharing allies,but we have not given the same protections to the journalists who report under those laws.”
Facing trial in the US,Assange will be able to invoke First Amendment protections – but only if he can show that he is,indeed,a journalist. And the issues of journalism and redaction are no longer merely philosophical:they’re right there in black and white. Counts 15,16 and 17 of his indictment read (my italics):“Assange,having unauthorised possession of significant activity reports ...containing the names of individuals,who risked their safety and freedom by providing information to the United States and our allies,communicated the documents containing names of those sources to all the world bypublishing them on the Internet.”
Incredible as it may seem,the US extradition case against Julian Assange concerns only the disclosures of 2010. It has nothing to do with WikiLeaks’ more recent,and arguably even more famous revelations:those involving the US presidential elections of 2016.
This release involved more than 150,000 emails from the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta during 2016. These emails have been squarely blamed by some for Clinton’s eventual defeat by Donald Trump.
Much of the material in these emails is extremely pedestrian. The most damning details involve Democrat staffers and volunteers criticising Clinton’s then rival Bernie Sanders:discussing weak spots like his polling numbers and religion;calling him a “doofus” for attacking the Paris Agreement on climate change;expressing frustration that he wouldn’t give up despite a “near-impossible” chance of beating Clinton. There’s no evidence that these criticisms went beyond email gossip,but when they were made public,the DNC chairperson and three employees resigned. All of this was an extraordinary windfall for Donald Trump,who took to joyful exclamations:“I love WikiLeaks!”
In retrospect,the emails themselves were far less significant than the assessment by US intelligence agencies that they were obtained by Russian agents who hacked into the DNC system and passed on the information to WikiLeaks in an attempt to influence the US election. According to the US government,Assange – knowingly or not – had become a tool of the Russian state.
Assange has always denied this. His supporters maintain that,rather than a state-sponsored hack,the information was a “leak” by a single individual. Some have alluded to a DNC employee,Seth Rich,who was murdered in Washington DC in 2016. Others point to the former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan,Craig Murray,who claims to have had personal contact with the leaker. “I know who leaked[the DNC emails],” he has said. “I’ve met the person who leaked them,and they are certainly not Russian and it’s an insider.”
As with the sexual assault case,the WikiLeaks-Russia allegations have become a mess of conflicting claims. On one side are the combined forces of the US National Security Agency (NSA),the FBI,the CIA and multiple private cybersecurity firms,who have all remained adamant that Russia was behind the leaks. This view has gained credibility in the past year,with the serving of an official indictment by special counsel Robert Mueller,charging 12 Russian intelligence agents with highly specific and detailed crimes that led directly to the WikiLeaks revelations.
Supporters point,in contrast,to an analysis by a group of former senior intelligence specialists in the US known as VIPS. This group includes former NSA technical director William Binney and former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter (who correctly identified that Iraq did not possess significant weapons of mass destruction in 2002,before the 2003 US-led invasion of the country). In 2017,VIPS published an article claiming the Russia story was nonsense,and that the leak had occurred via a download onto a USB-style storage device,such as a single whistleblower might use.
But some members,including Ritter,later dissented from the story. Binney also stepped back from parts of it,and it’s never gained widespread support. The vast majority of mainstream opinion now accepts that Russia was the source of the WikiLeaks election disclosures.
Why does any of this matter? It matters to the Americans because they clearly have an interest in establishing whether their electoral process was tampered with. And it matters to Assange because,once again,his reputation is at stake. Being the conduit of genuine whistleblowing information and increasing political transparency is one thing;being part of (even unwittingly) a battle between two state actors is quite different. Facilitating conflicts among the powerful is dangerous ground to tread:such information might tip the balance of international power,or advance unknown international agendas,or start a war.
An additional problem for Assange is that he is well known to be anti-Clinton;in February 2016,he wrote in a WikiLeaks editorial that “Hillary lacks judgment and will push the United States into endless,stupid wars which spread terrorism ... She’s a war hawk with bad judgment who gets an unseemly emotional rush out of killing people.”
Opponents to Assange say WikiLeaks became a vehicle for his personal animus,thus betraying its mission of apolitical purity. His supporters disagree. “Being anti-Hillary does not make him pro-Trump,” says Mary Kostakidis. “But the truth is,the US establishment cannot forgive him for Trump’s election.” As for his Clinton remarks:“Look,many would agree with that assessment of Hillary. You could possibly accuse him of lacking the shrewdness to keep his opinions closer to his chest. But we all do have personal opinions:journalists,editors and publishers.”
These groups,however,are professionally liable for their objectivity. They can be sued for defamation;brought before press complaints tribunals for bias;lose their jobs for failures of fact or judgment. No such professional limits apply to Julian Assange.
![Assange in a police vehicle following his arrest at London’s Ecuadorian embassy in April.](https://static.ffx.io/images/$width_300%2C$height_150/t_crop_auto/t_sharpen%2Cq_auto%2Cf_auto/bea2d8bf58d81b6435b106f0d6e994b0bdb0eaa6)
Assange in a police vehicle following his arrest at London’s Ecuadorian embassy in April.Credit:Getty Images
Mary Kostakidis last saw Julian Assange in Belmarsh eight weeks ago. It took her an hour and a half to reach him through the prison’s various security stages:when she finally arrived at the visitors’ hall she found him in “this massive room with 50 prisoners,and two or three visitors to each prisoner”.
Assange’s condition,she says,shocked her. “He was just sitting very still,looking straight ahead. He’s not well,” she says steadily. “He can’t focus easily. I could see how he was struggling. It was very difficult to hear. I had to be like this …” – she stands up and puts both hands on the table,leaning her body forward towards me – “… the guard kept asking me to sit down.” She sits down. “I told the guard I’d come a long way to hear him,and then the guard offered to move us to a quieter part of the room,and that was a little better.”
Kostakidis has a pretty good poker face. But talking about Assange’s condition,her voice falters. “If we allow this to continue,he’ll die,and we won’t know whether he’s been killed,or whether he’s taken his own life. There were moments when his intelligence and passion broke through,but ultimately,if a government is trying to destroy you,and you’re at their mercy,they will succeed.”
The Australian governmentcertainly appears singularly unmoved by Julian Assange. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade did not respond to Good Weekend’s questions about whether he’d received basic consular assistance (which is simply to advocate for every Australian’s right to fair treatment in foreign jails,and proper access to legal materials). Claims of maltreatment and solitary confinement appear unfounded,but Assange’s lawyer Jennifer Robinson says she “remains concerned” about his ability to prepare his case. “He is in effective isolation because he is[in the medical sector of the prison],” she writes in an email. “As far as I am aware,he does not yet have access to a laptop;his solicitors have had to fight to be able to deliver him papers in person because of severe delays in papers reaching him by post.”
Here in Australia,meanwhile,Prime Minister Scott Morrison has said the legal processes must “run their course” and Assange should “face the music”. The government position appears to be,as former High Commissioner to the UK Alexander Downer told the National Press Club in November,that “If the US wants to extradite him,and extradition proceedings are underway,Australia can’t[intervene] even if it wanted to.”
This is total nonsense,says everyone with experience:diplomacy is all about pulling levers behind the scenes. When Australian filmmaker James Ricketson was imprisoned for spying in Cambodia in 2017,then-PM Malcolm Turnbull made a deal with Cambodian PM Hun Sen to release him;in the end,he was freed three weeks after receiving a guilty verdict and six-year jail term from the Cambodian court. “That’s how diplomacy works,” says Ricketson. “It’s pretty down and dirty.”
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Assange supporters hope something similar will happen here. “What should happen,” says Bob Carr,“is that our foreign minister,Marise Payne,should have a conversation with Mike Pompeo,her American counterpart. She should remind him of what a good ally we are to the US,always to be counted on. She should remind him that,importantly to his president,the US runs a trade surplus with Australia,and she should say,‘In view of these things,we think it the better course to quietly let this drop. Besides,’ she could argue,‘if you go ahead,you are likely to face a backlash in Australia and damage the US-Australia alliance.’ She is absolutely entitled to make those representations.”
The problem,say sources in government,is that Australia may be reluctant to expend political capital on behalf of Assange. Australia may also be too afraid – “too craven”,according to one – to test its standing with the US;and there may be a sense that the US has gone too far to back down,so a request to do so would be both embarrassing and useless.
The US-Australia relationship may be further tested if,eventually,the UK refuses extradition and deports Assange back to Australia. It appears that the US might then be able to request his extradition directly from us. What will we do then?
At this stage,none of this is certain. What does seem clear,at the time of writing,is that the Australian government must move before anything will change for Assange. And crucially,for the Australian government to move,the Australian people must also move. “If you’re a footballer or a handsome young couple,” says James Ricketson,“the government will step in,because there’s clear public interest and sympathy. But my feeling is that with Julian,until there’s a public outcry – and until the media puts the metaphorical blowtorch to the belly of government – they’re not going to do anything.”
![Is there enough sympathy for Julian Assange – this particular man,at this particular moment – to galvanise public support?](https://static.ffx.io/images/$width_300%2C$height_150/t_crop_auto/t_sharpen%2Cq_auto%2Cf_auto/3d0fa65f69434cd2da0f381f5e93b4601c1ce3a5)
Is there enough sympathy for Julian Assange – this particular man,at this particular moment – to galvanise public support?Credit:Andy Gotts/Camera Press/australscope
And so we return to the fundamental question of Julian Assange: the question of reputation. Is there enough sympathy for him – this particular man,at this particular moment – to galvanise public support? And can we,in the final analysis,look beyond reputation to the broader picture,and decide what principles of democracy the Assange case represents,and whether those principles matter,even if the man himself is not to our liking?
Independent MP Andrew Wilkie certainly hopes so. He has recently registered a parliamentary group,along with co-chair George Christensen,of 11 MPs committed to bringing Assange home. “I’m not a friend of Julian – I’ve never met him,” he says. “And I know that some members of the group have no time for him at all. A number actually feel very negatively towards him.
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"But I think it’s very telling that those people,who don’t like him at all,would still join a parliamentary group to bring him home. They care about him as an Australian in trouble;they care about the principles of international law;they care about the public’s right to know information that impacts on democracy. And they care about the importance of speaking truth to power.”
John Shipton,Julian Assange’s father,can be forgiven for not mentioning these larger issues. At the end of our conversation,I ask him what he thinks will happen to his son. He is silent for a long time. “It’s a very difficult question,” he says finally. “I just keep working towards the idea of Julian seeing his family;just sitting in one of the sidewalk cafes and watching the passing parade. I just keep working towards that.
“Julian is a myth for a lot of people,” he adds suddenly. “He’s not real. Perhaps that’s always the case with other people. We can’t,at a distance,say what any man’s life is. We can only imagine.”
To read more from Good Weekendmagazine,visit our page atThe Sydney Morning Herald,The Age andBrisbane Times.