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IN 1958 a young Rupert Murdoch, then owner and
editor of Adelaide's The News, wrote: "In the race between secrecy and
truth, it seems inevitable that truth will always win."
His observation perhaps reflected his father Keith
Murdoch's expose that Australian troops were being needlessly sacrificed by
incompetent British commanders on the shores of Gallipoli. The British tried to
shut him up but Keith Murdoch would not be silenced and his efforts led to the
termination of the disastrous Gallipoli campaign.
Nearly a century later, WikiLeaks is also fearlessly
publishing facts that need to be made public.
I grew up in a Queensland country town where people
spoke their minds bluntly. They distrusted big government as something that
could be corrupted if not watched carefully. The dark days of corruption in the
Queensland government before the Fitzgerald inquiry are testimony to what
happens when the politicians gag the media from reporting the truth.
These things have stayed with me. WikiLeaks was
created around these core values. The idea, conceived in Australia, was to use
internet technologies in new ways to report the truth.
WikiLeaks coined a new type of journalism:
scientific journalism. We work with other media outlets to bring people the
news, but also to prove it is true. Scientific journalism allows you to read a
news story, then to click online to see the original document it is based on.
That way you can judge for yourself: Is the story true? Did the journalist
report it accurately?
Democratic societies need a strong media and
WikiLeaks is part of that media. The media helps keep government honest.
WikiLeaks has revealed some hard truths about the Iraq and Afghan wars, and
broken stories about corporate corruption.
People have said I am anti-war: for the record, I am
not. Sometimes nations need to go to war, and there are just wars. But there is
nothing more wrong than a government lying to its people about those wars, then
asking these same citizens to put their lives and their taxes on the line for
those lies. If a war is justified, then tell the truth and the people will
decide whether to support it.
If you have read any of the Afghan or Iraq war logs,
any of the US embassy cables or any of the stories about the things WikiLeaks
has reported, consider how important it is for all media to be able to report
these things freely.
WikiLeaks is not the only publisher of the US
embassy cables. Other media outlets, including Britain's The Guardian, The New
York Times, El Pais in Spain and Der Spiegel in Germany have published the same
redacted cables.
Yet it is WikiLeaks, as the co-ordinator of these
other groups, that has copped the most vicious attacks and accusations from the
US government and its acolytes. I have been accused of treason, even though I am
an Australian, not a US, citizen. There have been dozens of serious calls in the
US for me to be "taken out" by US special forces. Sarah Palin says I
should be "hunted down like Osama bin Laden", a Republican bill sits
before the US Senate seeking to have me declared a "transnational
threat" and disposed of accordingly. An adviser to the Canadian Prime
Minister's office has called on national television for me to be assassinated.
An American blogger has called for my 20-year-old son, here in Australia, to be
kidnapped and harmed for no other reason than to get at me.
And Australians should observe with no pride the
disgraceful pandering to these sentiments by Julia Gillard and her government.
The powers of the Australian government appear to be fully at the disposal of
the US as to whether to cancel my Australian passport, or to spy on or harass
WikiLeaks supporters. The Australian Attorney-General is doing everything he can
to help a US investigation clearly directed at framing Australian citizens and
shipping them to the US.
Prime Minister Gillard and US Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton have not had a word of criticism for the other media
organisations. That is because The Guardian, The New York Times and Der Spiegel
are old and large, while WikiLeaks is as yet young and small.
We are the underdogs. The Gillard government is
trying to shoot the messenger because it doesn't want the truth revealed,
including information about its own diplomatic and political dealings.
Has there been any response from the Australian
government to the numerous public threats of violence against me and other
WikiLeaks personnel? One might have thought an Australian prime minister would
be defending her citizens against such things, but there have only been wholly
unsubstantiated claims of illegality. The Prime Minister and especially the
Attorney-General are meant to carry out their duties with dignity and above the
fray. Rest assured, these two mean to save their own skins. They will not.
Every time WikiLeaks publishes the truth about
abuses committed by US agencies, Australian politicians chant a provably false
chorus with the State Department: "You'll risk lives! National security!
You'll endanger troops!" Then they say there is nothing of importance in
what WikiLeaks publishes. It can't be both. Which is it?
It is neither. WikiLeaks has a four-year publishing
history. During that time we have changed whole governments, but not a single
person, as far as anyone is aware, has been harmed. But the US, with Australian
government connivance, has killed thousands in the past few months alone.
US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates admitted in a
letter to the US congress that no sensitive intelligence sources or methods had
been compromised by the Afghan war logs disclosure. The Pentagon stated there
was no evidence the WikiLeaks reports had led to anyone being harmed in
Afghanistan. NATO in Kabul told CNN it couldn't find a single person who needed
protecting. The Australian Department of Defence said the same. No Australian
troops or sources have been hurt by anything we have published.
But our publications have been far from unimportant.
The US diplomatic cables reveal some startling facts:
► The US asked its diplomats to steal personal human material and
information from UN officials and human rights groups, including DNA,
fingerprints, iris scans, credit card numbers, internet passwords and ID photos,
in violation of international treaties. Presumably Australian UN diplomats may
be targeted, too.
► King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia asked the US to attack Iran.
► Officials in Jordan and Bahrain want Iran's nuclear program stopped by
any means available.
► Britain's Iraq inquiry was fixed to protect "US interests".
► Sweden is a covert member of NATO and US intelligence sharing is kept
from parliament.
► The US is playing hardball to get other countries to take freed
detainees from Guantanamo Bay. Barack Obama agreed to meet the Slovenian
President only if Slovenia took a prisoner. Our Pacific neighbour Kiribati was
offered millions of dollars to accept detainees.
In its landmark ruling in the Pentagon Papers case,
the US Supreme Court said "only a free and unrestrained press can
effectively expose deception in government". The swirling storm around
WikiLeaks today reinforces the need to defend the right of all media to reveal
the truth.
Julian Assange is the editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks.
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