BBC Panorama (1953) s59e06 Episode Script
WikiLeaks: The Secret Story
luck with the show.
Have a nice This man, the founder of WikiLeaks s, holding the powerful to account by leaking secrets like this.
Come on.
What annoys me the most is when people abuse their power and harm innocence.
The scale of the leaks unprecedented.
These released are based on 400,000 classified documents.
Julain Assange is fiecting extradition to Sweden on a rape allegation.
A black box has been applied to my life.
On the outside of that black box, has been written the word "rape".
In America, he's accused of endangering lives.
Sources of ours are now in jail.
Sources of ours now fear for their lives.
Who has Julian been giving the leaks to? If there was any involvement of anti-Semite in WikiLeaks, why didn't anyone tell me.
What does that say about the man and the organisation he leads? It became very powerful.
You cannot 30 metres below ground, from this Cold War nuclear bunker in Sweden, a revolution of a kind.
The heart of an information machine, using the internet to globalise openness.
What are those things there? These are the Powergen rators.
From what looks like a James Bond set, WikiLeaks puts out secrets the rich and powerful would rather we didn't know.
The concept behind WikiLeaks is simple: Whistle blowers can post secrets to a secure electronic mailbox.
The idea: No-one should ever find out who they are.
How much information is moving through this room? I would say infinity amount of information.
We have about 10% of the Swedish internet traffic.
I will show you.
So these are the two servers.
They are live now and thousands of people are visiting them all the time.
Don't touch.
I'm not touching.
WikiLeaks have backups which replicate the material on similar servers all over the world.
So if any Government tries to close down WikiLeaks, for example this one in Sweden, it will pop up somewhere else.
WikiLeaks is using the universe ality of the internet to challenge the power of the nation state and the most powerful nation of all can do precious little to stop it.
The last thing the American superpower wanted to share was this video, released by WikiLeaks last April.
An Apache gunship hovers over Baghdad.
On the ground, suspected insurgents.
But also were Reuters news photographer and his driver.
Request permission to engage.
Fire.
That guys crawling on the curb.
A van pulls up to help the injured.
Being permission to At least 11 people dead.
The Americans investigated and say they found no wrongdoing.
But they didn't want the world to see this.
It's their fault for bringing their kids to a battle.
That's right.
WikiLeaks call the video, which was post add none mussly, collateral murder.
It rocketed the website toint national fame.
He risks his life to promote transparency, please welcome Julain Assange.
the battle between power and openness, enter a rock star for the What we want to create is a system where there is guaranteed free press across the world, the entire world that every individual in the world has the ability to publish material that is meaningful.
man who founded WikiLeaks in 2006 sees himself as a fighter for openness and from the early days WikiLeaks had great scoops.
Operating man you'lls for Guantanamo Bay.
In Kenya, evidence of police death squads.
And here in Germany, a dossier against a major drugs company, accused of bribing doctors.
The Berlin Wall, a symbol of repression for decades, when it came down in 1989, it felt like a whole world had been opened up.
Now WikiLeaks is promising to bring down the firewall between those with real power and ordinary people.
WikiLeaks is now considered so powerful, its credited by some in having a hand in the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt.
This is Julain Assange.
We're here to make a short presentation about the WikiLeaks project.
It's very, very important to preserve our historic record as detailed and accurate as possible.
At Julian's side, Daniel Domschiet- Berg, his right-hand man and software wizard.
It was the best time in my life.
Every time when I woke up something new had happened.
It was almost too excited to even go to sleep.
Because either some publication had made the news somewhere and something had changed or something new had got in.
There was always this uncertainty of what actually happened, but something always happened.
Also on the inside a radical Icelandic MP who helped produce the Apache gunship video for WikiLeaks.
I was deeply moved.
I was sitting there and crying, particularly when I saw the wounded man trying to get up and they were hoping that they could shoot him.
If you don't have free press.
If you don't have Freedom of Information in your democratic society, you are not living in a democracy.
Daniel and Julian fought many battles for openness together.
He was a man with a mission.
He was one of the few people I knew that were willing to do something without thinking first of all, about how they could maybe profit from it, how they could sustain their living from it or whatever.
He was willing to go to a great lengtodge make sure that this idea worked.
For a man whose mission is to bring openness to the world, Julian surprisingly, when Panorama approached him, closed down.
We asked repeatedly for an interview.
He said no.
We asked his lawyer and his spokesman.
They didn't want to take part.
We asked some of his supporters, including bianca Jagger, Ken loch as well.
They too said no.
Julian's not exactly camera shy.
A TV crew from his native Australia got a rare insight into his family history.
What is your background? What is your childhood and your youth? Is it true 30 schools? 37 schools.
An unconventional family life kept him on the move as a child.
As a man he's still on the move, trying to keep one step ahead of the authorities he fears are out to stop him.
Julian loved computers and by the age of 19, he was hacking into US military computer systems.
Yeah we had a back door in the US military security coordination centre.
We had total control over this for two years.
pleaded guilty to 24 hacking- related offences in 1996 but avoided jail.
Ten years later, Julian, at the helm of WikiLeaks was back in control, using the internet to poke power in the eye.
And to avoid the reach of America, Julian chose to base himself in countries like Sweden, attracted by their laws on openness.
It was also a place to forge alliances with other Freedom of Information campaigners.
Information can no longer be controlled.
So what used to be power in the hands of a small, selected elite at the top of the pyramid, is now actually power at the base of the pyramid.
The power has shifted 180 degrees.
And there's going to be a lot and lots of struggles before we see equilibrium on this.
It didn't take long for the Americans to strike back, claiming their first scalp in the battle with WikiLeaks.
Seven weeks after the release of the Apache gunship video, private Bradley Manning, the US intelligence analyst in Iraq was arrested.
WikiLeaks has never said whether Manning is its source.
Julian is on the record pledging support for whistleblowers.
If they are exposed, then we'll fight like hell to bring attention to their plight and we will send lawyers and cash, if necessary, to get them out of their bad situation.
But for months, WikiLeaks sent neither lawyers nor cash.
A figure of $50,000 was mentioned.
But so far, the Bradley Manning legal fund has only received $ 15 DM100 from WikiLeaks.
-- $15,100 from WikiLeaks.
Because our payment was delayed for so long, many people around the world have contributed.
With every contribution the amount that was needed from WikiLeaks grew less, decreased.
That's not the right attitude either.
Manning, now 23, was apparently shopped by a former computer hacker.
The word is he copied the video and a mass of other secrets from classified US databases, while list tong Lady Gaga.
-- listening to Lady Gaga.
If convicted he could face 52 years in prison.
If Bradley Manning is the source for that material, he is the true whistleblower.
WikiLeaks only relayed that material to the public and in that respect, that person is the one that should receive all the support.
From the moment Manning was arrested, the clock was ticking.
Cot Americans close down the site before the next leak? WikiLeaks was sitting on thousands and thousands of documents, including the inside story of the Afghan war, reports and logs, almost all classified.
Where are we heading now? Off to the bunker in the Guardian.
Julian turned to the mainstream media.
deal was this: He would turn over the material to us.
We would select it.
We would study it.
We would analyse it.
We would do all the things journalists do to make sense of stuff.
We'd publish it and WikiLeaks would get the credit.
other newspapers were in on the deal.
Immediately they saw a problem.
The documents were littered with the names of agos -- Afghans who helped the Americans.
We were really worried about these informants.
We were worried unless they're names were deleted they would suffer reprisals or would be killed.
Julian wanted to publish in full.
The plan was for the papers to go to print at the same time, but Julian released all the documents online.
We said to Julian, look, we're really worried about the question of the informants.
My personal recollection is that Julian said words to the effect of, "If they get killed, they deserve it, because they're informants.
Therefore they deserve to die.
" There was a sort of silence around the table.
I think we all thought that was a very callous thing to say.
The newspapers removed all the names.
WikiLeaks didn't.
It held back 15,000 documents to minimise harm, but put out 77,000.
Dozens of Afghans were identified.
The Americans say that although there's no evidence anyone has been killed, there are victims.
Sources of ours are now in jail.
Sources of ours now fear for their lives.
Is that what the revelation of information is supposed to do? Fundamentally change people who were trying to provide a service, who were trying to open up closed societies? But what WikiLeaks has done is put those people, trying to change authoritarian societies, it's put their lives and their futures at risk.
Is that what this is supposed Human rights groups criticised Wikileaks for failing to protect the Afghans.
Amnesty International offered to discuss helping with future reductions.
Julian reportedly replied "I am very busy, and have no time to deal with people who prefer to do nothing but cover their asses".
Daniel says that by the time Julienne accepted that names should be removed from the Afghan warlocks, it was too late.
It was rushing things.
It was making agreements we could not stick to, that were not healthy, that were not transparent enough and that no one has understood in the organisation.
And then, more trouble.
But this time, it was personal.
News broke of a rape investigation here in Sweden.
The alleged culprit - Julian Assange.
Could this be a coincidence? After the rape allegations broke, Assange tweeted "we were warned to expect so dirty tricks.
Now we have the first one.
".
His lawyer spoke of a honey trap.
What does the lawyer for the two women make of the suggestion of dirty tricks? Could this be a CIA set up? It is not a dirty trick.
There is no conspiracy.
These two women did not know each other before.
They had never met.
They were very much for Wikileaks, and they still are.
Are you or they in the pay of the CIA? No.
I would never accept that.
There is no handicap or whatever it is called in English.
Julian denies the women's allegations.
His lawyers now suggest they are motivated by money and revenge.
Daniel put into Julian that he take a back seat until he cleared his name.
You suggested that? What did he say? was not negotiable.
He took this as an attack.
He said it was a power grab that I was making.
He was alleging that I was seeing this as my chance, as he put it, to get out of middle management.
Tension was mounting, but the leaks were still being published.
These releases are based on 400,000 classified documents that were received and The third revelation - America's Iraqi warlocks.
This time, identities were protected.
An American reports seeing an Iraqi policemen torturing is a spit.
He recalls hearing whooping noises and finding a man beating a detain the's feet with electric cable.
The abuse was not immediately investigated.
Next, cabled gate.
250,000 leaked documents revealing US diplomatic traffic on everything from China to the Lockerbie bomber.
The Americans were not best pleased.
The United States strongly condemns the illegal disclosure of classified information.
It puts people's lives in danger, threatens our national security and undermines our efforts to work with other countries to solve shared problems.
Suddenly, Visa, Mastercard and PayPal stop processing donations into Wikileaks.
Banks, Julian said, to political pressure from the Americans.
The companies say they are concerned about the legality of what Wikileaks is doing.
Jesus Christ! Buy now, Julian cannot pick up a paper without seeing himself.
Or move without a camera being pointed at him.
Can we talk about your life? No.
Is it an interview about me all the chicks? It cannot be both.
I am untouchable now for this country.
Untouchable? Now he is not just holding power to account, but has power in his own right.
How he handles it matters.
I sometimes described him as somebody with an incredibly high IQ and a remarkably low EQ.
Emotional intelligence? I think he is underdeveloped in a sense when it comes to having compassion to how other people feel or think, whereas he can always have an interest in an intellectual debate with you.
You are talking about a man who has given up his home, family and even his homeland for something he believes in.
many people would live in a suitcase for records they believe in so deeply.
But Birgitta Jonsdottir and Daniel were becoming worried about the lack of openness at Wikileaks.
Wikileaks fights for transparency.
When I was there, there was very little transparency about it.
I could understand it when it was tiny, but with its success, it became very powerful.
You cannot let power remain unchecked.
The growing dissent inside Wikileaks led to a row online by instant message.
Julian accused Daniel of leaking to the press something Daniel denies.
Daniel challenged Gillian about his leadership style.
Julian did not like that.
So you say to Julian, stop shooting at messengers.
Julian - I have had it.
Daniel - likewise, and that does not just go for me.
Julian - if you do not answer the question, you will be removed.
Daniel - you are not anyone's king or God Julian - you were suspended for one month, effective immediately.
And then he finishes off - if you wish to appeal, you will be heard on Tuesday.
What was that about? The background of this was that I was asking him about what specific deals he had made with media in respect to collaboration.
I just wanted to know what he had been working out with him, and he refused.
He took this whole occasion of talking to me to tell me that I was not allowed to ask questions to him, that he does not have to answer to me.
He has this weird hierarchy.
What he did not know while he was being disciplined was that Julian was dealing with a man with a very unsavoury reputation.
He is a Wikileaks associate in Russia who claims to have access to all 250,000 of the leaked US cables, which he selects for the region's media.
The future is not something which exists independently of the efforts, of your effort and my effort.
The future is something we do together.
Whose future exactly? Meet Alexander Lukashenko, the president of the former Soviet republic of Belarus.
He has been described as the last dictator in The elections that took place last year in December showed just what Alexander Lukashenko is made of.
Here arrested 700 citizens, protesters, journalists, politicians and members of the opposition.
And the EU and America have both now introduced to travel bans on Lukashenko.
The EU has frozen his assets.
Exactly.
The sort of chap Wikileaks would want to target.
But online, its associate not only praises the regime but also uses a Wikileaks cable to suggest that America is bankrolling the opposition pulls up and that, say the human rights group, could endanger democracy activists.
Shamir is using his tweeted -- privileged position as Wikileaks pushed the conduit to support Dave vicious regime.
It should worry Wikileaks that they could name is being used in this way.
Wikileaks say Shamir has never worked for them and they do not endorse his writing.
Shamir claims he is being smeared and that he also supplied cables to opposition media.
We have also discovered that Shamir, though born in Russia, was convicted of stirring up hatred against Jews by a French court in 2008.
Julian was warned about his re- Chemmy a's views a year earlier.
-- about Israel Shamir's views.
Panorama has been leaked this.
On it is an e-mail from Julian Assange.
It reads, Bayer Israel/Adam, someone wrote to say they refused to associate with an organisation that would work with an anti-Serb might like Israel Shamir.
Julian goes on, from a sampling of your writing, I did not find the allegation borne out.
I found the samples to be strong and compassionate.
Julian went on to suggest a solution - that Chemmy are right for Wikileaks under another name.
And that is handy, because he has a few of them.
Among them, Adam.
Whatever the name, Julian and Chemmy were photographed together two months ago.
How in hell is that guy involved, and why didn't I know about this? If there was any involvement of an anti- Semite in Wikileaks, why didn't anyone tell me? I would not work with such a guy.
Chamois are ignored our question about his conviction, but wrote online, I harbour no hate to a Jew, because he is a Jew.
However, I do criticise various aspects of the Jewish world view.
We asked Julian about Shamir and all the other.
We raised in the programme.
He did not reply.
But his lawyers have accused both Panorama and Daniel of using stolen documents.
Strange from a man who got 250,000 American cables.
Time to catch up with him.
Julian? Why were you not talk to Panorama? For the last two months, he has had to report to this police station.
This was as close as we could get.
Julian, do you still stand by Mr Shamir? Last week, a court heard Julian's case against extradition to Sweden on allegations of rape and sexual assault.
He will learn his fate in 10 days' time.
Birgitta Jonsdottir left Wikileaks before the release of the Iraq warlocks.
So did Daniel and others, taking with them software which make -- made a Wikileaks safe for whistleblowers.
Wikileaks say they can -- dismissed Daniel because they accuse him of sabotage, which he denies.
Either way, Wikileaks online is now closed for leaks.
Daniel has now launched his own website, OpenLeaks.
Aren't you setting up in opposition to Wikileaks, and therefore, you are the opposition? So what you are doing, perhaps cunningly, is knocking down Wikileaks so that you can build up OpenLeaks? That is not what we are doing.
I believe that generally, centralism is not good.
It is not good if there is only one solution for a problem that exists in society.
I would be more than happy to see Wikileaks flourish in the future.
In a statement received this afternoon, Wikileaks told us they did not want to take part in the programme because we are repeating, they say, sleazy, had made an completely false claims.
To his supporters, Julian Assange, however flawed, has changed the world.
Wikileaks is a pioneer.
When you are a pioneer, you do make mistakes.
And I think that one needs to have a bit of
Have a nice This man, the founder of WikiLeaks s, holding the powerful to account by leaking secrets like this.
Come on.
What annoys me the most is when people abuse their power and harm innocence.
The scale of the leaks unprecedented.
These released are based on 400,000 classified documents.
Julain Assange is fiecting extradition to Sweden on a rape allegation.
A black box has been applied to my life.
On the outside of that black box, has been written the word "rape".
In America, he's accused of endangering lives.
Sources of ours are now in jail.
Sources of ours now fear for their lives.
Who has Julian been giving the leaks to? If there was any involvement of anti-Semite in WikiLeaks, why didn't anyone tell me.
What does that say about the man and the organisation he leads? It became very powerful.
You cannot 30 metres below ground, from this Cold War nuclear bunker in Sweden, a revolution of a kind.
The heart of an information machine, using the internet to globalise openness.
What are those things there? These are the Powergen rators.
From what looks like a James Bond set, WikiLeaks puts out secrets the rich and powerful would rather we didn't know.
The concept behind WikiLeaks is simple: Whistle blowers can post secrets to a secure electronic mailbox.
The idea: No-one should ever find out who they are.
How much information is moving through this room? I would say infinity amount of information.
We have about 10% of the Swedish internet traffic.
I will show you.
So these are the two servers.
They are live now and thousands of people are visiting them all the time.
Don't touch.
I'm not touching.
WikiLeaks have backups which replicate the material on similar servers all over the world.
So if any Government tries to close down WikiLeaks, for example this one in Sweden, it will pop up somewhere else.
WikiLeaks is using the universe ality of the internet to challenge the power of the nation state and the most powerful nation of all can do precious little to stop it.
The last thing the American superpower wanted to share was this video, released by WikiLeaks last April.
An Apache gunship hovers over Baghdad.
On the ground, suspected insurgents.
But also were Reuters news photographer and his driver.
Request permission to engage.
Fire.
That guys crawling on the curb.
A van pulls up to help the injured.
Being permission to At least 11 people dead.
The Americans investigated and say they found no wrongdoing.
But they didn't want the world to see this.
It's their fault for bringing their kids to a battle.
That's right.
WikiLeaks call the video, which was post add none mussly, collateral murder.
It rocketed the website toint national fame.
He risks his life to promote transparency, please welcome Julain Assange.
the battle between power and openness, enter a rock star for the What we want to create is a system where there is guaranteed free press across the world, the entire world that every individual in the world has the ability to publish material that is meaningful.
man who founded WikiLeaks in 2006 sees himself as a fighter for openness and from the early days WikiLeaks had great scoops.
Operating man you'lls for Guantanamo Bay.
In Kenya, evidence of police death squads.
And here in Germany, a dossier against a major drugs company, accused of bribing doctors.
The Berlin Wall, a symbol of repression for decades, when it came down in 1989, it felt like a whole world had been opened up.
Now WikiLeaks is promising to bring down the firewall between those with real power and ordinary people.
WikiLeaks is now considered so powerful, its credited by some in having a hand in the revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt.
This is Julain Assange.
We're here to make a short presentation about the WikiLeaks project.
It's very, very important to preserve our historic record as detailed and accurate as possible.
At Julian's side, Daniel Domschiet- Berg, his right-hand man and software wizard.
It was the best time in my life.
Every time when I woke up something new had happened.
It was almost too excited to even go to sleep.
Because either some publication had made the news somewhere and something had changed or something new had got in.
There was always this uncertainty of what actually happened, but something always happened.
Also on the inside a radical Icelandic MP who helped produce the Apache gunship video for WikiLeaks.
I was deeply moved.
I was sitting there and crying, particularly when I saw the wounded man trying to get up and they were hoping that they could shoot him.
If you don't have free press.
If you don't have Freedom of Information in your democratic society, you are not living in a democracy.
Daniel and Julian fought many battles for openness together.
He was a man with a mission.
He was one of the few people I knew that were willing to do something without thinking first of all, about how they could maybe profit from it, how they could sustain their living from it or whatever.
He was willing to go to a great lengtodge make sure that this idea worked.
For a man whose mission is to bring openness to the world, Julian surprisingly, when Panorama approached him, closed down.
We asked repeatedly for an interview.
He said no.
We asked his lawyer and his spokesman.
They didn't want to take part.
We asked some of his supporters, including bianca Jagger, Ken loch as well.
They too said no.
Julian's not exactly camera shy.
A TV crew from his native Australia got a rare insight into his family history.
What is your background? What is your childhood and your youth? Is it true 30 schools? 37 schools.
An unconventional family life kept him on the move as a child.
As a man he's still on the move, trying to keep one step ahead of the authorities he fears are out to stop him.
Julian loved computers and by the age of 19, he was hacking into US military computer systems.
Yeah we had a back door in the US military security coordination centre.
We had total control over this for two years.
pleaded guilty to 24 hacking- related offences in 1996 but avoided jail.
Ten years later, Julian, at the helm of WikiLeaks was back in control, using the internet to poke power in the eye.
And to avoid the reach of America, Julian chose to base himself in countries like Sweden, attracted by their laws on openness.
It was also a place to forge alliances with other Freedom of Information campaigners.
Information can no longer be controlled.
So what used to be power in the hands of a small, selected elite at the top of the pyramid, is now actually power at the base of the pyramid.
The power has shifted 180 degrees.
And there's going to be a lot and lots of struggles before we see equilibrium on this.
It didn't take long for the Americans to strike back, claiming their first scalp in the battle with WikiLeaks.
Seven weeks after the release of the Apache gunship video, private Bradley Manning, the US intelligence analyst in Iraq was arrested.
WikiLeaks has never said whether Manning is its source.
Julian is on the record pledging support for whistleblowers.
If they are exposed, then we'll fight like hell to bring attention to their plight and we will send lawyers and cash, if necessary, to get them out of their bad situation.
But for months, WikiLeaks sent neither lawyers nor cash.
A figure of $50,000 was mentioned.
But so far, the Bradley Manning legal fund has only received $ 15 DM100 from WikiLeaks.
-- $15,100 from WikiLeaks.
Because our payment was delayed for so long, many people around the world have contributed.
With every contribution the amount that was needed from WikiLeaks grew less, decreased.
That's not the right attitude either.
Manning, now 23, was apparently shopped by a former computer hacker.
The word is he copied the video and a mass of other secrets from classified US databases, while list tong Lady Gaga.
-- listening to Lady Gaga.
If convicted he could face 52 years in prison.
If Bradley Manning is the source for that material, he is the true whistleblower.
WikiLeaks only relayed that material to the public and in that respect, that person is the one that should receive all the support.
From the moment Manning was arrested, the clock was ticking.
Cot Americans close down the site before the next leak? WikiLeaks was sitting on thousands and thousands of documents, including the inside story of the Afghan war, reports and logs, almost all classified.
Where are we heading now? Off to the bunker in the Guardian.
Julian turned to the mainstream media.
deal was this: He would turn over the material to us.
We would select it.
We would study it.
We would analyse it.
We would do all the things journalists do to make sense of stuff.
We'd publish it and WikiLeaks would get the credit.
other newspapers were in on the deal.
Immediately they saw a problem.
The documents were littered with the names of agos -- Afghans who helped the Americans.
We were really worried about these informants.
We were worried unless they're names were deleted they would suffer reprisals or would be killed.
Julian wanted to publish in full.
The plan was for the papers to go to print at the same time, but Julian released all the documents online.
We said to Julian, look, we're really worried about the question of the informants.
My personal recollection is that Julian said words to the effect of, "If they get killed, they deserve it, because they're informants.
Therefore they deserve to die.
" There was a sort of silence around the table.
I think we all thought that was a very callous thing to say.
The newspapers removed all the names.
WikiLeaks didn't.
It held back 15,000 documents to minimise harm, but put out 77,000.
Dozens of Afghans were identified.
The Americans say that although there's no evidence anyone has been killed, there are victims.
Sources of ours are now in jail.
Sources of ours now fear for their lives.
Is that what the revelation of information is supposed to do? Fundamentally change people who were trying to provide a service, who were trying to open up closed societies? But what WikiLeaks has done is put those people, trying to change authoritarian societies, it's put their lives and their futures at risk.
Is that what this is supposed Human rights groups criticised Wikileaks for failing to protect the Afghans.
Amnesty International offered to discuss helping with future reductions.
Julian reportedly replied "I am very busy, and have no time to deal with people who prefer to do nothing but cover their asses".
Daniel says that by the time Julienne accepted that names should be removed from the Afghan warlocks, it was too late.
It was rushing things.
It was making agreements we could not stick to, that were not healthy, that were not transparent enough and that no one has understood in the organisation.
And then, more trouble.
But this time, it was personal.
News broke of a rape investigation here in Sweden.
The alleged culprit - Julian Assange.
Could this be a coincidence? After the rape allegations broke, Assange tweeted "we were warned to expect so dirty tricks.
Now we have the first one.
".
His lawyer spoke of a honey trap.
What does the lawyer for the two women make of the suggestion of dirty tricks? Could this be a CIA set up? It is not a dirty trick.
There is no conspiracy.
These two women did not know each other before.
They had never met.
They were very much for Wikileaks, and they still are.
Are you or they in the pay of the CIA? No.
I would never accept that.
There is no handicap or whatever it is called in English.
Julian denies the women's allegations.
His lawyers now suggest they are motivated by money and revenge.
Daniel put into Julian that he take a back seat until he cleared his name.
You suggested that? What did he say? was not negotiable.
He took this as an attack.
He said it was a power grab that I was making.
He was alleging that I was seeing this as my chance, as he put it, to get out of middle management.
Tension was mounting, but the leaks were still being published.
These releases are based on 400,000 classified documents that were received and The third revelation - America's Iraqi warlocks.
This time, identities were protected.
An American reports seeing an Iraqi policemen torturing is a spit.
He recalls hearing whooping noises and finding a man beating a detain the's feet with electric cable.
The abuse was not immediately investigated.
Next, cabled gate.
250,000 leaked documents revealing US diplomatic traffic on everything from China to the Lockerbie bomber.
The Americans were not best pleased.
The United States strongly condemns the illegal disclosure of classified information.
It puts people's lives in danger, threatens our national security and undermines our efforts to work with other countries to solve shared problems.
Suddenly, Visa, Mastercard and PayPal stop processing donations into Wikileaks.
Banks, Julian said, to political pressure from the Americans.
The companies say they are concerned about the legality of what Wikileaks is doing.
Jesus Christ! Buy now, Julian cannot pick up a paper without seeing himself.
Or move without a camera being pointed at him.
Can we talk about your life? No.
Is it an interview about me all the chicks? It cannot be both.
I am untouchable now for this country.
Untouchable? Now he is not just holding power to account, but has power in his own right.
How he handles it matters.
I sometimes described him as somebody with an incredibly high IQ and a remarkably low EQ.
Emotional intelligence? I think he is underdeveloped in a sense when it comes to having compassion to how other people feel or think, whereas he can always have an interest in an intellectual debate with you.
You are talking about a man who has given up his home, family and even his homeland for something he believes in.
many people would live in a suitcase for records they believe in so deeply.
But Birgitta Jonsdottir and Daniel were becoming worried about the lack of openness at Wikileaks.
Wikileaks fights for transparency.
When I was there, there was very little transparency about it.
I could understand it when it was tiny, but with its success, it became very powerful.
You cannot let power remain unchecked.
The growing dissent inside Wikileaks led to a row online by instant message.
Julian accused Daniel of leaking to the press something Daniel denies.
Daniel challenged Gillian about his leadership style.
Julian did not like that.
So you say to Julian, stop shooting at messengers.
Julian - I have had it.
Daniel - likewise, and that does not just go for me.
Julian - if you do not answer the question, you will be removed.
Daniel - you are not anyone's king or God Julian - you were suspended for one month, effective immediately.
And then he finishes off - if you wish to appeal, you will be heard on Tuesday.
What was that about? The background of this was that I was asking him about what specific deals he had made with media in respect to collaboration.
I just wanted to know what he had been working out with him, and he refused.
He took this whole occasion of talking to me to tell me that I was not allowed to ask questions to him, that he does not have to answer to me.
He has this weird hierarchy.
What he did not know while he was being disciplined was that Julian was dealing with a man with a very unsavoury reputation.
He is a Wikileaks associate in Russia who claims to have access to all 250,000 of the leaked US cables, which he selects for the region's media.
The future is not something which exists independently of the efforts, of your effort and my effort.
The future is something we do together.
Whose future exactly? Meet Alexander Lukashenko, the president of the former Soviet republic of Belarus.
He has been described as the last dictator in The elections that took place last year in December showed just what Alexander Lukashenko is made of.
Here arrested 700 citizens, protesters, journalists, politicians and members of the opposition.
And the EU and America have both now introduced to travel bans on Lukashenko.
The EU has frozen his assets.
Exactly.
The sort of chap Wikileaks would want to target.
But online, its associate not only praises the regime but also uses a Wikileaks cable to suggest that America is bankrolling the opposition pulls up and that, say the human rights group, could endanger democracy activists.
Shamir is using his tweeted -- privileged position as Wikileaks pushed the conduit to support Dave vicious regime.
It should worry Wikileaks that they could name is being used in this way.
Wikileaks say Shamir has never worked for them and they do not endorse his writing.
Shamir claims he is being smeared and that he also supplied cables to opposition media.
We have also discovered that Shamir, though born in Russia, was convicted of stirring up hatred against Jews by a French court in 2008.
Julian was warned about his re- Chemmy a's views a year earlier.
-- about Israel Shamir's views.
Panorama has been leaked this.
On it is an e-mail from Julian Assange.
It reads, Bayer Israel/Adam, someone wrote to say they refused to associate with an organisation that would work with an anti-Serb might like Israel Shamir.
Julian goes on, from a sampling of your writing, I did not find the allegation borne out.
I found the samples to be strong and compassionate.
Julian went on to suggest a solution - that Chemmy are right for Wikileaks under another name.
And that is handy, because he has a few of them.
Among them, Adam.
Whatever the name, Julian and Chemmy were photographed together two months ago.
How in hell is that guy involved, and why didn't I know about this? If there was any involvement of an anti- Semite in Wikileaks, why didn't anyone tell me? I would not work with such a guy.
Chamois are ignored our question about his conviction, but wrote online, I harbour no hate to a Jew, because he is a Jew.
However, I do criticise various aspects of the Jewish world view.
We asked Julian about Shamir and all the other.
We raised in the programme.
He did not reply.
But his lawyers have accused both Panorama and Daniel of using stolen documents.
Strange from a man who got 250,000 American cables.
Time to catch up with him.
Julian? Why were you not talk to Panorama? For the last two months, he has had to report to this police station.
This was as close as we could get.
Julian, do you still stand by Mr Shamir? Last week, a court heard Julian's case against extradition to Sweden on allegations of rape and sexual assault.
He will learn his fate in 10 days' time.
Birgitta Jonsdottir left Wikileaks before the release of the Iraq warlocks.
So did Daniel and others, taking with them software which make -- made a Wikileaks safe for whistleblowers.
Wikileaks say they can -- dismissed Daniel because they accuse him of sabotage, which he denies.
Either way, Wikileaks online is now closed for leaks.
Daniel has now launched his own website, OpenLeaks.
Aren't you setting up in opposition to Wikileaks, and therefore, you are the opposition? So what you are doing, perhaps cunningly, is knocking down Wikileaks so that you can build up OpenLeaks? That is not what we are doing.
I believe that generally, centralism is not good.
It is not good if there is only one solution for a problem that exists in society.
I would be more than happy to see Wikileaks flourish in the future.
In a statement received this afternoon, Wikileaks told us they did not want to take part in the programme because we are repeating, they say, sleazy, had made an completely false claims.
To his supporters, Julian Assange, however flawed, has changed the world.
Wikileaks is a pioneer.
When you are a pioneer, you do make mistakes.
And I think that one needs to have a bit of