Cyberwar (2016) s02e06 Episode Script

1 America declares war on WikiLeaks.
They care nothing about the lives they put at risk or the damage they cause to national security.
Julian Assange fights back from his enclave.
WikiLeaks will continue its publications.
The war, the proper war, is just commencing.
Is WikiLeaks really a threat to US democracy? They're a publisher.
And so the idea that a government is going after them, if anyone's cheering that on, they don't belong in a democracy.
And what happens if it gets shut down? I think there is going to be copycats.
It's like a hydra: cut off one head, more grow back.
Five years on, and Julian Assange is still holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, trying to avoid extradition to the United States.
But up until recently, it hasn't been clear the US government is really after him.
Then President Trump's new CIA Director, Mike Pompeo, dropped a public bomb on WikiLeaks.
It's time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is: a non-state, hostile intelligence service often abetted by state actors like Russia.
So I know what it's like to have the government attack you as a journalist.
And to see what's going on with WikiLeaks and the CIA, it's really troubling.
And I know Glenn Greenwald, who reported on the Snowden Leaks, feels the exact same way, and I'm about to talk to him.
Greenwald's reporting on those leaks won a Pulitzer.
- Glenn.
- Hey, good to meet you.
How are you? When Mike Pompeo stood up and gave that 45-minute speech exclusively about WikiLeaks, the only purpose of that speech was to declare their intention, as he said, to put an end - in his words - to WikiLeaks' ability to use the First Amendment to continue to publish documents.
And what do you make about that CIA threat of, "non-state actor"? I mean, that's, that's a pretty harsh term.
I mean, I'm a national security reporter.
"Non-state actor", that's reserved for terrorist organizations.
Yeah.
You know, if you think about what it means, it actually gets more disturbing, right? They want to criminalize the publication of secret documents, which is the heart and soul of what news organizations do all of the time.
But because it is directed at WikiLeaks, an unpopular organization among the mainstream media, as opposed to insulting CNN or New York Times reporters, journalists, mainstream journalists seem to be indifferent to it, if not outright supportive of it.
Do you think WikiLeaks is Julian Assange? Do you think without him, there is no WikiLeaks? Like let's say he goes to jail.
I mean, is it over? Whatever else you wanna say about Julian and his personal behaviour and his choices, he's been a visionary in terms of revolutionizing how transparency is effectuated in a digital age.
But over the years, it's become an increasingly totalitarian organization, in that - by which I simply mean that there isn't much to WikiLeaks other than Julian.
There are much fewer people now who he trusts, and it's very hard at this point to separate the organization from the person.
I'm in Berlin to meet one of the people Assange does trust.
Renata Avila is one of his lawyers and close confidantes.
She believes that if the Americans are able to take down WikiLeaks, it will endanger democracy by stifling freedom of the press around the world.
That's not Julian, is it? No, that's - the thing is that it could be anyone, you know? And it's it's quite symbolic.
This is not only an American problem, this is a global problem.
And if if a country that has preached to defend freedom of the press and freedom in general - liberty in general - heads in this direction, what can we expect for the rest of the people? It's an attack to my right to know, and my right to truth.
But Julian Assange isn't stopping.
WikiLeaks recently pissed the CIA off by releasing Vault 7, thousands of documents revealing the scope of the the agency's cyber arsenal, and it proves that American spies can hack into virtually anything that's connected to a computer.
The Central Intelligence Agency lost control of its entire cyberweapons arsenal.
This is a historic act of devastating incompetence.
Vault 7 publication is, I will say, one of the most interesting publications for him as an editor, because he's one of the few people in the world that can understand the impact of and the technical aspects of that.
And do you think it was that publishing of the Vault 7 documents that got the attention of the CIA and DOJ? I think that was the trigger.
So when was the last time you saw Julian, and how long do you think he can last in that embassy? Usually we keep regular visits, because there are many things that we cannot discuss by electronic means.
He's a very resilient person.
As long as he has access to the internet, and he has ability to continue his role as editor, even if his health is not optimal, I'm confident that he can continue resisting as long as he is free to speak.
Some consider WikiLeaks a First Amendment champion, but to others it's a geopolitical pariah.
And I'm about to meet a man who was there at the very beginning.
The thing is, Julian is an extremely and exceptionally intelligent person.
And I think partly that is his problem, because he sometimes thinks that he's so much smarter than everybody else, that he is the one playing everybody.
He's the one with the endgame.
Nowadays, very few people get to meet Julian Assange face-to-face, but I'm in Germany with one of his former best friends who personally knows him and the way he thinks.
I want to know his opinion of WikiLeaks today: free press champion, or, anti-American spy tool? Daniel Domscheit-Berg was at WikiLeaks from the very beginning, and his story was even the subject of a Hollywood movie.
He very publicly left the organization when he felt it began drifting away from its original goals.
I'm in this really picturesque little German town outside of Berlin right now to meet Daniel Domscheit-Berg, former member of WikiLeaks.
He didn't want to give me his address, so I'm meeting him here on this park bench.
- Daniel? - Yeah, hey.
- Hi, I'm Ben.
- Good to meet you.
- Good to meet you.
- Yeah, how are you? Good.
This is like a really beautiful little town.
Yeah, that's kind of why we're here.
(LAUGHING) Yeah, seriously! I was actually lying on my garden bed and watching you guys.
In the first two-and-a-half years that I was there, we were building a press organization, and that's what changed at some stage.
And suddenly this became a a project that was trying to exercise political influence.
While he was there, Domscheit-Berg told me there were definitely times leakers used WikiLeaks as a political weapon.
The most infamous incident is the so-called Climategate Leaks, where hackers handed over emails in order to cast doubt on the reality of climate change.
It was stuff that was essentially saying that climate change wasn't that bad, right? Well, the Climategate publication, that was portraying climate change as let's say "exaggerated" in the public opinion.
Yeah, so it was missing all the data, or a lot of the data that was actually showing that climate change is a real thing.
And ultimately it went out anyway? It wouldn't have made any sense to keep it back.
Then actually you'd be missing maybe out on, on the chance that the whistleblower is giving society.
Did you get the feeling at a certain point, when you were with WikiLeaks, that it became kind of Julian Assange angry at the American government? Well, we were all angry at the American government.
I can say that very honestly.
'Cause some people are saying it's really this is Now it's become a vendetta.
I'm not sure if that's the right conception, actually.
It's too easy, and there's more shades of grey.
So Julian has a very, very strong sense of justice.
So it has nothing, I think, to do with being anti-American or so, but it's rather he's he's applying this strong sense of justice to some of the actors out of that conflict.
And that's what, what what I don't really get, because I don't understand why you would support the Trump side of things.
It doesn't make any sense to me.
With all the criticism you can have about Hillary Clinton, and I think there's a lot we need to criticize there, I still wouldn't get why you play the information you have rather than at least just release it.
I mean, the timing is very specific.
Yeah, that's what I mean.
You can't You can't say that there was no political motivation behind this.
It's, it's obvious.
Absolutely obvious.
Domscheit-Berg acknowledges political powers co-opt WikiLeaks for information war.
And Jonathan Nichols agrees with his government; WikiLeaks is constantly weaponized against US interests.
He's a War on Terror vet who wrote a secret report that appeared in the infamous Iraq War Logs, thousands of documents given to WikiLeaks by Chelsea Manning.
Nichols worked on Psychological Operations - PSYOP - for the US military, and was in Iraq at the time of the leaks.
And everybody in Baghdad was concerned about where the data was coming from.
And it quickly came out that about a half mile on my base, there was somebody else, this guy named Bradley Manning at the time, who had done the leak and was being arrested.
Do you think WikiLeaks has a vendetta against the US? It's an honest question.
Has there been a WikiLeaks dump that benefitted America and allies, at all? Has there been even one? Every single one has been to the detriment of the countries that support free speech, and have been to the advantage of the countries that don't like free speech, in the name of free speech.
So, I think the bad guys kind of got us by our balls here.
But in fact, some countries that supress free speech, like Saudi Arabia and Turkey, actually have been damaged by WikiLeaks' dumps.
What do you think the advantage is then, to use something like WikiLeaks as a disinformation platform if you're a foreign actor against the US? So first, I don't want to use the word "disinformation".
I haven't seen evidence that there's been that there's been overt lying.
Propaganda isn't about lying a lot of times.
It's about presenting the narrative that you have in the most compelling light while undercutting the adversary's narrative.
So do you agree with that you know, that characterization of WikiLeaks as a non-state actor? So, yes.
The short answer is, yes, I agree with that characterization.
Really? The long answer is I'm concerned with using that specific language.
The only other time I'm familiar with the language "non-state actor" being used is in terms of terrorist organizations, and I wouldn't go so far as to call WikiLeaks a terrorist organization.
WikiLeaks definitely isn't al Qaeda, and Julian Assange is no bin Laden, but one thing is for sure: after the role he played in the 2016 election, some Americans still see him as the enemy.
Is WikiLeaks a tool used by foreign governments to damage the United States, or a crusading free speech publisher? This is DC, not far from the White House, where Jen Palmieri, a key member of Hillary Clinton's campaign, expected her candidate to be right now.
Palmieri was the Communications Director for Hillary in 2016 when WikiLeaks released hacked emails that were damaging to the campaign.
What's really important about WikiLeaks is that the Russian government has engaged in espionage against Americans.
Then they have given that information to WikiLeaks for the purpose of putting it on the internet.
This has come from the highest levels of the Russian government.
The Russians may have done the hacking, but many think that Assange published the leaks because of his well-documented personal vendetta against Hillary Clinton.
I wanna hear what Palmieri thinks about WikiLeaks.
When I was at the White House, I was always told just to be safe, assume the Russians and the Chinese are listening to everything you say, but hadn't expected that WikiLeaks would team with them.
Is that how the campaign saw it? Was that it was a teaming between WikiLeaks and Yes, it was obviously intended to hurt us.
Each day, at I think 8:00am, they would put online a new batch of emails.
They seemed to be strategically curated and timed to inflict damage on our campaign.
And the press would report on it, we would get asked about it, and Trump would pick it up at his rallies.
(CHEERING) Now, this just came out.
This just came out.
WikiLeaks, I love WikiLeaks! The campaign felt like a Batman movie version of a presidential campaign, with overly stylized villains.
So why is WikiLeaks the villain? They are the villain because they teamed up with a the leader of a country that wants our country to be weaker, and teamed up with them to undermine this very core principle of our republic.
During the election campaign, candidate Trump embraced WikiLeaks.
Then after taking power, President Trump changed his tune, essentially labelling WikiLeaks an enemy of the state.
It's a perfect example of how fast whistleblowers can go from being heroes to villains depending on how the government wants to see them.
Jesselyn Radack knows that feeling.
She's a lawyer and former whistleblower who went on to defend other leakers, like Snowden.
- Hi! - Hey, how are you? How're you doing? I'm Ben.
- Hey, Jess.
- Nice to meet you.
Nice to meet you too.
(SIREN BLARING) Labeling WikiLeaks that way, you know, is similar to the overkilling going after whistleblowers, and labeling them as traitors and turncoats.
That's exactly what I was called when I blew the whistle, and really I was a lawyer.
I was an ethics lawyer for the Ethics Office of the Justice Department.
You represent Edward Snowden, and one thing that was interesting, you know, when he was first coming out with all the information, he told the reporters, "You need to put this out there as fast as possible, because if you don't, one of the potential things on the table is to eliminate you, to potentially kill you.
" Edward Snowden, having worked for intelligence agencies - and other clients of mine - know what they're capable of.
If people think the CIA isn't knocking off people in other countries, or that's never happened, that's a really naive point of view.
How bad do you think it could get for an organization like WikiLeaks right now? I think that the United States government and its allies are already doing everything they can to strangle WikiLeaks.
The US is very powerful, and it has very powerful allies.
WikiLeaks, on the other hand, has the truth on its side.
It's a journalist, it's a publisher, which should really raise alarm bells.
No matter how you feel about WikiLeaks or Julian Assange in terms of a cult of personality, at the bottom line, they're a publisher.
And so, the idea that a government is going after them, if anyone's cheering that on, they don't belong in a democracy.
I mean, it's the most anti-democratic thing I can think of.
I mean, the First Amendment, which people in the US trot out all the time, protects speech that we hate the most.
But despite people like Radack sounding the alarm, the Trump administration doesn't seem willing to protect what it hates: WikiLeaks, journalism, and Julian Assange.
I wanna talk to a member of one notorious hacktivist group that's willing to step up if WikiLeaks is taken down.
Whether or not WikiLeaks is actually an enemy of the United States, the American government has decided that it is, and that means the organization is under the real threat of US action.
One classic hacktivist group I'm acquainted with considers a world without WikiLeaks not a good one at all.
So I'm in Berlin right now.
I'm gonna meet Discordian, a really old school Anonymous member.
And he's never done an on-camera, in-person interview before, but we're going to talk about WikiLeaks and the relationship with the collective.
So what is so great about WikiLeaks? So when you leak to WikiLeaks, you are truly anonymous.
The idea that you can just go to work, put a USB stick in the computer, leak the company's information if there's wrong doing that's a very powerful idea.
And have immediate impact.
Well, they're contracted with so many media organizations from all kinds of political spectrums.
So, when you leak something to WikiLeaks, you know the coverage is going to be broad, but also diverse.
At first, Anonymous and WikiLeaks were natural allies.
But over the past few years, the relationship kind of fell apart.
So tell me, what's the current relationship right now between Anonymous and WikiLeaks? Well, you know, it's very complicated.
Because on one hand, you have Anonymous believing that they interfere with American politics in a way that is biased.
I mean, do you think that he was played by Russia? Oh, definitely.
How do you police something like that? Well, in my opinion, the information that got leaked is still valid.
And if more people leak information to them, you get more information from both sides.
But at some point, you start to see this just fuelling conflict, right? Because now the US and Russia are probably at their worst state of their relationship since the Cold War.
- You know? That's scary.
- It is scary, but you know, the idea is that if you know more information, you vote with your brain, and you get the right people elected.
But in this case Trump got elected, which does definitely have negative impacts on the international community.
I mean, what happens if it gets shut down? I think it will send a message, definitely.
But I don't think it will scare that many hackers away, because From hacking and leaking? Yeah, from hacking and leaking, because they will do whatever it takes to get that transparency in government.
If it gets shut down, not only will the old WikiLeaks archives be spread like wildfire through torrent websites, I think there's going to be copycats.
It's like a hydra: cut off one head, more grow back.
As you can imagine, Jen Palmieri, former Clinton staffer, isn't convinced WikiLeaks is a tool of democracy, or that it should be protected under the First Amendment.
So what's happening here is things are being selectively put out with an intent to harm and an intent to persuade people.
But do you think if they're taken down, prosecuted for what they did, that actually could spell some pretty nasty things for freedom of press? Interesting nobody ever that hasn't been a question, right? It was stolen material, I don't know.
They didn't steal it, they published it, but They published it, right, but it was stolen.
Jesselyn Radack, on the other hand, knows sometimes information needs to be stolen to be leaked.
And there's a proud American history of it.
The public does not realize how bad that would be for the public.
Because if you can prosecute WikiLeaks, you can prosecute The New York Times, you can prosecute The Guardian, you can prosecute any any paper, no matter what.
I mean, you're setting a horrible precedent, that if you publish classified information, or information that the government deems damaging to its interest, that that makes you fair game for prison? I mean, you're upending the entire First Amendment.
As the debate continues in the US, the standoff in London hasn't changed.
And what do you think Julian's endgame is? Where is this all going? I don't think he quite knows, which in some sense is what makes what he's done admirable and courageous.
I mean, at any moment, he could've just stopped.
So I don't think he really looks past his next step.
If he did, he wouldn't be in the situation that he's in.
In an age where the Trump administration is actively finding ways to outlaw leakers and journalism, even going so far as saying they'd throw reporters in jail if need be, this whole WikiLeaks debate couldn't be more urgent.
The view WikiLeaks - and by default Julian Assange - are enemies of democracy is dangerous to people like me: journalists.
And the Trump administration, of all groups, once a beneficiary of WikiLeaks and its work, is going after them regardless of the constitutional consequences.
For now, WikiLeaks keeps on leaking.
And whatever the endgame is, it looks like it may be played out sooner rather than later.