Transcript of an interview by Uruguayan journalist Jorge Gestoso Julian Assange from within
the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Originally aired on GamaTV, August
30, 2012.
Full video of the interview is available here.
Jorge Gestoso: Julian, do you believe
that this interview is being heard or spied on by the London police
that is surrounding this Embassy?
Julian Assange: Just a few days ago, it
came out that SS10, a covert operations group, was involved in the
policing around the Embassy, and also the counter-terrorism command.
Quite interesting story where there was a police officer outside and
a photographer from the Press Association used his zoom lens to zoom
up on the piece of paper he was holding and could read all the
details about what the police were doing around here. So, yes, we
assume that.
Gestoso: The UK was threatening
the Ecuadorian Government through a memorandum saying that they would
be ready to storm the Embassy in order to arrest you. That happened
the night before the Ecuadorian Government announces that you were
having their diplomatic asylum. Tell us a little bit about that
night.
Assange: Since I came to the
Embassy two months ago, there was a policing presence; we had two
policemen outside the front door most of the time. However, leading
up to that night—with a formal threat made by the United Kingdom to
Ecuador, saying that they had the right to go into the Embassy and
take me—the number of police increased to fifty. So it was a really
quite dramatic situation. We could hear police running up and down
the stairs of the interior fire escape, big police vans being pulled
around here. When we put out a notification that this was happening,
many of our supporters turned up, some hundred people—over a
hundred people—turned up outside the front, and they were
live-streaming what was happening on their phones and so on, video
taping constantly what was happening.
Gestoso: The press, they are
criticising you, or criticising Ecuador, it's... According to what
you read, you can read that Julian Assange is Ecuador for its
personal agenda, and Ecuador is using Julian Assange for political
purposes for President Correa. Are you using Ecuador, or you feel
that Ecuador is using you?
Assange: I don't feel that we
have been used at all. There's a mutuality in values. There's a
mutuality also in the groups that are negatively affecting us and are
negatively affecting Ecuador. So, this is... And I suppose we can
even go beyond that. Let's go straight down to the personal: that I
am a person that, it has been established, is under a political
persecution by the United States and its allies. That's a fact. And
that fact was recognised... We had to put a lot of work into giving
the Ecuadorian Government evidence after evidence after evidence
about that fact, and they created an assessment, and they're right.
They're right that political persecution of me and our organisation
is ongoing. So that's enough. But if we then look into the broader
context, Ecuador has been right to demonstrate its values in this
case in, not just giving me asylum, but also then publicly. It should
give every one asylum who deserves asylum and where it has the
economic capacity to do so, but in going the extra mile to defending
my rights in public. Because, my rights correlate to some of the
values that Ecuador would like to project. And I think it does
actually believe in those values.
Gestoso: Did you ever thought
that Latin America would be behind you so strongly?
Assange: I knew we had a lot of
Latin American support. I was very pleasantly surprised that it was
so uniform. It was everyone, everyone in Latin America came to
support us. Even those relatively right-wing groups in a couple of
countries did not oppose us. So this Latin American solidarity over
this issue and supporting me, I think that's something important. I
don't think that's something that could've happened ten years ago. I
think that reflects a growing strength and integration of Latin
America; a sort-of mutuality, a mutual defence and shared values.
Gestoso: November 28th, 2010,
WikiLeaks publishes what is called the Cablegate. Basically, 251,000
cables, mostly about diplomatic cables from diplomatic offices of the
U.S. Embassies, and also about the war in Afghanistan and in Iraq.
And here's what happens the day after in the U.S. Just a recap. The
following day, November 29th, 2010, Sarah Palin, former Vice
Presidential candidate in 2008, she said, "Assange is an
anti-American operative with blood on his hands. Why was he not
pursued with the same urgency we pursue Al-Qaeda and the Taliban
leaders".
Assange: Well, I think Sarah
Palin was a bit unhappy because we published her emails before.
Gestoso: It is more than her
that is unhappy. So we have, on November 29th, Tony Shaffer, former
U.S. intelligence officer on Fox News: "I would look at this
very much as a military issue with potentially military action
against him and his organisation", again the 29th and 30th of
November. Mike Huckabee, 2008 Presidential candidate in the
Republican primaries: "Anything less than execution is too kind
a penalty". November 30th, INTERPOL issues a Red Notice to 188
countries for Julian Assange. November 30th, Tom Flanagan, ex-senior
adviser to the Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, he's currently
a political science lecturer at the University of Calgary,
says,"Well, I think Assange should be assassinated, actually. I
think Obama should put out a contract and maybe use a drone or
something. I would not feel unhappy if Assange disappeared".
November 30th, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham referring to
WikiLeaks: "We are at war. I hope Eric Holder", the
Attorney-General, "who's a good man, will start showing some
leadership here and get our laws in line with being at war".
November 30th, Representative Peter King, a Republican from New York:
"Julian Assange is a terrorist". Former Senator Rick
Santorum, also another possible Presidential candidate for the 2012
Presidential election in the U.S.: "… prosecuted as a
terrorist". Bill O'Reilly, host of Fox News: "I'd like to
see a little drone hit Julian Assange. I think he's a bad man. If he
lived in Britain, 007 would take care of him". December 5, Mitch
McConnell, he is the Senate Majority Leader in the U.S. Senate: "I
think this man is a terrorist and needs to be prosecuted to the
fullest extent of the law, and, if this becomes a problem, you need
to change the law". December 5th, Newt Gingrich, another
Presidential candidate in 2012 Republican primaries: "Julian
Assange is engaged in terrorism. He should be treated as an enemy
combatant". Like in Guantanamo or... type of prisoner.
"WikiLeaks should be closed down permanently and decisively".
Bob Beckel, political commentator of Fox News: "Dead men can't
leak stuff. This guy's a traitor, he's a treasonous, and he has
broken every law of the United States and, I'm not for the death
penalty, so there's only one way to do it: illegally shoot the son of
a bitch". December 7th, PayPal and MasterCard and VISA shut down
the donations to WikiLeaks. December 8th, Retired Lieutenant Colonel
from the U.S. Ralph Peters: "Julian Assange should be on the
kill or capture list. He's a maggot. He's guilty of sabotage,
espionage, crimes against humanity; he should be killed".
Finally, the U.S. Vice President Joe Biden of the U.S. calls Assange
a "high-tech terrorist". Reuters, talking about what is
taking place, say, "The Obama Administration has said, Assange's
immediate faith is in the hand of Britain, Sweden, and Ecuador".
But Nuland's predecessor P.J. Crowley said, "Assange has painted
himself into a corner and he's going to stay there for some time."
This is very interesting, and I will like to hear your opinion. It
says, "Based on emails hacked from a Texas consulting firm,
Assange claimed that U.S. Authorities issued a secret indictment
against him which could result in him being imprisoned at Guantanamo
Bay, Cuba, and executed." And Stratfor, that is the global
intelligence company found in Austin, Texas, said that, "Emails
leaked by WikiLeaks have this concern surrounding a secret Grand Jury
with a secret indictment". Later, a media organisation received
the classified diplomatic cables that confirm a secret indictment
exists. The documents go to say that Australia has no objection to a
potential extradition to the United States. The Australian Government
confirmed that possibility of extradition, but stated that it wasn't
unusual as there was an ongoing investigation about WikiLeaks. They
point out that the United States may not be intended to Assange. But
I want to tell you, before any comment, what your mother said. Your
mother said, "When Julian initially started WikiLeaks in 2006,
he told me that he was doing it to help people in repressive regimes
to be able to whistleblow, to get the truth about some of the abuses
happening inside the countries. For four years, that is what
happened, and his life was not threatened in any way. He was safe
with that work. But then, when the documents came to WikiLeaks'
drop-box on America, things all changed. For some reason, it was
alright to produce documents about other countries, but as soon as
the United States was embarrassed, his life became threatened. So, I
have two reactions: one as a mother, of course, I wish he had never
done it, but as a citizen, having investigated what WikiLeaks has
done to bring transparency to the world about abusive power,
corruption, extortion, kidnapping, torture, and fraud involved with
big financial institutions, of course I completely support my son".
That's why you're here.
Assange: Yeah, that's right. The
decision by the Ecuadorian Government to grant me asylum under the
basis that my fears of persecution by the United States are
reasonable, and they spent two months looking at all this material,
like some of the material you just read. That's important also for my
organisation; it's important for other people who are in similar
positions. Being the most prominent person, there is the most
movement towards me, because it sets the strongest example, that if
you defy the will of the United States, then something bad happens to
you. So, they need a prominent person to display that to. But there
are other people that are swept up in this Grand Jury investigation;
it's come out that there are at least seven. And those include the
founders and managers of WikiLeaks which is principally me, but
perhaps also some of our other people. I mean, this enormous list
that you gave, it misses some things, of course it misses many more
addition threats, but there's some recent material. For example, that
the Department of Justice just six weeks ago said to Agence
France-Presse, 'Yes, we admit that there is an ongoing
investigation'. The State Department just last week said, 'No, no,
there's not a persecution, but we won't answer whether there's a
prosecution". So, there's a large investigation, and I guess
it's important to understand the scale of this matter. Australian
diplomats to Washington reported back what they were told by U.S.
officials, and they say that the investigation against WikiLeaks is
unprecedented both in its scale—its size—and its nature.
Gestoso: The U.S. official
version, this is Victoria Nuland, she is a State Department
spokesperson. She said, "Well, let me start with the fact that",
talking about Julian Assange, "he's making all kinds of wild
assertions about us, when in fact his issue is with the Government of
the United Kingdom. Has to do with whether he's going to go stand,
y'know, face justice in Sweden for something that has nothing to do
with WikiLeaks. It has to do with charges of sexual misconduct. So,
he's clearly trying to deflect attention away from the real issue
which is whether he's going to face justice in Sweden, which is the
immediate issue. So, that case has nothing to do with us; it's a
matter between the UK, Sweden, and now Ecuador has inserted itself".
Assange: The U.S. Government
also falsely stated that I was charged. You see exactly what
happened. Now, you have to be very careful with this and the
statements that officials are making. So here—and we've seen the
U.S. Ambassador to Australia do the exact same sort-of rhetorical
trick—it's to say: the extradition case between the UK and Sweden
for Mr Assange is nothing to do with us. Now, formally, that's true.
In a formal sense it is nothing to do with them, in terms of Sweden
has made an application, the UK is responding to the application.
What is not being said is that there are other matters the U.S. is
involved in, y'know? Just admitted by the Department of Justice that
it is ongoing, in fact in that same statement by the State
Department, if you go a bit further down, she does this, 'Well, I
refuse to say whether there's a prosecution, there's not a
persecution, but I refuse to say whether there's a prosecution'. So,
these are matters that are to do with the United States, but it's a
little rhetorical trick they use in order to manipulate the public
and to manipulate the press. And the press should not better. In
fact, it really depends on whether the press is favourable to us, or
favourable to the U.S., or favourable to the UK, on what gets
reported. So, you see a statement like that, where if you go further
down, actually you see there's essential an admission of an ongoing
investigation, prosecution. But the first part is a denial. And
they'll just take the denial and they'll not report the rest, because
they want an excuse to push a particular agenda.
Gestoso: What are you going to
say if you have to give your side of the story to the investigation
in Sweden?
Assange: We've been trying to do
that for two and a half years. Two and a half years. And the courts
here, they refused to permit us to say anything. Refused!
Gestoso: Okay, but what I'm
saying is, there are at least allegations. What do you have to say to
those allegations?
Assange: Well, we're trying to
do the formal method, which is to formally present them to the
Swedish authorities; they've refused. They have even refused to
accept a written, sworn statement.
Gestoso: People want to know if
this is a set up, or you were committing some irregular act; rape,
sexual molestation, sexual whatever-you-want-to-call-it.
Assange: Well, it is an abuse of
language to use these words. I mean, even before the Supreme Court
here, there is an admission by the UK Government, by the Swedish
Government, there is an admission that no woman went to a police
station to complain about me. That this is something that the police
decided to do. That is admitted. Unfortunately in this sort of
situation, when you're accused of these sorts of accusations...
Gestoso: You're not accused. At
least you are...
Assange: When these sort of
allegations are floating around in the media, you can't respond.
Gestoso: Why not?
Assange: Because it's like to
wrestle with a pig. You know, you get mud all over yourself. It just
suits the people who are throwing mud. If you respond you bring
yourself into the situation; you legitimise the scurrilous
accusations that have been made against you. And this sort-of
situation is... People care about women, they care about children,
and they don't like to see bad things happen to them. So, when you
make such an accusation against someone, the instinct is to fight for
the...
Gestoso: Victims. Alleged
victims.
Assange: The alleged victim.
That's the instinct; I have this instinct. But people can just go and
see—I mean it is on the internet—they can go and read the
original police reports; they can see what various people said. And I
defy anyone to read those and come away with an impression other than
these women have been pushed, or it is a complete absurdity. Complete
absurdity.
Gestoso: The Swedish Government
now is saying that if your life is at risk, if you could be submitted
to the death penalty if they were to extradite to the U.S., they
would not do it. Do you believe that at any point you will be ready
to consider to go to Sweden because you feel that there is a written
commitment that you're not going to be extradited?
Assange: At some point, yes. If
the ground is right. I mean, if you look at what the Swedish were
demanding, that is, to immediately put me in Sweden and keep me there
without charge, you know, that's not very acceptable either. So, we
have important work to do. That is wrong to do. If someone has been
cooperative the whole time, has tried to... I stayed five weeks in
Sweden to try and clear up that matter, I was given permission to
leave, and then in the middle of Cablegate they put out an INTERPOL
Red Notice to the whole world. That's not right for someone that is
completely cooperative in trying to assist an investigation. It is
not right to hold them in prison without charge.
Gestoso: And do you believe that
Sweden's actions in line with the U.S. policies regarding unfriendly
characters that you could be considered?
Assange: Sweden's a very
interesting country. There's historically a lot of good things about
Sweden. There's important advances of some kinds that were made in
the 70s. But it's changed in a very sad way, and most Swedes—Swedes
who are old enough—see what has happened and they see the change,
and they see a state that has said that it was proud of its
neutrality—there's been questions about even the 70s about actually
how neutral it was—to a position now where Sweden is on over a
hundred NATO committees, where its forces under U.S. command in
Afghanistan, where it was the fifth into Libya with planes, it was
the first to have its parliament to vote to send planes into Libya,
it is the number one per capita arms manufacturer in the world—the
number one arms manufacturer per capita in the world, nearly double
that of Israel—it was the number one supplier of arms to the United
States during the Iraq War in absolute terms, and it is now currently
the third largest supplier of arms to the United States in absolute
terms, eighth largest arms manufacturer in the world in absolute
terms. There we have this very strange situation where, if you go to
the Sweden Foreign Ministry website, there is a formal statement
there that Sweden is a neutral country. And just last year, actually
maybe just the beginning of this year, there was a combined operation
with the United States and NATO and Sweden called Operation Loyal
Arrow in relation to defeating some hypothetical Russian threat. In
2007, the U.S. Ambassador to Sweden reporting back to Washington in a
cable from Stockholm said, and this is the title of the cable,
"Sweden has consigned neutrality to the rubbish bin of history".
Gestoso: What is your opinion of
what's going on in Syria?
Assange: WikiLeaks is in the
process of releasing some five million... Sorry, 2.4 million emails
from the Syria Government. So, we have somewhat of an insider's
perspective. But it's obvious that the western powers are using the
Syrian issue in order to get rid of Syria's political opposition to
the role of Israel, to weaken Iran, and that's clear. It's clear that
there's been enormous media manipulation of what has happened in
Syria.
Gestoso: By the western media.
Assange: Just... extraordinary.
I mean, photos appearing on BBC website of couple of hundred bodies
laid out on the ground... Actually it was of Iraq! It was from a
butchery in Iraq. But saying it was Syria. There's information we
released through our Stratfor files, this American intelligence
contractor, where they had meetings last year with people in the U.S.
Military, and also some from European militaries, saying how they
were looking forward to this campaign—military campaign, military
intervention—that they already had Special Ops forces on the ground
in Syria. Many people in Lebanon have campaigned for the liberation
of Syrian people. So, under Assad, there is a one-party state,
there's a one-party Ba'athist state. The Government cannot be
comprised of a party other than the Ba'ath party, or at least it
couldn't be until recent constitutional change in the past months.
Those constitutional changes are being introduced, so there is a...
In response to this threat by the people domestically, and the
international threat, there is a democratisation that is occurring in
Syria. It's clear that the U.S., the UK, Israel, France, is not at
all concerned about the democratisation. I mean, where's the campaign
to democratise Saudi Arabia? Where's the campaign to democratise
Bahrain? Countries where to be an opposition activist is
significantly more precarious. In fact, a friend of mine has just
been sentenced to three years in Bahrain, in prison for going to a
protest and sending a tweet. It is a targeting manoeuvre for
geopolitical reasons. Now, the consequence of a war with Syria is so
severe, that that is something that should be resisted. The military
intervention must be pulled back. It must be. Because, if there is a
proper military war in Syria, we're talking—you know there were
20-40 thousand dead in Libya, we're talking 100,000 people, perhaps,
killed in a civil war—and with a political outcome that is still
unpredictable. So, we don't know that we're going to see a much
better government after this; we may see a much worse government.
Gestoso: Talking about the
merits of WikiLeaks and its contribution to the defence of human
rights and investigative journalism, Fidel Narvaez, who is the consul
of Ecuador here in London, he wrote, "To ignore these merits can
only come from antagonism and it's clear from the opinion of the
director of the NGO Fundamedios in Ecuador when he says, this
gentleman, his name is César Ricaurte, "WikiLeaks does not
practice journalism, only leaks. And it's truly absurd to want to say
that the work of Assange is a model of investigative journalism"".
And he, meaning Mr Narvaez, continues saying, "Paradoxically,
Fundamedios and its director participated in Ecuador with great
enthusiasm at the Latin American Conference of Investigative
Journalism 2011, where the keynote speaker was precisely one of the
WikiLeaks spokesman who was invited to give a seminar to dozens of
the most experienced journalists in the continent". So, are you
just a machine of leaking cables or information? Or you are
practising investigative journalism and the process of between you
receive information and you pass it along goes through different
stages?
Assange: WikiLeaks is a
publication, it's the name of a publication. Behind the publication
there is an organisation, the organisation is Sunshine Press. So, we
do everything that a big media organisation does. So, that means we
have to get information, create the infrastructure to do that, defend
ourselves legally, defend ourselves financially, defend ourselves
politically, train our staff, make sure they're in safe locations,
and so on. And, as part of the political defence, we campaigned for
the rights of sources, the rights of journalists, and the rights to
publish. This particular word, 'journalist', has never had such power
as in relation to the assault on WikiLeaks. The concern as to the
definition of this word. Now, when a cameraman goes to war and he
photographs something and comes back, we all acknowledge that he is a
war journalist. Even though he is not writing an opinion piece. For
the material that we publish, we publish the truth always. There's
never been an accusation that a single thing we have published over
five years has not been true. We verify what is published, we analyse
what is published... Our analysis, yes, is sometimes like classical
news wire analysis: this happened this day etc., in a narrative form.
But, this is the internet. We're dealing with... Last year we
published over one million documents from different places. It is
simply not physically possible to write individual news stories about
one million documents. That is not possible. We work at a high level,
which is that we create the structure of analysis. So, that is, after
all the verification, publication is done, to, for example, with the
Afghan War Logs, to show exactly where on maps people were killed,
how many by the size of the circle on the map, and so on. That's the
only way to do things at scale. And the world's a big place, and if
you really want to change the world, you have to do things at the
same scale as the problem. The U.S. involvement in Afghanistan, the
State Department, the Syrian Government—these are big
organisations. These organisations have to be understood by
understanding their many millions of pieces all at once, and that's
what we do. I don't care whether people call this journalism or not;
it's completely irrelevant. This is more important that that. It is
about adding to our shared intellectual record, documenting what is
actually going on, producing just change as a result of that
documentation.
Gestoso: For the record, do you
buy information? Do you sell information?
Assange: We haven't bought or
sold any information, but I have no philosophical objection against
that. It is just for legal and political reasons, or just logistics,
that we haven't. But, I understand other people do occasionally, and
I have no objection against that. Why should only journalists and
lawyers be paid? The other people who actually take the real risks,
they're the sources of information. And I think they should be
compensated for the risks.
Gestoso: When the U.S. is saying
you are putting the lives of many people at risk because of the
releasing of all those 250,000 cables, do you admit that?
Assange: This is a basic
rhetorical trick. So, they didn't say—well, they said that for
every publication we've done about the U.S., actually, they've tried
some variant on that—but this first started when we produced the
Afghan War Logs. We did an analysis that showed that, just in those
records that the U.S. Government had, were documented individual
cases of 20,000 people being killed in Afghanistan.
Gestoso: Civilians?
Assange: Mostly civilians. The
vast majority civilians. 20,000. And so, not all of them killed by
the U.S. Military, many of them killed by the Taliban, but killed by
the situation that the U.S. Military had brought to Afghanistan. So,
what is the accusation? The accusation is the U.S. Military, here,
has directly killed several thousand people, and indirectly killed
20,000 people, according to its own records, and here's every single
record showing the children that were killed, the adults that were
killed, the women, etc. And we published it. So, our accusation is
they not really have blood on their hands, they're a machine to put
blood all over Afghanistan.
Gestoso: The U.S.
Assange: The U.S.! The U.S. Military
was putting blood all over Afghanistan: the blood of children, the
blood of women, the blood of men, and the blood of its own soldiers.
All over Afghanistan. That was our accusation. So, if that is the
accusation of your opponent, how do you try and turn that around? You
just say the same thing back. I mean, it's like primary school.
WikiLeaks says, 'Pentagon killed thousands of people,' Pentagon says,
'WikiLeaks might have blood on its hands'. And, what is astounding is
that, over the past two and a half years, there has been no claim by
the American Government, or any other government, that we have
killed—or were responsible for the death of—a single person. A
single actual person.
Gestoso: So, you weren't
directly, indirectly didn't kill with your information anywhere.
Assange: Exactly. Exactly. No
person, there is no allegation that any person was harmed physically
from our publications, from all our... not a single. They haven't
been able to bring up a single person, just like weren't able to find
weapons of mass destruction.
Gestoso: So, when Sarah Palin
says that you have blood in your hands...
Assange: She's lying. She's
lying! But if you Google for the phrase "blood on hands"
and "WikiLeaks" you get something like 700,000 results. If
you Google for that same phrase in relation to the Pentagon only, not
speaking about WikiLeaks, you get about 70,000 results. So all the
wars, because of the corruption in the media, ten times as many
articles have been produced saying that WikiLeaks has blood on its
hands, when not a single has been harmed even according to the U.S.
Government. Compared to all the wars the U.S. has ever fought; over
150,000 deaths in Iraq, over 20,000 deaths in Afghanistan,
documented. And yet, the perception, if you read the rest of the
media, the statistically measured perception is that WikiLeaks has
killed ten times as many people as the Pentagon.
Gestoso: So, if I'm
understanding you well, you say the U.S. Government has never ever
questioned the veracity of your information.
Assange: That's right.
Gestoso: So, your biggest sin
for some of the people in the U.S. has been to dare to bring the
truth, to bring transparency, to bring the information that the
general population hasn't had access to, and therefore they're going
to punish you—or they're punishing you—they're hunting you,
they're on a witch-hunt, and basically the message is: you better
don't deal with us. And nobody else tried to follow your steps
because that is going to happen to Julian Assange, and that could
happen to you, too.
Assange: They say that
explicitly. They have said that in official documents, they have said
explicitly that, it is not just about prosecuting Julian Assange for
espionage, it's about stopping WikiLeaks' ongoing activities.
Gestoso: Why are you doing in
life what you're doing?
Assange: I don't like to see
injustice, and I don't like to see lies. Y'know, I find that deeply
annoying when powerful people lie to cause injustice to people that
are less powerful. That revolts my basic sense of fairness. And I'm
in a fortunate position where I can do something about that at a
global level.
Gestoso: Another side of the
coin is that you have been a hacker. Why?
Assange: I was a hacker as a
teenager, before the internet was available to people. It was only
available to the military and research groups in universities. So, as
a young, curious man who wanted to understand the world, who wanted
to understand how these big institutions work. Well, of course. You
go out. Australia is... Where I grew up has a fairly nice culture,
and decency and respect for people. It is an island, so... You have
to explore if you want to understand the world.
Gestoso: What is the impact that
internet, social media, and the social movements are having in the
new world, in the new world that we're living.
Assange: Okay, so there's two
rivalrous possibilities. One possibility is that the connecting up of
everyone in their desires, for example: when you search on Google for
something, Google records it permanently. Google's based in the
United States. Google knows you better than you know yourself. Do you
remember what you were searching for two days, three hours ago?
Google does. It remembers. It knows you better than your mother.
Gestoso: What that information
goes to?
Assange: Well, so that's stored,
permanently, by Google but also it is intercepted by the National
Security Agency as it goes through the United States. People in Latin
America may not realise this, but the United States' geographical
position is one of the things that has given its intelligence
agencies such power. All communications flows to Europe, to Asia,
from Latin America, passes through the United States, where they're
intercepted by the National Security Agency. And the new game in
interception is not anymore to go, 'Ah, is he an interesting guy? I
just saw he made an email here, that he looked at a website there,
that he tried to telephone his mother in Madrid'. No. The new game in
interception is you just record everything. It's cheaper. You just
record everything coming out of Latin America going through the U.S.
and store it. And then, if in a couple of years, you become
interesting to U.S. intelligence or their pals, then they go, 'Okay,
let's look what he was doing two years ago, let's look what he was
doing one year ago, let's look to see who his friends are, who he's
communicating with'. And this is not speculation. There are companies
across the world that sell the equipment to do this and who have
marketing guides for the intelligence agencies: this is what our
equipment will do, this is how much it costs, you can intercept
everything, you don't have to worry about finding which person you're
interested in, just intercept it all and store it all. And we
published these earlier this year, they're called the Spy Files.
Gestoso: We meaning WikiLeaks.
Assange: WikiLeaks published 170
companies that provide the intelligence sector with this ability to
bulk-spy the entire population, communication flows going through an
entire country, everything out, every telephone call out of the
country; store it permanently, don't bother deleting it. So that's
the dark aspect of internet. As we have moved more of our private
lives onto the internet—our plans, our timetables, our emails—all
those things that perhaps would've been kept in our homes once, or be
done face-to-face, we have given it all to intelligence agencies
every goddamn thing. And some countries are better able to intercept
that because the have greater technological prowess and they have a
history of doing this, or their geographical position permits them to
do it. On the other hand, we also have the ability to make alliances
much faster, to make our plans much faster, with one another. And,
for social situations to arise so quickly, that even if you're
intercepting, even if you know who everyone is, that the situation
moves too fast to do anything about it. By the time you followed all
the tendrils and trials of the different activists, it's too late.
But they're getting better and better at this, and they're starting
to automate this technology. Companies working for German
intelligence, even two years ago, are selling systems where they go,
'Oh, if this person is on his mobile phone, he's in this location,'
because all the mobile phones are tracked, that's the best way to
describe a mobile phone: it is a tracking device that also makes
calls.
Gestoso: Like a GPS.
Assange: It's a tracking device
that also makes calls. This is how it's described in the intelligence
community. So if this person happens to be in proximity to a person
that has come from another country—y'know, just general rules—then
automatically issue a dispatch, and send someone there, and correlate
that to the email, and so on. This is all being automated now. It's
not about an individual being targeted; it is automated. They look
for patterns. The U.S. Military in its drone strikes in Yemen now—is
speaking about, and Obama is wanting to authorise, and it probably
has gone through—this motion of signature strikes, which is: when
they're assassinating someone with a drone, they don't have to know
who they are, just sort of statistically if they sort of went here
and went there then...
Gestoso: They should be there.
Assange: Then... they should be
killed. Y'know, just because statistically they might be a bad guy.
According to their interpretation. So that's really quite dark,
really very dark. And as far as I see, the only way to stop this
avalanche of pending transnational totalitarianism, because that's
what it is, when there is total surveillance that is part of
totalitarianism because it's total. Everyone is under this. So how
can we stop that world rushing forward? If we look at the legislation
that is passing through the United States, if we look at the attacks
on us, if we look at the involvement of all the banks in trying to
attack us outside the law. Where is all this heading? Where's all
that going? People being detained without charge here in the UK for
eight years...
Gestoso: Your case.
Assange: I've been detained for
600 days without charge, but there's people been eight years in
prison detained without charge, more severe than my case. Where's all
that going? I mean, just look at the trajectory of where it's going.
Gestoso: And where's it going?
Assange: It's going into some
sort-of—at least in the west, possibly in other countries as well—a
very, very strong, centralised transnational state. It's not going to
be the UK or U.S. this happens to, no, because of the way the
equipment is flowing, the way it's flowing socially, the linking up
of all the intelligence apparatuses, military apparatuses, the social
elites of these various countries. It's a transnational phenomena,
it's a western phenomena. It's not about simply the United States;
it's bigger than the United States. That's moving to a very, very
dark place. So, what can we do to prevent that? Regional alternative
power blocks is the first thing. So, Latin America getting together
and trying to combat that sort of surveillance. Perhaps the Latin
Americans can, in their big communications links to Europe, and their
big communications links to Asia, they can start encrypting it all as
it passes through the United States. I mean, that's just a start. But
to also make it so that the impact of bulk-spying on Latin America is
reduced. Okay, so you know everything that we're doing, but that
doesn't mean you can stop it, because the strength, the brotherhood
of Latin America is strong enough to resist that. As individuals,
it's quite hard now to resist this sort of thing. You have to be
really a cryptographer or a security expert; it's really quite hard.
But perhaps there can be investment, y'know, perhaps there can be
investment in alternatives to Facebook, where all that information is
collected and held in the United States.
Gestoso: So, it's almost like
something perverse, if you want, that the official line is, 'we are
promoting or we are living in states that are democratic', we're
talking about some western countries, when in reality they're
practising the exact opposite.
Assange: It's completely
perverse. It's completely perverse. I mean, it's in such runaway
accelerating decay, the rule of law in the west. And we saw this with
Guantanamo Bay, that's where it first... detention without trial in
Guantanamo Bay. I mean, you now have a case that I worked on, the
Omar Khadr case: young man, 15 years old, detained, from Afghanistan.
He has been kept in Guantanamo for ten years now; he's gone from a
boy to be a man in Guantanamo, the only life he knows now is
Guantanamo. Over 80 people there are cleared for release—even the
U.S. Government says they were never terrorists—still there, after
years. The most grievous offence against the rule of law, to
deliberately, intentionally, order the murder of your own citizens,
outside of any judicial process, where there's no possibility to
review. Some of my lawyers tried to take a case against what they
believed was a pending drone strike on Awlaki, a priest in Yemen—an
American, who had moved to Yemen and become an imam. They were
prevented from doing so. Now, prevented from doing so because the
laws in the United States are now that that would be considered
material support for terrorism. To take a lawsuit to prevent someone
from being assassinated would be material support for terrorism. They
have introduced the NDAA, the National Defense Authorization Act, in
the United States. If you listen to Congress, and the guy of the name
Peter T. King, a Congressman, he says that that act would help the
U.S. Government detain me offshore—me personally—offshore
imprisoned without charge, like in Guantanamo. They'll do that even
to their own citizens now, with this act: permanent detention,
without charge, by the military.
Gestoso: So, very scary.
Assange: It's just in total
decay. The rights of people to, if they're in a court case, something
that... Actually, I'll tell you a very, very ironic situation. So,
the National Security Agency was spying—not just on Latin American
traffic flowing through the United States, but also domestically
within the United States—it was bulk-spying on traffic. And that
has been discovered, some of the machines in San Francisco were
unveiled and there were some whistleblowers that came forward, like
Mark Klein from AT&T came forward. So, people took a class action
suit in the United States saying, 'We were all spied on, illegally,
outside the law, and therefore we want to sue the Government, and sue
these telecommunications companies for doing it'. The judges ruled
that they hand no standing. That they shouldn't be recognised as
someone who should be able to sue. Why? 'Because', he said, 'This
happened to everyone. This crime happened to everyone, you're not
special.'
Gestoso: Therefore it's okay.
Assange: Therefore there's no
case. So, if you want to go and rob someone, you want to go and
murder someone, just do it to everyone
Gestoso: And in that case
there's no...
Assange: And then there's no
case.
Gestoso: So, that witch-hunt,
for about two years, to have all that pressure on you, how much that
was affecting Julian Assange, the person.
Assange: I haven't had time
to... People have asked me this question a number of times. That, I
haven't had time to sort-of sit and stop and worry about how it's
affecting Julian Assange, the person.
Gestoso: But anyway, if you're
here, and you have to go to bed, and you're surrounded as we are at
this very moment, and you have policemen in the corner, policemen in
the other corner, policemen on the entrance of the building...
Assange: Policemen behind the
toilet.
Gestoso: Policemen behind the
toilet, policemen... you open of the kitchen and there are... How
difficult it is to sleep with all that surrounding you. Basically,
you are siege, you are in a siege.
Assange: Yes, but, you get
use... I mean, you get used to everything. It's, I suppose, all
through this time, that the... It's quite easy to weigh these
threats, y'know these threats to my person, and to some of our
people... they are not so big in comparison. I mean, yes, it is a
whole government investigation, yes, it's unprecedented in scale,
yes, I suppose, in many ways it's very bad. But, if we then look to
see what we are achieving: our contribution to the revolution of
countries, to the shifting political balance between the people and
royal families such as in Morocco, and so on. That is so tremendous,
it dwarfs.
Gestoso: Is it worth even your
life?
Assange: Yes. And I don't say
that... I don't believe anyone should be a martyr. I don't believe
anyone should throw their lives away. People should make a good
fight, retreat, rearm, fight again. That is the way to truly fight
for what you believe in. So, I don't believe in making foolish steps
that then stop your ability to then continue on. But that hasn't
happened to us yet. Yes, it has been very hard with these banking
blockades, and arrests, and so on, but they haven't stopped us.
Gestoso: When do you see
yourself leaving this Embassy of Ecuador in London? How long will it
take you?
Assange: I don't know. My guess
is that the situation will resolve through diplomacy, through some
unusual thing happening in the world we can't predict, like a war
with Iran, like the U.S. election, like the Swedes dropping the
case—which I think I the most likely outcome, I think. An internal
investigation into what happened there, and they'll drop it. And so,
I think that will resolve in six to twelve months. That would be
my...
Gestoso: Your guess.
Assange: My guess.
Gestoso: Finally, let's assume
that Julian Assange, between six months and twelve months, and a
year, is walking out this Embassy. What's next in your life?
Assange: Well, I must continue
the fight. I mean, the fight is not just about me. I have an
organisation of people and supporters and others who are close allies
who have also been attacked and targeted. This is not just a
persecution of individual, it is a persecution of an organisation, it
is a persecution of a group. It is a persecution of people who
believe in something, who believe in human rights. Who actually
believe in this, who are not just using it for propaganda purposes to
bash the Soviet Union or to bash China or something, but who actually
believe that it's important., because we want a civilisation that is
civilised. Y'know, when there's arbitrary law, when the rule of law
is in collapse, there's no safe place you can go. You can't decide
that, well, if I pal up to this bit of the establishment here or
there, if I keep my head down I'll be okay. Because it's arbitrary.
It's unpredictable. It doesn't matter whether you do something that
is perceived to be wrong, or do something that is perceived to be
right, because it is arbitrary. So it is necessary for us, for me,
for everyone to continue that fight, because otherwise we are all
moving toward an international system of arbitrary rule by complex
groups that are connected to each other. Where it's not about the
electoral system, it's non-democratic rule of these people for their
own interest. I mean, they need to understand that by supporting such
actions, they are moving their societies into a regime where even
they won't like the outcome.
Gestoso:
Julian Assange, thank you
very much for being with us.
Assange:
Muchos gracias.
