Inside WikiLeaks Read online

  English translation copyright © 2011 by Crown Publishers, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Crown Publishers,

  an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group,

  a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

  www.crownpublishing.com

  CROWN and the Crown colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Originally published in paperback in Germany as Inside WikiLeaks: Meine Zeit bei der gefährlichsten Website der Welt by Econ, an imprint of Ullstein Buchverlage GmbH, Berlin. Copyright © 2011 by Daniel Domscheit-Berg, copyright © Ullstein Buchverlage GmbH, Berlin.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-95193-9

  JACKET DESIGN BY SABINE WIMMER, BERLIN

  v3.1

  To the First Amendment

  and those defending the

  world’s most precious bastion

  of freedom of speech

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  A WIKILEAKS TIMELINE

  Prologue

  1 The First Meeting

  2 David vs. the Bears

  3 The Scientology Handbooks

  4 Dealing with the Media

  5 Julian Assange

  6 Financing WikiLeaks

  7 Quitting My Day Job

  8 The Censorship Debate

  9 Heroes in Iceland

  10 Going Offline

  11 A Free Haven for the Media

  12 Back to Berlin

  13 Collateral Murder

  14 The Ordeal of Private Manning

  15 The Afghan War Diary and the Dead-Man Switch

  16 Accusations in Sweden

  17 My Suspension

  18 Quitting WikiLeaks

  19 The Iraq War Logs

  20 Cablegate

  21 The Promise of OpenLeaks

  AFTERWORD

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  About the Authors

  WHEN I joined WikiLeaks in 2007, I found myself involved in a project devoted above all to one goal: subjecting the power that was exercised behind closed doors to public scrutiny. The idea of using an Internet platform to create transparency where it was most resisted was as simple as it was brilliant.

  Over the course of my time with Julian Assange at WikiLeaks, I would experience firsthand how power and secrecy corrupt people. As the months passed, WikiLeaks developed in a direction that dismayed core members of the team and led us to leave the project in September 2010. I was confident that the diplomatic, almost reticent criticism I voiced at the time would cause people to question the power of WikiLeaks and the chief figure behind it, as is the case with other organizations.

  In fact, the opposite happened. Small segments of the public around the world, people who had been acquainted with the topic for a while, did begin to criticize what WikiLeaks had turned into, but their questions were drowned out in the hype surrounding the platform for leaking confidential documents and its founder. Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, bound inextricably to each other, became a pop-culture phenomenon.

  That was due primarily to the informational vacuum at the heart of a secretive organization whose motto is transparency. Now, like so many of the people to whom we gave a platform for revelations, I have decided to make inside information public. This isn’t a decision I have taken lightly. For a long time, I was torn between feelings of loyalty and my own moral standards.

  At WikiLeaks we often used to say that only an accurate historical record can enable a true understanding of the world. I have decided to do my part toward that end with this book.

  DANIEL DOMSCHEIT-BERG

  Berlin

  January 2011

  OCTOBER 4, 2006: WikiLeaks.org is registered as a domain name

  DECEMBER 2006: First publications

  JANUARY 2007: WikiLeaks announces 1.2 million documents waiting to be processed and published

  NOVEMBER 2007: WikiLeaks publishes the Guantánamo Bay handbooks

  DECEMBER 2007: Daniel meets Julian at the 24th Chaos Communication Congress (24C3) in Berlin

  JANUARY 2008: WikiLeaks publishes hundreds of documents about the Cayman Islands subsidiary of the Swiss banking house Julius Bär

  FEBRUARY 2008: Julius Bär sues Dynadot (the registry of WikiLeaks.org), loses the injunction it obtained to shut down the WikiLeaks site, and then withdraws the suit

  MARCH 2008: WikiLeaks publishes the Scientology handbooks

  MAY 2008: WikiLeaks publishes the first American fraternity handbook

  JUNE 2008: WikiLeaks publishes documents from the “Memorandum of Understanding” in Kenya

  JUNE 2008: Global Voices Summit in Budapest

  SEPTEMBER 2008: WikiLeaks publishes e-mails from the private account of Sarah Palin

  NOVEMBER 2008: WikiLeaks publishes a membership list of the far-right British National Party

  NOVEMBER 2008: WikiLeaks publishes a report by the Oscar Legal Aid Foundation about political killings carried out by Kenyan police

  DECEMBER 2008: WikiLeaks publishes German secret service documents about corruption in Kosovo in cooperation with German media

  DECEMBER 2008: WikiLeaks publishes the 2008 Human Terrain Team handbook

  DECEMBER 2008: Daniel and Julian hold their first official lecture at the Chaos Communication Congress (25C3)

  JANUARY 2009: Daniel quits his job and begins working full-time for WL

  FEBRUARY 2009: WikiLeaks publishes more than 6,700 Congressional Research Service reports

  FEBRUARY 2009: WikiLeaks inadvertently publishes the e-mail addresses of WL donors

  MARCH 2009: WikiLeaks publishes the database of supporters of US senator Norm Coleman

  APRIL 2009: International Journalism Festival in Perugia, Italy

  JUNE 2009: WikiLeaks receives an Amnesty International Media Award

  JULY 2009: WikiLeaks publishes a list of the biggest debtors to the Icelandic Kaupthing Bank

  AUGUST 2009: Hacking At Random (HAR) conference in Vierhouten, Netherlands

  SEPTEMBER 2009: WikiLeaks receives a prize from Ars Electronica in the category “Digital Communities”

  OCTOBER 2009: WikiLeaks publishes a second membership list of the British National Party

  NOVEMBER 2009: WikiLeaks publishes the 9/11 pager messages

  NOVEMBER 2009: WikiLeaks publishes the investigators’ reports about a major German pharmaceutical company

  NOVEMBER 2009: WikiLeaks publishes the Toll Collect contracts

  NOVEMBER 2009: WikiLeaks publishes the e-mail correspondence of David Irving

  NOVEMBER 2009: WikiLeaks initiates the idea of a free haven for the media, leading to the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative (IMMI)

  DECEMBER 2009: WikiLeaks publishes field reports concerning the bombing of two tanker trucks in Kunduz

  DECEMBER 23, 2009: WikiLeaks goes offline

  DECEMBER 27, 2009: Daniel and Julian talk about the future of WikiLeaks at the Chaos Communication Congress (26C3)

  JANUARY 5, 2010: WikiLeaks begins work in Iceland on the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative (IMMI)

  APRIL 5, 2010: WikiLeaks publishes the “Collateral Murder” video

  MAY 26, 2010: Bradley Manning is arrested

  JULY 26, 2010: WikiLeaks publishes the Afghan War Diaries

  JULY 30, 2010: WikiLeaks posts the encrypted insurance file

  AUGUST 20, 2010: WikiLeaks publishes documents concerning the planning of the Love Parade in Duisburg, Germany

  AUGUST 20, 2010: A warrant for Julian’s arrest
is issued, then withdrawn in Sweden

  AUGUST 26, 2010: Julian suspends Daniel

  SEPTEMBER 14, 2010: Daniel repairs a malfunctioning mail server

  SEPTEMBER 15, 2010: Daniel and others leave WikiLeaks

  SEPTEMBER 17, 2010: OpenLeaks.org is registered as a domain name

  OCTOBER 22, 2010: WikiLeaks publishes the Iraq War Logs

  NOVEMBER 28, 2010: WikiLeaks publishes US diplomatic cables

  DECEMBER 1, 2010: Interpol issues a Red Notice international warrant for Julian’s arrest

  DECEMBER 7, 2010: Julian turns himself in to police in London

  DECEMBER 14, 2010: Julian is released on bail

  DECEMBER 30, 2010: Daniel presents OpenLeaks at the Chaos Communication Congress (27C3)

  I STARE at the monitor. The screen is black with green letters. A couple of posts react to the lines I wrote. I ignore them. I’ve already typed my last words. There’s nothing left to say. It’s over. Forever.

  Julian was no longer present in the chat room. At least, he hadn’t answered. Perhaps he was sitting silently in front of his computer, apathetic, shocked, or enraged, in Sweden or wherever he was keeping himself at the moment. I didn’t know. I only knew I was never going to talk to him again.

  The bar on the corner had discharged the last of its guests into the night. I heard them cheerfully heading toward the nighttime streetcar stop. It was approaching two a.m. on September 15, 2010.

  I left my laptop on my desk and collapsed into a pile of cushions in the corner of my living room. I picked up a novel by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett and started reading. What else was one supposed to do in a situation like this? What would other people do?

  I read for hours. At some point I fell asleep, still in my jeans and sweater, with woolen slippers from my grandmother on my feet. The book fell to the floor. I remember the title: Good Omens.

  How do you walk out of your job when the place where you work is the whole world? When there are no colleagues around to give a farewell handshake? When two hastily typed lines, in green letters, have burned all your bridges? When no one even gives you a swift kick in the ass to send you on your way?

  “You’re suspended,” Julian had written me weeks ago.

  As if he alone were the only one who could decide. Now it was finally over.

  When I awoke the next morning, everything looked normal. My wife, my son, our usual household mess—everything was exactly as it had been, and the sun was shining through our living room window at the same familiar angle. But it all felt different. A part of my life had been transformed from a promising future to a past that was dead and gone, never to be recaptured.

  I had broken off contact with the people with whom I had shared the past three years of my life and for whom I had given up my regular job and neglected my girlfriend at the time, family, and friends.

  For years, the chat room at WikiLeaks.org had been my central channel to the outside world. Sometimes, when I was working on an important publication, it was my only channel. I was never again going to log myself in. Weeks earlier, Julian had blocked access to my mail account. He had even threatened me with the police. But instead of signing the confidentiality agreement others had encouraged me to put my name to, I am writing this book.

  We used to be best friends, Julian and I—or, at least, something like friends. Today, I’m not sure whether he even knows the concept. I’m not sure of anything anymore. Sometimes I hate him so much that I’m afraid I’d resort to physical violence if our paths ever cross again. Then I think that he needs my help. That’s absurd, after everything that’s happened. Never in my life have I known such an extreme person as Julian Assange.

  So imaginative. So energetic. So brilliant.

  So paranoid, so power-hungry, so megalomanic.

  I believe I can say we spent the best years of our lives together, and I know we can never go back. Now that a few months have passed and my emotions have calmed down, I think that everything is all right the way it is. But I also freely admit that I wouldn’t trade the past few years for anything in the world. I’m afraid that, given the choice, I’d do it all over again.

  The things I’ve experienced! I looked into many an abyss and played with the levers of power. I’ve understood how Scientology, high-level corruption, money laundering, the peddling of political influence, and the waging of war actually function. I’ve telephoned via Cryptophone to maintain security, traveled the world, and been embraced by grateful people on the street in Iceland. One day I ate cake with the investigative reporter Seymour Hersh; the next, I sat on the bus with Germany’s Labor minister, Ursula von der Leyen; and on the third I watched us make headlines in the nightly news. I played a role in parliamentarians’ decision not to pass a badly written law on censorship in Germany, and I was onboard when they enacted a fine piece of legislation in Iceland.

  Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, was my best friend. The site made him into a pop star, one of the most intriguingly zany media figures in the world. Unfortunately, his brand of zaniness is also dangerous, and I noticed that fact too late.

  What connected Julian and me was the belief in a better world. In the world we dreamed of, there would be no more bosses or hierarchies, and no one could achieve power by withholding from the others the knowledge needed to act as an equal player. That was the idea for which we fought. It was the project that we started together and watched grow with enormous pride.

  In the past few years, WikiLeaks has gotten huge—much bigger than I would have ever thought possible in 2007, when, almost accidentally, driven by curiosity, I joined the project. It made two pale-faced computer freaks, whose intelligence would have otherwise gone unnoticed, into public figures who put fear into the hearts of the politicians, business leaders, and military commanders of this world. They probably had nightmares about us. A lot of them probably wished that we had never been born.

  That had felt good.

  There were times when I could hardly sleep, in anticipation of what tomorrow would bring. There was a period every morning in which something happened that I was convinced would make the world a little bit better. I’m not being ironic. I really believed this. Better yet, I still believe in the idea. I’m convinced the project itself was brilliant. Perhaps it was too brilliant to work the first time around.

  During my last few months with WikiLeaks, I also slept badly, but this time it was from fear and not anticipation. Every morning I expected that the next catastrophe would strike, that everything would come crashing down around our ears, something major would go wrong and a source would be put in danger. Or that Julian would launch another attack against me or one of the others who had previously been his closest confidants.

  Julian wrote an introduction to the most recent set of leaks, “Cablegate.” The leak, he said, illustrated the contradictions between public appearances and what goes on behind closed doors. People, he asserted, have a right to know what happens behind the scenes.

  You can’t put it any better than that. And it’s high time to look behind the curtains of WikiLeaks itself.

  I FIRST heard about WikiLeaks in September 2007. A buddy of mine told me about it in a chat. At the time, we were regular readers of cryptome.org, the whistle-blower website run by John Young. It had made the headlines, among other things because lists of agents working for MI6, the British secret service, had been published there in 1999 and 2005. Cryptome published documents from people who wanted to reveal secrets without running the risk of being branded traitors. It was the same idea WikiLeaks was based on.

  Ironically, many people initially assumed that some international secret service was actually behind WikiLeaks—that the platform was a so-called honeypot, a trap offering people a platform for revealing secrets where they would actually be arrested if they uploaded anything controversial. The predominant attitude was one of mistrust.

  Then in November 2007, the handbooks from Guantánamo Bay, the “Camp Delta Standard Operating Procedu
res,” appeared on WikiLeaks. They revealed that the United States was violating internees’ human rights and the Geneva Conventions at their military base in Cuba. Three things were immediately clear to me.

  One: It was absurd to think that WikiLeaks was a secret-service front.

  Two: The project had the potential to become much, much bigger than Cryptome.

  Three: WikiLeaks was a great idea. For people who’d been active from the beginning in these sorts of communities, the Internet was not a global sea of data, but a village. If I needed a reliable opinion about something, I knew where to ask. So that’s what I did, and the answer was always: “WL? It’s a fantastic idea.” That encouraged me to learn more. I logged in to a chat room, which still exists today on the WikiLeaks site, and started making contacts. I got the sense immediately that these people were the same as me. They were interested in the same issues. They worked the same ungodly hours. They talked about social problems and believed that the Internet offered previously unimaginable solutions. After a day of this, I asked if there was anything I could do. At first I got no answer. I was confused and a bit insulted. Still, I kept participating in the chat.

  “Still interested in a job?” came a message two days later. It was Julian Assange.

  “Sure! Tell me what,” I typed in response.

  At first Julian gave me a couple of menial tasks: cleaning up the Wiki site, making formats cohere, and revising some content. I was still a long way from dealing with any sensitive documents. Then I had the idea of introducing WikiLeaks into the program of the 24th Chaos Communication Congress, the legendary meeting of the hacker and computing scene sponsored by the Chaos Computer Club, a well-respected organization of technology activists in Germany. The congress takes place every year in Berlin between Christmas and New Year’s Day.

  I knew little about how WikiLeaks was run internally. I didn’t even know how many others besides me were involved or what sort of technical infrastructure the project had. When I thought about it, I imagined WikiLeaks as a midsized organization with a well-organized team, robust technology, and servers across the globe.