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<h1>Democracy Now Talks With Julian Assange About Wikileaks,
Snowden</h1>
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<span class="cat-date-line3"> <a
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<span class="cat-date-line4">By Democracy Now, <a
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July 8th, 2014</span><br>
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<div id="story-summary">
<p>In a Democracy Now! special, we go inside the Ecuadorian
embassy in London to interview Wikileaks founder Julian
Assange. He has been holed up there for more than two years,
having received political asylum. He faces investigations in
both Sweden and the United States. In the U.S., a secret grand
jury is investigating WikiLeaks for its role in publishing a
trove of leaked documents about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars,
as well as classified State Department cables. In Sweden,
Assange is wanted for questioning on allegations of sexual
misconduct, though no charges have been filed. Late last week,
there was the first break in the latter case in two years,
when a Swedish court announced it would hold a hearing on July
16 about a request by his lawyers for prosecutors to hand over
new evidence and withdraw the arrest warrant. In the first of
a two-part interview, Assange discusses his new legal bid in
Sweden, the ongoing grand jury probe in the United States, and
WikiLeaks’ efforts to assist National Security Agency
whistleblower Edward Snowden.</p>
</div>
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<h2 class="section-header">Transcript</h2>
<div id="story-rush-transcript">
<p>This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.</p>
</div>
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
We turn now to a <em>Democracy Now!</em> exclusive. WikiLeaks
founder Julian Assange has just entered his third year inside
Ecuador’s Embassy in London where he has political asylum.
Assange faces investigations in both Sweden and the United
States. Here in the U.S., a secret grand jury is investigating
WikiLeaks for its role in publishing a trove of leaked documents
about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, as well as State Department
cables. In Sweden, he’s wanted for questioning on allegations of
sexual misconduct, though no charges have been filed. Late last
week, there was the first break in the Swedish case in two
years. A Swedish court announced it would hold a hearing July
16th over a request by his lawyers for prosecutors to hand over
new evidence and withdraw the arrest warrant.</p>
<p>Well, late last night, we flew back to New York after
interviewing Julian Assange inside the embassy.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
The Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where Julian Assange is
holed up—he has been here for just over two years, just
celebrated his 43rd birthday inside the embassy. Here you can
see the British police, and right in front of me is the
balcony where Julian Assange has come out and addressed his
supporters and addressed the media. The Ecuadorean flag hangs
from that balcony. As to when Julian Assange will come out,
well, he is concerned, if he steps foot outside, he will be
arrested by the British police. So, for now, he’s inside, this
nomad of the digital age.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p>We’re in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London, where Julian
Assange took refuge two years ago. He’s been detained in
Britain for close now to four years.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p>Welcome to <em>Democracy Now!</em>, Julian.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
Thank you, Amy.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
How are you doing here? It’s been over two years that you have
really not seen daylight for any extended period of time.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
There’s been nearly four years that I’ve been detained without
charge, in one form or another, here in the United Kingdom,
first in prison, the solitary confinement, then under house
arrest for about 18 months, and now two years here in the
embassy. The Ecuadorean government gave me political asylum in
relation to the ongoing national security investigation by the
<span class="caps">DOJ</span>, the Department of Justice, in
the United States into our publications and also into sourcing
efforts. So, did I enter into a conspiracy with Chelsea
Manning, who was sentenced last year to 35 years in prison?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p>So, the question as to how I’m doing, of course, personally,
it’s a difficult situation, in a variety of ways. I would say
that when someone’s in this position, what you are most
concerned about is the interruption in your family
relationships. So, because of the security situation, that’s
made it very hard for my children and my parents.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p>But if we look at the bigger picture, WikiLeaks, as an
organization, has survived that attack by the U.S. government,
and we’ve gone on to do further work and some quite
significant work. Unlike many media organizations during that
period, we have not gone bankrupt, despite a worldwide,
extrajudicial banking blockade by Visa, MasterCard, PayPal and
so on, and none of our members of staff have been fired. So, I
think if you went back and said to yourself, “What are the
chances that a small investigative publisher could publish
this information about the Iraq War and the State Department
and the Afghanistan War and many other documents about
Guantánamo, and enter into conflict with the United States
government in a very serious way, would they still be
publishing? Would their people be in prison?” and you would
think, probably, yes. But actually, we have managed to mostly
overcome, apart from my situation here, the barriers that have
been put up against us.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
So, July 16th is a significant date. You are wanted in two
investigations, or you’re being investigated by the U.S.
government because, as you said, of WikiLeaks, of exposing
many documents—tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? How
many would you say? Around the Iraq War—</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
Eight million so far.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
Eight million—around the Iraq War, around the Afghanistan War,
and cables of the State Department that go back for decades.
You’re also wanted by Sweden for questioning, often misstated
as “because you’ve been charged”—</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
Yeah.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
—for questioning around sexual misconduct. And July 16th is a
big date in that case. Why?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
While most of our resources have been concerned with the
ongoing U.S. investigation and pending prosecution, which the
U.S.—which the <span class="caps">DOJ</span> admits to in its
court filing of the 25th of April this year, continues, the
Swedish investigation has obstructed my asylum. So, United
Kingdom says, “Look, there’s this questioning warrant that
Sweden has put out for you. They may have dropped the case,”
which they did and re-raised it, “but nonetheless there’s this
questioning warrant, and therefore we say you cannot go to
Ecuador to accept asylum until we’ve extradited you to
Sweden.” Now, that is actually a violation of international
law. The international law is quite clear: Asylum trumps
extradition, because of the nature of the relationships with
the U.N. and the 1951 asylum convention. So, every time we try
and we get some traction publicly and politically in the U.S.
case, people say, “Oh, no, no, the whole thing is really about
the Swedish case.” So it’s quite important to deal with the
Swedish matter and kind of show it for what it is and that it
should be dropped.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p>There has been no movement. Although the Swedish government
is obligated to somehow progress the situation, they’ve been
very happy to keep it a complete stasis. They’ve refused to
come here to speak to me here or pick up a telephone or to
accept an affidavit. They have also refused to provide a
guarantee that I will not be extradited to the United States
if I offer to go to Sweden. So, that situation means we have
to tackle the Swedish matter, it seems, in Sweden. The only
other alternative is perhaps going to the International Court
of Justice in relation to the asylum.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p>Anyway, so it will be the first date in nearly four—in four
years that the matter has been heard about in Sweden. And my
lawyers are confident that either in the lower court, and more
likely the appeal court, we will be able to dismiss the case,
because the law is reasonably clear. You’re meant to proceed
with—the Swedish government has an obligation under its own
law to proceed with maximum speed, with minimum cost, and also
with bringing the minimum suspicion on the person who’s being
investigated. And it is in clear violation of all those points
of law.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
This hearing that will take place on July 16th is a result of
an appeal by your Swedish lawyers. Why didn’t they appeal
before?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
Well, several things have happened in the interim. Because of
the abuses in this case and some other cases, new European law
was introduced and pulled in—and enacted in Sweden. And it was
meant to be enacted by June the 1st this year; it wasn’t. But
by July the 1st it should have come on board, so just
recently. So that new legislation permits people who are
suspects, who had their liberty deprived in some way, to be
able to access evidence that shows that they’re innocent. And
so, we understand that there’s significant evidence that was
collected by the police that show that I am innocent, and they
have thus far refused to hand it over. But this new European
law means that they have to hand it over.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
In affidavits that I have read, your lawyers were allowed to
see text messages of the women who have accused you.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
Well, what’s hard to—you have to be careful in saying that
they have accused me, because actually when you read their
correspondence and their early statements, they don’t say that
at all. In fact, they say that they didn’t accuse me and that
the police took the matter and the state accused me, that they
didn’t want any charges, that they weren’t filing a formal
complaint. That’s what they say in those text messages.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
Your lawyers weren’t able to get copies of them at this point,
but they were allowed to look at them.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
Yeah.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
One of them saying something like, “I did not want to put any
charges on Julian Assange, but that the police were keen on
getting a grip on him”?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
Yeah, and that she was railroaded into things and really did
not—she did not want what occurred to occur.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
So, you were questioned in Sweden originally, and the chief
prosecutor actually—is it the prosecutor who dropped the case
against you?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
The chief prosecutor of Stockholm reviewed the material very
early on in the case and dropped the rape complaint, dropped
it, said there’s no—said, “It’s not that I don’t believe what
the women say, but there’s just no evidence that any crime has
been committed.” And so, the matter was dropped. Then,
subsequently, a senior Swedish politician, Claes Borgström,
who was running for election, then took it to Gothenburg, a
city which has nothing to do with the case, and resurrected it
under another prosecutor.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
And so, what could happen on July 16th?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
The options for them, they can simply—they can dismiss it;
they can say that the law is unclear and ask maybe European
Court of Justice to give clarity on this new European law and
how it is to be implemented.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
There’s also a law here that was just passed in Britain that
seems to have come about as a result of your case.
Unfortunately, you’re not protected under it.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
That’s a very important development. So, as a result of the
abuses in my case, which were seen by the Supreme Court—there
was a split in the Supreme Court.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
Here in Britain.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
Here in Britain. And subsequently, the <em>Cambridge Journal
of Comparative Law</em> wrote two papers about what had
happened. And there’s a lot of concern about this idea that
you could extradite someone without even charging them. So,
political pressure—there was a backbench revolt in the British
Parliament, principally amongst the conservative backbench,
that this was—you know, that any police officer in Europe
could just ask for someone in the U.K. to be extradited
without it going before a court and without them being
charged. And so new legislation was introduced to prevent that
happening. So, no more extradition without charge from the
U.K. But there was then debate that, “Well, will this in fact
protect Assange?” And so, a specific clause was entered into
it that it will not be retrospective for those people where
the court has decided that they will be extradited, but they
haven’t been extradited yet—which just applies to me.</p>
</blockquote>
<p class="collapsed-hide"><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span
class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong> WikiLeaks founder and
editor Julian Assange inside the Ecuadorean Embassy in London,
where he has been holed up for more than two years. When we come
back, in this sitdown interview, I talk to Assange about my
interview with the Swedish foreign minister, Carl Bildt, about
Assange’s case. And I get Assange’s response to former Secretary
of State Hillary Clinton’s comments calling for Edward Snowden
to come back to the United States to face a trial. We also learn
how Assange helped facilitate Snowden’s departure from Hong
Kong. All that and more, coming up. Stay with us.</p>
<p class="collapsed-hide">[break]</p>
<p class="collapsed-hide"><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span
class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong> This is <em>Democracy
Now!</em>, democracynow.org, <em>The War and Peace Report</em>.
I’m Amy Goodman, just back from London. We return now to my
interview with WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange from inside
Ecuador’s Embassy in London this weekend, where he has political
asylum and has been living for over two years.</p>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
I just came from Sweden, from Almedalen, where 25,000 people
gather to talk about politics, and all the parties there and
the leaders are there, among them the foreign minister, <a
href="http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/2/after_2_years_of_confinement_will">Carl
Bildt</a>, and I asked him about this challenge that was
just introduced to the U.N. Human Rights Council. Let’s go to
a clip of that.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
Could I ask you—we’re looking at the case of Julian Assange,
and 59 legal and human rights groups have made a submission
to the U.N. Human Rights Council challenging the pre-charge
detention, which makes it a foreign policy issue. As foreign
minister, what are your thoughts on this?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><strong><span class="caps">FOREIGN</span> <span
class="caps">MINISTER</span> <span class="caps">CARL</span>
<span class="caps">BILDT</span>:</strong> None, because
it’s a question for the legal authorities and not a question
for me.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
But because it’s in the U.N. Human Rights commission—</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><strong><span class="caps">FOREIGN</span> <span
class="caps">MINISTER</span> <span class="caps">CARL</span>
<span class="caps">BILDT</span>:</strong> Well, that
doesn’t make—</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
—the Council.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote>
<p><strong><span class="caps">FOREIGN</span> <span
class="caps">MINISTER</span> <span class="caps">CARL</span>
<span class="caps">BILDT</span>:</strong> That doesn’t
make any difference whatever, because it’s still a legal
issue within the legal system. And as you have in the U.S.,
I guess, you have the separation between the executive and
judicial branch. And the executive—that’s sort of the nature
of democracy or constitutional democracy. If you’re a
representative of the executive branch, you have no say—and
shouldn’t have any say—in what the judicial branch is doing.
And that applies here, as well.</p>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
That was Carl Bildt, the foreign minister of Sweden, saying
this is a judicial issue, an issue of the judiciary, and he
won’t intervene. Your comment on that?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
Well, I only wish that was the case. But, in fact, Carl Bildt,
the Swedish foreign minister, a hawkish trans-Atlanticist who
was hired by the Liberation of Iraq Committee, for cash, to
provoke the invasion of Iraq here in Europe, and has done many
similar things—this year was his 14th Bilderberger, he’s an
old friend of Henry Kissinger, etc. Carl Bildt has, in fact,
continually, publicly interfered and denounced WikiLeaks and
me, or statements that my lawyers have made, in various ways
over the past four years—not only Carl Bildt, but the rest of
the Swedish Cabinet, as well. So, it’s one of these situations
where when someone doesn’t want to answer a question, they
rely on principles—which are good principles, of not
interfering in judiciary—but on the other hand, when they want
to interfere, then they do just that.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
And the significance of the U.S. government being involved
with Sweden to a level we haven’t seen before? You have the
secretary of state at the time, Hillary Clinton, coming to
Sweden; the attorney general, Eric Holder, coming to Sweden;
President Obama coming to Sweden. That’s never happened in
U.S. history when it comes to Sweden.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
And John Kerry, as well.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
And John Kerry, the current secretary of state.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
Yeah, yeah. The last secretary of state visit was Kissinger in
1976.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
Do you believe this has to do with you?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
I don’t think it’s just to do with me. There may be an
element. For example, the Holder visit was unscheduled and was
sudden and occurred at the time when there was a significant
debate in Sweden about dropping the matter in relation to me.
That’s possibly related to me. And the Hillary visit, yes, it
was just a week before I was meant to be extradited to Sweden.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p>But I think it more likely reflects a very strong alliance
between Sweden and the United States, which has developed
since the end of the Cold War, and rapidly since 2006, when
the center-right party, the moderates, entered into
government. And that alliance we can see, for example, in that
Swedish troops are under U.S. command in Afghanistan; that
Sweden was the fifth into Libya; that Sweden was the number
one seller of arms to the United States during the Iraq War,
in absolute terms; that the National Security Agency and
Sweden have an agreement, which is even stronger than the
agreement between—that in aspects is even stronger than the
agreement between <span class="caps">GCHQ</span>, the British
intelligence agency, and National Security Agency to conduct
bulk surveillance of traffic passing through Sweden.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
Julian Assange, if the case dissolved in Sweden, if the
allegations were dropped, could you walk outside of this
embassy here on British soil?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
No, but that case would stop obstructing part of the asylum.
So we still have the issue as to whether the British would
then activate a U.S. extradition request. The British are also
conducting their own counterterrorism investigation in
relation to our involvement and <em>The Guardian</em>‘s
involvement in Edward Snowden’s documents. And there’s also
questions about the Snowden grand jury that we’re not sure
about. But the most clear aspect is the WikiLeaks grand jury
in the U.S., which has been the largest investigation and
pending prosecution of a publisher in U.S. history, more than
a dozen different agencies involved. It’s very well
documented, not just by us, but by other journalists and <em>New
York Times</em>. And, in fact, the <span class="caps">DOJ</span>
admits it in court filings. So, that’s an issue.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p>Now, in 2012, when the conflict was at its height, and this
embassy was completely surrounded by British police—it is
still surrounded by British police. There is still a siege
underway with about eight to 16 uniformed and undercover
police officers around the embassy at any time. But going back
to 2012, there was a siege involving, at various times of the
day, over a hundred police officers. At that time, the British
police were ordered to smash—ordered to smash into a
diplomatic car, if I was in a diplomatic car; if I had
diplomatic immunity, to arrest me. So, that’s quite
extraordinary that there would be a direct instruction to
violate the most tested part of international law, which is
the Vienna Convention, which is the protection of embassies
and diplomatic cars. It’s not like there’s any debate on
whether it might be illegal and might be legal to do that
under some circumstances. It’s completely illegal. And yet the
British police were ordered to do it.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
Do you sense a shift here? I mean, you have Baroness Jenny
Jones, for example, who’s in charge of a police committee in
the London House, saying, “Why are we spending this money?” In
fact, hasn’t there been a breakdown of how much money has been
spent? In U.S. dollars, something like $11 million.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
Yeah, it’s come out under a Freedom of Information Act request
just about two—about two weeks ago, that the U.K. had reached
6.5 million pounds, or about eleven-and-a-half million
dollars. It’s now up to 6.7 million pounds. Interestingly,
when there’s a request of the breakdown, because that
only—that should be about 16 people full-time. When there’s a
request of the breakdown, they refuse to reveal the breakdown
under national security—for national security reasons. So the
U.K. government—there’s something that they’re doing with that
police surveillance that they say is a matter of national
security.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
So, let me ask you about this latest letter that was written
to Attorney General Eric Holder, signed by many organizations,
including Human Rights Watch, Anthony Romero of the <span
class="caps">ACLU</span>, Reporters Without Borders, World
Association of Community Radio Broadcasters and many others,
calling on the Justice Department to officially close all
criminal investigations against WikiLeaks and its
editor-in-chief, you, Julian Assange, and to stop harassment
and other persecution of WikiLeaks for publishing in the
public interest. Talk about what this means and whether you
think this will happen in the United States right now, whether
this investigation against you, which has come up in
everything from the Manning trial—</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
Yeah.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
—to other places, will stop.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
I think it’s a sign of a developing mood in the United States,
to see conservative organizations like Human Rights Watch,
which, as you well know, has a lot of former State Department
people in it, to come out with that position, that this
prosecution, or this pending prosecution of WikiLeaks by the <span
class="caps">DOJ</span>, National Security Division, is a
dangerous precedent to set and would be a significant stain on
the record of the Democrats. And so, I think there is a view
that that should be stopped, and a number of different
organizations are pushing for it. Now, of course, that always
should have been the view. You can ask the question: Why
wasn’t Human Rights Watch in there two years ago saying these
things? Well, I think people were scared. I think they really
were scared and that they thought that perhaps they could
isolate us and, “OK, let the U.S. government go after
WikiLeaks, just as long as we can keep our media organizations
and our human rights groups, and we can stay out of the
fight.”</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p>But if you look at how the Espionage Act prosecutions have
developed, there is now more investigations and prosecutions
by the Obama administration of people under the Espionage
Act—principally, whistleblowers and journalists—than all
previous presidents combined, going back to 1917—in fact, more
than double. And people understand that it’s not just us. In
fact, the precedent has been set that you can perhaps do this
to almost anyone. And that should be checked.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
In this letter, they go on to quote Eric Holder, the attorney
general, saying, “you promised that </p>
‘as long as I am attorney general, no reporter who is doing his
job is going to go to jail.’”</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
Yeah.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
He recently said this.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
Well, unfortunately, you can see the conditional, which is
doing his job. And we’re being—interestingly, this public
statement by Holder reflects a development of thought in the
State Department over the past two years that we have been
following quite closely. And it is to somehow say that there
are certain types of reportage which are legitimate and other
types of reportage which are not legitimate. And the State
Department has refused to recognize us as a media
organization. And it’s done that in a number of different
ways, not just in its public statements by its officials over
a wide variety of time, but, for example, when the Bradley
Manning trial was on and Kristinn Hrafnsson, our
spokesperson—the top award-winning journalist of Iceland, has
won journalist of the year three times—applied for a visa to
go to the trial, to the U.S. State Department, a journalist
visa, it was refused. And the grounds for refusal were not
specified; they refused to specify them. But they are
obviously that the State Department has a policy position that
it will refuse to recognize WikiLeaks as a media organization,
because then this would activate their other position that
they’re not going to prosecute journalists for doing their
jobs.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
Here you are, Julian Assange, in the Ecuadorean Embassy, under
siege by a number of governments, under surveillance by many.
And yet you manage to work with Edward Snowden, perhaps the
most famous whistleblower today in the world, to help him,
once he gave over his documents in Hong Kong, the former <span
class="caps">NSA</span> contractor, to the journalists Laura
Poitras and Glenn Greenwald, make his way to Russia, where he
got political asylum. Can you explain how you did this?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
Well, I think it’s—first of all, will explain why WikiLeaks,
as an organization, took on that case. Well, personally, I’ve
been through a very similar—I could see the experience Edward
Snowden was about to go through. I have been through a similar
experience. And I’ve also watched Chelsea Manning go through
an even worse experience, now sentenced to 35 years in prison
and, at one stage, kept in cages in Kuwait and so on, and
treated very, very badly. So, I have personal sympathy for
what he was about to go through—and not just from the legal
side, but also from the press side. But as a result of us
having gone through it, we developed certain understandings
about diplomacy, secure communications, which had long been
our specialty, and we have a good kind of diplomatic network
as a result of specializing in diplomatic publications. So we
thought there was a chance that we could help him, and he
reached out and asked for help, and we thought it was
important to assist.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p>The other thing is about the sort of signal it sends. The
U.S. government decided to smash Chelsea Manning—absolutely
smash him—to send a signal to everyone: Don’t you ever think
about telling people what’s really going on inside the U.S.
military and its abuses. And they tried to smash also the next
most visible person and visible organization, which was
WikiLeaks, to get both ends—the source end and the publishing
end. Now, we have mostly defended ourselves. I’m in a
difficult position here, but WikiLeaks has never censored any
of its publications in response to that attack. So we wanted
to try and set a counterexample with Edward Snowden, that in
fact you can blow the whistle, you can reveal this information
to the public, which is of tremendous historical importance.
It’s of importance to the ongoing development of civilization.
Are we going to end up into a mass surveillance system with a
very aggressive and strong military-industrial complex, or do
we have an attempt to steer away from that? But if we could
erect Edward Snowden as someone who blew the whistle and
survived, and not even survived, but thrived and spoke about
it and kept informing people of what was going on, then we
wanted to do it, because that incentivized other sources
coming forward.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
And so, how did you do it?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
Well, you know, you have to understand I need to speak
carefully, because there is an ongoing Edward Snowden grand
jury, which is looking at the matters of those people who
assisted Edward Snowden, as well as Edward Snowden himself.
But there’s a lot of surveillance of this embassy; on the
other hand, we had developed certain techniques in defeating
surveillance. And they’re not easy. They are hard techniques,
and they do take diligence. But the reality is, the National
Security Agency, for all its surveillance power, and the <span
class="caps">DOJ</span>, for all their coercive power, in
the end, they are bureaucracies. They are perfectly nasty,
boring bureaucracies. And bureaucracies are inefficient, and
they move slowly. And we knew this from our dealing with the
State Department and the Pentagon previously.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p>And so, we were able to move quickly and fast and assess the
situation, from a legal and political perspective, in Hong
Kong and the mechanisms that would be needed to get him out,
get him asylum, and the flight path that would be needed so he
had protection at each step of the way and that none of the
intermediary countries would grab him, due to us making
pre-arrangements and also due to just the sort of where they
stood geopolitically. So that’s what we did. And it’s not like
it was guaranteed to work. In fact, there were certain stages
where there were quite some risks. But the risks of inaction
were even greater.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
So you not only helped him from here, but Sarah Harrison, who
we just recently interviewed in Germany, who is British, but
concerned, if she comes back to Britain, she, too, will be
arrested, actually accompanied him on that trip from Hong Kong
to Russia, stayed with him at the—both at the airport for five
weeks and then for months after that.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
Yes, that’s right. Yeah, so, Sarah Harrison, one of our
people, who went to Hong Kong to deal with the situation both
from a legal perspective and a journalistic perspective, she
was acting as a secure conduit to our lawyers, who were trying
to understand the asylum situation and advise him. And from a
journalistic perspective, of course, it’s a very interesting
story. Accompanied him to Hong Kong—sorry, accompanied him out
of Hong Kong to Moscow and dealt with a very difficult
situation there of gaining him asylum, and, importantly,
making sure—once it became clear that it would be difficult
for him to go to Latin America, making sure that the situation
into which he entered into asylum in Russia was a
well-negotiated one, was not one of weakness. And so she
stayed there for some three or four months to make sure that
he had freedom in Russia and was well respected there. And to
their credit, the Russian authorities did the right thing:
They gave him asylum, and they didn’t interfere or coerce with
his conditions there.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
What do you think is the most significant revelation that’s
come out of the Snowden-leaked documents? I mean, you who know
so much from the documents that you’ve released.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
Well, because it is our specialty to understand surveillance
systems of various kind, and it was my profession beforehand,
the broad—many of the broad parameters, we already knew about.
But the confirmation of each one of those parameters was
extremely important for others to realize it. I think what is
most surprising is not any one thing. It’s the scale, the
incredible scale, and that at any point where you could guess,
“Are they doing this, or are they not doing it?” they are
doing it. So, for example, intercepting packages that are sent
out in the post and backdooring them, backdooring chips. So we
see the corporation list between National Security Agency and
U.S. hardware manufacturers, so Intel, Qualcomm, that makes
the chips for telephones and so on. That’s quite surprising.
That had been rumored and speculated on, but that the actual
physical hardware is backdoored before you even get it, that,
I think, is—that is a bit surprising. And then the absolute
numbers, the billions of interceptions that are occurring per
day. Actually, people who were studying this knew that, but to
see a map of the world and the different countries with how
many millions or billions of intercepts per day were coming
in, I think that is probably the most consequential.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
And the latest news that’s just come out of Berlin, the arrest
of a German intelligence officer for spying for the United
States on the inquiry that’s been opened—</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
Yeah.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
—into the whole <span class="caps">NSA</span> scandal?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
Yeah, very interesting. No surprise at all that intelligence
officers are being bribed by the United States. We have had
volunteers being paid by the <span class="caps">FBI</span>
and so on, being bribed by the United States. That’s no
surprise at all. What is very interesting is that Germany has
decided to make it public, that they have found someone and
that they’re going to prosecute him, not just dismiss him.
That’s a decision by the German government to cater to the
popular will of the German population.</p>
</blockquote>
<p class="collapsed-hide"><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span
class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong> WikiLeaks founder and
editor Julian Assange. In our next segment, we ask him about
former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s comments calling for
Edward Snowden to come back to the United States to face a
trial. And Julian Assange describes his surroundings. He’s been
holed up in the Ecuadorean Embassy in London for over two years
without any direct sunlight. He describes it as a kind of space
station. He has been granted political asylum in Ecuador, but
he’s concerned if he steps foot outside the Ecuadorean Embassy
in London, he’ll be arrested by British authorities. We continue
our conversation with Julian Assange in the Ecuadorean Embassy
in a moment.</p>
<p class="collapsed-hide">[break]</p>
<p class="collapsed-hide"><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span
class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong> We’re just back from
London for our <em>Democracy Now!</em> exclusive, the first
time a U.S. TV/radio broadcast has had a sitdown interview
inside the Ecuadorean Embassy with WikiLeaks founder Julian
Assange. We go back to that interview right now. He has been
granted political asylum in Ecuador but has been living in the
embassy for over two years.</p>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
Hillary Clinton has been doing a number of interviews on her
book-slash-pre-presidential tour, and she was interviewed by <em>The
Guardian</em>, where she talks about Edward Snowden.</p>
<blockquote>
<p><strong><span class="caps">HILLARY</span> <span
class="caps">CLINTON</span>:</strong> If he wishes to
return home, knowing that he would be held accountable but
also be able to present a defense, that is his decision to
make. In any case that I’m aware of as a former lawyer, he
has the right to mount a defense. And he certainly has the
right to mount both a legal defense and a public defense,
which of course can affect the legal defense. Whether he
returns or not is up to him. He certainly can stay in
Russia, apparently under Putin’s protection, for the rest of
his life, if that’s what he chooses. But if he’s serious
about engaging in the debate, then he could take the
opportunity to come back and have that debate. But that’s
his decision. I’m not making a judgment one way or the
other.</p>
</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
Those are the words of Hillary Clinton, that Edward Snowden
should come home and, as the current secretary of state says,
“man up” and face a trial.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
He has no possibility to conduct a meaningful defense in the
United States. That’s just a sad reflection of how the federal
court system has evolved in relation to national security
cases. They will make sure, A, that the case is in Alexandria,
Virginia. In fact, they already have. That’s where his grand
jury is. It’s where the WikiLeaks grand jury is. It is the
highest density of military intelligence contractors and
government employees in all of the United States. That’s why
it’s there, so they always get what they want.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p>The state secrets privilege is used in these espionage cases,
where the government tries to work out a way to present
evidence that it doesn’t allow to the defense under the basis
that it’s classified. So, even at the sort of procedural
level, he will not be able to conduct a meaningful defense.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p>Then, in relation to his obligations under law for classified
access, it’s a strict liability. So he can’t conduct any
whistleblower defense that it was in the public interest, etc.
It’s strict liability.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p>And then we only need to—and you go, “Well, how does that all
play out in practice?” Well, actually, we’ve seen the case of
Bradley Manning: 35 years for speaking to the press, no
allegation that there was any money involved, no allegation
that he was dealing with any opponents of the United States
government, and 35 years in prison. So, those are the actual
conditions that people go through in cases like this.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
In fact, when Hillary Clinton talks about his public defense,
that he could mount one, when it came to Chelsea Manning, then
Bradley Manning, when Manning was being tried, we could not
even hear Manning’s voice, except that, you know, a tape of
his voice—</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
As a result of a leak. That’s right. That’s right.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
—was smuggled out of the courtroom, so we were able to play a
very muffled tape. So how would Edward Snowden defend himself?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
And in the Chelsea Manning case, it was even worse than that.
We filed to get his—Center for Constitutional Rights, a number
of cases, even to get any transcript out of that hearing. So,
you’ll see a similar thing in the Snowden case, a lockdown
under the basis that secrets are being discussed. And then the
conditions that Snowden would be kept in in the United States
would be SAMs, so special administrative measures, because
it’s what they do in these national security cases. They say
that there’s something in his head that’s valuable—it’s not
just documents—and that by speaking, he could reveal this
information. And so he’d basically be kept in incommunicado
detention during the bail process, and the court case, I
imagine, could go for five to seven years, even if in the end
political constellations came together and he won in the
Supreme Court.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
Well, presumably, Julian Assange, this applies to you, as
well. What do you think would happen if you’re extradited to
the United States?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
Well, just that. It’s not even what I think. WikiLeaks and I
have a team of excellent lawyers—there’s about 30 of them
now—that have been understanding the situation for several
years. They include Michael Ratner from the Center for
Constitutional Rights and others in the United States. And
their advice is that, yes, there’s a high chance that you
would be subject to SAMs, special administrative measures,
during the whole time that the court case went on. You
obviously wouldn’t get bail as a foreigner. And yeah, so, the
punishment is in the process. And the <span class="caps">DOJ</span>
understands that. And if you look at other cases, like Thomas
Drake, for example, former National Security Agency
whistleblower, given 13 counts of espionage, and then, in the
end, he beat it and beat them down to one count of mishandling
classified information. So you see this attempt to punish
people by drawing them into a long and extended, drawn-out
process, and, OK, in the end maybe you’ll win it, but you
don’t get all those years back again. And, you know, that I
have responsibilities to the organization I’m running, to my
family, and I’ve been advised to not go to the United States.
And I think that’s good advice.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
Finally, where we are here, in the Ecuadorean embassy, you
have described it as a kind of space station. Can you describe
it for us, how you live here 24 hours a day?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
Well, it’s a space station in the sense that I’m sealed from
the outside world and natural light, and therefore have to
create my own cycle of light, like you also do in space. But,
you know, it’s—</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
So you have a light machine.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
Yes. But being in a—and timers and so on. But being in an
embassy is actually, in some ways, not in others, a national
security reporter’s dream, because there’s no subpoenas to an
embassy. You can’t subpoena. The British police can’t come in.
The Ecuadorean police can’t come in. No police can come in.
There can be no raids in the night or during the day. And
that’s quite a comforting position for the publisher of
WikiLeaks to work from. It’s not a position I would like to
keep forever, obviously, but it does at least allow me to
continue working—yes, with a lot of constraints about can my
family safely visit, can sources safely visit, can our most
sensitive staff safely visit the embassy. There’s a lot of
surveillance of the embassy. Some of that has been publicly
declared. There’s a lot of other surveillance of the embassy
that we are aware of, in different forms, surrounding what
faces onto the embassy in different ways, which I don’t want
to go into what we know and what we don’t know, for obvious
reasons.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
We’re right across from Harrods, the famous department store.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
There is, under the Freedom of—under, actually, the Data
Protection Act, we filed a act against Harrods and got
information out showing how Harrods were in fact assisting the
police surveillance operation.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
How?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
By permitting the police to use various buildings and
facilities that Harrods has, not just the formal building, but
they have a number of buildings which face onto the embassy.
Additionally, it might be something of interest that Harrods
was bought out by the Qatar sovereign fund a while ago, so it
is ultimately Qatar that is supporting the surveillance
operation of this embassy through its collaboration with the
British government.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
What about the outside security here? We just look beyond the
curtains, and we see police vans.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
Around the embassy, there are a number of uniformed police and
plainclothes police operating and others. The publicly
admitted expenditure is now 6.7 million pounds, $11.5 million.
It’s about $15,000 per day. And so, there has been some
analysis of that and what that means. There’s about eight
visible people around the embassy. But the salaries cover 16
people, so there’s a number of others also involved in the
processing and management of the information. That doesn’t
include what MI5 is doing and what <span class="caps">GCHQ</span>
is doing.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
And you found—the embassy here found a bug in the ambassador’s
office?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
That’s right. The embassy security found, at the time of the
visit of—shortly before the visit of Ricardo Patiño, the
Ecuadorean foreign minister, in terms of the security—getting
ready for the security of the minister’s visit, yes, they
found a bug planted, a <span class="caps">GSM</span> bug
planted in a hidden socket in the ambassador’s room.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
Do you expect there are many others?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
Well, some parts of the embassy. Fortunately, the embassy has
a 24-hour security guard—me—who never leaves the building and
is always watching or alarmed in one way or another. So not
all places, but, yes, others.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
What gives you hope? And what do you see as the greatest
legacy of WikiLeaks?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
Well, hopefully the greatest legacy is still to come. But
WikiLeaks started in 2007, but it was really this very public
confrontation that we had in 2010, 2011, which people saw
watching. So it was not—a new generation saw history unfolding
in real time, before their eyes, a history that they were part
of. Young people see the Internet as their place, where they
exchange ideas and culture and so on. And previously, they had
been politically apathetic, because they didn’t feel that they
could be a part of the power process. But seeing Hillary
Clinton’s personal cables and equivalents for many different
countries, and the fight that we were in, and being part of
that in some way, by spreading this information or talking
about it with others, educated a new generation. And the
Internet went from being a politically apathetic space to
being a political space. And that then spread into many
different things. And so, I think this is actually the most
significant thing that we have done.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p>We have also, in terms of the publishing industry, widened
the envelope of what is acceptable to publish and so on.
That’s been quite important and set off a cascade of examples,
which—going through allegedly Chelsea Manning and Edward
Snowden and Jeremy Hammond and many others, to come forward
and reveal abuses in government.</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong>
Is there another Edward Snowden in the pipeline?</p>
</blockquote>
<blockquote class="collapsed-hide">
<p><strong><span class="caps">JULIAN</span> <span class="caps">ASSANGE</span>:</strong>
I’m sure—I’m sure there will be. In fact, I’m sure there
already is.</p>
</blockquote>
<p class="collapsed-hide"><strong><span class="caps">AMY</span> <span
class="caps">GOODMAN</span>:</strong> WikiLeaks founder and
editor Julian Assange. We interviewed him inside the Ecuadorean
Embassy in London over the weekend. We just flew back. Julian
Assange celebrated his 43rd birthday there on July 3rd, his
third birthday inside the embassy. He’s been granted a political
asylum by Ecuador, but concerned if he steps foot outside the
embassy in order to get to Ecuador, he’ll be arrested by British
authorities. On Wednesday, part two of our interview with Julian
Assange. Special thanks to Mike Burke, John Hamilton and Denis
Moynihan. If you’d like a copy of today’s show, go to our
website at democracynow.org.</p>
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