[Peace-discuss] Democracy Now Talks With Julian Assange About Wikileaks, Snowden
David Johnson via Peace-discuss
peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
Wed Jul 9 21:46:31 EDT 2014
Democracy Now Talks With Julian Assange About Wikileaks, Snowden
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Educate! <http://www.popularresistance.org/category/educate/> Democracy
Now <http://www.popularresistance.org/tag/democracy-now/>, Edward
Snowden <http://www.popularresistance.org/tag/edward-snowden/>, Julian
Assange <http://www.popularresistance.org/tag/assange/>, Wikileaks
<http://www.popularresistance.org/tag/wikileaks/>
By Democracy Now, www.democracynow.org
<http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/7/exclusive_inside_embassy_refuge_julian_assange>
July 8th, 2014
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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.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
*AMY GOODMAN:* We turn now to a /Democracy Now!/ 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.
Well, late last night, we flew back to New York after interviewing
Julian Assange inside the embassy.
*AMY GOODMAN:* 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.
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.
Welcome to /Democracy Now!/, Julian.
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* Thank you, Amy.
*AMY GOODMAN:* How are you doing here? It's been over two years that
you have really not seen daylight for any extended period of time.
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* 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 DOJ, 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?
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.
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.
*AMY GOODMAN:* 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---
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* Eight million so far.
*AMY GOODMAN:* 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"---
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* Yeah.
*AMY GOODMAN:* ---for questioning around sexual misconduct. And July
16th is a big date in that case. Why?
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* While most of our resources have been concerned
with the ongoing U.S. investigation and pending prosecution, which
the U.S.---which the DOJ 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.
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.
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.
*AMY GOODMAN:* 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?
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* 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.
*AMY GOODMAN:* In affidavits that I have read, your lawyers were
allowed to see text messages of the women who have accused you.
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* 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.
*AMY GOODMAN:* Your lawyers weren't able to get copies of them at
this point, but they were allowed to look at them.
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* Yeah.
*AMY GOODMAN:* 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"?
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* Yeah, and that she was railroaded into things and
really did not---she did not want what occurred to occur.
*AMY GOODMAN:* So, you were questioned in Sweden originally, and the
chief prosecutor actually---is it the prosecutor who dropped the
case against you?
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* 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.
*AMY GOODMAN:* And so, what could happen on July 16th?
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* 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.
*AMY GOODMAN:* 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.
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* 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.
*AMY GOODMAN:* Here in Britain.
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* Here in Britain. And subsequently, the /Cambridge
Journal of Comparative Law/ 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.
*AMY GOODMAN:* 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.
[break]
*AMY GOODMAN:* This is /Democracy Now!/, democracynow.org, /The War and
Peace Report/. 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.
*AMY GOODMAN:* 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, Carl Bildt
<http://www.democracynow.org/2014/7/2/after_2_years_of_confinement_will>,
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.
*AMY GOODMAN:* 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?
*FOREIGN MINISTER CARL BILDT:* None, because it's a question for
the legal authorities and not a question for me.
*AMY GOODMAN:* But because it's in the U.N. Human Rights
commission---
*FOREIGN MINISTER CARL BILDT:* Well, that doesn't make---
*AMY GOODMAN:* ---the Council.
*FOREIGN MINISTER CARL BILDT:* 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.
*AMY GOODMAN:* 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?
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* 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.
*AMY GOODMAN:* 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.
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* And John Kerry, as well.
*AMY GOODMAN:* And John Kerry, the current secretary of state.
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* Yeah, yeah. The last secretary of state visit was
Kissinger in 1976.
*AMY GOODMAN:* Do you believe this has to do with you?
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* 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.
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 GCHQ, the British intelligence agency, and National Security
Agency to conduct bulk surveillance of traffic passing through Sweden.
*AMY GOODMAN:* Julian Assange, if the case dissolved in Sweden, if
the allegations were dropped, could you walk outside of this embassy
here on British soil?
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* 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 /The Guardian/'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 /New
York Times/. And, in fact, the DOJ admits it in court filings. So,
that's an issue.
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.
*AMY GOODMAN:* 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.
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* 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.
*AMY GOODMAN:* 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
ACLU, 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---
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* Yeah.
*AMY GOODMAN:* ---to other places, will stop.
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* 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 DOJ, 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."
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.
*AMY GOODMAN:* In this letter, they go on to quote Eric Holder, the
attorney general, saying, "you promised that
'as long as I am attorney general, no reporter who is doing his job
is going to go to jail.'"
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* Yeah.
*AMY GOODMAN:* He recently said this.
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* 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.
*AMY GOODMAN:* 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 NSA 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?
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* 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.
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.
*AMY GOODMAN:* And so, how did you do it?
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* 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 DOJ, 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.
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.
*AMY GOODMAN:* 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.
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* 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.
*AMY GOODMAN:* 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.
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* 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.
*AMY GOODMAN:* 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---
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* Yeah.
*AMY GOODMAN:* ---into the whole NSA scandal?
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* 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 FBI 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.
*AMY GOODMAN:* 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.
[break]
*AMY GOODMAN:* We're just back from London for our /Democracy Now!/
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.
*AMY GOODMAN:* Hillary Clinton has been doing a number of interviews
on her book-slash-pre-presidential tour, and she was interviewed by
/The Guardian/, where she talks about Edward Snowden.
*HILLARY CLINTON:* 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.
*AMY GOODMAN:* 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.
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* 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.
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.
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.
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.
*AMY GOODMAN:* 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---
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* As a result of a leak. That's right. That's right.
*AMY GOODMAN:* ---was smuggled out of the courtroom, so we were able
to play a very muffled tape. So how would Edward Snowden defend himself?
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* 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.
*AMY GOODMAN:* Well, presumably, Julian Assange, this applies to
you, as well. What do you think would happen if you're extradited to
the United States?
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* 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
DOJ 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.
*AMY GOODMAN:* 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?
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* 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---
*AMY GOODMAN:* So you have a light machine.
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* 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.
*AMY GOODMAN:* We're right across from Harrods, the famous
department store.
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* 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.
*AMY GOODMAN:* How?
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* 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.
*AMY GOODMAN:* What about the outside security here? We just look
beyond the curtains, and we see police vans.
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* 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 GCHQ is doing.
*AMY GOODMAN:* And you found---the embassy here found a bug in the
ambassador's office?
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* 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 GSM bug planted in a hidden socket in the
ambassador's room.
*AMY GOODMAN:* Do you expect there are many others?
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* 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.
*AMY GOODMAN:* What gives you hope? And what do you see as the
greatest legacy of WikiLeaks?
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* 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.
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.
*AMY GOODMAN:* Is there another Edward Snowden in the pipeline?
*JULIAN ASSANGE:* I'm sure---I'm sure there will be. In fact, I'm
sure there already is.
*AMY GOODMAN:* 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.
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