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24 May 2013. Add NY Times review. 23 May 2013 We Steal WikiLeaks Gibney's pusillanimous interviews and press-fed reviews, stolen goods masking covert propaganda for secretkeeping. Cryptome-Jigsaw (Gibney) E-mails: http://cryptome.org/2013/01/wikileaks-jigsaw.htm
http://movies.nytimes.com/2013/05/24/movies/we-steal-secrets-a-documentary- Movie Review One Built a Pipeline for Secrets, and the Other Pumped Them Out ‘We Steal Secrets,’ a Documentary on WikiLeaks A portrayal of Julian Assange that shifts from bold to creepy. By NICOLAS RAPOLD Published: May 23, 2013 The title of Alex Gibney’s new documentary contains what sounds like a cheeky ad slogan for the embattled organization WikiLeaks. In fact, the phrase “we steal secrets” is spoken by Gen. Michael V. Hayden, a former director of the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency, when he is explaining how government activities that involve secrets in turn require secrecy. The unexpected source of the quotation is not just a curiosity, for it lies at the heart of WikiLeaks and the film’s twinned stories. “We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks” describes what happened when Julian Assange led the WikiLeaks project to publish sensitive documents from anonymous contributors, and when a lonely Army private, Bradley Manning, took the opportunity WikiLeaks created to air the military’s dirty laundry (and much else besides). It’s a tale of absolutist ideals that seemed somehow to curdle and of private torment in search of an outlet, with drastic results. Mr. Gibney’s account of this recent history attempts to trace a kind of double tragedy. The film, over two hours long, shuffles awkwardly among the well-publicized tale of WikiLeaks, led by the hubristic Mr. Assange; Private Manning’s far more compelling woes involving sexual identity; and some sharp but overlapping commentators. The sprawling treatment lacks the swing and drive the filmmaker has shown elsewhere, and the narrative feels stretched to include an evidently prized interview with one of two women who have made allegations of sex crimes against Mr. Assange. (He appears here only in secondhand tag-along footage.) The woman, whose face is partly concealed, plays a role in the film’s central, simplistic pivot concerning Mr. Assange, whose WikiLeaks Web site also supplied sensitive government documents to news organizations including The New York Times and The Guardian of London. In this portrayal Mr. Assange, the WikiLeaks frontman, goes from bold, unnerving liberator of secrets — like the skin-crawling, classified footage of an American helicopter attack on a crowd in Baghdad that killed 12 people, including two Reuters journalists — to a paranoid creep, criticized by those who once worked with him and on the run from accusations of rape. An audience weaned on news footage of the white-haired, unctuous Mr. Assange (and on Bill Hader’s impersonations on “Saturday Night Live”) may be primed for such a sketch, but that arc pales beside, for example, the intimate online chat records that let us get inside the head of Private Manning. (Mr. Assange remains in asylum in the Ecuadorean embassy in London. After the movie’s completion Private Manning, after prolonged solitary confinement, pleaded guilty to 10 charges but is awaiting trial in a military court on more serious counts.) It’s somehow appropriate that a film concerned with secrecy should make use of private chat messages. Private Manning sent them to a former hacker, Adrian Lamo, who has said he turned in the soldier for the common good. Alongside such personal dramas, the debate over the dangers and the responsibilities of secrecy plays out articulately with commentators like the reporter Nick Davies of The Guardian and General Hayden, though Mr. Gibney also covers issues familiar from Brian Knappenberger’s “We Are Legion” and Robb Moss and Peter Galison’s “Secrecy.” A strength of the film is its succinct dissection of the spin control that ensued as Private Manning’s document dump made known certain unsavory American conduct in war. When the Pentagon and pundits repeat the refrain that the breach of secrets endangers the lives of those involved, one journalist observes that “speculative blood became worse than real blood.” For all its faults, “We Steal Secrets” reminds us that despite the potential of WikiLeaks, its project of truth and consequences remains treacherous and complicated in practice.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-207_162-57585850/we-steal-secrets-alex- "We Steal Secrets": Alex Gibney and the war on WikiLeaks By David Morgan / CBS News/ May 23, 2013, 4:33 PM (CBS News) "When I started this story I thought it was about a leaking 'machine,' and about the United States' surveillance machine," said filmmaker Alex Gibney about his latest documentary, "We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks." "But it turns out that all that surveillance and all that electronic drop-box leaking, it pales in comparison to the actual human beings attached to this. The whole process of leaks is a very human process." "We Steal Secrets," which debuted at the Sundance Film Festival, and is now opening theatrically, tells the gripping story of the rise -- and subsequent crash-and-burn -- of Julian Assange, who became an Information Age rock star by building and promoting a website aimed at increasing transparency of governments and corporations. The Australian native became the public face of WikiLeaks when in 2010 the site released its most controversial material to date: a classified U.S. military video showing a 2007 helicopter gunship attack upon Iraqi civilians and journalists. Gibney found a story which was about much more than an anonymous means for whistleblowers seeking to right a wrong. It was also about hubris; how virtual relationships can lead to discomfiting acts of inhumanity; and how electronic surveillance and media coverage can so savagely distort our seeming Constitutional protections. The film's three main characters -- Assange; Army SPC. Bradley Manning; and computer hacker Adrian Lamo -- never meet, and only communicate virtually and clandestinely. Indeed, for the purposes of this film neither Assange nor Manning speak to Gibney on-camera. Their stories are told virtually as well, via in-depth interviews Assange gave as WikiLeaks became a more powerful media entity, and through the shockingly intimate online chats in which Manning revealed his complicity in the leak of the Iraq helicopter attack video (as well as classified State Department diplomatic cables). That shocking recording put both Assange and the young Defense Department analyst in the sights of the U.S. government. And while former U.S. diplomats appear on camera to speak frankly about the United States' surveillance and trading in secrets across the globe, the film also shines a light on the pursuit and prosecution of Manning for "aiding the enemy," and on Assange's attempt to avoid extradition to Sweden as part of an investigation of sex charges. Julian Assange, founder of the whistleblower website WikiLeaks, holds up a copy of the Guardian newspaper during a press conference in London on July 26, 2010. The website and a consortium of print publications released tens of thousands of leaked military files about the war in Afghanistan dating back to 2004. Gibney's past films include "Casino Jack and the United States of Money" (about Jack Abramoff and the culture of lobbying in Washington); "Client 9" (about the fall of former N.Y. Gov. Eliot Spitzer); and "Taxi to the Dark Side," his Oscar-winning look at the use of torture in the U.S. War on Terror. "There's no doubt that my films all concern themselves in some way with abuses of power, and 'We Steal Secrets' is no different in that regard," Gibney said. "A lot of the film revolves around abuses of power in different kinds of ways, and also a concern for the truth -- how the truth can become elusive. There are moments when we THINK we know what really happened but actually it's not that way at all. People settle on a momentary truth and like to believe it because it's comfortable for them, but it turns out if you do a little bit more digging, you find truths that are a little bit more inconvenient, and a little bit more uncomfortable." And what does Gibney find to be the most uncomfortable truth in the saga of WikiLeaks? Perhaps the heavy hand of the United States' government when it comes to responding to leaks of information. "Let's be honest and say that the Obama administration is the most aggressive prosecutor of leaks in American history, and they're going after leakers -- and, in a collateral way, after journalists -- in a way that's more aggressive than anything that's ever been seen in our history. "Leaking, after all, is a kind of pressure valve for a democracy. It allows there to be information conveyed which lets us know things about the workings of our government, when the government is improperly classifying them and is over-classifying material. But the degree of government surveillance now -- as we're seeing with the taking of the phone records of the Associated Press -- and again, the aggressive prosecution of leaks, is making the environment for whistleblowers extremely dangerous, maybe unprecedentedly dangerous. And so I think the Obama administration needs to be held to account for that."
http://www.motherjones.com/media/2013/05/we-steal-secrets-wikileaks-assange- Why Julian Assange Hates "We Steal Secrets" Alex Gibney's new documentary traces the rise and fall of WikiLeaks and its prickly founder. —By Dave Gilson Thu May. 23, 2013 3:00 AM PDT Julian Assange already hates this movie. That six-word review may be all that his die-hard supporters need to know about We Steal Secrets, Alex Gibney's exhaustive and exhausting new documentary on the rise and fall of WikiLeaks. Apparently without having seeing the film, which hits theaters tomorrow and will be available on demand on June 7, Assange has condemned it as a hatchet job, starting with its name. "An unethical and biased title in the context of pending criminal trials," WikiLeaks tweeted in January when the movie screened at Sundance. "It is the prosecution's claim and it is false." Assange's preemptive attack one of the film's main themes: What happens when an admirable cause is headed by a thin-skinned, combative prick? Like many observers of WikiLeaks' short, chaotic history, Gibney (Taxi to the Dark Side, Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer) starts out sympathetic before souring on Assange. At first, We Steal Secrets seems enthralled with its subject. When Assange quotes a favorite Midnight Oil song, Gibney obligingly blasts the tune—a haranguing one even by the band's standards—over a title sequence that ricochets through cyberspace. What follows is a complimentary look at Australia's "most infamous hacker," a peripatetic cryptographic whiz who recognized the promise and threat posed by a site that could publish anonymous leaks from around the globe. Robert Manne, a professor of politics at La Trobe University in Melbourne, gushes that Assange is "a humanitarian anarchist, a kind of John Lennon-like revolutionary, dreaming of better world." Or as Assange declares with casual bravado, "I enjoy crushing bastards." Gibney gives Assange and WikiLeaks plenty of credit for their greatest hits, which culminated in the massive leaks of 2010, namely the "Collateral Murder" video, the Cablegate documents, and the Afghan and Iraq War Logs. "Collateral Murder," shown in the film, still packs a sickening punch: An American helicopter crew in Baghdad mows down a group of men identified as militants—two, in fact, were Reuters journalists—and then strafes a van that arrives to help the wounded. When the helicopter crew learns that the vehicle was carrying two children, one responds, "It's their fault for bringing their kids to a battle." Among their many revelations, the Iraq War Logs detailed how the US military had handed over detainees to Iraqi forces knowing that they could be abused, tortured, or summarily executed—a violation of international law. Gibney, who narrates the film, concludes that "the Obama administration appears to have committed war crimes." But in its second hour, We Steal Secrets sinks a knife into its subject as a series of disillusioned allies steps up to testify against him. Former WikiLeaks staffer James Ball diagnoses Assange with a case of "noble cause corruption"—unable to recognize when he does things that he would deplore in others. Manne qualifies his earlier praise, asserting that Assange is "a natural fabulist and storyteller and lives intensely in his imagination." Nick Davies, a Guardian reporter who worked closely with Assange, recalls his callous attitude toward sources named in American military documents whose lives might be jeopardized if their identities were not redacted: "I raised this with Julian and he said, 'If an Afghan civilian helps coalition forces, he deserves to die.' He went on to say that they have the status of a collaborator or an informant." Gibney says he met with Assange for six hours, only to be told that "the market rate for an interview with him was $1 million." Gibney also interviews Anna, one of two Swedish women who have accused Assange of sexual assault, setting off the chain of events that has led to his self-imposed exile inside the Ecuadorian Embassy in London for the past 11 months. Since speaking out against Assange at the height of his celebrity, she's been the target of vicious trolling. "I've been through two years of different kinds of abuses," she recounts. "People coming to my house, people threatening, or questioning, or following my friends and family. Some death threats, but mostly sexual threats that I deserve to get raped." She believes Assange bears some responsibility for not reining in his devotees. "They admire him very much and he could have easily stopped that." Gibney dismisses Assange's claim that the Swedish investigation is a ruse to get him extradited to the United States to face trial for espionage. (A federal grand jury has considered charges against Assange; no indictments have been filed yet.) However, the film overplays its hand when it mentions that Assange reportedly has had four children with four different women "around the world," suggesting that he's not only into crushing bastards but fathering them. Although We Steal Secrets includes plenty of footage of Assange from various sources, he was not interviewed for the film. Gibney says he met off-camera with Assange for six hours, only to be told that "the market rate for an interview with him was $1 million dollars." Gibney balked at this, as well as at Assange's offer to talk if the filmmaker would tell him what his other interview subjects were saying about him. Although Assange's story dominates We Steal Secrets, it's just one of three parallel storylines. Another is the rise of national security state and the massive expansion of official secrecy following September 11. Gibney assembles an impressive cast of insiders to provide context on the obsessive and often unnecessary secrecy that WikiLeaks was set up to combat. Yet these interviews feel like excerpts from an unfinished companion film (which Gibney should make). "We produce more secrets than we've ever produced in the history of mankind," says Bill Leonard, the Bush administration's classification czar. "And yet we never fundamentally reassessed our ability to control secrets." Former National Security Agency and CIA chief Michael Hayden, the source of the film's contentious title, admits that the federal government does exactly what it pursues whistleblowers (and now, reporters) for doing: "Let me be very candid, all right. We steal secrets." The film overplays its hand when it suggests that Assange is not only into crushing bastards but fathering them. Enter Bradley Manning, the film's shadow protagonist. Manning is the Army private who's been imprisoned for more than 1,000 days while awaiting a military trial for giving WikiLeaks the helicopter video, state department cables, and war logs. Like Assange, he comes off as an idealistic misfit who found purpose in his digital mastery and his access to official secrets. But Manning remains an enigma. Much of his story is fragmentary, told through the messages he exchanged with Adrian Lamo, the hacker who drew him out in a series of private chats and then turned him in. Was Manning's alleged crime a considered statement of conscience or the indiscriminate act of an unhappy GI—or both? We Steal Secrets can't really say. (A detailed statement Manning read at a court martial hearing in February offers more insight into his motivations.) We Steal Secrets may provide a new focal point for WikiLeaks' supporters and detractors. But it also reminds us just how much the group has been sidelined. The wiki part of WikiLeaks is history: The site's dropbox for leaks has been shuttered for more than two years. And the leaks have gone cold: Its biggest recent coups have been security-firm emails lifted by Anonymous and the re-release of 40-year-old documents that confirm the horribleness of Henry Kissinger. Assange's current state of limbo is captured near the end of We Steal Secrets. Over Lady Gaga's irresistible "Telephone," one of the songs Manning listened to as he allegedly orchestrated his massive document dump, Gibney plays a clip of Assange dancing, unselfconsciously and unapologetically, by himself.
‘We Steal Secrets’ Documentary Focuses on Personalities of Assange, Manning Over Significance of WikiLeaks By: Kevin Gosztola Thursday May 23, 2013 12:22 pm Academy Award-winning director Alex Gibney held a special screening for his new documentary, We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks, in Washington, DC, on May 21. Gibney also participated in a question and answer session after the film that was moderated by POLITICO‘s Josh Gerstein. First, the title reinforces widespread perceptions created by the United States government that the WikiLeaks organization is out to “steal” secrets. Gibney has claimed that the title is “ironic.” Actually, the US government steals secrets. Former NSA director Michael Hayden says this in the film, but this aspect of US government operations takes up only a few seconds of the film. He does not explore how US government agencies are actually the ones engaged in stealing so the “irony” does not come through at all. The opening of the film charts the rise of WikiLeaks—why editor-in-chief Julian Assange was “obsessed” with secrets, how the organization took on bank corruption in Iceland and who worked together to release the “Collateral Murder” video showing a 2007 Apache helicopter attack that killed two Reuters employees in Iraq. The expansion of the surveillance state after the September 11th attacks and the rise of what William Arkin and Dana Priest explored with their “Top Secret America” project provides a bit of context. Pfc. Bradley Manning, who provided information to WikiLeaks, is introduced through what he said in his chats with hacker and government informant Adrian Lamo. Lines from the chat are typed across the screen. It becomes apparent that Lamo invited Manning to confide in him. The film highlights Lamo’s decision to turn Manning into federal authorities, how he was viewed by others in the military, who he was socializing with in Boston, how he considered becoming a woman and some of the mental issues he was confronting while stationed as an intelligence analyst in FOB Hammer in Iraq. Chat logs, suggestions and descriptions of Manning’s outbursts in the military are not particularly endearing to whatever contribution he has made to global society as a whistleblower, but Gibney never outright suggests that Manning’s mental health issues led him to leak classified information. He does include chat logs that show how Manning challenged the handing over of detainees to the Iraqi Federal Police, who would be tortured, because they had done nothing wrong and were just opponents of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki. Manning’s arrest and his confinement at Quantico are highlighted as well, with Gibney taking the story of Manning all the way up to his court martial. In the second half of the film, Gibney broaches the issue of the sexual allegations that Assange has faced. It focuses on what led individuals that had worked with him to become alienated. His personality and ego, according to Gibney, along with a desire to keep his own secrets while trying to force the release of secrets from government and corporations, transform him into a character that drags WikiLeaks downward. And, as the film comes to an end, arguments are introduced that one of the downsides of WikiLeaks for Manning was not being able to communicate with the organization and explain what he was doing so he could not feel isolated. Loneliness is apparently the hallmark of a whistleblower and, as this can make one unstable, WikiLeaks bears some level of responsibility for not being able to comfort Manning. As someone who has extensively covered the story of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange and Bradley Manning, there are multiple aspects of the film that happen to be misleading, disingenuous or seem to be the product of a director who has an axe to grind. Gibney recounts in the film that he tried “over many months to get an on-camera interview with Assange.” He says, “After meetings and emails, I was finally summoned to the Norfolk mansion for a 6-hour negotiation. But Julian wanted money.” He states that Assange said the market rate for an interview with him was $1 million for an interview or he wanted Gibney to “spy” in his “other interviews and report back to him.” This makes it seem like Assange demanded $1 million or else he would not appear in the film. As the New York Times noted in a correction, “While [Gibney] says that he rejected the demands, and that the market rate for an interview was $1 million, he does not specifically say that he rejected a demand from Mr. Assange for a $1 million fee for an interview.” Also, the “spying,” according to WikiLeaks, which claims to have a recording of a meeting with Gibney, was a request to inform Assange of any details he might come across related to the United States’ investigation into WikiLeaks. A “Most Wanted Leaks” list compiled by WikiLeaks is presented as an effort to “bait whistleblowers.” Cast in this manner, audiences might think WikiLeaks was doing something wrong, but WikiLeaks was committing no crime by compiling a list of documents or recordings it thought deserved to be in the public record. It was not only put together by WikiLeaks. This tweet from May 15, 2009, shows the organization accepted nominations. These apparently came from human rights groups, lawyers, historians, journalists and activists. As highlighted in the film, it reinforces arguments military prosecutors have made that this is evidence the organization “solicits” leaks in order to criminalize the organization. Nothing in the film indicates that Gibney is aware of this. Gibney made the decision that he would show the allegations against Assange were not ridiculous. There is nothing wrong with that, except the people who speak about the allegations are providing hearsay. He highlights a torn condom that was pictured in a Swedish police report released to the press. What Gibney neglects to mention is “two forensic laboratories were unable to find conclusive evidence of Mr Assange’s DNA” on this condom, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. The misconduct of Swedish police in handling the case does not enter into the film at all, even though this is a prime factor in Assange’s decision to resist being extradited to Sweden. For that information, viewers will have to view the Australian documentary produced by Four Corners called, “Sex, Lies & Julian Assange.” Swedish defense lawyer for Assange, Per Samuelson, appears in the film asking why the Swedish police leaked contents of his interview and confirmed his name to the press when Assange specifically asked that they not do this. He asks why the case was dropped and then reopened. Gibney incorrectly states in his film that, “Prosecutors permitted Assange to leave Sweden on condition that he reappear for questioning.” When he left Sweden, there would have been no reason why he would have to reappear. According to journalist Andrew Fowler, “On September 15th, the prosecutor told Assange he was permitted to leave Sweden. Assange, back in England, would later offer to return within a month. The Swedish Authorities said too late – a second warrant had already been issued for his arrest.” He also fails to note that there is an internationally recognized process that would have allowed the Swedish authorities to interview Assange on the sexual allegations by now so they could decide whether to charge him, but the authorities insist on having him in their custody, which has also factored into Assange’s decision to resist extradition. Then, there’s this section of the film, where Gibney says, “The testimony of the women raised another issue: did he refuse to use a condom because he wanted to make the women pregnant? Some pointed to the fact he had already fathered four children with different women around the world.” It sounds like something one would hear on Fox News (except not even Fox News has made these kinds of allegations). He shows a clip of Iain Overton, former executive editor of The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, who suggests, “This is a man who is elusive, he’s always flying around the place, he doesn’t have any roots and he’s got a number of kids. There may be some sort of primary impulse in him to want to reproduce, to want to have some sort of bedrock in his life. You know, this is the ultimate digital man and actually you can’t just live in a digital world.” It is such a wildly lunatic suggestion to be making. It only serves to reinforce concerns that aspects of the film are intended to assassinate the character of Assange. No incontrovertible proof has been presented to suggest Assange and Manning were working together on the leaks. Gibney says Manning used Jabber to chat with Assange “about the progress of the uploads.” He indicates the Manning’s buddy list included an address “under a familiar name”—Julian Assange. However, what his source is for this critical detail is not apparent. During the Article 32 hearing in December 2011, as I wrote in the book I co-authored with Greg Mitchell, Mark Johnson of the Computer Crime Investigation Unit testified that he had found “chat logs” between a Jabber user account, “dawgnetwork,” associated with Manning and a Jabber user account, “pressassociation,” associated with Julian Assange. The account associated with Assange had once been associated with “Nathaniel Frank.” The chats had been deleted but were uncovered in unallocated space. They contained an exchange that mentioned an upload, probably of classified information, on March 5, 2010. But, this was far from proof that the person using the “Nathaniel Frank” account had been Assange. In fact, on February 28 of this year, Manning stated in military court: Almost immediately after submitting the aerial weapons team video and the rules of engagement documents I notified the individuals in the WLO IRC to expect an important submission. I received a response from an individual going by the handle of ‘ox’ ’office’– at first our conversations were general in nature, but over time as our conversations progressed, I assessed this individual to be an important part of the WLO. Manning thought Assange could be using this account to talk to him, but he did not know for certain. In at least one instance, messages between Manning and Lamo appear on screen and create a conversation for the viewer that never occurred. Lamo types “keep typing <3.” This comes after Manning has poured his heart out, describing personal problems he is having, but this message from Lamo was actually sent because Lamo wanted to know more information after Manning wrote, “Hilary [spc] Clinton, and several thousand diplomats around the world are going to have a heart attack when they wake up one morning, and finds an entire repository of classified foreign policy is available, in searchable format to the public.” Additionally, Gibney managed to interview Spc. Jihrleah Showman, who was a supervisor of Manning when he was stationed at FOB Hammer. She shares details about an incident that did not come out in his Article 32 hearing because the defense convinced the investigative officer to close the hearing. I was off shift and I had to come in to find something that he should have been able to find, and he was pacing back and forth saying smart comments to me, and I blatantly said: “Manning, how about you fix your shit before you try to fix mine?” And he screamed and punched me in the face, while I was sitting down. My adrenalin immediately hit overload. I stood up, pushed my chair back. He continued to try to fight me but I put him in, you know, what UFC would call ‘guillotine’ and, you know, pulled him on the floor and laid on top of him and pinned his arms, you know, beside his head. At that time, I can’t believe that he’d mess with me. I literally had 15-inch biceps. I was the last person he probably should have punch. His defense lawyer, David Coombs, argued if the testimony was given in open court it could prejudice Manning. It would have been appropriate to highlight this in the film, especially since in retrospect one wonders if the military approved of her participation in the documentary. Overall, the film makes the choice to be about the personalities of Assange and Manning rather than a film that truly explores what it has been like for those involved in the release of over a half million documents to be targeted by the most powerful country in the world. WikiLeaks forced state secrets revealing corruption, crimes, fraud, misconduct, etc, into the open for the world to see, but, rather than telling a lesser known story about the backlash led by the US government against the organization, Gibney opts to highlight Manning’s struggle with his gender identity and how Assange’s egotistical personal battles have been a drag on WikiLeaks, which have been covered extensively by establishment media. A reporter with the Washington Examiner at the end of the screening said to Gibney she thought the film was “about a lot of awfully troubled people.” She asked Gibney if he learned anything about human nature from making the film because many of the characters in the film all appeared to have personal and psychological issues. This reaction is likely to be a common one among Americans who see the film. That is unfortunate, because if this is what they walk away with, they are unlikely to appreciate the contributions to humanity that both Manning and WikiLeaks have made. They are not likely to grasp the extent of the secrecy state in America and the nobility of WikiLeaks’ efforts to confront it and continue to operate, even while under a secret grand jury investigation. WikiLeaks had a tremendous impact on journalism. It has inspired other news organizations to begin to consider how to operate their own leak submission portals. It would have been worthwhile to broach this aspect. Unfortunately, none of this appears in the documentary. What audiences get instead—from a director who has made excellent documentaries like Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room and the Academy Award-winning Taxi to the Dark Side—is an unsatisfactory film that appears to unpack every human flaw of Assange because he would not appear in the documentary. Manning’s story serves to take off the edge created by some of the spitefulness in the sections on Assange, but it is impossible to escape the reality that Gibney wants viewers to see that Assange is much more of a scoundrel than a hero.
Review: 'We Steal Secrets' juicy look at WikiLeaks DAVID ROONEY | May 23, 2013 11:39 AM EST | AP LOS ANGELES — Prolific documentary-maker Alex Gibney delivers a gripping account of the wins and losses of hard-charging idealism on the front lines of the information wars in "We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks." Exhaustively researched and balanced in its view of the controversial key player, the film slips in ahead of DreamWorks' dramatic take on the exploits of Julian Assange, "The Fifth Estate," which is currently shooting. Unfolding like an espionage thriller but with a methodical journalistic skill at organizing a mountain of facts, the film raises stimulating questions about transparency and freedom of information in a world in which governments and corporations have plenty to hide. It should be a magnet for op-ed coverage. In addition to WikiLeaks founder Assange, Gibney devotes almost equal time to the fascinating figure of U.S. Army Pfc. Bradley Manning, allegedly the source of the largest volume of classified military documents leaked by Assange. It's an awkward irony that one of WikiLeaks' first major coups was a 2007 video showing a U.S. Apache helicopter mowing down unarmed civilians in Baghdad, released under the title "Collateral Murder." Manning in a sense was also collateral damage. A brilliant but lonely tech geek from Bible-Belt Oklahoma struggling with gender-identity issues, he enlisted to get a government-funded college education. But his homosexuality made him a target for sergeants determined to "beat the macho into him." Despite a supervisor's recommendation that he not be deployed, Manning went to Iraq as an intelligence analyst. But his isolation and unhappiness led him to dig deeper into easily cracked classified military files. Distressed by what he found there, he reached out to WikiLeaks. While Assange has repeatedly asserted that WikiLeaks' encryption systems ensure that its sources remain undetectable, the fact emerges that Manning took all the risks as well as the fall. He was betrayed by fellow hacktivist Adrian Lamo and held for almost a year at Quantico under conditions of extreme duress before being transferred to Fort Leavenworth, where he awaits trial in July. Hard evidence that the information spread by him has led to casualties or compromised missions remains elusive, according to Gibney's film. Humiliation of the Pentagon appears to have been the bigger issue. Manning's story is framed by a thorough, more or less chronological account of Assange's rise and fall. The early sections dovetail with the dramatic depiction in Robert Connolly's TV movie "Underground." Operating under the codename Mendax as part of a small hacker group in Melbourne, Australia, called "The International Subversives," Assange became a dedicated proponent of information-sharing. While no link has been verified, Gibney speculates in the opening of "We Steal Secrets" that Assange may have been behind the cheekily dubbed WANK (Worms Against Nuclear Killers), a virus that entered NASA's network in the run-up to the 1989 launch of its plutonium-powered Jupiter probe, Galileo. The doc then traces Assange's success in exposing corrupt banking practices during Iceland's economic collapse in 2009-10, which led to heated public protests and provided the budding whistleblower with a new national base and sympathetic allies. Other early WikiLeaks efforts focused on tax evasion in Swiss banking, government corruption in Kenya and toxic-waste dumping. Assange hooked up with like-minded German technology activist Daniel Domscheit-Berg, who became his right-hand man. When the incoming load of U.S. military and diplomatic secrets started burning a hole in Assange's pocket, WikiLeaks entered into a media alliance that included The Guardian and The New York Times to disseminate the information, much of which cast American intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan in a damning light. However, when Manning's actions were uncovered and WikiLeaks became an international hot potato, those broadsheets both distanced themselves from Assange - notably so in a critical New York Times Magazine profile. During this time, allegations of sexual assault surfaced against Assange in Sweden, which the WikiLeaks founder and many of his supporters have tried to paint as a fabricated smear campaign, possibly orchestrated by the CIA. A British legal rep for Assange amusingly calls it "a surreal Swedish fairy tale only missing the trolls." But the film implies with what seems like reasonable certitude that the conspiracy angle is bogus. The unraveling of WikiLeaks was accelerated when major credit-card companies and PayPal bowed to pressure to stop processing donations to the organization, effectively setting up a financial blockade. The legal costs incurred in fighting Assange's extradition order to Sweden ate up much of WikiLeaks' remaining funds. Its founder lived in semi-isolation in England before landing at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, where he remains holed up. Gibney provides no shortage of support for Assange's noble mission to keep governments and corporations in check. But the film also digs into the questionable ethics and hypocrisy of his methods, as well as the ego and paranoia that clashed with his idealism. Domscheit-Berg quit the organization when it became apparent that WikiLeaks had lost control of what information was being spread and how. There's a suggestion here that once Assange stepped out from undercover, his judgment was impaired by the rock-star seduction of the spotlight, and self-protection gradually trumped other concerns. The strength of the film is that it leaves the audience to decide whether he remains a figure of heroism or recklessness. Given that "We Steal Secrets" is out less than a year after Gibney's equally dense account of pedophilia in the Catholic church, "Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God," it's clear the filmmaker must have a virtual army of researchers working full-time. The volume of information here is considerable, but Gibney and editor Andy Grieve keep it pacey and accessible, incorporating smart graphics and animation, and a suspenseful score by Will Bates. The film could stand to be tightened by 10 minutes or so, but this is a tremendously fascinating story told with probing insight and complexity.
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