VIDEO - Frost over the World - Julian Assange - 2010

Frost over the World  Julian Assange  https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=U6mcSXge4Qo Al Jazeera English Video Upload:  22 December 2010 – Duration:  24:00. Frost over the World - Julian Assange Al Jazeera English Video Upload:  22 December 2010 – Duration:  24:00. Sir David Frost Hello and welcome to a special edition of Frost Over the World.  I’m joined tonight – today – by the, well, probably the most talked about man in the world, at the moment:  Julian Assange.  He’s the founder of WikiLeaks, WikiLeaks website and so on, which is currently releasing over a quarter of a million – quarter of a million – confidential, although not necessarily top secret, American diplomatic cables.  He’s here in the UK fighting extradition to Sweden, where he’s wanted on charges* of sexual behaviours, sexual violence.  He’s here now, though, and we’ll start, obviously, and then continue with him. Julian, just to start with, do you feel that any state has a right – any government has a right – to have secrets at all, ideally? Julian Assange There’s a practical need to have secrets in certain circumstances for particular bodies and institutions for particular bodies and institutions.  That is a long-term matter of history.  Your doctor has a need to keep your medical records secret, in nearly but not all circumstances.  But that is not to say that all others must obey that need.  The media has a right and obligation to the public to get out information that the public needs to know.  Similarly, some intelligence services have an obligation to go about their activities to the best of their ability and that sometimes involves secrecy.  But what is not a right is for a General or Hillary Clinton to say that they want to use the criminal law on every person in the country to stop talking about embarrassing information that has been revealed from her institution or from the US military.  She does not have the right to proclaim what the law is.  That’s a matter for the court.  She does not have the right to use the coercive power of police – armed police – to stop journalists and publishers from publishing.  She does not have that right.  Sir David Frost What about, though, the right that, for instance, that the Brits and the Americans and others had to conceal where they were going to strike back at Germany, where in France they were going to strike back?  The revelation of that secret ahead of time could have destroyed the whole attempt to strike back at Germany.  Would that be valid? Julian Assange We don’t need to go to hypotheticals.  We have a four-year publishing history.  During that time we have published millions of documents.  We can see what actually happens in practice in the 21st century with our organisation, with me as Editor in Chief.  And what we see:  there is not a single incidence of anyone being physically harmed by what we’ve done.  There’s not even a single incidence of a government alleging that we have - not even the Pentagon allege that – in fact, the Pentagon admits that it cannot find a single incidence of anyone being harmed.  Sir David Frost Do you, at the moment, fear the possibility of, some form or other, of being delivered back to the United States? Julian Assange It’s a serious problem.  I mean, lawyers are discussing this every day.  US officials are making public statements that they are trying to do that – the Attorney General, Eric Holder, spokespeople for the Justice Department and so on.  There is pressure that has been applied to one of our alleged sources, Bradley Manning, in his prison cell.  He’s a young, former intelligence analyst, being held in Quantico in Virginia for some 6 months now prior to trial, and there is pressure on him through his physical cell conditions, according to lawyer, David Coombs, to coerce him into testifying against me or against our organisation, to try and suggest that there is some kind of conspiracy to commit espionage – which there is not.  I’ve never heard of his name before it appeared in the media.  But that’s what they’re trying to push forward.  It’s a serious business.  And why are they going after WikiLeaks?  Well, they want to stop this publication of information that embarrasses them.  Why are they going after me?  There is a particular reason, which is they have been tremendously embarrassed.  The State Department, the US military, has been tremendously embarrassed by these abuses being revealed.  So what do you do if you’re embarrassed?  Well, you want to save face.  How do you save face?  You have to slap the face of the person who is perceived to have embarrassed you and, because I’m the most recognisable person for WikiLeaks, I am the target. Sir David Frost That makes you the – therefore in that situation, do you think – you said deportation [audio unclear to transcriber]  – do you fear that you will end up in an American gaol? Julian Assange That’s a problem.  My lawyers certainly fear that; that I will end up in an American gaol, either directly through extradition from here or from extradition from Sweden.  There’s a serious problem – Sir David Frost Which do you think would be more dangerous to you?  Is it worse if they’re trying to extradite you from the UK or from Sweden?  Or are you equally vulnerable from either to the United States? Julian Assange The advice of my lawyers is that Sweden is much more dangerous. Sir David Frost Much more? Julian Assange Much more dangerous. Sir David Frost Dangerous. Julian Assange Because there’s political – the way these extradition treaties are done, there is usually an exemption for political reasons.  So you don’t have to extradite someone if it’s a political issue and espionage is the classical political offence, so if they tried to frame publishing as espionage and then latched onto this ‘conspiracy to commit espionage,’ that would then activate, if you like, a defence for saying that the extradition was political in nature. Sir David Frost Just going back for a moment to early days.  When you co-founded WikiLeaks what was your action motto – phrase – what was your basic aim? Julian Assange Our phrase was ‘Courage is Contagious’ but – which it is.  There – Sir David Frost It’s a great slogan. It’s – Julian Assange We look at trans-Atlantic aeroplane flight.  In the 1930s this was – in the 1920s – this was one of the most heroic acts you could perform and almost no-one did it.  Now, everyone does it.  Why?  Because there’s examples of other people doing it and succeeding.  Now no-one thinks anything about how courageous it is to get on an aeroplane to cross the Atlantic.  So we could see early on that we could encourage, through successful examples, people to step forward to reveal abuses by governments, and by doing that we could produce a more just civilisation.  Sir David Frost America was possibly your leading target, wasn’t it?  Not your only target, but your leading target? Julian Assange No, it was actually the most closed societies in the beginning and the most corrupt ones; and the United States is not the most closed or the most corrupt.  On the other hand, what we found in practice was that the United States, as the dominant empire, is connected to all the other countries and has a tendril in them and being the largest security state, spending approximately the same amount as all the rest of the world combined, on its military and intelligence sector, it generates a tremendous amount of secrets.  And being involved in two wars – two very unpopular wars in the United States – it also generates a lot of dissenters, and those dissenters tap into the great American tradition of free speech, of government accountability, and they’re saying my institution is not accountable in the way that I thought it was, that I [was] told it was, and then they pass this material out.  But that’s why we’ve had such a focus recently on the United States; it’s not that we go asking for material from the United States, rather these people within the United States – good people – dissenters in the United States – come forward and they give us material.  We are source driven:  we can only publish what people are giving us.  And the United States they are giving us a lot of material.  Sir David Frost So that would mean that, therefore, as you say, you are source driven, you’re never going to get a fair, equal share of material from China, North Korea, etc? Julian Assange China, we are getting some decent material from and have, as it’s becoming more Internet connected.  North Korea, you’re right.  We haven’t received anything directly from North Korea.  North Korea is blockaded from the Internet, so that’s not a surprise.  But we do get, because the world is connected, actually, we do have a lot of material about North Korea, from other countries – providing angles on what is going on in North Korea. Sir David Frost Do you ever pay for the secrets you get? Julian Assange No.  No.  We have no philosophical objection to paying, actually.  Sir David Frost You just need the money? Julian Assange Why should journalists and lawyers be the only one to be compensated for their risks when actually it’s the source that is taking the greatest risk.  Though it is simply being that we are overwhelmed with the amount of material that courageous whistleblowers are giving to us.  So we’re not at the stage where that extra incentive needs to be given, but we have absolutely no philosophical objection to that. Sir David Frost How do you finance the operation and is it profit-making or loss-making? Julian Assange Well, until the beginning of this year, I financed – together with some of my friends – the entire operation, with the majority of money coming from me. Actually, there’s a reason why investigative journalism has never been historically funded by the government, it has not been funded by big business:  it has been funded by readers and advertisers. Sir David Frost And do you think of yourself when – do you see references to yourself as anarchic or an anarchist – is that an accurate description of what you are? Julian Assange No, it’s not at all an accurate description. Sir David Frost Why not? Julian Assange Well, that’s not what we do.  We’re an organisation that goes about and has a long record all over the world, of exposing abuses by exposing concrete documentation – proof of bad behaviour – that’s not anarchy; that’s what people do when they’re civil, is that they engage in organised activity that promotes justice. Sir David Frost So, therefore, in that sense, you’re not anarchic because you actually – you’re in favour of authority if it’s doing the right thing – Julian Assange Correct. Sir David Frost – you’re not automatically opposed to authority. Julian Assange Correct. You know, having run an organisation I understand the difficulties in building an institution and having a good institution.  Institutions are very important.  I mean, anyone who’s worked in Africa, as I have, knows that successful civil institutions don’t just come from nowhere.  It’s a – you will find a difference going between particular African countries, or European and African countries, that, well, clean roads and so on don’t just come from nowhere; there is an institutional infrastructure behind this.  But secret institutions start to become corrupted in their purpose. They’re able to engage in secret plans, which would be opposed by the population if the population knew, and then carry them out for their own internal purposes; so not performing the function that the people demand that they perform   Sir David Frost And in terms of the situations that you’ve come across and so on, that – did – is there anybody who is really leading the campaign against you at the moment, or do you feel that it’s a rather opaque group? Julian Assange I think that it’s fascinating.  We have seen MasterCard, Europe Visa, Amazon, PayPal, the Swiss Bank, all financially censor us after pressure from the United States government.  Not legal pressure; all done under the table.  So, what’s going on there?  Who – is MasterCard leading the campaign against us?  Of course not.  It is the Washingtonian network of big business, politicians, people in a military-diplomatic area, that network of friends, cross-shareholdings, that spreads out from Washington and into Western countries.  It’s not purely American in form [?]; it’s interlinked across the Western world.  Sir David Frost And there’s a sort of – which even you’re the subject of this you’ve see the humour, if that’s the right word, in it; but I mean, obviously, you’ve got a situation that you’re coming up with all this material that’s revealing things about people that they would prefer not to be published and then you get absolutely lumbered in a situation where, in reverse, that’s what happening to you in Sweden, and you don’t want all this stuff published in Sweden about the alleged rape, which was then withdrawn as a rape and talking about sexual advances and so on.  But, I mean, it’s ironic in a way, that it’s you getting it – or someone putting it back to you, or is it not ironic?  Is it –  ? Julian Assange Not really.  It’s not ironic.  It’s actually much deeper and dangerous than that.  We’re an organisation that – a little organisation – that helps individual people inside abusive organisations expose the abuse by some powerful group.  What has happened to me is that a powerful organisation – at least the Swedish police, prosecution service, maybe Swedish intelligence (we don’t know precisely what the interference is with this case) – has breached their stated internal obligations; breached the law; to, first, pump out my name and, just recently in the last few days, to selectively take bits of the court – of the police investigative file – the most prejudicial bits they could find – and pump this out to The Guardian newspaper, just before my court hearing, pump it out to La Monde, pump it out to The New York Times.  Why?  Who’s doing that?  That’s a dirty trick.  That’s a clear, clear dirty trick – Sir David Frost Some of those journals were the allies of yours a few days ago and you were feeding them stuff.  The Guardian, for instance, The New York Times, and so on. Julian Assange No.  That’s not true.  We have a business arrangement. But the particular journalist – you know, Guardian’s a big place; it has lots of journalists.  The particular journalist that they picked has a public record, because of some ridiculous dispute we had about an embargo arrangement, has publicly said that he is personally opposed to me and, in fact, refused to work on Cablegate, the biggest journalistic story in the past ten years.  He is the one that was picked to launder that information through; someone they knew would write in a negative way. Who would do that?  Who had access to that material?  Who was sophisticated enough to send it out to our media partners, to the particular journalist that they knew would write in a negative way?  Sir David Frost And the answer to your question – your answer to that question? Julian Assange I don’t know.  Maybe we can see who benefits, who might have the ability to do it. Clearly, someone connected, at some stage, to the government in Sweden.  Maybe something was stolen from the government of Sweden.  Who would have the capacity to steal something from the government of Sweden?  Sir David Frost Why would the government of Sweden obviously care about this? Julian Assange Well, it’s not – whenever we talk about a government, we’re actually talking about individuals – yeah – we’re talking about lots of people, individuals in government who work in particular sectors, who have friends, family and so on.  In Sweden, we, two weeks ago, had the front page with Cablegate material in every major newspaper – the biggest newspaper the Aftonbladet, the SvD, we had a 44 minute documentary on Swedish television, the equivalent to the BBC – showing how – what the US Ambassador was writing about Sweden – and what he was writing:  Sweden is really in NATO, we pretend that it’s not; but really it is.  He was writing that there is intelligence sharing arrangements of all types and we have to keep it secret from Parliament; not even most members of the government known what’s going on; it is arguably a violation of the Swedish Constitution, so we’re going to keep it all quiet.  We saw the opposition leader in the recent election being hauled in to the US embassy.  Why?  Because she had made statements saying that when we get elected we’re going to take Swedish troops out of Afghanistan.  She came in and she said:  don’t worry about that; that’s just all for the people; once we’re in government, we’re not going to do that.  That opposition leader, head of the Social Democrats.  Social Democrats is the same political party that Claes Borgstrom is from.  Claes Borgstrom is a politician who ran in the last election; he’s also the principal public advocate for the two women who are alleging these crimes.    Sir David Frost And, obviously, you denied the crimes in that case – vigorously, obviously, and so on – but you presumably – you don’t deny having had sex with them? Julian Assange I don’t talk about – there’s things about this matter that are of public record – but I think it’s not right for me to do a couple of things.  And it’s hard because of different cultural values.  But my cultural values are:  is that a man does not talk about his private life and a man does not criticise women; certainly he doesn’t criticise women before he knows all the facts are in.  In this case, we have just recently got a translation of part of one of the statements, by a close friend of one of the women, and she says that she – only one of the women – told her that she was bamboozled by police and other people into this position and that she’s very unhappy about it.  So maybe it’s not actually all a scheme from the women, although there is some suggestive evidence that that is true; but maybe it’s not.  Maybe they are innocent victims who were bamboozled into making statements that they didn’t really want to make. Sir David Frost So, but, why wouldn’t you go back to Sweden, in the sense, does it mean you feel, which would be a clear point, I mean, do you feel you can’t get a fair trial in Sweden, at the moment?  Julian Assange Well, it’s very interesting that you ask that point, because this was a point made by the prosecution here, who applied to make sure I was in solitary confinement; that I was denied bail; then when bail was granted – rightly so – appealed all the way to the High Court, to prevent me from being out on bail; and one of the arguments used was that they thought that I would not– that I thought I would not get a fair trial in Sweden.  So if I say that I believe I’m not going to get a fair trail in Sweden:  that there’s no juries in Sweden, that half the juries are appointed by the Social Democrats – that’s how – sorry, not juries – that half the panel – the judge, he’s appointed by the political party that is involved in this – if I say that sort of thing, suggest that I do not have confidence in the Swedish judicial system, then my bail will be cancelled and I will go to prison. So, I have – to look into the situation as to whether there is a fair trial possibility in Sweden or not.  That is something that we are researching.  That is something I want to understand before I’m extradited back to Sweden.  What I want to understand is what are the charges*?  Who is behind this?  The prosecution has refused to give to the British courts any evidence, has said that it doesn’t need and doesn’t want to give any evidence – and by ‘evidence,’ I don’t mean photographs or something like this.  By evidence, I mean even the statements, even the initial complaint; it’s refusing to hand over.  That’s not a situation that I feel that it is right to walk into.  I feel it is right that, since I haven’t even been charged, since I am offering to do all sorts of interviews, for them to come here and say – well, we want to talk to you about – what exactly.  That should happen first and we have an opportunity in the British legal system, which is more open, to get some of this information out, to find out what this is really about and demonstrate publicly that something is not going on here that is right, that there are clear dirty tricks, at least in the abuse of process:  how did my name get out in the first place; why did the most senior prosecutor in Sweden say not only that there was no evidence, she said:  I’ve read everything, but there is not even a suspicion that he has committed a rape.  Then intervention of this politician Claes Borgstrom comes about, passed off to another prosecutor in Gottenburg, not in Stockholm, what is going on? Sir David Frost And that’s the question, you most of all, but everybody will be interested to know the answer. Julian Assange, we look forward to talking to you again.  Thank you for this. Julian Assange Thank you, David. _____________________ *  . Note:  Assange was not ‘charged’ at the date of the above interview, and has not been charged with any crime to date (25 May 2015).