1.
DAVID GREENE, HOST: For years,
WikiLeaks has published a steady stream of documents exposing the underbelly of
war and diplomacy. In 2010, the organization released a trove of information
related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The disclosure was explosive, and
the U.S. Department of Justice is still investigating. We reached WikiLeaks
founder Julian Assange yesterday on Skype at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.
He has been closely following another breach with great interest, Hillary
Clinton's State Department emails.
2.
JULIAN ASSANGE: The DOJ has erected a
new standard, it seems, with their decision to not proceed against Hillary
Clinton in relation to alleged national security violations in her email.
3.
GREENE: You're saying that if they drop
the case against her, if they don't have any evidence that you're a threat to
national security, they should drop the case against you.
4.
ASSANGE: Right. It's an incredible
double standard that they have kept the case going against me and WikiLeaks as
an organization for six years.
5.
GREENE: Now, as the U.S. government
continues to investigate WikiLeaks, the organization has thrust itself back
into the U.S. political scene, becoming one of the most unexpected and
unpredictable players in the presidential election. The site released some
20,000 emails last month, pulling back the curtain on the Democratic National
Committee's senior leadership and their efforts in support of Hillary Clinton
over Bernie Sanders. Four top committee officials have resigned, but a key
question still remains. Did those hacks that WikiLeaks released, those emails,
come from Russia?
6.
ASSANGE: Well, we don't comment as to
our sources. But James Clapper, DNI, director of national intelligence of the
United States, oversees all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies. He has said that
there is media hyperventilation about this issue, and that they're not in a
position to make any attributions, let alone claims, as to motivation.
7.
GREENE: Every cyber expert who's looked
at this has said it's Russia. Are you telling me that that information did not
come to you from Russia?
8.
ASSANGE: No cyber expert has said our
emails that we published come from Russia. What they have said is that they
have looked at some of the hacking of the DNC over the last two years and said
that the malware in that hacking appeared to be Russian. And that's a different
question.
9.
GREENE: Do you know where these emails
came from?
10.
ASSANGE: Yes, I know where they came
from. They came from the DNC.
11.
GREENE: Do you know the source that
provided them to you?
12.
ASSANGE: Well, we don't comment on
sourcing because it makes it easier for any investigation.
13.
GREENE: Mr. Assange, did you have a
motive, though, once you were in possession of these emails? Was there a motive
to release them - to decide, these emails are from the DNC, they have to do
with Hillary Clinton's campaign so you decided, I'm going to release them for a
reason here?
14.
ASSANGE: I mean, yes. It's a wonderful
scoop. What media organization who had received that information would not
publish it? I think that's a real question. I would like to say the answer is
no media organization would censor that material. Unfortunately, due to
incredible partisanization that is occurring in the U.S. media landscape in the
lead-up to the election, we're not confident that, in fact, all media in the
United States would have published those emails.
15.
GREENE: Do you have emails from the
Trump campaign or the Republican Party?
16.
ASSANGE: We try to avoid talking too
much about pending publications because it kind of - you know, we don't want to
accidentally scoop ourselves...
17.
GREENE: Although pending publications
makes it sound like something might be pending that might be coming from you
about the Trump campaign.
18.
ASSANGE: We - the U.S. electoral
process - we have two pretty much reviled candidates, having the lowest
approval ratings of any pair of candidates in the last hundred years, going
into the U.S. election - is generating a desire by various sources, inside and
outside campaigns, to contribute information to WikiLeaks and the rest of the
news media.
19.
GREENE: OK. So if you do indeed have or
get in possession of stuff about the Trump campaign, you would be just as ready
to release that as you were the DNC emails?
20.
ASSANGE: Yes, of course. If anyone has
information that is from inside the Trump campaign, which is authentic, it's
not like some claimed witness statement but actually internal documentation,
we'd be very happy to receive it and publish it.
21.
GREENE: I want to circle back to where
we began the conversation because you brought up this question of whether
there's an argument that you're a threat to national security. I mean, there
are cybersecurity experts who say that someone in Russia, perhaps the Russian
government, was responsible for getting this information to you. If you,
indeed, have...
22.
ASSANGE: No, there aren't. They are
speaking about the hacks of the DNC, not our publications. There's a
difference. It is possible for people to count the two. One, there's been hacks
at the DNC and many other organizations over the last few years. Two, WikiLeaks
published the information from the DNC.
23.
GREENE: But if the United States
government thought that you might have knowledge that a foreign government had
hacked into a political institution in the United States during a presidential
election...
24.
ASSANGE: They haven't asked. They
haven't asked.
25.
GREENE: But could you see that as a
reason they might want to continue this investigation as seeing you as a
possible threat to national security?
26.
ASSANGE: Well, that would be a
different investigation. So once again, there's various hacks of the DNC and
there's our publications. They're different things.
27.
GREENE: But, I mean, could you blame
the DOJ for wanting to carry on with this investigation until they figured this
out, in case they, you know, believe that you might have knowledge here of the
Russians doing this?
28.
ASSANGE: Well, that would be a
different investigation. We have published many things about many countries
over the years, including, you know, NSA revelations about the United States.
There's actually very serious ones about spying on the French presidency,
trying to interfere in the climate negotiations, etc. All of these are
potential investigations, but they are different investigations.
29.
GREENE: Well, let me - apart from the
different investigations, could you see people in the U.S. government thinking
that you might be a threat to national security?
30.
ASSANGE: Well, I mean, there's great
people in the U.S. government - many of them are our sources - and there's
terrible people in the U.S. government. Unfortunately, the U.S. government is a
- you know, a reflection, to some degree, of the rest of society. So it's
filled with its share of paranoid and sociopathic power climbers...
31.
GREENE: But is it paranoid to look at
these uncensored documents?
32.
ASSANGE: ...People who make errors of
judgment, etc.
33.
GREENE: Is it paranoid to look at these
uncensored documents, these emails, that are released by you? And if they
believe that that could change a U.S. presidential election, could be a threat
to national security, why isn't it logical...
34.
ASSANGE: I just - I mean...
35.
GREENE: ...For them to see you as a
possible threat?
36.
ASSANGE: Hold on. Hold on.
37.
GREENE: OK.
38.
ASSANGE: Hold it right there.
39.
GREENE: OK.
40.
ASSANGE: Hold right there. This is a
great journalistic scoop - 20,000 emails from within the heart of the DNC,
which has led to the resignation of the top four officials of the DNC. Those
resignations occurred because it revealed an attempt to fix the primary process
in favor of Hillary Clinton. That's a remarkable and important contribution to
U.S. democracy by our sources and by WikiLeaks. Any allegation that that is a
process that should be stopped is deeply worrying. Of course - let's be
realistic - it's coming about because Hillary Clinton is in a position where
she is trying to gain support and reduce criticism. And her support is in the
media and elsewhere, are trying to distract.
41.
GREENE: Now, of course, others suggest
WikiLeaks has been making an effort to distract, to draw attention away from
its alleged sources in Russia. The group announced it would offer a $20,000
reward for information about Seth Rich, a 27-year-old DNC staffer, who was shot
and killed last month in what police suspect was a late-night robbery gone bad.
WikiLeaks offering that reward sparked speculation that Rich was in some way
involved with the DNC emails. Some have seen that as possibly a some kind of
smoke screen, maybe an effort by you to draw attention away from some relationship
with your actual sources in Russia.
42.
ASSANGE: Well...
43.
GREENE: How do you respond to that?
44.
ASSANGE: Yeah - it's false. His parents
are grieving. They have called for information. The police have called for
information. We're trying to contribute to that. We are not alleging that his
murder is a result of these allegations of him being a WikiLeaks source because
we don't have proof of that. Any allegation that someone has been murdered
because they're a WikiLeaks source, even if it only has a small probability of
being true, is very concerning to us. We have a perfect record in protecting
the identity of our sources. And we want to establish quickly exactly what the
circumstances were of Seth Rich's killing.
45.
GREENE: Was he a source of yours?
46.
ASSANGE: We don't disclose sources,
even dead sources.
47.
GREENE: We should remember Julian
Assange received political asylum from Ecuador in 2012. He has been stuck in
that country's embassy in London ever since, unable to
leave because Britain would likely extradite him to Sweden, where he's wanted
for questioning on suspicion of rape. I wanted to give you the chance to
reflect on your four years, now, since getting political asylum. I wonder how
you're holding up in there and if you're missing anything on the outside.
48.
ASSANGE: Yeah. Well, today is the
anniversary, if you can call it that, of my successful political asylum case,
where Ecuador awarded me political asylum. The embassy was then surrounded by
police siege, a very expensive one, which has continued to this day. But here's
a situation where an individual - me - stuck in an embassy siege for four
years, not able to see their family, not able to, you know, see their son.
49.
GREENE: Why is it all worth it for you?
50.
ASSANGE: Well, you know, I believe that
the way to justice is education. And by bringing out, into the public domain,
how human institutions actually behave, we can understand, frankly, to a degree
for the first time, the civilization that we actually have. So we are building
a kind of rebel Library of Alexandria. All the 11 million documents that
WikiLeaks has published so far wouldn't have existed in the world had we not
and our sources had not fought hard to publish.
51.
GREENE: That was a conversation with
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. He was speaking to us from the Ecuadorian
embassy in London.
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