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‘We Steal Secrets’: WikiLeaks and the U.S. intelligence-industrial complex
May 2, 2013 at 6:20 AM
Posted by Jonathan Martin
Early in Alex Gibney’s gripping new documentary “We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks,” Julian Assange declares that he “likes crushing bastards.”
By the end of the 130-minute film, Assange is one of the bastards. Seized by paranoia and the fame monster, he made WikiLeaks volunteers sign non-disclosure agreements, and charges $1 million per interview ...
... Assange is a reckless, creepy ideologue. Although he publicly pledges to protect the identifies of Iraqi citizens who talked to the military, he released some 75,000 records without blacking out names, jeopardizing 100-some lives. To escape prosecution for sexual assault in Sweden, he hides in Ecuador’s London embassy, hypocritically ignoring a WikiLeaks cable describing alleged corruption among Ecuador’s elite. He conflates his personal criminal problems with an attack on WikiLeaks, and his supporters are seen in “We Steal Secrets” denouncing the women who <accused him of> sexual misconduct as “sluts.”
The most devastating critiques come from one-time WikiLeaks loyalists. “WikiLeaks has become what it detested and tried to rid the world of,” Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a one-time spokesman for WikiLeaks, says in the film ...
By the end of the 130-minute film, Assange is one of the bastards. Seized by paranoia and the fame monster, he made WikiLeaks volunteers sign non-disclosure agreements, and charges $1 million per interview ...
... Assange is a reckless, creepy ideologue. Although he publicly pledges to protect the identifies of Iraqi citizens who talked to the military, he released some 75,000 records without blacking out names, jeopardizing 100-some lives. To escape prosecution for sexual assault in Sweden, he hides in Ecuador’s London embassy, hypocritically ignoring a WikiLeaks cable describing alleged corruption among Ecuador’s elite. He conflates his personal criminal problems with an attack on WikiLeaks, and his supporters are seen in “We Steal Secrets” denouncing the women who <accused him of> sexual misconduct as “sluts.”
The most devastating critiques come from one-time WikiLeaks loyalists. “WikiLeaks has become what it detested and tried to rid the world of,” Daniel Domscheit-Berg, a one-time spokesman for WikiLeaks, says in the film ...
http://blogs.seattletimes.com/opinionnw/2013/05/02/wikileaks-we-steal-secrets/