The "put lives at risk" fallacy

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The "put lives at risk" fallacy

Brian Vickery • Jan 12, 2023

Pushing back on years of smears and lies

The accusation made by our governments and parroted by much of the media that Wikileaks put lives at risk has been one of the most damaging in the campaign for his freedom and to end the possibility of his extradition to the US to face 175 years in jail. It is natural and right for us to feel concern for those are putting their lives on the line to defend us. Or be concerned for innocent individuals who maybe put in harms way.

It is also very easy to accuse someone of putting lives at risk but not so easy an accusation to defend against. Even if the Department of Justice after more than a decade have not named any individual harmed by the Wikileaks publication.

First we need to be clear we do know that those who put lives at risk are those who lied (and continue to lie) about the true reasons for war. The true effects of war. Tens of thousands of our military personnel and hundreds of thousands of civilians have paid for those lies with their lives. Let's be honest, our military, especially those on the front line know the true cost of war. The population of those countries that are on the receiving end of war certainly have a pretty good idea of that reality. The lies and concealment of the truth is necessary to fool domestic voters into supporting the need for war and to continue funding and sending our young men and women into battle.

The Manning trial

The indictments that Julian Assange faces relate to the information sent to Wikileaks by Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning.

Manning had full clearance for the information sent to Wikileaks. At the trial of Manning for leaking the information Brigadier General Robert Carr who led a team of over 80 intelligence officers with a $6 million budget at the Pentagon investigating the leak, confirmed under oath that there was no evidence that anyone had lost their lives as a result of the leak.

Robert Gates, Former Secretary of Defense

"the discclosures were embarrassing and awkward" "did not reveal any sensitive intelligence sources or methods" The Department of Defense could not point to anyone in Afghanistan or Iraq harmed due to the documents released by WikiLeaks. Link

Wikileaks harm reduction process

Wikileaks developed a harm reduction process to ensure that their publication would not endanger innocents or put operational personnel at risk.

American journalist John Goetz testified in court that Wikileaks had a very rigorous redaction process.

"Assange himself was “very concerned with the technical aspect of trying to find the names in this massive collection of documents” so that “we could redact them, so they wouldn’t be published, so they wouldn’t be harmed.” He testified that Assange continually reminded the media partners to use secure communications, encrypted phones and apps, and while he seemed paranoid at the time, this is now standard journalistic practice"

Wikileaks worked with the State Department to redact names and sensitive information

Goetz also testified about WikiLeaks and the media partners’ conversations with the U.S. government ahead of publication.

"The media partners also sent a delegation of New York Times reporters, who already had an office in Washington DC, to the White House to discuss the release ahead of time. As the Times’ Eric Schmitt emailed to Goetz immediately after the meeting, the media delegation passed on to the U.S. government that WikiLeaks would not be publishing some 15,000 documents within the Afghan War Diaries, and they asked the White House for any technical assistance they could provide to assist with redactions. That request, Goetz said, was met with “derision.”

Wikileaks redacted more information than the Defeense Department did in Freedom of Information requests

Goetz testified that with future releases, WikiLeaks’ harm-minimization process developed over time, and he said:

"that the organization “overshot” with the Iraq War Logs, and “ended up redacting more than the Defense Department did. Some of the files had been declassified and released under FOIA requests, so one could compare redactions and see that WikiLeaks had concealed more names than the U.S. government had"

John Sloboda who founded a prominent London-based NGO testified in court that:

"Julian Assange aimed for 'stringent redactions' and was "insistent" on redacting the names of Iraqi informants and even deployed software to remove Iraqi words from WikiLeaks cables" "he was determined to scrub sources' names from the documents before publishing"

"It was impressed upon us that the aim was a very, very stringent redaction of the logs before publication"

Sloboda said it would have taken an "army of people" "a very long time" to redact the files by hand and that it was his colleague who came up with the idea of developing software that would scrub non-English words from the documents.

He said "redactions of occupations were also carried out to stop informants' identities being guessed"

It should also be remembered that alongside Wikileaks, The Guardian, New York Times, Der Spiegel, Le Monde were among other mainstream news outlets that assisted in the redaction process and published information from the files.

Guardian journalists role in causing unredacted files to be published

The Wikileaks approach to sharing the files with their partners in other news organisations was on a "need to know" basis. An Italian journalist for example would be shared encrypted files pertaining to Italy. The private key (password) would only be shared with the journalist once both sides were happy they were secure.

This method secures the information in a similar manner to how those who own Bitcoin use a private key to access their money on the public Bitcoin blockchain.

The Guardian Chapter 11 showing password to unredacted files

In mid 2010 Julian Assange, under pressure from Guardian journalist David Leigh, gave him the pass phrase for the full files. Leigh and Luke Harding then proceeded to publish the password in full in their book on Wikileaks.

This enabled the full unredacted files to be accessed by others.

Damage limitation process

Although Wikileaks and Julian Assange were not responsible for publishing the passphrase they then made efforts to limit the fallout.

Julian Assange made efforts to contact Hilary Clinton and did manage to have a protracted conversation with Cliff Johnson at the State Department.

Only after the files were published in full by other organisations, including on cryptome.org

a US based organisation, did Wikileaks the files in full.

The reason for Wikileaks publishing the unredacted files at this stage was as Glen Greenwald pointed out at the time:

"WikiLeaks decided -- quite reasonably -- that the best and safest course was to release all the cables in full, so that not only the world's intelligence agencies but everyone had them, so that steps could be taken to protect the sources and so that the information in them was equally available"

In Julian Assange's words:

“Additionally, for harm minimisation, there are people who need to know that they are mentioned in the material before intelligence agencies know they are mentioned – or at least as soon after as possible.

“By the time we published the cables, the material was already on dozens of websites, including Cryptome, and were being tweeted everywhere. And even a searchable public interface had been put up on one of them.”

New Scientist

Wikileaks role in saving lives

Just as the publication of the Pentagon Papers by the NYT's helped to shorten the Vietnam war and to curtail the bloodshed, the Wikileaks publication of the Iraq war logs helped to bring the Iraq war to an end again reducing the bloodshed.

In summary

The biggest risk to our military and innocent civilians is our political class using lies and deceit to take us into war and to sustain those wars.

Wikileaks developed a harm reduction process designed to protect innocent civilians and ensure lives were not lost. Julian Assange was "paranoid" about the security of the information and was prepared to work with the State Department.

It was Guardian journalists who were responsible for the publication of the unredacted files. Files that are still publicly available on US sites without prosecution of the organisations responsible.

Many mainstream news outlets published the Manning disclosures alongside Wikileaks.

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