Wikileaks and the Iraq. Authorities Reactions to 2010 Leaks

Introduction

WikiLeaks, founded in 2006 by Julian Assange, is a non-profit organization which aims to facilitate the anonymous leaking of secret information, censored by the government and private actors, through its public website. Through the global reach of the Internet, taking advantage of the speed of networks and the possibility to interact anonymously, WikiLeaks has spread documents considered private or secret through electronic publication¹. On April 5th 2010, WikiLeaks published on its website, a secret edited video titled "Collateral Murder". The video, taken in Iraq from an American Apache helicopter, shows a fatal attack against 12 civilians, including two Reuters photographers, and the wounding of their rescuers, including two children. The army, however, declared that they believed the targets were armed military, not civilians². On July 25th 2010 WikiLeaks published 91,000 online reports on the war in Afghanistan in a document called the "Afghan War Diary"³, and on October 22nd 2010 they published 391,832 Iraq War Logs⁴.

It is not the first time that governments and organizations have been involved in leaks of information considered secret. In 1971, Daniel Ellsberg copied 7,000 secret documents from the Department of Defense, and informed the New York Times of their existence. The documents contained the report on relations between the US Government and Vietnam in the period 1945-1967⁵. But what are the differences between the public governmental reaction to the Pentagon Papers and the reaction after the leaks of WikiLeaks documents? The Pentagon Papers demonstrated that four different American governments (from the Truman administration, through the administrations of Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson) lied about strategic intentions and military activities in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Their publication changed public opinion radically on the Vietnam War and the cultural understanding of freedom of expression. The reaction of President Richard Nixon was tough. He tried to silence the press, going as far as to forbid governmental agencies' employees to have contacts with the media. In addition, he denounced the New York Times, but the Supreme Court, with a historical judgment, ruled that the First Amendment did protect the right of the New York Times to print the materials⁶. The public reaction of the American government to the WikiLeaks action was, instead, a non-reaction. As the CNN reports, the US Government was silent. Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, declared "I think it's important not to over-hype or get excessively excited about the meaning of those documents." There was not a word from the Republicans⁷. The Obama administration's reaction to the Collateral Murder Video and the War Logs, with particular attention to "untold" reactions, is therefore the subject of our analysis .

Timeline

July 12th 2007: the action of "collateral Murder" took place in Baghdad

July 15th 2007: US army finish an investigation regarding the event.

2007: Reuters asked for the footage, following the death of two reporters. Pentagon denied access to video and investigation report.

2009: Chelsea Manning leaked the video "Collateral Murder" to WikiLeaks, with thousands of documents related to wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

September 15th 2009: "The Good Soldier" is released, with transcripts of the conversation during Apache attack on civilians. They were not classified.

April 5th 2010: WikiLeaks put the video "Collateral Murder" online, on its website and youtube.

April 6th 2010: White House redirected all questions to Department of Defense.

April 6th 2010: Department of Defense reacted and made investigation report public May 2010: Chelsea Manning was arrested.

July 25th 2010: Part of Afghan Diary released on WikiLeaks website

3rd August 2010: WikiLeaks asked White House for assistance for editing War logs in order to protect sources on site.

5th August 2010: First reaction from Pentagon, regarding War logs. Pentagon declined help to WikiLeaks, and asked WikiLeaks to hand back Documents and erase them from all their servers and hard disks.

14th August 2010: White House condemned WikiLeaks way to publish classified documents. 2nd October 2010: WikiLeaks release Iraq war logs on its website.

October 22nd 2010: President Obama did not mentioned WikiLeaks in his official speech in Las Vegas.

Reactions to Collateral Murder

On April 5th 2010, WikiLeaks uploaded a video on youtube, the 39 minutes video was shot from the APACHE helicopter monitor screen with radio dialogues. A shorter version of the video named Collateral Murder was also released at the same time. The video screening an attack on iraqi civilians on July 12th 2007, killing 12 civilians, including 2 Reuters reporters and 2 wounded children. The video reached 12 millions views in 24 hours⁸. However, during White House press briefing on April 6th, the speaker Robert Gibbs did not mention the fact, and later encouraged journalist who popped up he question to address it to Department of Defense⁹. CNN reported a statement from Pentagon on April 6th, in which Pentagon insured there was no way of knowing there was journalists among the group of peoples¹⁰. However, the dates and stamps on investigation file suggest it was performed in 2007¹¹. In 2007, Pentagon refused access to the video and investigations to Reuters, who asked for the footage following the loss of 2 reporters, under the Freedom of Information Act¹².

Reactions to Iraq War Logs and Afghan War Diary

On August 3rd 2010, WikiLeaks asked the White House for assistance for editing War logs in order to protect sources. On August 5th 2010, Pentagon acknowledged WikiLeaks asked for assistance, but refused and asked WikiLeaks to "returned all versions of all these documents to the US Government, and permanently delete them from its website, computers and records"¹³. When journalist asked the White House about more leaks to come, on August 14th 2010, Robert Gibbs insisted that the worry was on the safety of sources¹⁴. However Amnesty International was not of the same opinion. Immediately the organisation asked the US government to investigate if officials knew about the torture and other ill-treatment of detainees. "We have not yet had an opportunity to study the leaked files in detail but they add to our concern that the US authorities committed a serious breach of international law when they summarily handed over thousands of detainees to Iraqi security forces who, they knew, were continuing to torture and abuse detainees on a truly shocking scale," said Malcolm Smart, Amnesty's director for the Middle East and North Africa¹⁵.

After the War logs the Pentagon initiated a media blitz, which was "orchestrated across the entire US mainstream media"¹⁶. This led to WikiLeaks being accused of having blood on their hands. Statements like these appeared on different media across the US:

- but the truth is they might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier or that of an Afghan family.
- The people ofWikiLeaks could have blood on their hands.
- He definitely has blood on his hands.
- Thebloodis ontheirhands¹⁷.

This action led to a change in how the leak was dealt with and the focus was shifted away from the leaks itself to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. It also affected how the media was treated as Nick Davis investigative journalist point out, "[as] soon as they pick up this line about who's got blood on their hands, it's WikiLeaks being isolated and that, from a political point of view, was a clever move by the White House. They stepped all around any kind of argument with these big media organisations and isolated Julian"¹⁸.

The day after Iraq War Logs were released, Barack Obama decided not to comment the news of the day by avoiding any position on it. In his official speech in Las vegas, the president mentioned the "100,000 brave young men and women who have come back from Iraq."¹⁹ In support of this reaction, the official position by Defense Department spokesman Dave Lapan was "Our concern, is mostly with the threat to individuals, the threat to our people and our equipment."²⁰ For days, the official line was redirected to bring attention to slogans like "threat" and "danger", emphasizing of the danger of the leaks. At the same time Pentagon spokesman Morrell rushed to object to this assessment: "There is nothing in here which would indicate war crimes. If there were, we would have investigated it a long time ago," he told CNN²¹. In order to protect individuals on site, War logs needed to be reviewed and names removed.

"Untold" reactions

WikiLeaks published an annotated transcript of the documentary "We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks" the day before its premiere. There they claim that "the film is filled with factual errors and speculation [... as well as being] unprofessional and irresponsible in light of ongoing legal proceedings"²². To many this comes as a surprise since the authority's reaction to the release of the film Collateral Murder as well as other related leaks was minor. The annotations point out to some confusion in the dialogue around the whole case. While the video of the helicopter attack was found to be unclassified, it was numerous times referred to as being classified. Even Reuter took it as a classified material when they published a short article on the matter, as seen in the captions below:

[...]

¹ Brevini, Benedetta, Arne Hintz, and Patrick McCurdy. Beyond WikiLeaks: implications for the future of communications, journalism and society. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

² McGreal, Chris. "Wikileaks reveals video showing US air crew shooting down Iraqi civilians." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 05 Apr. 2010. Web. 11 Feb. 2017, https:www.theguardian.com/world/2010/apr/05/wikileaks-us-army-iraq-attack.

³ "Submit documents to WikiLeaks." Afghan War Diary, 2004-2010 - WikiLeaks. N.p., 25 July 2010. Web. 11 Feb. 2017. https://wikileaks.org/wiki/Afghan_War_Diary,_2004-2010.

⁴ "Submit documents to WikiLeaks." Afghan War Logs, 2004-2009 - WikiLeaks. N.p., 22 October 2010. Web. 11 Feb. 2017. https://wikileaks.org/wiki/Afghan_War_Diary,_2004-2010.

⁵ "Pentagon Papers." National Archives and Records Administration. National Archives and Records Administration, n.d. Web. 12 Feb. 2017. https://www.archives.gov/research/pentagon-papers.

⁶ Brevini, Benedetta, Arne Hintz, and Patrick McCurdy. Beyond WikiLeaks: implications for the future of communications, journalism and society. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013.

⁷ Goodale, James C. The Daily Beast. The Daily Beast Company, Aug. 2010. Web. 11 Feb. 2017. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/09/19/pentagon-papers-james-c-goodale-the-outrageous-nsa-opinion.html

⁸ The Fifth Estate. Dir. Bill Condon. Perfs. Benedict Cumberbatch, Daniel Brühl, and Anthony Mackie.. Warner Home Video, 2013. DVD.

⁹ "Press Briefing by Press Secretary Robert Gibbs, 1/5/2011." National Archives and Records Administration. National Archives and Records Administration, 5 Jan. 2011. Web. 17 Feb. 2017. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2011/01/05/press-briefing- press-secretary-robert-gibbs-152011.

¹⁰ Cohen, Tom, Adam Levine, and Barbara Starr. CNN. Cable News Network, 07 Apr. 2010. Web. 17 Feb. 2017. http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/04/06/iraq.journalists.killed/.

¹¹ H.R. Doc. No. Legal Review for AR 15-6-Department of the Army AFZC - B - CDR at 1 (2007).

¹² McGreal, Chris. "Wikileaks reveals video showing US air crew shooting down Iraqi civilians." The Guardian. Guardian News and Media, 05 Apr. 2010. Web. 20 Feb. 2017. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/apr/05/wikileaks-us-army-iraq-attack.

¹³ G20Detainee. YouTube. YouTube, 26 Sept. 2010. Web. 20 Feb. 2017. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DJe_Q8XFIHI.

¹⁴ "White House Daily Briefing." C-SPAN.org. N.p., 13 Aug. 2010. Web. 20 Feb. 2017. www.c-span.org/video/?295037-1%2Fwhite- house-daily-briefing.

¹⁵ "Group: Investigate reports of torture in Iraq WikiLeaks documents." CNN. Cable News Network, 25 Oct. 2010. Web. 20 Feb. 2017. http://edition.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/europe/10/23/wikileaks.documents/index.html.

¹⁶ We Steel Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks. Dir. Alex Gibney. Perfs. Julian Assange, and Heather Brooke. Home Video, 2013. DVD.

¹⁷ Ibid.

¹⁸ We Steel Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks. Dir. Alex Gibney. Perfs. Julian Assange, and Heather Brooke. Home Video, 2013. DVD.

¹⁹ "Transcript of President Obama's speech at UNLV." LasVegasSun.com. N.p., 07 June 2012. Web. 16 Feb. 2017. https://lasvegassun.com/news/2012/jun/07/transcript-president-obamas-speech-unlv/.

²⁰ Pitzke, Marc. "Outrage, Applause, Indifference: US Reacts to WikiLeaks Iraq Documents." SPIEGEL ONLINE. SPIEGEL ONLINE, 23 Oct. 2010. Web. 17 Feb. 2017. http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/outrage-applause-indifference-us-reacts-to-wikileaks-iraq- documents-a-724974.html

²¹ Keyes, Charley. "Pentagon suspects WikiLeaks has more documents." CNN. Cable News Network, 26 Oct. 2010. Web. 17 Feb. 2017. http://edition.cnn.com/2010/US/10/26/wikileaks.more.documents/

²² We Steel Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks. Dir. Alex Gibney. Perfs. Julian Assange, and Heather Brooke. Home Video, 2013. DVD.