Thread by @LaFleurDelSur

THREAD:
What REALLY happened in 2010 when @Wikileaks, the @nytimes, the @guardian et al got together to publish the #WarCrimes of the US and its allies?

Listen to Mark Davis (sbs.com.au/news/dateline/…) share his first-hand experience:

The archival footage in this clip ⬆️(filmed in SYD 8 Aug 2019 at "Julian Assange: the Alliance Against the US Culture of Revenge") is from "Inside Wikileaks" (2010) - where Mark Davis was on the scene as the reporter.

"Everyone has an opinion on #JulianAssange and I certainly do, but ... after the Four Corners piece in particular, I thought that I could offer ... EYE WITNESS observations that I haven't revealed before."

"[These observations] gravitate around a couple of enduring slurs against Julian:
- that he is cavalier to the lives of people who were [mentioned] in these documents, &
- that he had a different level of professionalism than the 'true' journalists: @guardian & @NYT journalists."

@guardian @NYT "I was there when he met them, when they formed the bunker at the Guardian - @DerSPIEGEL, @guardian @NYT, and #JulianAssange. I'd been travelling with him - a hard man to find. I found him and stuck to him like glue. And so when he went to the bunker, I was with him."

"[Julian's] idea of starting work was midnight. Their idea was starting at 9am and going home at 5pm. And the job I did, which allowed the Guardian to let me into their fortress, was that I would go and find Julian ... and bring him to the Guardian at maybe 2pm."

"Every moment that Julian was there, I was there.
And every moment that those journalists have since narrated in their books, articles, Four Corners appearances, about the 'enormous integrity' that they had, & the 'lack of integrity' that Julian had, I can say is A COMPLETE LIE."

Mark Davis plays several short clips from "Inside Wikileaks (2010).

1) The lead up to the first big release (when Julian was still mostly unknown) - in the bunker.

"It was here that they were taking what Julian had, which was impenetrable data... [& turning it into a database]"

"That's Nick Davies- Julian's main contact at the @guardian. Davies has made the most recurring & repetitive statement that Julian had a 'cavalier attitude' to life.

That's what I say is a lie. I was there. If there was any cavalier attitude ... it was the Guardian journalists."

"The @guardian journalists had a disdain for the impact of that material. The @guardian journalists had, at best, a type of gallows humour as to what would happen to anyone revealed in these documents."

"And I can tell you, he (Nick Davies) narrates a dinner (if you've read the books) where Julian said "If they die, they die."

Now that is the ONLY event that I WASN'T at. I remember the dinner and I didn't go to the dinner."

"But I can contradict every other account they talk about from that room, where anyone expressed any concern whatsoever about the lives of people - except for #JulianAssange.

Now that is such a stark contrast to what has been repeated, that I ... want to dissect that a bit."

Ï haven't done it before because it wasn't relevant ... But now he's in custody on espionage [charges] related to the documents that these guys [pointing at screen] are working on together. So it's highly relevant and I do want to put it on the public record.

"Up in the corner is @davidleighx. David Leigh wrote the most damning book about Julian.
[WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy (Feb 2011)]

These guys ... they were all over Julian. Julian had something valuable to them. They were fawning over Julian. None of this 'Oh we're all professionals and we retained our distance.'

There was no distance between them and Julian at this point, I can promise you."

"David Leigh is also - ironically or tragically - the guy who printed the password to the original files.

In his book he put the password that opened the original files ... that Julian had physically redacted. This clown put the password in ..."

[See wikileaks.org/Guardian-journ…]

"So what they were doing in this room was taking the raw data - which I saw. You could see it on a computer but it was very difficult to read, to filter, to understand - a bit like reading a .xls sheet or something like that ... "

"The people who brought that material to life, gave birth to it, were the Guardian. Wikileaks did none of that work. Julian didn't have the capacity to do [it]. It was here, with Guardian staff - those two journalists & 2-3 computer experts - they created the Wikileaks database."

"If Julian is in jail, then [the @guardian journalists] should be in jail.

Quite literally, they should be in jail. They created this, they put it up, they took it out to the world."

"So what they were doing was generating individual reference codes for every entry in the @wikileaks material, they gave it a graphical interface - a 'look' - and they made it searchable.

That was the Guardian. All, entirely, the @guardian."

@wikileaks @guardian "That's @DerSPIEGEL."

"And these are the techos.

So it's about a week of technical work. I mean, about $100,000 probably to do the type of work they did.

And the @nytimes were coming in in the week I was there - were coming in regularly on the telephones."

"Between these three groups - @DerSPIEGEL, @guardian & the @NYT, they were fossicking through the material - the tech guys kind of gave birth to it - fossicking through looking for stories of interest to them."

"Of course, it was apparent that they would be risking, if not the safety, certainly exposing the identity of many people - there's tens of thousands of documents there.

I never witnessed a conversation where anyone took that seriously. Not one."

"The only conversation that occured was between Nick Davies & David Leigh (both from the Guardian). Julian hadn't arrived yet. They had arrived an hour before him."

"It occurred to Nick Davies as they pulled up an article they were going to put in the newspaper - he said "Well, we can't name this guy."
And then someone said "Well he's going to be named on the website." "

"Davies said something to the effect of "Well we''ll really cop it then if/when we are blamed for putting that name up."

And the words I remember very precisely - from David Leigh was he gazed across the room at Davies and said: "But we're not publishing it [the website]." "

"So what [David Leigh] was, in effect, saying was that 'we are going to let Julian be the fall guy.'

They're going to create this, they're going to make it searchable, they're going to give it a graphic 'look' and they're going to release it."

"They're then going to share the link to it and put 13 pages of newsprint dedicated to saying "Go and look at it" and then they'll say "But we didn't publish it. Julian published it." "

"Now this was highly alarming to me, and I did raise it with Julian - who has, amongst his other qualities, he might be a genius but he does have a certain naivety about him. He thought these guys were great. They were being nice to him. This was a collective effort ..."

"There was no idea that he was a source and they were the journalists. If you watch this story ["Inside Wikileaks" (2010)] you'll get a better feel of that. They were all in it together, and Julian didn't quite believe that they'd be pushing him out onto the plank ... "

"... Julian didn't quite believe that they'd be pushing him out onto the plank, and then saying "Oh, it's not us! We're just reporters, we're just reporters!"

It's shameful. SHAMEFUL! Embarrassingly shameful."

"There's another scene I'd like to show you along those lines. This is about four days before release of the Afghan War Logs (wardiaries.wikileaks.org).
Remember the Afghan War Logs was really the public announcement of #JulianAssange and @wikileaks."

[Announced 25 July 2010]

This is a conversation that is linked to that comment I was telling you about before of David Leigh:

"Oh, but we're not publishing it. We can wash our hands of it."

Right? And how successfully they have done that!"

But this was a conversation [with] Julian [that] relates to a lecturer at London University who was a very big supporter of Julian - Gavin McFadyen.

"This is Gavin McFayden's house." [Video: ]

Narrator: "As the new material of the publications begins to circulate between the three publications, the full scope of the data becomes clearer - and one of the partners seems to be getting a little nervous."

Julian's voice: "So the latest squabble is -not over the date, they are all happy with that - but the precise time.
Julian Assange: So anyway, the Times (@nytimes) has come back & said they don't want to go first."
Mark Davis: "Why?"
Julian Assange: "They want us to scoop them!"

Mark Davis: "Seriously? Oh, so they can claim they were reprinting somebody else's news?"
Assange: [Looking surprised} "That's right! So they can claim that 'We didn't ... We weren't involved ...' "
Davis: [sarcasm]
Assange: " 'We were just reporting on what someone else did.' "

Mark David: "That's good. So who is going first?"
Julian Assange: "The NYT wants a web startup press to scoop them. Wants! Wants to be scooped!"
END OF CLIP

Mark Davis (SYD, 8 Aug 2019):

"I mean, that's chilling to watch that now.
Julian's in jail BECAUSE of that subterfuge."

"Julian's in jail BECAUSE of that subterfuge.

Clearly discussed amongst themselves and not discussed with Julian.

You can see his shock in:
'What are you talking about? We're doing this together. This is a collective effort. What are you talking about?' ... "

" 'You want me to it? You don't want to get it [the scoop]? I thought you'd be busting to get it.'

And you can just see the way he [Assange] ... The honesty with which he relates that story.

That's why he's in prison today. That's why they're not. And why they should be."

"So I had a discussion with Julian around these issues. And he went back in to them [the other journalists] to revisit the issue of identifying people within the War Logs."

It was #JulianAssange who brought that issue to the fore, not the @guardian, not the @NYT.

They didn't care, because there was no reflection upon them. They didn't care - they couldn't give a stuff, right? As long as there was no blow back on them, they were relaxed about it."

"It was Julian that brought it to a head. The release was to be on Monday [26 July 2010], Monday morning. It was Thursday or Friday (I think it was Friday) when Julian said: 'Well, we need to pull these names out - the names that are identified as informants.' "

" 'If there's going to be danger to them, we need to pull them [the names] all out.'

Now that called their bluff - not that they were bluffing. But that absolutely through them into a panic. It meant they wouldn't get their publication date."

"He [Assange] asked for it [publication] to be delayed - because they [the other journalists] weren't going to assist in this task.

He said 'Well I'll do it, but we need time.' "

"No. Because they were... As well as being allies: @nytimes, @guardian, @DerSPIEGEL, they were also competitors, bitter competitors. Very unusual to be in the same room for them, so they couldn't trust each other & they couldn't agree with what they thought was a trick going on."

"They'd all got ready to print on Monday. 'No, we're going on Monday.' So what happens?

All these people who now write books about how concerned they were, they all went home on Friday afternoon - back to Essex, back to Surrey, whatever ..."

"... and Julian was left with - not just the task, but the moral responsibility of trying to cleanse those documents in some way.

And he did. All night.

When I say all night, I mean from 5pm until 9am the next day. We were sharing an apartment at the time."

"#JulianAssange removed 10,000 names - by himself. Not with the support team of the @guardian etc etc etc. By himself. He removed them."

Then it came to Sunday night... "

"This is the Frontline Club on Sunday night. The press conference is Monday morning.

All the press editions are being printed and ready to be released."

FROM 2010 Clip:

Narrator: "The information is now on the internet - 200,000 cables, supposed to be classified secret, expose the raw details of America's war in Afghanistan."

Narrator: "It will be the beginning of a media storm that will last for days."

INTERLUDE

For those who wish to read up on the publishing of the Afghan War Logs, this article (by @ElizabethleaVos of @Consortiumnews) makes for helpful reading:

consortiumnews.com/2019/05/09/the…

@ElizabethleaVos @Consortiumnews Returning to the account by Mark Davis (SYD 8 Aug 2019 at )

"Now what really happened? They'd built this artifice that Julian was the man to walk the plank for them. and they'll report about a man falling off a plank. That was the premise."

"But @wikileaks never released it that night.
Wikileaks were meant to release on Sunday night [the date given on the Wikileaks webpage at wikileaks.org/+-War-Military…] and the Monday papers would report this event.
But he couldn't get it live."

"So all of this evening [25 July 2010] from - it was expected to be up at about 9pm, it was meant to be live. It couldn't go up.

And the panicked calls from the @nytimes started coming. Like HYSTERICAL calls. I could hear them Everyone could hear them."

They're holding the presses, holding the front page, because it was saying this weird group, Wikileaks, HAD RELEASED ...., had published, had put online ...

They were trying to report a news event [but] it [the database] didn't go up."

IMAGE: Archived NYT article 25 July 2010.

ASIDE:

Some actual words were "made public" and "The secret documents, released on the Internet by an organization called WikiLeaks ..."

archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.co…

"And their {@nytimes) phone calls became more hysterical through the evening up until ... (I forget now the time difference. If it's important I'll try to become as precise as I can). Up until about 2am they held the presses in NY, then they just had to go."

"And then the storm unfolded.

But they (@nytimes) were essentially PRINTING A LIE. Wikileaks DIDN'T publish that night. And in fact didn't publish the next day.
I think it was about 2 days. I don't know if that was ever known but I think it was about 2 days before it went up."

"So these high priests of journalistic ethics were - all of them - very happily colluding in publishing a lie: that they were reporting on something that, in fact, didn't happen, and they KNEW didn't happen.

And they set Julian up from the start."

"And they set #JulianAssange up from the start.

I think it's important, that distinction's important when you see this recurring slur, this slander against Julian.

It started in 2010, this 'He's cavalier with people's lives,' and 'he has no ethics.' "

"It started in 2010 and I would have well and truly though it would faded away by now. But to see it on Four Corners AGAIN - 9 years later - in great detail, I felt compelled to at least those issues.

I'm grateful to have done that."

A big THANK YOU to Mark Davis for his eyewitness testimony in Sydney on 8 Aug 2019 (supported by footage from his 2010 report "Inside Wikileaks").

Thanks to @CathyVoganSPK for videoing Mark's presentation, & to @Consortiumnews for screening it on their weekly news show CN Live.

END of presentation.

Readers of this thread may also be interested in the Mark Davis interview of #JulianAssange in Feb 2011 - ie 7+ months after the events discussed above.

Conversation about the relationship between #JulianAssange and the @nytimes and @guardian DURING and AFTER the events discussed above begins at 23:43 of the 2011 video.

While the emphasis is different, nothing said contradicts claims made by Davis above.

@nytimes @guardian In relation to the dinner that Mark Davis COULDN'T attend (and the comment form Julian that has been reported as occurring there,

John Goetz (then of Der Spiegel), who WAS at the dinner, has been reported as providing this testimony:

An alternate view of what happened - one which mostly quotes Nick Davies as a source - can be found here. John Goetz is mentioned in this story.

archives.cjr.org/campaign_desk/…

Julian spoke about redactions of the Afghan War Logs during his interview for "Secrets and Lies" (2011) - which turned out to be a smear job.

Unfortunately, most of his comments were (ironically) redacted, but a transcript remains. See from 15.59.16.

wlstorage.net/file/cms/Folde…

Wikileaks made two public comments on the smear job "Secrets and Lies" (later known as "the Guardian documentary"). David Leigh was co-producer of the final film, a fact not revealed to Wikileaks during filming.

The first (30 Nov 2011) is here:
wikileaks.org/Guardian-s-Wik…

Wikileaks filed an OFCOM complaint about that film.

A statement was made afterwards (11 Sep 2012), including an overview of files released as part of OFCOM complaint. The statement from John Goetz is appended to that statement, as are many relevant files.
wikileaks.org/Inside-the-sec…

Both of the @wikileaks statements about "Secrets and Lies" contain information which supports what Mark Davis has reported in his presentation.

One surprising detail was that David Leigh is the brother-in-law of Guardian editor (at that time) Alan Rusbridger.

@wikileaks The Mark Davis 8 Aug 2019 presentation is now available as a stand-alone clip here:

@wikileaks Nick Davies (from the Guardian) went on to promulgate his own narrative about the events described above. By 7 July 2011 (in his Google presentation) he has moved the location of his "discussion" with Julian about redacting names to Stockholm (see 32:52).

@wikileaks @Bynickdavies An ABC (AU) documentary from that period - "Wikileaks" - was broadcast after "Collateral Murder" was released (5 Apr 2010) & after Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning was arrested (6 June 2010) but before the release of the Afghan War Logs (25 July 2010).

While the ABC documentary does not address the preparation for the Afghan War Logs (not public at that time), it does address the concern @wikileaks showed for ACTUAL people harmed by events narrated in its files, and its protection of endangered people.

The video also provides comment on the transcript of Collateral Murder events in the (26 Mar 2010) book by WaPo journalist David Vincent:

"Unfortunately, typical of newspapers - they don't follow up these atrocities ..." (24:28)
- Dan Ellsberg

Daniel Ellsberg (16:16):

"It would be interesting to have someone speculate ... exactly what context would lead to justifying the killing that we see ... the killing of men ... lying on the ground where ground troops ... are perfectly capable of taking those people captive."

There is a Spiegel interview (by John Goetz) published on Monday 26 July 2010 addressing the issue of redactions in the Afghan War Logs and - more generally - the @wikileaks attitude to secrecy and disclosure..

spiegel.de/international/…

@wikileaks Julian spoke of his efforts to get the Pentagon to give advice on appropriate redactions (in an Al Jazeera interview, 22 Oct 2010):

"The Pentagon rebuffed us. Their claims were that they were not interested in any conversation about harm minimisation."