Assange Says Guardian Caused WikiLeaks to Release Cables
Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, said its latest release of U.S. diplomatic cables was triggered by the U.K. newspaper the Guardian.
The company announced the release of un-redacted U.S. diplomatic cables on its Facebook and Twitter accounts in August. Assange said WikiLeaks published the documents to make them generally available after a Guardian reporter published the password to the encrypted files comprised of the cables.
“We could have done nothing differently,” Assange said at a media conference at the IFA consumer electronics fair in Berlin. He was speaking via satellite uplink. The publication of the password was “the decision of the Guardian alone. It didn’t check with us,” Assange said.
The Guardian “utterly rejects any suggestion that it is responsible for the release of the unedited cables,” spokeswoman Hayley Dunlop said, reiterating a statement of Sept. 1. “The Guardian was told that the file to which it was given access in July 2010 would only be on a secure server for a few hours and then taken off. It appears that two versions of the file were subsequently posted” using the same password.
WikiLeaks is no longer working with the Guardian and the New York Times, Assange said, adding that “all other media partners are still onboard.”
Assange was arrested in London in December where he is fighting extradition to Sweden over alleged rape charges. Lawyers for Assange have argued that the rape allegations he faces in Sweden wouldn’t be considered a crime in the U.K.
Visa Europe Ltd., MasterCard Inc., American Express Co. and eBay Inc (EBAY).s PayPal have halted payments to the site, according to WikiLeaks’ website.
Assange said the today that the boycott shows the payment companies’ ties to the U.S. government and that a Visa credit card is “an instrument of Washington policy in your pocket.”
To contact the reporters on this story: Claudia Rach in Berlin at crach1@bloomberg.net; Ragnhild Kjetland in Berlin at rkjetland@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Kenneth Wong at kwong11@bloomberg.net
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