 This is Just Asking Questions, a show for inquiring minds one reason. Today's guest is Stella Assange, an attorney specializing in international law, a human rights activist, and the wife of WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, with whom she has two children. Stella, thank you for talking with us today. Thanks for having me. Julian Assange was arrested outside England's Ecuadorian embassy after his political asylum was revoked and moved to Belmarsh prison in April 2019. And that's a maximum security facility where inmates are held in small single cells. Amnesty International has drawn parallels to Guantanamo Bay. Reports and statements from doctors emerged quickly after that imprisonment, testifying to his deteriorating mental and physical health. How is he doing today? Well, as we film this, we're nearing his fifth year, his fifth Christmas in Belmarsh prison. And he has been there for over four and a half years now because the US is trying to extradite him since the 11th of April 2019. And he hasn't left the facility to go to court since January 2021. That was the last time they allowed him to come to court to his own hearings. Since then, he's been participating remotely over video link because they don't let him to even go to the courtroom. His physical state has obviously deteriorated over that time. He spends a lot of time in his cell. But he is able to receive visits. So once or twice a week, I can go and see him. On weekends, I can bring the kids. And that obviously helps him a lot. He can call me from Belmarsh prison during certain hours throughout the day. So we are in contact ongoingly during the day for most days unless there's some kind of problem. And that obviously keeps him sane and helps us both feel like we're not so separated and apart. Can you, I mean, I imagine this is, you know, you're a mother. You have kids together. You know, how often are you actually able to travel and see him and kind of what is the personal situation like for you? Well, it's obviously very difficult. Our children are the oldest one is six and a half and the youngest one will turn five in February and they, all their memories of Julian are inside this one big visiting hall inside Belmarsh prison. And I, you know, I reiterate that Julian is only there because there is this extradition request from the US. He's not charged of any crime in the UK. They're just holding him on behalf of the United States that is opposing bail. And so we have to, we're forced to interact within this extremely harsh environment. And that's how the children, that's all the children know. Visiting their father inside a big, loud, monitored visiting hall once a week, more or less. How do you explain to the children, like, was there ever a time when you sort of explained what was going on and contextualized the children, why their father is in this type of environment? Like, how much do they know? Or is this just the only thing they've ever known? Well, it's, it's really a mix of the two. So I've tried to introduce context as they grow older. I didn't want them to understand what a prison was before, before other concepts like, you know, freedom and fairness. But so actually it was our eldest son, Gabriel, at one point, I guess he was around five or, yeah, it must have been around five where he asked whether, whether Julian was in prison, this place that we went to, was it a prison? And I told him, yes. Before that, I would say we're going to the big building where daddy is, and it's not daddy's home, he's just being kept there. And obviously they experienced the whole process of going through the prison security, which is everyone has to go through it, you know, everyone including toddlers have to be searched by the dogs. They look inside their mouths and so on, they get patted down. So they're, they've seen that and they live it. And eventually the eldest one asked me if this was a prison and I explained that, yes, it's a prison, but that daddy hasn't done anything wrong. In fact, he's done good things and he's being punished by bad people. Obviously, you know, I'm trying to explain it in age appropriate ways and also trying to also counter the, you know, the immediate horror of the situation with the fact that lots of people support Julian and are fighting for his freedom. And sometimes I've taken them to protests and so on, so that they actually see that there are a lot of people that support Julian and that actually there's something bigger going on and it's not really something bigger going on and it's not just, he's just not, he's not just any other prisoner. And that's obvious from when you visit Belmarsh, there's, you know, huge banners saying free Julian Assange, there are protests which we see often, there's at least once a week there's a protest people going into the prison, into the prison premises with loud speakers and calling for him to be released and all the visitors, all the family members and friends who go and visit there, the prisoners that are inside see it as well. So obviously this isn't something that the other prisoners have. This is a unique case and they can sense that there's something special about their dad. And I've, you know, I've explained it in different ways. I've told them, you know, I saw that the guards themselves who they see and interact with are holding their father specifically. It's the, you know, it's, it's the people above them, the people who decide and they're the people that Julian made angry because he showed them, he showed the world that they had done bad things and they're angry about that. And that's generally how I try to explain it and they understand. I tell them daddy's a hero, millions of people around the world admire him, he spoke the truth and sometimes it's difficult to tell the truth and a lot of people will get angry and try to take revenge. But, but it's, it's important and and that's what, that's what Julian did. Well, so you, you first met Julian, if I'm not mistaken, when he was fighting sexual assault charges in Sweden and you initially joined his, his defense team, what made you interested in that case and what's your perspective on that whole case? Well, I joined his legal team in February 2011 and the so Julian had started publishing the WikiLeaks publications from that had been sent to WikiLeaks by Chelsea Manning in 2010. So a year before I joined his team and so these publications from Chelsea Manning, which were the Collateral Murder Video, the Iraq War Logs, Afghanistan, War Diaries, Diplomatic Cables and Wantanamo Bay Files and these are the same publications that Julian is indicted with, indicted over now. That had happened in the lead up to me joining his legal team and it had also started prior to any preliminary investigation being opened in Sweden and actually there were never any charges in Sweden, none were brought and that's quite amazing because it kind of defies logic, right, because there was a big extradition case and Sweden would say, well, we haven't decided whether to actually bring charges against him, but we just want to question him and then there was this question about, well, why don't you just question him because in hundreds of other cases the Sweden would travel to other European countries to question him and so on. Anyway, that Swedish preliminary investigation was dropped and resurrected multiple times. It was dropped four times, resurrected three, no charges were ever brought, it's quite extraordinary. I mean, the amazing thing about this case is that the prosecutor was refusing to question him and you think how can it possibly be that in a sex case where of course memories fade and it all depends on the recollections of the people involved and so on that the prosecutor had to be compelled by the Swedish Court of Appeal six years after the fact to question him and the reason the Court of Appeal compelled her was she said that she had failed her professional duty to advance the case and of course this is just one aspect of how that Swedish preliminary investigation was abusive and the reason it was abusive was because it took place in a highly charged political moment in which Julian was being actively sought by authorities because he was about to publish the Chelsea Mining Lakes. He had already published the collateral murder video and the Afghan warlocks and then it was one month before Wikileaks started publishing the rock warlocks that he went to Sweden there's actually a Daily Beast article it's archived it's it's no longer on the website but it's archived in which the US the reporter says the State Department was contacting its allies in Europe and urging them to find a way to stop Julian and his tracks to arrest him on whatever because they had by them they had arrested Chelsea Manning then Bradley Manning and they knew that Wikileaks had more major leaks coming out and so they wanted to stop him in his tracks they contacted the Australians the Australians were looking to cancel his passport and then there was an investigation by the Australian police and then the Australian police recommended not canceling his passport because it would be easier to track his movements and ultimately Sweden initiated this preliminary investigation which was condemned by the United Nations as an abuse against Julian's rights as a defendant he was in fact never formally a defendant because he was never charged which meant that he was never given access to exculpatory evidence of text messages that we knew existed and so the UN special rapporteur on torture also did an investigation in 2019 wrote to the Swedish and UK governments who refused to cooperate he wrote a whole book about it it's called the trials of Julian Assange and for any viewers who are interested in this kind of Swedish preliminary investigation which also served to you know cast a shadow on Julian to treat him as an accused person without being formally accused and so on there are two key books one is by this special rapporteur on torture at Niels Meltzer and it's called the trials of Julian Assange and then there's another one called Wikileaks and its enemies by Stefania Maurizzi which is an Italian investigative journalist and she's done actually these two books are very complimentary because the one by the special rapporteur involves his own investigation into the reports his communications with the government in in a formal manner you know as a UN official and Stefania Maurizzi as an investigative journalist she has done a lot of FOIA work and obtained a bunch of correspondence some of which had been destroyed by one party which is the UK government which is incredibly damning and it shows how in fact there was a collusion between the UK and Sweden that the UK was telling Sweden not to question him to extradite him to put him in and the Sweden was going to put him in custody immediately and urging them not to progress the investigation unless he was extradited and of course this is extremely bizarre and unjust of course denying a suspect the ability to defend himself but of course if you if you think this is just a regular case then none of it makes sense but you want to once you understand the political context then of course it all makes sense and it even says in this correspondence that Stefania Maurizzi discovered literally the sentence please do not think that we're treating this as just any other extradition case that's the words of the UK prosecution authority who was communicating with the Swedish authorities and then when Sweden tried to drop it in 2013 the UK responded please don't you dare get cold feet telling them not to drop it so it's pretty clear I mean it's very clear now to to you know extremely detailed exhaust examinations about the Swedish preliminary investigation and as I said for which Julian was never charged but of course as soon as that was dropped it was revealed that there was an indictment that had come under the Trump administration and Julian has been in Belmarsh in relation to that extradition request from the US since 2019 so I want to get into the extradition requests in a moment but I am curious so you're basically saying Sweden was engaged in a politically motivated witch hunt of Julian but the thing that I'm also curious about is you know these are not the traditional circumstances under which most people meet their spouses what was this like for you emotionally was this the sense of I mean most the time when you meet somebody who becomes your husband they're not you know being accused of rape in another country how did you feel signing up to work on this case and then getting to know Julie and like what was swirling around in your head. Well I was steeped in the in the documents surrounding this Swedish preliminary investigation and there was no case to answer from the beginning it was pretty clear that the administrative use of the extradition request from Sweden was a way to trap him basically to bury him in a legal quagmire in order to interfere with his publishing work I mean in Sweden as I said like the initial prosecutor who looked at the case said there is no crime of rape involved in these allegations but the Swedish look the Swedish conduct in this case also responds to local dynamics the the person who took on the case within days was also running for for there were general elections in Sweden he was tipped to become the new justice minister Julian's case was in the media there were a lot of motivations it wasn't just the you know possible nudge or likely nudge from the State Department at the highest levels. Julian Julian's name was was leaked to the press which should never happen in the case of the preliminary investigation where the person hasn't even be formally accused and as I said he was never formally accused in those nine years the US working group on arbitrary detention which looked at this case from 2014 onwards saw the underlying investigation material it was an adversarial process in which Sweden and the UK also participated and were unsuccessful in convincing this group of UN experts on arbitrary detention that they had conducted themselves in a lawful manner they had in fact violated international obligations concerning arbitrary detention when it came to Julian because as I said he was neither convicted or even charged in relation to Sweden and so it was this extraordinary abusive nature of the Swedish allegations that was immediately obvious to me as a member of his legal legal team but also as a Swedish speaker because I'm fluent in Swedish and so I could directly access the the material of the case that we had access to to see that this was absurd and my own experience I mean as I got to know Julian was to see how he was persecuted and maligned in all sorts of ways of course the Swedish aspect was just one it was an effective one because Julian had a lot of support from the left initially because these publications concerned of course the bush wars and so on and sex case even one without a formal accusation or a conviction or anything obviously is going to alienate a portion of the left and and a big portion of women and there was a deliberate strategy as as these FOIA documents show to keep him in this position of not being able to defend himself not being able to clear his name because they refused to question him Sweden refused to give him a guarantee that he wouldn't be on wordly extradited to the US and Sweden in fact you know in spite of its reputation was a participant in the CIA rendition program it's rendered a Giza and alzary to asylum seekers who were in the process of applying for protection and then said they were taken on a CIA flight and tortured in Egypt and this was one of the most obvious one of the most shocking cases of CIA rendition concern Sweden and in fact since 2001 Sweden I don't know if it's still true but definitely while Julian was still facing potential extradition to Sweden Sweden has not once rejected an extradition request to the United States and this is different to the UK which has it's it's rare but has rejected extradition request to the United States so this was also a factor in in Julian's decision to resist extradition to Sweden which is a very small country and views itself as a very small country certainly in relation to the US couldn't ask a similar similar mentality but Sweden you can't even compare. Yeah you've laid out lots of reasons to be skeptical of the Sweden sex case against Assange and I mean I would think that any objective observer looking at what has happened to him the way he was extradited kind of immediately sorry not extradition imprisoned immediately after the asylum was lifted should at least make you raise an eyebrow as to what was going on there but I want to raise a couple of criticisms that you hear commonly you know one comes from the intelligence community in the United States government officials which we can get to that later but first while we're on this topic one thing that you hear a lot from people who are more friendly to wiki leaks you know wiki leaks as you mentioned was kind of embraced on the American left and then kind of fell out of favor there's people who were or are friendly to its mission who say that Julian Assange is he's a problematic figure he's kind of an ego maniac who puts his personal legal troubles and grudges above the mission of the organization it's a theme that you see in multiple documentaries produced about him including risk by Laura Poitras who's sympathetic but sort of takes this position that you know Julian's personal troubles are intertwined too much with wiki leaks mission what do you make of that kind of criticism well it's it's really a dated criticism because that kind of criticism came about when the extradition case in relation to Sweden was a lie when a lot of facts concerning the Swedish extradition the fact that he wasn't even charged the fact that you know all this FOIA documentation that we now know and which is now in the public domain had come out and so on and so a lot of people at the time were saying well he has nothing to worry about the US doesn't want to extradite him this is all about Sweden etc and unfortunately risk is fell into that trap it's very dated now when you watch it because obviously what happened was that Julian was indicted in relation to the Afghan and Iraq war publications and so on and look a lot of these portrayals came about in the immediate aftermath of these publications so what happened in 2010 2011 was that wiki leaks came onto the scene and broke more significant stories but then the legacy press had you know in 50 years combined and of course wiki leaks had partnered with the New York Times the Guardian and three major European papers as well in Germany Spain and France and to to kind of maximize the the coverage of these big databases and so they would publish the the cables the war logs and so on in coordination doing joint investigations and so on with these big papers once the big papers had published together with wiki leaks then there wasn't much utility in that partnership and they distance distance they sell themselves and Julian was also a critic of the way that these major papers reported on the wiki leaks publications the way they redacted information that exposed them perhaps to lawsuits from oligarchs whereas the content was of such significance that that and also you know wiki leaks had already published on their website so there was from that perspective no serious legal threat but so Julian has been you know a media critic he has been criticized critical of the major media players and of course he was an outsider he's Australian this is an internet publisher an internet publisher that attracted very high quality sources who entrusted wiki leaks as the vehicle with which this information could reach the public and the reason for that was that wiki leaks had and has a pretty much well a very high grade submission system which has since been kind of copied by by the mainstream there's a very interesting paper by Jack Goldsmith who was the who is a former assistant attorney general under Republican administration I can't remember which called the wiki leakization of the American press and what he argues is that actually the American press adopted the innovations that wiki leaks had pioneered by the mid 2010s right the New York Times Washington Post the Guardian etc they all have the same are similar technology they adopted the technology that wiki leaks invented for the submission of using encryption to be able to protect sources when they communicate and also the submission systems so that you don't necessarily as the receiver of information know who the source was and provide the source with sufficient encryption knowledge to be able to mask their identity and so this became adopted by the mainstream press another innovation that wiki leaks brought was to create partnerships between me and your organizations it was wiki leaks who basically forced the New York Times to cooperate with the Guardian to cooperate with LeMond and El Pais and so on had never been done before it wasn't easy and part of the reason why the there was you know a distancing from Julian I think was because they they didn't like to work in a way that was not on their own terms even when it was with other major media partners and so when Julian came onto the scene he was seen as a competitor but also as a threat to the mainstream media's economic model you know this is like 2010 so the media was only just kind of the major papers were publishing online their their advertising revenue was down people weren't buying papers anymore and they were like how are they going to survive lots of people are being fired and so on and here comes wiki leaks that has a completely different business model which is it's small has a lot of volunteers and and it's reader funded and of course now we see reader funded publications quite a lot but at the time you know apart from some bloggers perhaps but this was a reader funded publication that was unfettered by advertising you know restrictions and so on and that at the same time was having such high quality sources come to them and having high impact and enabling it to enter into partnerships with the biggest media organizations the media biggest media houses and basically being able to call the shots because wiki leaks was the one that attracted the sources and of course once the the legal trouble started and the financial blockade Bank of America PayPal Western Union and so on blocked the donations to wiki leaks as soon as wiki leaks had started to publish the State Department Cables this was also the time when Julian was arrested over the Swedish allegations this all happened within a week so it all came down at the same time and then these major media organizations who had partnered with wiki leaks then turned against Julian and basically I think I think the objective was to try to kill off wiki leaks because because it was a competitor because it has had such an important impact and was a newcomer and a threat to the kind of gate gatekeeper function that we all know we do have a we have a montage of some MSNBC hosts reacting to Assange I was wondering if you would roll that Zach and then we'd love to get your reaction. I have a follow-up question after that. Many establishment journalists in the U.S. considered Julian Assange to be a criminal whose work doesn't fit in the same category as their own. No journalism here what we have is an act of espionage the wholesale dumping of wiki leaks actually isn't journalism. If you help in the stealing of classified material nothing about the First Amendment is going to insulate you from charges that you stole regardless of whether or not you publish it. I mean you learn that day one in news business school. I find this whole montage very funny because we've actually seen this sort of reiterated you know basically from this time all the way up until now I mean it's still a thing that people talk about maybe not with the specific espionage framing but there is this line drawn between well these people are journalists over here but these other people surely don't qualify and so therefore their First Amendment protections ought to be different. How do you feel when you see you know MSNBC hosts treating Julian Assange this way Stella. Well I mean it's it's kind of it's a bit disappointing because the criticisms that they use are just simply not true. You had Maria Ressa there. She she was a CNN presenter and then she's Nobel Prize Prize winner and herself faced political prosecution because of her journalism and it's really disappointing that she says something like wiki leaks dumping. This is one of the major mis say distortions concerning wiki leaks wiki leaks does privilege the publication of archives but it doesn't just dump it's you know it provides context it writes up context it writes up analyses it it has redacted information and states that the criteria for redactions and so on but even so I mean all of this is really irrelevant whether Julian's a journalist or not the question is is Julian accused of journalism and he is it is the activity that has been criminalized not whether he falls into a category or not it's the category of the activity that is being criminalized receiving obtaining and communicating information to the public and you know the use of the espionage act it's it's very interesting because you see kind of lazy journalists lazy reporters lazy sometimes I think it's it's also deliberate right talking about Julian as if he is being accused of being a spy now this is of course you enter into the realm of absurdity when when you start talking about the the allegations against Julian because the first point is that Julian is Australian he's not American he's never lived there and the use of the espionage act allows for this kind of laziness categorical laziness and that's because the espionage act it's very broadly worded indeterminate piece of text that was adopted in 1917 and that has been interpreted in an increasingly expansive way and especially under the Obama administration you have for the first well actually it had been used against journalistic sources but in in in quite a selective manner before the Obama administration the Obama administration really ramped up the use of the espionage act against journalistic sources and there's no allegation that those that there was some kind of foreign power involved rather that these were newspapers TVs whatever that were receiving information from from the person accused under the espionage act and under the Obama administration three times the three times more people were prosecuted as sources of of news stories than all previous administrations in the hundred years of proceeding and preceded it combined and so this expansive trend that started the Obama administration then continued and became even more extreme under the Trump administration so it actually took the US eight years to bring an indictment against Julian and it came under the Trump administration actually just before this I don't mean to read much here I just found this quote that was really interesting so there was a case called the Morrison case in 1984 and this was a source who was indicted and convicted under the espionage act for disclosing classified photos to a British military journal and there was judge Harvey Wilkinson who in his concurring opinion said that this would be limited to the role of the source because press organizations are not being and probably could not be prosecuted under the espionage act because the political bar strong that would follow a prosecution of one who exposed in administration's own in aptitude would make such prosecutions an unrealistic prospect so in other ways in other words he was saying that what limits the espionage act is political safeguards it is the the outcry it is the reaction to be preposterous use of the espionage act against the press and so what has happened is that the espionage act has been used in that way it's been used against Julian its precedent setting and the supposed outcry that was supposed to limit this kind of use of the espionage act has not followed. Yeah although I do think there have been an increasing number of journalists especially people in national security reporting who have been awakened to the they realize the implications of what happens if there is a successful prosecution against Julian Assange I think with some of these msnpc hosts a lot of this is tied up with what happened in the 2016 election wiki leaks involvement with the DNC emails there's you know that Hillary Clinton has positioned or has said has visited herself kind of the chief rival of Julian Assange and Assange had not two kind words for her either you know Mike Pompeo who was serving as the C.I. Chief under Trump was the one who labeled wiki leaks a kind of hostile intelligent non-state hospital intelligence service this all that unfolded in 2016 between wiki leaks and the U.S. government during the election how do you think that changed the tenor of the conversation and the way that people view wiki leaks and what do you say to people who do get a suspicious feeling who think that there's some weird relationship between Julian Assange and Russia I mean you know there like he had a show on Russia today for a while there have been some Russians who've worked for wiki leaks should people be suspicious I don't think there are any Russians who have worked for wiki leaks wiki leaks well Julian had a talk show that was licensed to a number of channels and Russia today at the time this is 2011 I mean you this is a long time ago this is like 13 years ago had the license for Julian's talk show which is also available on YouTube because it was also licensed to others and that was the extent of his involvement with any you know he licensed the show it was a UK production company that he owned so these allegations have never been substantiated because there is no nothing to substantiate the Mueller report of course came up with nothing the National Security Directors in January 2017 already during congressional hearing said that in relation to the 2016 election material they had no no evidence of any anything on toward concerning wiki leaks you know it's it's all been speculation it's all basically coming down to Julian licensed a show to RT in 2011 it's it's weak to say the least of course in relation to the 2016 publications there was a strategy by the Hillary campaign to talk about Russia is allegedly interfering with that elect election and so on but taken when you look at the wiki leaks publication specifically that had you know nothing to do with this other stuff the DC leaks and I don't know what which others did publish like the Hill and others published stuff that they said they got from this character Goose for two that's separate to what wiki leaks published which was the DNC leaks and the Podesta emails and earlier in the year they had they had also republished the Hillary Clinton emails that had been put up on the State Department website but which were not easily accessible so there were actually three Clinton publications so the DNC ones revealed how the Hillary content Hillary Clinton campaign had rigged the Democratic primaries and basically defrauded the Democratic donors who were being misled that at least the Bernie ones who were being misled that their candidate that they were supporting actually had a chance of becoming a nominee so the Hillary Clinton campaign of course afterwards one found out that in Donna Brazil's book that there was a secret agreement between the DNC and the Hillary Clinton campaign and there was it was even a written agreement and that they were colluding basically to undermine and ensure that Bernie Sanders did not get the equal did not get access to the media and so on and then the Podesta emails which came in October were showed how the Hillary Clinton campaign had also basically rigged the Republican primaries in the sense that they had this thing called the Piper strategy in which they would get their mates in the MSNBC and so on to get Trump on the airwaves because according to the Hillary campaign their view was that Trump and a couple of other Republican candidates which they viewed as extreme and unelectable would alienate the swing voters and so on and that if they if they gave Trump airtime and if they convinced their allies in the press to give Trump airtime then Hillary would win and of course we knew what happened after that so these were you know incredibly important and publications and in fact there was a court case that many people haven't even heard about the DNC tried to actually tried to sue WikiLeaks and Julian personally in New York in the southern district of New York in relation to the DNC publications and that case was thrown out by the judge on First Amendment grounds and in fact he said that this was the type of publication that enjoys the highest protection of the First Amendment because you cannot think of a more important publication than that concerning political candidates and the lead up to an election that is of the highest you know is significance for the public to know about and then so that's a really important and strong judgment the New York Times afterwards gave an interview to the BBC saying well if they had received that they would have also published it and in fact talking about who the possible sources is irrelevant if the material is of the significance that these publications actually had but of course I think it raises important questions about whether it's really possible in the US media landscape to be truly independent can you alienate Democrats and Republicans and still and still enjoy protection you know under even under the law like the political heat on you and on WikiLeaks having published damning information both about Republicans and post 2016 about Democrats has placed Julian in an extremely vulnerable position vulnerable in in the sense that if the protections at the First Amendment protections are not robust enough if the political climate is such where there is a push for censorship a push for propaganda for you know a repression when it comes to speech then then these this political restraint that that I was talking about earlier on the Espionage Act becomes ineffective I want to take us back in time to 2010 for a second which was when WikiLeaks made its first big release with the collateral murder video which showed you know a 2007 I guess US airstrike and Baghdad killing you know a dozen over a dozen civilians and really expose some of the horrors of that war to the American audience for the first time what was the impact of that video and what has the broader impact of WikiLeaks release has been on the world and actually before you answer that Stella we have a clip from a documentary I produced on a we a Saundra's plight where he's reflecting on that that video which made a huge splash and was really WikiLeaks introduction to the world I like to roll that clip and get some of his thoughts and then get you to you know add any meat on to that so let's roll that real quick I'm all up video WikiLeaks would title collateral murder showed footage from a US Army Apache helicopter of soldiers gunning down more than a dozen people in Baghdad who weren't engaged in active combat including two Reuters reporters the video generated international press and controversy a Saundra said his intention was to expose the casual carnage and destruction happening in the course of the US war in Iraq it was another day at the office how routine it was a whole street covered with bodies the reaction to that was and so as we made very clear in this interview the the the charges against the Saundra have nothing to do with all these rumors swirling around what happened in 2016 it's about the release of these documents in 2010 including this video what was the import of the collateral murder video well it really marks a before and after concerning the bush wars this it's 2010 right this actual event depicted in the video is I believe from July 20 2007 and so the war had started in 2003 and it had been going for seven years by the time collateral murder was released and by then there wasn't you know much interest in the media anymore there were embedded journalists traveling you know with with US convoys and going to press briefings by the Pentagon and so on but there was no real insight there were just body bags coming back from Iraq and and there was no like real news worthiness let's say in reporting about Iraq and then suddenly this came down and it had such an impact because it really contrasted with what with the curated information that was coming through the media and it and it was it depicts a war crime that's that's what you see it's it's not just the gunning down of these individuals to begin with where a two Reuters journalists are on assignment and and get killed one of them calls tries to call to cover and then a van pulls up and two good Samaritans come out of the van and try to pick pick up this journalist and then bring him into the van and then it gets shot down and everyone dies except for two children who are shielded by the body of their father so this is a truly horrific video and it's horrific not just because you're watching it but because you're you're listening to the conversation and the kind of Jokey conversation around and it's it's become to be a rock war what that picture of the of the napalm girl you know in Vietnam is to the Vietnam War the one where she's walking or she's running naked away for the village that has just been napalm it is I think Chelsea Manning has said that it is like in in in 30 minutes you see just the concentration the Iraq war in its essence and it really captured the international the international imagination and in 2011 the December 2011 Obama Obama had by then the Obama's sorry the U.S. military had had been removed officially at least from Iraq in big in a big part because of what we he leaks had published including there was another report in one of the cables about a family that was massacred and and the evidence of that event had then been destroyed by a U.S. airstrike and all of the members including five children under the age of five had had bullets in their head and and it was a U.S. air raid in the middle of the night in a village in Iraq. So these Wikileaks had a major impact in in the way U.S. policy developed after that point the publication of the collateral murder video and you know also with the Afghan war it took another 10 years or nine years for that to finish and we all know how that ended. But it didn't just show the carnage in Iraq but the senselessness of sending soldiers to fight this this war in Iraq and dying and getting injured and of course the epidemic of suicides that that has followed and is ongoing right. So it has a major I mean it can't be overstated how important it's very it's just very telling to me that this is what the U.S. is prosecuting him over is facilitating the release of undeniably true information about the war that the U.S. was prosecuting so that the people could have a clearer vision of what was going on and it clearly had an impact on people's view of that war and for me Julian Assange is a figure of world historical importance because of what he unlocked with WikiLeaks I mean he demonstrated undeniably that the strategic use of technology like encryption would be shifting the entire global power structure and he ushered in that new reality really it it was the reality that the cipherpunk movement dreamed of this world where a small team of hackers and activists can just share information and even the most powerful governments can't do anything to stop the release of that information and he pushed it into being and showed a whole generation that may be resistance to these powerful super states actually isn't feudal and if you have the right tools and you know how to use them you can really change the world and I think that might be a big part of why he's a marked man more so than his alleged crimes but is there anything else to say that you want to say as we're wrapping up about his significance as a cipherpunk or kind of his place in history. Well I think Julian is a is a visionary and a pioneer as you say his writings and his speeches many of his speeches or or clips have gone viral on the internet you know in relation to Ukraine for example he was talking about Afghanistan but his kind of big picture analysis and criticism of of the drivers of war the true drivers of war have a currency now and in fact you know I I often go back to things that he wrote ten years ago because they are they have stood the test of time and you know he is he is a global figure and a thinker of our times and the type that that is is direly needed. So you know Julian has to be freed not just because this is an enormous injustice and the the precedented sets effects journalists everywhere in the U.S. but also globally it's an extreme overreach it criminalizes the publication of true information of the highest public importance but also because of Julian's position as a public intellectual and of someone who promotes truth and and is a critic of of war and just I'm not sure when this is airing but there's a house resolution currently which is being pushed which has been tabled I think that's the words they use in the U.S. I don't know by Paul Gosar that says expressing the sense of house the House of Representatives that regular journalistic activities are protected under the First Amendment and the U.S. ought to drop chart all charges and attempts to extradite Julian Assange and there there's also a letter that's been signed by multiple congressmen and including Thomas Massey who we interviewed last week asking Biden to do the same thing to drop the extradition so to wrap this up. Can you tell me like are you optimistic that there will be some sort of shift in the political wins that this some something can change for Julian's case like how are you feeling at the end of the day here. Well I think that politicians that actually take the time or at least their their staffers that take the time to look at this case will immediately understand the dangers and the un-American nature I mean really the First Amendment is something that is quite unique in the world and it defines the political culture of the United States which is much more open and dynamic than other parts of the world you're for sure and this case is actually kind of a more European eyes more not to talk down Europe too much but it is totalitarian in its nature and it changes it shifts the political culture and it has to be reversed and I think any you know the vast majority of politicians that look at this case seriously will be will understand that the dangers of this case that it should never come to pass and that the case should be dropped and I'd ask any viewers to contact their representatives and ask them to support any efforts to drop the case against Julian that's a good final call to action for anyone who's worried about free speech the future of press freedom in America Stella Assange thank you for talking to reason that's a pleasure thanks for having me thanks for listening to just asking questions these conversations appear on reasons YouTube channel and Facebook page every Thursday and the just asking questions podcast feed every Friday subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and please rate and review the show