NYTs going massive with an attack on Assange and WL.

[EFerrari]

Long, multi-page denunciation by the executive editor, Kellor, and a really creepy video that tries to make Assange sound crazy.

Dealing With Julian Assange and the Secrets He Spilled
By BILL KELLER

This past June, Alan Rusbridger, the editor of The Guardian, phoned me and asked, mysteriously, whether I had any idea how to arrange a secure communication. Not really, I confessed. The Times doesn’t have encrypted phone lines, or a Cone of Silence. Well then, he said, he would try to speak circumspectly. In a roundabout way, he laid out an unusual proposition: an organization called WikiLeaks, a secretive cadre of antisecrecy vigilantes, had come into possession of a substantial amount of classified United States government communications. WikiLeaks’s leader, Julian Assange, an eccentric former computer hacker of Australian birth and no fixed residence, offered The Guardian half a million military dispatches from the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq. There might be more after that, including an immense bundle of confidential diplomatic cables. The Guardian suggested — to increase the impact as well as to share the labor of handling such a trove — that The New York Times be invited to share this exclusive bounty. The source agreed. Was I interested?

I was interested.

The adventure that ensued over the next six months combined the cloak-and-dagger intrigue of handling a vast secret archive with the more mundane feat of sorting, searching and understanding a mountain of data. As if that were not complicated enough, the project also entailed a source who was elusive, manipulative and volatile (and ultimately openly hostile to The Times and The Guardian); an international cast of journalists; company lawyers committed to keeping us within the bounds of the law; and an array of government officials who sometimes seemed as if they couldn’t decide whether they wanted to engage us or arrest us. By the end of the year, the story of this wholesale security breach had outgrown the story of the actual contents of the secret documents and generated much breathless speculation that something — journalism, diplomacy, life as we know it — had profoundly changed forever.

Soon after Rusbridger’s call, we sent Eric Schmitt, from our Washington bureau, to London. Schmitt has covered military affairs expertly for years, has read his share of classified military dispatches and has excellent judgment and an unflappable demeanor. His main assignment was to get a sense of the material. Was it genuine? Was it of public interest? He would also report back on the proposed mechanics of our collaboration with The Guardian and the German magazine Der Spiegel, which Assange invited as a third guest to his secret smorgasbord. Schmitt would also meet the WikiLeaks leader, who was known to a few Guardian journalists but not to us.

Schmitt’s first call back to The Times was encouraging. There was no question in his mind that the Afghanistan dispatches were genuine. They were fascinating — a diary of a troubled war from the ground up. And there were intimations of more to come, especially classified cables from the entire constellation of American diplomatic outposts. WikiLeaks was holding those back for now, presumably to see how this venture with the establishment media worked out. Over the next few days, Schmitt huddled in a discreet office at The Guardian, sampling the trove of war dispatches and discussing the complexities of this project: how to organize and study such a voluminous cache of information; how to securely transport, store and share it; how journalists from three very different publications would work together without compromising their independence; and how we would all assure an appropriate distance from Julian Assange. We regarded Assange throughout as a source, not as a partner or collaborator, but he was a man who clearly had his own agenda.

By the time of the meetings in London, WikiLeaks had already acquired a measure of international fame or, depending on your point of view, notoriety. Shortly before I got the call from The Guardian, The New Yorker published a rich and colorful profile of Assange, by Raffi Khatchadourian, who had embedded with the group. WikiLeaks’s biggest coup to that point was the release, last April, of video footage taken from one of two U.S. helicopters involved in firing down on a crowd and a building in Baghdad in 2007, killing at least 18 people. While some of the people in the video were armed, others gave no indication of menace; two were in fact journalists for the news agency Reuters. The video, with its soundtrack of callous banter, was horrifying to watch and was an embarrassment to the U.S. military. But in its zeal to make the video a work of antiwar propaganda, WikiLeaks also released a version that didn’t call attention to an Iraqi who was toting a rocket-propelled grenade and packaged the manipulated version under the tendentious rubric “Collateral Murder.” (See the edited and non-edited videos here.)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/30/magazine/30Wikileaks-t.html

Creepy video: Wikileaks, the Back Story

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2011/01/26/magazine/1248069587816/wikileaks-the-back-story.html

All via GregMitch who is on Day 60 of blogging Wikileaks today:

http://www.thenation.com/blog/158028/wikileaks-news-views-blog-wednesday-day-60


Very interesting that Bill Keller felt a pressing need to do this.

[villager]

1. an acknowledgement that the NYT will never again be a vital part of the "4th estate"

...and that the only models left in dying democracies like ours are the Wikileaks ones, the denunciation is to be expected...

[EFerrari]

3. At one point, Keller compares a freer flow of information to anarchy.

Stick a fork in them, they're done.

[pnwmom]

5. And Wikileaks altered the helicopter video to delete

an Iraqi with a grenade launcher.

Stick a form in them, they're done.

[EFerrari]

6. False. But then, that probably won't bother you.

:)

[pnwmom]

8. True. Maybe you should read the article.

" The video, with its soundtrack of callous banter, was horrifying to watch and was an embarrassment to the U.S. military. But in its zeal to make the video a work of antiwar propaganda, WikiLeaks also released a version that didn’t call attention to an Iraqi who was toting a rocket-propelled grenade and packaged the manipulated version under the tendentious rubric 'Collateral Murder.'

Here are the edited and unedited videos.

http://www.nytimes.com/projects/2011/video/opensecrets/

[EFerrari]

9. Wikileaks put out both short & long versions so yes, the allegation is false.

You just demonstrated the basic dishonesty of the NYTs. Thanks.

[pnwmom]

12. It wasn't just shorter -- it was deceptively shorter.

The part they left out included an Iraqi with a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

[EFerrari]

17. I think I've had one too many unproductive discussions with you

and respectfully, this isn't a good use of our time.

[Kurovski]

27. That's a much better way to do it.

I have to take notes. :-)

[Dawson Leery]

The Times was the chief propaganda whore for the Iraq War.

Keller will do what is needed to defend the propaganda of the times.

[EFerrari]

20. The New York Times has never met a well funded attack on our democracy

they didn't like, apparently.

[Dawson Leery]

21. +1

[sabrina 1]

36. False allegation, but then look at the source.

I heard that the NYT is considering imitating Wikileaks by providing a 'safe' downloud facility for Whistle-blowers.

If I were a whistle-blower, and people should be warned, I would never trust a publication that works with the U.S. Government, sitting on stories eg, when the Govt. asks them and funneling the lies of Judith Miller through their paper out to the public helping to get a war started.

Any Wikileaks imitation at the NYT would probably be a trap. I bet the CIA suggested that to them.

As others here said already, the NYT is done. The New Media is the future, and it works. People are being informed for the first time in a long time, and it is helping to get the bad guys exposed and even to get a few of them thrown out of office. Or arrested, as in Iceland, for Bank fraud. THAT is what journalism is about.

'Bye 'bye old media, too coopted to be trusted with the comic section. And cheers for the new media whose existence was inevitable, to fill the vacuum after we lost our own free press.

[sendero]

40. There is nothing the MSM would like more...

.... than to co-opt this annoying scourge. Provide a "leak listener", get the "leaks" and flush them to the bit bucket.

During the Bush administration the NYT proved itself to be useless as a fourth estate player. I could go right down the list, but everyone who wants to know already knows.

The NYT is part and parcel of the facsist decline of America, if they don't like Wikileaks that makes me like WL all that much more.

[villager]

11. "too much information in the hands of peons" -- could be too unsettling for those grand poobahs

it's up to them what we "need" or "ought" to know... Well, them, and the ownership class from whom they derive permission to keep publishing...

[EFerrari]

18. It's a little stunning in a way.

On the other hand, I'm still waiting for that investigation into Ohio 2004 we were promised should a story "emerge".

lol

[Enthusiast]

37. Me too nt

[Catherina]

2. Color me shocked from the Iraq War enablers. rec'd n/t

[pnwmom]

4. Denunciation? Hardly. The tone was calm and measured. n/t

[EFerrari]

7. Nope. From Greg Mitchell's blog today:

2:50 Just finished reading the Bill Keller piece at NYT on his WikiLeaks dealings since last June (see below). Too long to detail but provides a lot of behind the scenes stuff not previously known, including extent of showing stuff to State Dept or administration in advance, harsh attacks on Assange personally, skepticism that this really changes journalism (oddly, on day after Keller himself said paper was considering opening its own leak platform), and more. Keller at various points calls Assange "volatile," "eccentric," "arrogant," "conspiratoria," "oddly credulous," "manipulative." When reporter Eric Schmitt meets Assange in London he compares him to a "bag lady."

http://www.thenation.com/blog/158028/wikileaks-news-views-blog-wednesday-day-60

[Octafish]

13. ''Bag Lady.''

How, ah, revealing.

[villager]

16. the imperatives of class will out

sooner or later.

[EFerrari]

26. One of the first things I did when we were making enough from comedy to eat

and pay rent plus a little more was to get home delivery of the NYTs. I wanted to be one of those blue bagged doorsteps.

Iirc, that lasted about 3 months until it was obvious they weren't going to cover Ohio.

[EFerrari]

19. Yep. n/t

[The Backlash Cometh]

10. If there is any information leading up to Iraq, the NYT may have a personal reason

to want to discredit Assange early.

[FiveGoodMen]

15. I'll bet that's it.

Fuck the NYT.

[pacalo]

28. I agree. Funny how the NYT was publicly on board, despite all the snippy

adjectives they now use for Assange & their seedy portrayal of The Guardian. It was The Guardian that gave us reliable information when our media took a walk during the Iraq debacle, & I don't recall any of their information being disputed in any way -- they're top-notch.

[PufPuf23]

14. I hope human archaeologists are sifting through the remains

of today's human society in 3000 years.

Try to thought experiment the 4011 archeologists's minds.

There is far more Authoritarian intrusion and control into personal life than warranted, such invasive and non-productive efforts are a waste of Federal $. Police State perceptions and actions demoralize and are counter-productive. Why no Patriot Act repeal nor mention of extensions in SOTU? Habeas Corpus, the line in the sand for enlightened western civilization since the Magna Carta, is no longer the law.

Whew.

[Enthusiast]

38. Without authoritarian control

how would they ever look out for corporate interests? Geesh.

[EFerrari]

22. Btw, Keller's diatribe is long and I appreciate the slogging through. n/t

[charlie]

23. Oh yeah

The guys who were leaked the news that Bush secretly ordered warrantless domestic spying, then sat on it through 2004 because they didn't want to "influence the election."

Now they want me to know that Assange inexplicably skipped down the street ahead of their reporters, then fell back in line... FOR NO DISCERNABLE REASON.

Amazing stuff.

Thanks Filter of Record!

[EFerrari]

24. Watch the video. It's Foxlike.

Man, I used to love that paper.

[charlie]

33. Apparently, it's not too early for a Valentine card

To themselves. Pros massage scruffy hacker's splatterdump into usable journalism, yay NYTimes.

After chiding Assange for thinking he was going to blow the lid off US hypocrisy, they leave out how we scuttled Spanish investigations into torture in their revelations at the end. Funny that.

Also funny is how so many of the guys who intially dismissed the cables as nickel and dime gossip can't seem to get enough gossip about Assange.

And with news orgs telling us daily he's a loon, I haven't heard one of them wonder about this: if HE can get this stuff, what do countries with real resources have? Like say, China or Iran. Why aren't the guys banging the OMG NATIONAL SECURITY drum freaking out?

I'm beyond sick of these guys.

[msanthrope]

25. Interesting that both the NYT and The Guardian have had negative experiences

with Mr. Assange.

Considering that he chose them.

I found this nugget--the release of names--to be very
interesting.

"By this time, The Times’s relationship with our source
had gone from wary to hostile. I talked to Assange by phone a
few times and heard out his complaints. He was angry that we
declined to link our online coverage of the War Logs to the
WikiLeaks Web site, a decision we made because we feared —
rightly, as it turned out — that its trove would contain the
names of low-level informants and make them Taliban targets.
“Where’s the respect?” he demanded. “Where’s the respect?”
Another time he called to tell me how much he disliked our
profile of Bradley Manning, the Army private suspected of
being the source of WikiLeaks’s most startling revelations.
The article traced Manning’s childhood as an outsider and his
distress as a gay man in the military. Assange complained that
we “psychologicalized” Manning and gave short shrift to his
“political awakening.” 

[EFerrari]

34. John Burns' pathologizing of Brad Manning was disgusting.

But, John Burns has been pretty disgusting ever since he refused to apologize for his WMD cheerleading. That pretty much goes for Keller, too.

[EFerrari]

29. Ha! Greenwald points out, Bill Keller says Assange is paranoid

and in the same passage, insinuates NYTs email was hacked. :)

An air of intrigue verging on paranoia permeated the project, perhaps understandably, given that we were dealing with a mass of classified material and a source who acted like a fugitive, changing crash pads, e-mail addresses and cellphones frequently. We used encrypted Web sites. Reporters exchanged notes via Skype, believing it to be somewhat less vulnerable to eavesdropping. On conference calls, we spoke in amateurish code. Assange was always “the source.” The latest data drop was “the package.” When I left New York for two weeks to visit bureaus in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where we assume that communications may be monitored, I was not to be copied on message traffic about the project. I never imagined that any of this would defeat a curious snoop from the National Security Agency or Pakistani intelligence. And I was never entirely sure whether that prospect made me more nervous than the cyberwiles of WikiLeaks itself. At a point when relations between the news organizations and WikiLeaks were rocky, at least three people associated with this project had inexplicable activity in their e-mail that suggested someone was hacking into their accounts. (P.3)

[sarcasmo]

30. Propaganda paid for by the CIA, perhaps?

[EFerrari]

31. Does CIA have to pay for it -- looks like Keller is giving it away.

:)

[stranger81]

32. The article's tone sounded like it was written by a jealous sore loser.

And maybe it was.

[girl gone mad]

35. All of the old media hit pieces on Assange do.

They're not taking their fall into the dustbin of history very gracefully.

[EFerrari]

43. Apparently, Ms "A" organized a whole 'nother media blitz

with a group of her friends in media, that connected Assange to rape and abuse stories.

http://ivanjohnson.wordpress.com/2011/01/27/journalists-behind-assange-media-blitz-are-friends-of-accuser/

Interesting tactic.

[Poboy]

39. k&r

[nuxvomica]

41. The 65K row limit in Excel

from the article...

They had run into a puzzling incongruity: Assange said the data included dispatches from the beginning of 2004 through the end of 2009, but the material on the spreadsheet ended abruptly in April 2009. A considerable amount of material was missing. Assange, slipping naturally into the role of office geek, explained that they had hit the limits of Excel.

What else might they have missed in the past because of that limit?

[Dystopian]

42. KandR

peace~

[spanone]

44. the times worked with mr assange....they are complicit

and now trying to distance themselves.....

'a secretive cadre of antisecrecy vigilantes, had come into possession of a substantial amount of classified United States government communications. WikiLeaks’s leader, Julian Assange, an eccentric former computer hacker of Australian birth and no fixed residence....'

knowing that mr keller, why did you participate?

[EFerrari]

45. Greg Mitchell says that late last week, they themselves were

considering a wikileaks-like set up for the Times.

They're publishing a book so this gigantic smear is promo, too.