Wikileaks-The book + video-The Guardian-2011

Julian Assange feared he was being followed by US spies, new book reveals Julian Assange's 'old lady' disguise, and how fraught negotiations included rows with Guardian editor

David Leigh and Luke Harding guardian.co.uk
30 January 2011

The Guardian's Alan Rusbridger, David Leigh and Luke Harding on the book that charts Julian Assange and WikiLeaks' transformation from rebel hackers to global celebrities

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange disguised himself as an old woman in a wig for fear he was being followed by US intelligence, according to a Guardian book published tomorrow. The first full, inside account of the story that dominated global headlines for weeks reveals how a secret deal was brokered in a Brussels hotel that led to five international media outlets simultaneously publishing disclosures based on the leak of 250,000 US diplomatic cables.

WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's war on secrecy


The leak has led to calls from US right-wingers for Assange to be indicted on espionage charges, or even assassinated. The alleged source, US army private Bradley Manning, is being held under harsh conditions in a military prison in Quantico, Virginia.

WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy discloses what lay behind the sometimes-fraught negotiations with Assange. At one stage the Australian computer hacker and his lawyers "ambushed" Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger and threatened to sue him for endangering WikiLeaks's "financial assets".

Tomorrow's first extract reveals court documents about Assange's Australian childhood, and the strange personality of the man his supporters call the messiah of the internet. When the teenage Assange was convicted of hacking, the court was told he was a gifted boy with a "tragic" background whose "computer is his only friend". The book also describes the project's cloak and dagger measures. Assange dressed up as a woman and took elaborate steps to lose pursuing cars as he travelled to Ellingham Hall, the Norfolk stately home where his followers secretly set up camp last November.

Some of the journalists involved communicated using throwaway "burner" phones inspired by the TV series The Wire, and encrypted Jabber chat software.

In his introduction to the book Rusbridger acknowledges that the relationship between the five international papers and WikiLeaks had "moments of difficulty and tension", at times threatening to collapse into farce, "as if a Stieg Larsson script had been passed to the writer of Downton Abbey, Julian Fellowes". But Rusbridger says Assange behaved as "a new breed of publisher-intermediary" who sought to have a degree of control over the information he brought to the table. But he concludes: "WikiLeaks and similar organisations are generally admirable in their single-minded view of transparency and openness".

The book also details:

• How Assange said US informants "deserve to be killed".

• The full story of the Swedish sex allegations that Assange's supporters claimed were a honeytrap.

• Why Assange quarrelled with the Guardian's star reporter Nick Davies.

• How Assange paid a notorious anti-semite to represent WikiLeaks in Russia.

• WikiLeaks: Inside Julian Assange's War on Secrecy, by David Leigh and Luke Harding


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