WikiLeaks film shifts focus after Julian Assange won't share info

[struggle4progress]

Documentary director Alex Gibney initially wanted to tell the advocate's story in 'We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks,' but when the website founder wouldn't cooperate, the director decided to work on a profile of Bradley Manning, the Army private who allegedly leaked classified U.S. documents to the website.

By Rebecca Keegan
May 18, 2013, 9:28 a.m.

... "I thought this film was about a leaking machine, this new technology, and I thought it was about this silver surfer character Julian Assange, who had this great David and Goliath story," Gibney said over coffee last month. "But in some ways it's a reflection of how important it is to constantly be examining what is true and what is not" ...

Gibney penetrated the dense circle of agents, lawyers and journalists who surrounded Assange with the help of one of his film's executive producers, activist Jemima Khan, who had posted some of Assange's bail in a case involving allegations of sexual abuse by two Swedish women.

After months of discussions about Assange's possible participation in his film, Gibney flew to England, where his subject was living under house arrest in a country estate, for a six-hour meeting. According to Gibney, at that meeting Assange told him the going rate for an interview was $1 million. When Gibney said he didn't pay for interviews, Assange asked if instead the director would tell him what others interviewed in the documentary were saying ...

Assange declined to cooperate with Gibney, which led the director to mine other sources, including footage an Australian journalist shot of Assange before he was famous, and to find another story — Manning's ...

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/movies/moviesnow/la-et-mn-wikileaks-julian-assange-movie-20130519,0,7991309.story

[JimDandy]

1. How ironic...

The director, who makes and sells lots of documentaries, takes umbrage at a subject's request to be paid for his time and info. How dare Assange.

[struggle4progress]

3. Universal gave Gibney a $2.5 million budget for the film, so Assange was asking

40% of what Gibney had for making the entire film. Gibney's expectations may not have been unreasonable:

... I said that I didn’t pay for interviews, so that was off the table. He was in the midst of writing a letter denouncing a TV documentary done by Channel 4. He had given them an interview, and he felt they had betrayed him by not portraying him in a positive light. It’s amazing – if you think about this stuff, he’s acting like a propagandist or a press agent or a CIA agent, right? It’s not about, “I give you my testimony and then you do what you want.” It’s, “If I give you my testimony, you have to tell my story the way I want it to be told.”

I have to laugh now, in retrospect. I think I’m the only person in the world who didn’t get an interview with Julian Assange. If you look at all the clips I use, he’s been interviewed a lot. And I remember him talking to me about the “60 Minutes” interview. He said, “Oh, yes, we did good intel on ‘60 Minutes’ to determine just the right reporter that would be appropriate to interview me. We knew exactly what his political views were so the interview would be positive,” Julian the puppeteer. So anyway, I said I wouldn’t pay, and he said, “What if, instead, you get me intel on all the other interview subjects?” (Laughter.) He wanted me to spy for him. “You come back to me and tell me all the things these people have said, and maybe I’ll give you an interview” ...

Alex Gibney: Julian Assange has become like “those he despises”
Saturday, May 18, 2013 12:30 PM EDT
An Oscar-winning filmmaker defends his Col. Kurtz-style portrait of the WikiLeaks founder in "We Steal Secrets"
By Andrew O'Hehir
http://www.salon.com/2013/05/18/alex_gibney_julian_assange_has_become_like_those_he_despises/

[snot]

2. Greg Mitchell has provided excellent, balanced coverage of the Wikileaks story; his take on it

can be found at http://www.thenation.com/blog/173637/alex-gibney-interview-early-media-controversy-over-his-wikileaks-film .

Personally, I'm happy to place my bets re- the movie on John Pilger's side.

Re- the money, Wikileaks is still operating, despite its near-total financial strangulation via the probably-illegal financial blockade being administered by the big banks, which have refused to process millions in donations to the organization. Both Assange and Wikileaks have to be utterly desperate for cash; so any implication that Assange's request for compensation evinces mere greed seems, to me, dunderheaded at best.

[struggle4progress]

4. My film doesn't "abuse" Julian Assange. But in a story about Wikileaks, facts matter

A response to John Pilger from Alex Gibney, director of "We Steal Secrets: the Story of WikiLeaks"
By Alex Gibney
Published 26 February 2013 10:59

... In a recent piece in the New Statesman, he attacked, with undisguised vitriol, my film on WikiLeaks and an essay by my executive producer, Jemima Khan, for “smearing” and “abusing” Julian Assange ...

The first fact that should be noted is this: John Pilger has not seen my film ...

But had he seen my film, he would have witnessed many powerful sequences highlighting Mr Assange’s original idealism and courage. Indeed, I was drawn to this tale because it was a David and Goliath story in which Assange stood up to governments and corporations with a singular determination to use transparency as a weapon to combat mendacity, corruption and crime ...

A key point of Jemima Khan’s piece – and a rather small section of my film – is that Julian Assange has undermined his high-minded principles by intentionally seeking to confuse them with his refusal to be held to account for possible sex crimes. Further, he has been silent regarding the vicious online attacks by his supporters on the Swedish women – including posting gun targets on their faces – even as he has been outspoken on the subject of his own persecution. Another fact: his “imprisonment” in the Ecuadorean embassy is self-imposed. There is no proof of a secret agreement between the US and Sweden to airlift Assange to Guantanamo (as one of his lawyers once suggested) if he leaves the Ecuadorean embassy. The film does not abuse or indict Assange in reference to the Swedish matter; it only raises questions about universal human rights (Swedish women have rights, too) and why Assange thinks that he should be above the law ...

http://www.newstatesman.com/voices/2013/02/my-film-doesnt-abuse-julian-assange-story-about-wikileaks-facts-matter

[snot]

5. I happen to be familiar with the facts, too, and

disagree with Gibney's interpretation of some of them. E.g., I personally consider it very likely that Sweden would allow Assange to be extradited to the US, given the chance.

Apart from that, the massively disproportionate quantities of manpower and expense that have been devoted to trying to prosecute Assange for the alleged sex crimes, as compared to similar crimes by others, makes plain that extremely powerful forces will do all they can to shut this man and Wikileaks down.

I have not yet seen the film – have you?

[struggle4progress]

6. Why Julian Assange Hates "We Steal Secrets"

Alex Gibney's new documentary traces the rise and fall of WikiLeaks and its prickly founder.
—By Dave Gilson
Thu May. 23, 2013 3:00 AM PDT

... Assange's preemptive attack one of the film's main themes: What happens when an admirable cause is headed by a thin-skinned, combative prick? ...

Gibney gives Assange and WikiLeaks plenty of credit for their greatest hits ... But in its second hour, We Steal Secrets sinks a knife into its subject as a series of disillusioned allies steps up to testify against him. Former Wikileaks staffer James Ball diagnoses Assange with a case of "noble cause corruption"—unable to recognize when he does things that he would deplore in others. Manne qualifies his earlier praise, asserting that Assange is "a natural fabulist and storyteller and lives intensely in his imagination." Nick Davies, a Guardian reporter who worked closely with Assange, recalls his callous attitude toward sources named in American military documents whose lives might be jeopardized if their identities were not redacted: "I raised this with Julian and he said, 'If an Afghan civilian helps coalition forces, he deserves to die' ...

... The wiki part of WikiLeaks is history: The site's dropbox for leaks has been shuttered for more than two years. And the leaks have gone cold: Its biggest recent coups have been security-firm emails lifted by Anonymous and the re-release of 40-year-old documents that confirm the horribleness of Henry Kissinger ...

http://www.motherjones.com/media/2013/05/we-steal-secrets-wikileaks-assange-gibney-review