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Resistance See other Resistance Articles Title: Wikileaks’ Julian Assange Homeschooled to Avoid Unhealthy Respect for Authority Irish Times Julian Assange of the Wikileaks website appears to have gone to ground after receiving more US military secrets. But keeping a low profile as he wages “information warfare” is par for the course for this hacker with a conspiracy theory and a grudge against authority, writes BRIAN BOYD WITH HIS HALO of martyrdom, shield of truth and righteous sword at the ready to slay the beasts of government lies and military cover-ups, the Australian journalist Julian Assange, who is being breathlessly described as “the most dangerous man in the world”, is like some freedom-of-information cartoon hero come to life. Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange was Mostly Homeschooled Reportedly on the run from Pentagon officials who want to talk to him about defence secrets he may have, Assange is coming across like Robin Hood with a Twitter account, tweeting tantalising hints about what potentially damning US “military cover-up” he may soon be making known to the public. The 39-year-old, who describes himself as a journalist and internet activist, and is also a skilled computer hacker – useful in his line of work – is one of the founders of Wikileaks, an online organisation that publishes leaked documents that purportedly show government and corporate misconduct. Its whistle-blowing work is global in scope, but right now all media focus is on what, exactly, the organisation has in its possession about US military activity in Iraq and Afghanistan. Assange is generally credited as the director of Wikileaks, an amorphous organisation that hit the headlines in April when it uploaded a classified military video showing a helicopter attack in Baghdad that resulted in 12 deaths – it shows the murder of Iraqi civilians and two Reuters reporters, according to Wikileaks. The US military disputes the claim and says it is investigating the incident. Last month a US army intelligence analyst, Bradley Manning, was arrested after apparently revealing to a journalist that he was Wikileaks’s source for the classified video. The journalist, who gave the FBI a copy of the online conversation, says Manning said he also provided Wikileaks with a second video, detailing an incident in Afghanistan, along with 260,000 classified diplomatic cables. Since the arrest, four weeks ago, Assange has been in hiding. “Pentagon investigators are trying to determine the whereabouts of Assange for fear that he may be about to publish a huge cache of classified State Department cables that, if made public, could do serious damage to national security,” reported the US Daily Beast web paper. “We’d like to know where he is; we’d like his co-operation in this,” a US official was quoted as saying. Assange, who is in frequent contact with the media without revealing his exact whereabouts, said last week that Wikileaks would shortly upload the second classified video, which he says shows a US air strike in Afghanistan in 2009 that, according to the Afghan government, killed 140 civilians, including 92 children. The US claimed at the time that 95 people died, 65 of them insurgents, but it has subsequently wavered on the figure and admitted to making mistakes in the attack. Given that the release of the first video brought wide condemnation of US actions in Iraq, this second video – which, if claims are to be believed, is a lot more damning – will pile more international pressure on the White House and the Pentagon. But it is the third part of Manning’s alleged leak that is attracting the most media heat. In a Twitter post, Wikileaks has denied that it was provided with military cables. (Wikileaks has a habit of denying everything, in order to protect its sources.) It does have something relating to military intelligence, though, according to Assange, who, speaking to the Australian ABC network last week about the organisation’s next exposé, said, a little opaquely: “I can give an analogy. If there had been mass spying that had affected many, many people and organisations, and the details of that mass spying were released, then that is something that would reveal that the interests of many people had been abused.” Assange has not gone totally underground. He appeared at a seminar in Brussels on freedom of information last week and said of the claims that the Pentagon was looking for him: “US public statements have all been reasonable. But some statements made in private are a bit more questionable. Politically it would be a great error for them to act. I feel perfectly safe . . . but I have been advised by my lawyers not to travel to the US during this period. There’s a need always to be on the alert.” IF HE IS ON the run, Assange should have plenty of experience that might come in useful. His parents, who ran a touring theatre company in Australia, moved the family 37 times before Assange was a teenager. And his mother believed a formal education would only give him an unhealthy respect for authority, so he was mostly schooled at home.
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