We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks Page #2

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so numerous that the information

could never be taken down.

[AUDIENCE APPLAUDING]

So this is what you'll see if you go

to the front page of the website-

This is WikiLeaks, we help

you get the truth out.

We want to enable information

to go out to the public

that has the greatest

chance of achieving

positive political reform

in the world.

To get things to the public

you need to protect sources

who want to disclose,

and you also need to protect your ability

to publish in the face of attack.

ROBERT MANNE:
His thinking is,

how can we destroy corruption?

It's the whistle-blower.

Julian Assange is neither a right-wing

libertarian nor a standard leftist.

I think he's

a humanitarian anarchist.

A kind of John Lennon-like

revolutionary,

dreaming of a better world.

If we are to produce a more civilized

society, a more just society,

it has to be based

upon the truth...

HEATHER BROOKE:
When

I heard Julian speak,

I was struck by

his vaulting idealism

and forthrightness

about what he believed in.

Totally uncompromising

about freedom of speech.

I agreed almost entirely

with everything he said,

and I'd never experienced

that before.

So I thought he was amazing.

Every week

we achieve major victories

in bringing the unjust to

account and helping the just.

[AUDIENCE APPLAUDING]

NARRATOR:
Before WikiLeaks

was front page news,

there were some

smaller successes.

The website published evidence

of a tax-evading Swiss bank,

government corruption

and murder in Kenya,

and a secret company report on

illegal toxic waste dumping.

[HELICOPTER HOVERING]

One early leak was from the

National Security Agency.

Frantic text messages

from desperate workers

trying to save lives

on 9/11.

9/11 turned out to be a watershed

moment for the world of secrets,

both for the leakers

and the secret keepers.

After 9/11 we were accused of not

being willing to share information

rapidly and facilely enough,

and we've pushed that

very far forward.

NARRATOR:
Michael Hayden

is an expert on secrets.

He's been the director of the

National Security Agency and the CIA.

HAYDEN:
In terms

of our focus,

the default option, in a practical

sense, has been to sharing

rather than caging information and

making it more difficult to flow.

NARRATOR:
In the years after 9/11,

facing enemies it didn't understand,

the U.S. government started

sharing more information

between different agencies.

At the same time, the U.S. also started

to keep more secrets from its citizens.

In data centers that sprang

up all over the country,

NSA/CSS Cryptologic Center

the U.S. launched

a massive expansion

of its operations

to gather secrets.

The amount of classified documents per

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