I can’t help but feel conned by Alex Gibney’s latest
documentary. By the end of it’s protracted 130 minutes I wasn’t sure what I had
just witnessed. Could it have been a story about some very brave young people
who were not afraid to expose the truth behind the evils committed by great
nations in the name of ‘freedom’ or was it a deliberate attempt by Gibney and
his corporate masters to belittle these courageous whistle blowers? On
reflection I would veer towards the later.
We did get the story of WikiLeaks international website
which was set up as a drop point for those people who had access to information
that they thought should be in the public domain and who wanted to remain
anonymous. In return Wikileaks would
publish the information for all to see. It was initiated in Iceland in 2006 by
a small group of activists that included the Australian Julian Assange. It was
Assange that was suspected of involvement in the 1989 WANK worm attack on the
NASA computers that was originally thought to threaten the launch of the US spy
satellite Galileo. The non profit making website has been involved, for example,
in the Icelandic financial collapse, which involved three of the country’s
major privately owned commercial banks, a Swiss banking tax evasion case,
exposing Kenyan government corruption, a toxic waste dumping scandal and most
famously Bradley Manning’s upload of Iraq and Afghanistan war documents,
diplomatic e-mails and video footage including the terrible Collateral Murder
video shot from an Apache helicopter gun sight clearly showing the deliberate
killing of 12 or more civilians including two Reuters journalists in an Iraqi
street and seriously wounding two young children much to the hilarity of the marines. WikiLeaks
released both the original 38 minutes video and a shorter version, which were
shown as part of the documentary.
So far so clear, but then Gibney decides to carry out
a character assassination of Assange and Bradley Manning that’s really got
nothing to do with the courageous work that they carried out, and nothing to do
with the
frightening reality that we can we be spied on with impunity or assassinated
without warning. Manning is portrayed as a pitiful, naive and sexually
confused young man. Assange is presented as a paranoid, vindictive megalomaniac
and a sexual deviant. We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks
(2013)
becomes political propaganda for the security and surveillance state!
The film goes on to describe the attempt by ‘the authorities’ to extradite
Assange on allegations of rape and how he is virtually under house arrest in
the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Manning was
arrested and incarcerated in solitary confinement where he was brutalised, sparking an international outcry which President Obama refused to recognise for a long time.
Alex Gibney’s documentary tends to
stretch ever-single point beyond its natural elasticity making what should be
at least an interesting film, even if you do not agree with its political point
of view, into one that’s monotonous just as he did to a certain extent with Mea
Maxima Culpa (2012). But the best way for me to sum
up my feelings about this documentary is to include a paragraph from an article
by Chris Hedges an American journalist who specializes in American politics and
society:
Gibney is unable
to see that humans are a mixture of hubris and altruism, cowardice and courage,
anger and love. There are no “pure” political figures—including Daniel
Ellsberg. But there are people who, for reasons of conscience, discover the
inner fortitude to defy tyranny at tremendous personal risk. Manning did this.
Assange did this. They are not perfect human beings, but to dwell at length, as
Gibney does, on their supposed psychological deficiencies and personal
failings, while glossing over the vast evil they set themselves against, is an
insidious form of character assassination. It serves the interests of the
oppressors. Even if all the character flaws ascribed by Gibney to Manning and
Assange are true—and I do not believe they are true—it does not diminish what
they did.
Of course the story does not stop there, Edward
Snowden another extremely brave young whistle blower has again raised public
awareness about the governmental threat to our privacy and ultimately our
freedom.
