Do you feel that John Brennan is harbouring a grudge against WikiLeaks?

"Well, John Brennan is the Head of the CIA in most of the second term of Obama. The answer is I don't know. Normally, as an analyst of political affairs we don't look at things in terms of personal grudges, we think it has usually poor explanatory power, although I know that's popular in the press but rather what someone's interests are and what position they hold within an institution or a culture which also has interests. But John Brennan, in his testimony before Congress Thursday before last, at the John McCain put together in the Senate, he does act a little unusually when he is asked the question about me personally. In fact, he almost spits. It's possibly related to, that we published materials allegedly from a 16-year-old hacker, up in the North Midlands of England, which was his private security clearance application form and a review from the CIA and the Auditor-General saying that his company ... was one of the least credible, worst-performing company in every contract that it was going for. That was before he was head of the CIA, obviously. See that's the type of thing, if you're hacked by a 16-year-old kid and you're the head of the CIA and what is published is quite embarrassing to your prestige then perhaps you take it personally. But I think generally personal emotional explanations don't have much explanatory power when dealing with senior officials."

How many journalists are under investigation for their collaboration in Cablegate publications and spheres?

"It's a very interesting question. The answer is unknown. That is part of the problem with the U.S. case against WikiLeaks and me which was erected by the Department of Justice. With the Grand Jury being in Alexandria, Virginia. The National Security Division of the Department of Justice and the Criminal Division have been running that case since the middle of 2010. They maintain, as of this year, that it continues. It's something that has affected many people in the United States in its investigation, around half a dozen individuals have gone into exile. The FBI infamously flew a jet load of 6 FBI agents and 2 prosecutors illegally into Iceland to interrogate people there. They paid informants more than $5,000 in cash bribes to rendezvous in Denmark which the Danish government says that they didn't authorise and therefore would have been illegal also under Danish law. There has been many attempts by the press in the United States and our lawyers and Chelsea Manning's lawyers and EPIC - the Electronic Privacy and Information Centre - and EFF, to get hold of some of the status of that investigation, who its affected, what possibly illegal investigative techniques have been used, for example, warrants were issued to Google, search warrants, on our journalists emails, they took all of them. Now of course we don't use Google for our work but they had their old personal accounts there and of course that's something that affects them and their lawyers etcetera that they had been communicating with. So from our perspective, strategically, the issue is this: we have had a seven-year-long investigation being run by the Department of Justice, National Security Division, Criminal Division. Pulling in a range of other US government agencies including according to paperwork, the CIA, the NSA, the State Department, the Defence Intelligence Agency. What is our ability to litigate that case? Because so far that case is being protected under grounds of secrecy, from the press. They maintain, in court filings this year, that to reveal any substantial information about that case would be to negatively effect the pending prosecution. What we have as a result is, process as punishment. We don't have the material made public enough for us to grab hold of illegalities in the case, which we assume are there, and start to litigate it. There is effectively a Hoover dam of Freedom of Information Act requests held back by this excuse that to release information about the enormous case about WikiLeaks would be to compromise the pending prosecution. It really is a large case. There's not only that we can see this by people being pulled into the Grand Jury and so on and those other activities, but statements made by the US government officially to Australian diplomats who reported those cables back to the Australian government maintained that the United States government said that it was of unprecedented scale and nature."

It's unclear that there was ever an extradition request from the US in the first place. Can you confirm or prove that it exists?

"This is exactly the problem. Journalists need to be asking those questions of the Department of Justice. What is the purpose of maintaining this case? As of this year, 2017, they maintain, the DOJ Criminal Division, National Security Division, that the case proceeds, but what is the purpose of it? It doesn't make sense to keep it going for 7 years unless you have a sealed indictment that you're waiting to serve on people. Now, our lawyers have asked the United Kingdom, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, to tell us, have they received a US extradition request for me yet and the response by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office is that they refuse to confirm or deny whether they have received such a request. Similarly, when journalists ask the FCO for information about its correspondence with the DOJ in relation to me, they refuse to confirm or deny even the existence of such correspondence and just today, the L'Espresso reporter Stefania Maurizi has got a response back from the UK Crown Prosecution Service saying once again, that it refuses to confirm or deny whether there is an extradition request live in the United Kingdom from the United States. But it also maintains that it has so many pages in its file that it would be too expensive to even count them all. We put that out on Twitter a few hours ago."

Will you leave the embassy and give yourself up now? If not, will you give yourself up when Manning is released?

"There has been no change in the position, I stand by what I've said. We are very, very happy that Manning has received clemency, it is a major strategic victory to have achieved that, both for Chelsea Manning and everything that she has had to suffer over the last 7 years. It was a terrible case, Barack Obama should have granted her clemency at the least in his first term, there was no need to wait for such a long period to do it. But also it sheds light with the problems with the broader case. The broader case, according to the FBI, has far more pages in it. By 2013 they say they had accumulated 42,135 pages in the case against WikiLeaks and its founders, managers and owners, which presumably refers mostly to me. So I stand by what I said, I'm open to, I look forward to having a conversation with the DOJ about what the correct way forward is. We say, of course, that they should immediately drop their case or they should unseal their extradition request if they have one, unseal their charges if they have one. I'm confident about winning any US case that is respecting law in the United States because WikiLeaks is a publisher and as a publisher our activities are protected by the 1st Amendment. WikiLeaks as a publisher has won every single legal procedure that it has been involved in bar none. But what is occurring in the United States is an attempt to prevent us and our lawyers getting our teeth stuck into this case and getting standing, by keeping it secret."

Do you still stand by your offer to be extradited to the US after Chelsea Manning's sentence has been commuted?

"I stand by everything I have said including my offer to go to the United States if Chelsea Manning's sentence was commuted. It's not going to be commuted until May, we can have many discussions to that point. Now, interestingly, the Obama White House in order to, well maybe it's the truth but perhaps in order to look tough, has distanced itself and it says that they didn't give Chelsea Manning clemency because of my offer in September and later on. So it's not something that can be taken away, the clemency, politically at least, because the Obama administration says it is not dependent on anything that I do. But I've always been willing to go to the United States provided that my rights are respected because this is a case that should never have occurred. It is fundamentally unjust in relation to my staff, in relation to WikiLeaks as a publisher, in relation to the terrible precedents that it will set under the 1st Amendment. Now let's not forget that Barack Obama in his term in office initiated more criminal investigations and prosecutions of journalists and whistleblowers than all previous administrations combined. In fact, three times as many going all the way back to 1917 when the Espionage Act was introduced.  So under this administration there has been an epidemic of press crackdowns and crackdowns on alleged sources by the Obama administration abusing the Episonage Act to do it."

The press state that Chelsea Manning put lives at risk. What proof do you have that she didn't endanger US military personnel?

"That's a very good question. Now at the time of our alleged Manning leaks in 2010, the Iraq War Diaries, the Afghan War Diaries and the US Diplomatic Cables most famously, the Pentagon, the Obama administration and the press, trying to hype up an issue, put about the false claim, rather the false suggestion, the Pentagon never directly claimed it, but rather suggested it and the press took the qualifiers off that suggestion, that people had come to harm as a result of our publications. That is entirely false. The US government had to admit under oath in 2013 that it could find no one who had come to harm as a result of our publication. Not US soldiers, not Afghanis, not civilians etcetera. No one."

As a journalist or a publisher aren't you then protected under the US Constitution?

"Yes. We say this case is entirely bogus, it's obviously bogus, the UN has denounced it, the ACLU has denounced it, Human Rights Watch has denounced it. There seems to be a degree of shyness by the DOJ in exposing that case such that we can effectively litigate it. Now there has been attempts at litigation to get hold of the details, by EPIC, by other journalists, by us and those are aggressively resisted by the DOJ and the last judgement in the Freedom of Information Act request by the DOJ was in January just a few days ago."

What do you think the future of journalism looks like in the US when some journalists seem to try and push for censorship?

"It's a sad thing. In some ways right now is a golden age of journalism in English. Because it's becoming so cheap to become a publisher so there's a lot more variety in publishers that are cropping up. Each one has their different interests and different angles, each one has their different loyalties and this clash of voices is more likely to reveal the truth. But on the press side, you know we have good friends in the press and good collaborators amongst journalists and we've won many awards ourselves but there is a lot of bad journalists, it's true. Not accurate and who are not loyal to protecting the basic interests of the press, the American people and people globally which is the right to speak and to publish and to communicate to each other and we can see that in just the past few days for example. Where instead of naturally shifting focus from the Chelsea Manning clemency and asking how did this case come about, where is it, what aspects of it are still going forward, the case against WikiLeaks, the case against me, the DOJ, why all the secrecy etcetera? There's been a type of frankly disturbing glee trying to decontextualise some of my remarks, hoping or lusting it even seems, for my extradition to the United States for an entirely bogus case which would set a very deleterious precedent for people's rights to publish across the board. So, come on guys, what are you doing? You're going to take yourselves out just like that if you keep carrying on jumping after every ball the administration throws."

Will your commitment to transparency and opening up governments continue to extend into this upcoming administration?

"Yes! It's a very interesting time with the new Trump administration. From a security publisher point of view who specialises a lot in national security issues, this conflict which has developed between the embryonic Trump administration and the Central Intelligence Agency and perhaps a few other agencies but centrally focused no the Central Intelligence Agency, we think will lead to dissidents and sources in both camps coming forward. We've already seen that on the CIA side from the Obama administration, with information coming out about Trump, a lot of it not very well sourced or not high quality but perhaps in the future we will see higher quality and so, you know, we're looking forward to that conflict and other conflicts to occur among this new administration. There has been Cabinet members amongst this new administration which have said appalling things in the past about the rights of the press, the bona fide rights of the press and WikiLeaks and myself personally so we are under no illusions that there are people in that Cabinet that are of significant concern to WikiLeaks and should be of significant concern to those concerned with press freedoms in general. We have to see whether their words in office are different to their words out of office, where you're opposition trying to get attention but we can see a big fight ahead, perhaps, and are looking forward to it."

You say you will come to the US if your rights are protected. What rights are not protected?

"Well that's a very interesting question. At the moment, what we know, and it's a matter of public record and the US DOJ admits it, that there has been a 7-year long attempt to build a prosecution against WikiLeaks and my name is on several of the subpoenas and warrants and they are saying as of this year that it's active and ongoing. Now the warrants have five charge types. They have the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act Section 1A which was defined by the Patriot Act as electronic terrorism. What the hell is going on trying to say that publishing is electronic terrorism? There is a general conspiracy statute which seems to be trying to suggest that if one person in a media organisation receives information from a source and then communicates it to others in the same media organisation in a collaborative process, which is how investigative journalism is done within a publisher, then the entire media organisation or at least all of those people involved in analysing and assessing, transforming and publishing, can likewise be swept up into a conspiracy and be subjected to various warrants under the allegation of conspiracy. General conspiracy, sorry, conspiracy to commit espionage, where the United States government is defining national security journalism as espionage. Espionage, itself. Same thing. So this is a pretty big concern because the espionage statute for example, does not permit a public interest defence. It doesn't permit you to say that no one was harmed for example, or the reason why it was published. But we have to have a discussion with the DOJ about what is their proposal. At the moment, they don't have a proposal. At the moment we call them up and they refuse to say anything at all and continue on with their process. Something has to stop and if it takes me going to the United States to encourage the Obama administration to get Chelsea Manning out of prison, I was very happy to do that, and if it takes me going to the United States to somehow flush out this case and to get the DOJ to either make a charge or an extradition or to drop it then we're interested in looking at that as well."

Why does WikiLeaks seem to focus solely on the United States?

"Good question. It doesn't. It's absolute nonsense. In the last months we have published hundreds of thousands of documents about other countries, Germany and Turkey included, in fact in total volume, way more than we published during the US election cycle. People of a particular culture, or of a particular language group, they are interested in their culture and their language group so there is a selection bias that people read about things that are connected to them and when we publish in a different language or about a different culture, people are not aware of it."

The United Nations requested the UK and Sweden to immediately request Julian be released nearly a year ago. Why is he still detained?

"Good question. Yesterday, the United Nations put out another statement calling for the UK and Sweden to respect their finding that I had been unlawfully deprived of liberty since 2010 in prison, under house arrest, and the last 4 1/2 years at this embassy where my asylum rights are not being respected by the British and Swedish governments. Now, that decision by the UN was in February, February 5th it was announced publicly, after 16 months of litigation where I, backed up by some great lawyers including the late John Jones, litigated two states, the UK and Sweden in front of a five jurist panel and we won. They lost. Comprehensively. So that order was made. That was February 5. The UK appealed and on November 29 it was announced that the UK had also lost that appeal."

What can US individuals do to protect and promote WikiLeaks?

"Other than opening up your wallets, go to WikiLeaks.org and make sure we're really cashed up for the conflict ahead, part of it coming from the past year, well, I look at things in two ways. Either you have time or you have a skill or financial resources. If you have financial resources then you should give them to those organisations which seem to be quite efficient in what they are doing in promoting the freedom of the press. Obviously that's WikiLeaks, organisations like Courage, Freedom of the Press Foundation, Electronic Frontier Foundation in the United States, Wau Holland Foundation in Germany, Amnesty International Spain has done a really good job with the Manning case, with the Manning clemency, or if you have a skill then you can say, OK, you could either volunteer or you could just do more work with the skill and as a result of doing more work with the skill perhaps you can actually earn more and can then go to somewhere else with the skill if that is more efficient or if that is not a direct translation then you can use that skill  directly to volunteer for some of these organisations or do something on your own, start your own thing. If you just have time and no skills and no money then use that time in the public debate to correct factual inaccuracies for example, or to amplify those people who are doing good work."

How do you maintain you and your staff's morale?

"That's an interesting question. At different times of the year there might be different views on what the morale is like but you know I'm in a luxurious position as the head of an organisation which is everyone can understand that my situation is definitely worse than all the other staff in the organisation so I guess part of how I maintain morale is everyone goes well, goddamnit, if Julian can do it in that situation, then I can do it in the situation that I'm in. For myself, well I love what we're doing. I like to think - well who wouldn't like to do the sort of stuff that WikiLeaks does? We help understand the world in a way which was never done before, we have published more than 10 million documents that never appeared in the public record before. That's a kind of rebel library of Alexandria, a great intellectual fruit that has contributed to justice all around the world, releasing innocent people from prison, taking their place in a variety of elections, leading to all sorts of reforms, entering into academic process etcetera. And at the same time we're not just involved in historical intellectual work of building this wonderful archive of material that would never have appeared in the world were it not but for our work and the work of our sources, but we're involved in the conflict of defending it, defending our rights to publish and encompassing within that the rights of others to also publish and secure information in the way that we do."

Do you have any concern about the RiseUp.net (warrant) canary being expired?

"This concerns something interesting which is a technique developed in response to gag orders principally in the United States but also extending to other countries as well. While the gag order will say for example, if the government has forced you to hand over information, that you're not allowed to tell people that you have. OK. So a technique was developed called a canary which is to say, every three months, you say that you haven't received a gag order and handed over information. That's the normal course of business. Then if you don't do that one month, then the effective statement is that you have received a gag order and that's why you can't say that you haven't received a gag order because you have received a gag order. It's a bit unknown how this works in practice in law and whether there's some ways around it but it seems to be that while gag orders can stop people speaking and warrants can force people to modify devices or turn over information at least in the United States there's not a mechanism to force people into speech acts so there's a quite well-known organisation called Rise Up which is a great little ISP and mail provider in Seattle involved in many years of pushing the frontiers for freedom of information, communication and security. It was perhaps late with its warranted canary statement. It doesn't affect WikiLeaks. We assume that any email provider for example, WikiLeaks doesn't use any particular email provider and we assume that email itself is compromised. So it's not something that affects us. Rise Up on their behalf have said none of their information is affected. There's clearly something like an attempted subpoena or something like that for Rise Up which is why they're saying that they needed legal advice but can't talk about it but we don't have other insights. One of our lawyers does have insight but that's only a single source so I'm not going to speak about it today."

How soon can we expect to see new publications?

"Well, WikiLeaks has a big publishing year ahead as I said last year. The prominence of our publications in the US electoral cycle where they, for the 5 weeks leading into November 8 were the most discussed topic on Facebook, according to Facebook, the most discussed political topic, according to Facebook, and the most discussed topic on Twitter about politics according to an independent statistical survey done on Twitter. So that exposure has, like it always does with WikiLeaks actually, encourages other sources to come forward. So we have a lot of material to get through, it takes time. We do have a perfect record for accurate vetting of what we've published, going back for 10 years. That's such a valuable reputation that we don't want to lose it so it can take us a little while to get through things and to format them and verify them etcetera. If you want it to go faster, well go to WikiLeaks.org and contribute in one way or another. But I'm very excited, it's, you know, information that concerns everyone. Some information for some countries, big corporations, government behaviour etcetera. You know, I like doing this, I'm in love with the publications that we have coming."

How many plans to release and/or highlight current documents in the upcoming election in Germany?

"Well, we already have. We have published more than 60,000 pages of material about the BND NSA inquiry in the German parliament. So after the Snowden revelations in 2013 the Bundestag set up an inquiry panel to look into whether the BND had been illicitly passing information to the National Security Agency and there's several findings out already which, the answer is yes they had. They were also engaged in a number of unlawful domestic programs, at least a dozen, which were found to have violated German law in terms of what they were keeping and holding. So we published those and the response was interesting. The first response was that it was thought that this was probably a Parliamentary insider. The second response came out through Focus magazine and Focus magazine is a magazine that is notorious at least within WikiLeaks as having a very close relationship with the BND. In fact, we exposed them in 2009 as having met more than 54 times, just one of their journalists, with a BND handler and they were involved in hunting down the sources of other journalists. So Focus magazine put out a statement from a government security official, pretty clearly a BND official, claiming that it was likely or that they assessed that it was likely that this material that we had published from the German Parliament actually came from Russian hackers. Now, so clearly resonating with certain attacks on us by some members of the US press. And just two weeks later, the Commission of Inquiry into the leak, a formal prosecutor was appointed by the Parliament to investigate. They came out and said no, actually we think this must have come from the German Parliament. They gave a simple argument for example, they say that some Russian hack they had had back in 2015 had taken 30 megabytes or 50 megabytes of data but we had published 90. So it was literally impossible that it could have been the Russians. But there is that environment now where you can see the incentives. So whatever propaganda Russia may be putting out through RT or elsewhere and it certainly has its angle on things, you can see the incentive for incumbents like Merkel, just as we could see with Clinton, to try and hype up an issue about potential Russian involvement. It's not that they have a genuine opposition, it's not that the people are annoyed with misbehaviour in government and of course there is, I'm not saying anything in particular about Merkel's government but it is a government, it misbehaves. Well there's an attempt to go, any criticism of governmental misbehaviour, corruption or incompetence, well, it's not the opposition, the people, making a fuss, you know, it's secretly the Russians so that's something we're going to see I assume in the German election and in the French election regardless of what the Russians are doing or not doing."

Why do you think Obama's approval ratings are so high and Trump's are so low?

"I'm not sure. I don't have statistical information on it. Trump is not a politician. He's a beginning politician. So he says things that are confrontational or easy to take out of context, or offend people. So that would be a prime reason and Obama's rather slick. But similarly, it's true that the majority of the media, perhaps with the exception of Fox News, was fully in the tank for Clinton during this election cycle and kind of whipped up a class hysteria about what they were saying was effectively that the leader of the white trash was going to take over and it would all be a terrible disaster and that everyone in their class had to rally together to prevent this from happening. I'm not defending Trump or his policies, obviously he's made quite a number of statements which we object to but by the same token I don't think I'm saying anything new by saying that there was a deeply partisinised atmosphere in this election. There has been in previously elections in the United States but more than other elections. And the behaviour in the press on both sides but the majority was on the Clinton side, was terrible, in terms of accuracy, absolutely terrible. As a result, according to Pew surveys, the respect for the press is at a record low in the United States."

You offered to go to the US where there is no extradition order and no charge. Why don't you go to Sweden where there is an extradition order and possible charge?

"Good question. First of all in the United States that's exactly the problem. Is there an extradition order, is there a charge? The Department of Justice behaves exactly like it does if there's a sealed indictment. My Washington DC lawyer Barry Pollack said that he believes that it's much more probable than not that there is already a sealed charge. It's the way that federal charges are done, nearly all of them are produced by Grand Juries, there's been a Grand Jury in this case. The Grand Jury issues a sealed indictment, the sealed indictment turns into a sealed extradition request. The British government refuses to confirm or deny whether there is already one there, but if there isn't the US can issue one at any time. But there's already a deliberate attempt by the US Department of Justice to keep me and WikiLeaks in a state of uncertainty, abusing the process for psychological gains. Refusing to confirm or deny whether they have already issued such a request but saying that the pending proceedings continue. Or there is a sealed indictment. And it's an offence for any official to reveal the existence of a sealed indictment. Now in relation to Sweden, I was granted asylum at this Embassy because of the persecution involved in the US case. It's not just whether there is the existence of a sealed indictment or not, you know a lot has happened in this case in the United States, with people being hauled into the Grand Jury, forced to testify, warrants being spewed out all over the place for information, planeloads of FBI agents illicitly engaged in activities, interrogating people in other countries etcetera so there's a lot going on. In relation to Sweden, let's be clear, I have never been charged at any stage, I have already been previously cleared by the Chief Prosecutor in Stockholm in relation to exactly the same allegation and the United Nations twice last year has formally found that I am being illegally detained in relation to it. Despite all that, I have asked and my lawyers have asked and the state of Ecuador have asked that Sweden simply give a guarantee that I will not be extradited to the United States and they refuse to do so, absolutely refuse and instead this enormous fuss and expense and diplomatic costs.. the UN, they go through a lot, to simply not issue a guarantee that is perfectly normal in international extradition proceedings."

Do you think you will receive different treatment under a Trump Department of Justice than under an Obama Department of Justice?

"It remains to be seen. The good news is that there's a Chelsea Manning clemency, everyone can see that that was a bogus case, at least I hope on the Democratic side, that it was incredibly excessive etcetera, and that's on the alleged source end. Whatever duties a soldier has to obey their orders, although you can of course argue that there are higher orders, like the Constitution and the law and you need to obey that as well, not just your Army orders. Whatever duties that exist there, they are clearly higher than the duties that a publisher has. A publisher has the duty to do what? A publisher has the duty to publish. That's it's number one duty. That's what its function is in society. That's what its claim is before the public and I'm an Australian citizen publishing from Europe. What the hell is going on with this jurisdictional overreach, trying to apply US law, which shouldn't be applied to publishers even in the United States because of the First Amendment, trying to apply US law to an Australian publisher publishing from Europe. This is an absurd overreach which chills the climates for publishers to scrutinise and help the public understand what is going on with the most powerful organisations in our state and why is it important for the most powerful organisations to be scrutinised? Well, because when they get it wrong, when they act badly or incompetently, it is that power, that military intelligence or governmental of the enormous corporation like Google, it is that power that can cause widespread systematic damage and loss of life, as it has done, as we have seen in Syria and Iraq and in Libya."

Is there a possibility that Trump's cabinet was pre-picked prior like Obama's was?

"That's a good question. One of my favourite emails from the Podesta emails that we published is correspondence with John Podesta and a Citibank official. Now that Citibank official seemed to be the primary person putting together the Obama cabinet back in 2008. Now, those people who remember that period will remember that Obama was big with the banks. He got a lot of cash from the banks and it seems to have translated into this senior Citibank executive being absolutely central and creating the lists of people who would be on the Cabinet and if you look at the first Obama Cabinet and compare it to the proposed lists, more than 50% of the people according to an article in the New Republic which analysed it, were on the Citibank list. It would be interesting to think what the equivalent is in the Trump Cabinet selection. There's not a, perhaps it is, it does seem to be Jared and Pence and filters going through them that are making the pick, it's not obvious yet, but we do see three ex-Goldman Sachs people in the Trump Cabinet. Now according to public reportage that's coming through his son-in-law Jared, but I haven't confirmed that myself."

Why aren't the media asking the editors of The Guardian and The New York Times why they aren't getting on a plane to go to the US?

"Well they should be. How can it be proper for the DOJ to have continued this investigation against WikiLeaks and me personally for seven years, resulting in a circumstance where the UN has been activated and found that I have been arbitrarily detained, where Ecuador has engaged in its asylum process and where I've been kept without sunlight in this Embassy for four and a half years and away from my children and so on. That's a pretty serious consequence. It's had political effects for the United States in relation to its relationship with Latin America, it's had political effects in relation to the relationship between the UK and Ecuador, it's had political effects in relation to Sweden. So it's not like this is a cost-free exercise, there's considerable cost. The UK government states that it's spending around $6 million US dollars per year just in surveillance of me in this Embassy alone. I'd just say - that of course the DOJ has a political technique, it has a theory, about how its going to separate the herd, to take WikiLeaks off to the side for a beating and perhaps leave the New York Times and the other partners alone. So, what is its theory? It's theory seems to be, based on the warrants and some statements that it has made, that WikiLeaks is different. Why is WikiLeaks different? Because WikiLeaks dealt with the source. WikiLeaks, if you like, brought in the fish that we then published and we shared with others in the media in order to get more eyeballs and better analysis and therefore WikiLeaks is different in this way. While that may be of some slave to The Guardian and Le Monde and more than 100 other publishing partners that we have, it shouldn't be, because it's not just about who is swept up into this particular prosecution. This prosecution will set precedents. It will set precedents about what is tolerable behaviour by the DOJ and if it is tolerable behaviour in law and politically for the administration to go after publishers and go after their sources and say that every interaction between a national security journalist and their source is a conspiracy, in general, and a conspiracy to commit espionage, and the passing of electronic information falls under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act Section 1A,   electronic terrorism, if national security journalism is electronic terrorism and espionage then that is the end of national security journalism in the United States and we like to joke that if that happens, well all sources will just have to come to WikiLeaks."

With all the talk of fake news do you feel that makes your publications more desirable since you have a 100% accuracy record?

"Come on, where did you get that question from? Yes we are very proud of it, we have a 100% accurate record for authenticating documents, we are the world experts in this now. There is literally no one who has authenticated as many leaked documents as we have, especially digital leaked documents so we have a lot of forensic expertise etcetera. It's a pain because it's a very valuable reputation, it takes a lot of time to keep it and to not make a mistake. But when we saw this fake news narrative going around, of course there's all sorts of sites in Macedonia and blogs and so on, pushing particular agendas, very, very sloppy etcetera. But also there's a lot of inaccurate reporting in the legacy press and in new media. A lot of very, very poor reporting, inaccurate or not corrected when inaccuracies are found out. We see this all the time, just speaking for myself personally for example, constantly we see articles saying that I have been charged with an offence, which is false, at least in relation to Sweden, it is false, I have never been charged. Constantly we see that. It's a black and white thing, either you are or you aren't. We see that all over the place. In the biggest outlets. So the reality is most media doesn't do basic fact checking and when we see this discussion about fake news and potential lists of organisations are being put up that are reliable or that are not reliable, we're like, this is a great narrative, this is an excellent narrative, because any such list of reliable news we're going to be at the top of and any list of fake news we're going to be at the bottom of and I don't want to, kind of, criticise the rest of the press too much. We do something that is easier. We do something very hard, which is to discover and publish documents which are the hardest to discover and the hardest to publish. On the other hand, in terms of authentication, it's a black and white process for us. Either the document is an official document, is an official archive, or it isn't. This is black and white criteria. So you really drill down and focus down on that, you can answer that question in a definite way which is not the same if you're speaking to witnesses and reporting what they say."

Would you still publish info if your source instructed WikiLeaks to redact info or redacted it themselves?

"Yes, definitely with the former. We've had that a number of times where the source has asked for particular things to be redacted especially say, related to information that might expose who the source is or work colleagues of the source who they want to protect. On the second part, if there was a request to redact information for political purposes, it's not something that we've had yet, it's an interesting question but we just haven't had it yet. I hope that we could discourage the source from making that request but so far we haven't had it."

You announced WikiLeaks would publish on Google in 2017. Can we expect something soon?

"You can expect a nice publication on Google in 2017. We have a lot of upcoming publications, I don't want to say which one's first. Actually, it might surprise some of you but even I don't know which one we're going to do first. It does depend on what's in the news and what's taking up the news cycle or is there a company or government department prominent for some other reason."

In the last days there's been a growing tension between Trump and the European Union, specifically Angela Merkel. Would you like to comment on that?

"Once again, we published this great material on the NSA and the BND which is the German NSA equivalent, 60,000 pages about a month ago. Great stuff, you can see it on our front page. It has an excellent cartoon. And there was initially a false allegation, or rather an allegation which had no evidence, put out saying that Russia was behind this. Now there's a claim that, well now the German Parliament makes the claim that it thinks, or rather it's sure that it's not Russia. So those narratives are going to be spoken about but I don't have a comment about Trump versus Merkel. I will say with Trump, you know, his behaviour is of someone who is not a diplomat at all, making inflammatory statements or saying what he genuinely thinks, that most politicians and people in senior roles would not. I think, from a journalistic perspective, is very interesting. Because those kinds of conflicts, say between Merkel and Trump, allow you to examine, they create a market, they create an audience that is receptive for information about Merkel in the United States and an audience in Germany that is receptive to information about Trump. The general phenomena is quite, I'm not saying it's good government or good diplomacy but from WikiLeaks perspective we like to see this kind of churn and invigoration and everything being reconsidered."

What would be the impact of your freedom on WikiLeaks and WikiLeaks publications and following on from that was your detention an attempt to shut down WikiLeaks?

"Well, I've had a number of detentions. There was a very unusual statement by the Crown Prosecution Service in 2011, to their counterparts in Sweden, which was "don't worry, we're not treating his extradition like a normal extradition case." Well there's quite a lot of material actually, you should go to Justice4Assange.com, and you can read all about that. When you're involved in a situation like this yourself, what you see is that when the politics becomes significant enough then everything becomes political. In terms of political philosophy it makes perfect sense. Which is that various institutions within a state such as the judiciary, are functions of the state and the state is the result of two things, a political process and a security process. That is what constructs and maintains the state in the first place. So if the security aspect becomes too high or the political aspect becomes too high then the rule of law starts to become too rubbery and can eventually be swept aside. Now that's I suppose, in a positive sense, with the Chelsea Manning clemency. But it does happen frequently in the negative sense and that's the case for me."

What can the Australian Government do to help you, as is surely their duty?

"Australia is a sad state, it's a sad thing. I mean, it's perfectly understandable, it's a colonial country, population just over 20 million, speaks English and is in the middle of nowhere. So the result is that it's not near its close friends culturally. It's in the Five Eyes alliance with the UK, Australia, New Zealand, the white, English-speaking countries and unfortunately it doesn't have a foreign policy, it doesn't have an independent foreign policy. It's foreign policy cues are taken from the United States and from the United Kingdom with which it is deeply integrated in terms of its military and intelligence services. Anyway, it's something that's affected not just me, it's affected a number of Australians who have been imprisoned overseas in say the United States but also in other states that the Australian government wants to have a security relationship with. It essentially abandons them. It has done so in this case. In fact, the Australian intelligence services gave information to the United States, they looked into cancelling my passport, the then-Prime Minister said that I was engaged in illegal acts, and all of that was found to be untrue. So the Australian investigation found that I had broken no Australian law and I have won the peak journalism prize in Australia which is the Walkley. Although there's popular support in Australia and support in the press and a lot of support in the legal community the government so far has done nothing. But there might be some change. There's a little bit of talk in parliament that perhaps things should change."

What do you think about Facebook's attempts to fight fake news?

"It's super interesting. I mean, it's not something that really I can put in a soundbite. You know they're talking about the ecosystem of information flow in a modern civilisation that Facebook forms an important part of and Facebook as it became rich has integrated, like many large companies, with for want of better words is the US establishment, so other large companies who are dealing with the State Department etcetera. It was, more or less, I guess Peter Thiel is an exception on the Facebook board, but it was more or less in the tank for Clinton, as far as Facebook ownership and management was concerned. So of course they didn't like to see that Facebook was spreading a lot of stories critical of the candidate that they had backed. Now some of those were genuinely fake stories but the majority, well I don't want to speak about statistics, but I assume the majority was true, then there was our information which was definitely true. So there's a breaking of one of the most important control structures in a democracy and that is who controls the media and the effects that the media has on people reading it. So you can look at work by Chomsky and Hermann which you can sum up with just one phrase - that as the truncheon is the dictatorship, the media system is the democracy. That is that if you don't want to use a truncheon to keep people in line, you need to use their perceptions to keep them in line. So what is involved in managing people's perceptions? Well, traditionally that's who controls publishing and broadcasts and now organisations like Facebook are permitting many, many people to publish, billions, at the click of a button. So that is obviously breaking down the control structure. Now the control structure is there for bad reasons and it is there for good reasons. The bad reasons are principally to keep whatever the ruling class in any particular country in rule and the good reasons are well maybe some of those rules are for good reasons. So the control structure is breaking down and Facebook's traditional position is of being quite frightened of being accused of manipulating the priorities of what you see for reasons other than you paying the money, has resulted in, more or less, I know there's a lot of exceptions, more or less fair distribution of what people think, to each other. But when you have more or less fair distribution of what people think to each other, that is a new circumstance in a democracy. So something else must change because the structures of a democracy, the relative powers of different institutions and cultural norms exist in an equilibrium which is mediated by information flow structures. So when the information flow structures change, the other parts of society must also change to enter into a new equilibrium. But before the new equilibrium is established, there is a disequilibrium and part of the election of Donald Trump is that phenomena taking place."

Who is Embassy Cat and what is the situation with their Twitter feed?

"Oh, no. I'm not going to lie, it's a tough situation to be illegally kept in an Embassy for four and a half years despite the UN saying that you're unlawfully detained, it's tough on me, it's tough on my young children, I have a family under the age of 10, and so they were concerned about me and so they got me a cat. It's a bit pathetic, it's not a replacement for your family but interestingly, psychologically, actually it's quite good. It's why you give long-term prisoners cats. If they're lifers for example and all the staff that come in the Embassy in the day, they all dote on the cat etcetera. But we have a Twitter account ( @EmbassyCat) for the cat. With, ah, kind of publication intensity over the last few months, Ecuador cutting off the internet briefly, etcetera, there's a lot of other stuff going on so we haven't had the time to take and publish as many cat photos as we'd like."

[ends]