Julian Assange held back 15,000 documents to prevent harm to US government

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange held back 15,000 documents from publication at the request of the US government, a court heard today.

John Goetz, senior editor of investigations at NDR in Germany, told the court that WikiLeaks and its media partners took measures to make sure no one was harmed by the release of the documents.

Goetz was speaking on the seventh day of the extradition hearing against Assange at the Old Bailey in London.

Assange has been charged with 17 offences under the US Espionage Act after WikiLeaks published a serious of leaks from Chelsea Manning, a former US Army soldier turned whistleblower.

The 49-year-old defendant faces a further charge of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion and is alleged to have encouraged hacking groups to obtain information for WikiLeaks

The US government has accused Assange of purposely publishing classified documents containing the unredacted names of innocent people who risk their lives to provide information to the US and its allies.

Goetz, who previously worked at Der Spiegel, said he was asked to meet with The Guardian and Assange in June 2010 to work on tens of thousands of leaked documents on the Afghan war obtained by WikiLeaks.

“They were a first-hand eyewitness diary of what was happening in Afghanistan as it was happening,” said Goetz.

Goetz said US cables obtained by WikiLeaks showed how the US had put pressure on Germany not to prosecute Khalid el-Masri, a German citizen kidnapped and tortured by the CIA.

The partnership between rival publishers – The Guardian, Der Spiegel and The New York Times – and WikiLeaks was unorthodox at the time, he said, but had now become standard practice.

Under cross-examination by Mark Summers QC, representing Assange, Goetz said the WikiLeaks founder had been highly concerned with keeping the leaked material secure.

“I remember being very irritated by the constant, unending reminders from Assange that we needed to be secure, we needed to encrypt things, we needed to use encrypted chat. It was the first time I had used a cryptophone,” he said.

Goetz said Assange was very concerned with the technical aspects of trying to find names in a massive collection of documents.

“He and everyone were discussing how to find these sensitive names so that we could redact them and take measures to make sure no one was harmed,” he said.

The media partners agreed that The New York Times would approach the White House for comment in advance of the release of the documents, said Goetz.

Following the meeting, The New York Times sent an email saying the White House was looking for redactions and that WikiLeaks would withhold 15,000 documents 

The email said WikiLeaks would entertain suggestions from the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan on which names to remove if they could provide technical assistance. 

Goetz said he was not aware that any sensitive names were published or had not been picked up by the redaction process.

Goetz said he took a break after the media partners finished work on the Afghan War Diary, but had “remained in the loop” when WikiLeaks and its media partners moved on to publication of the Iraq War Logs.

“The redaction process developed over time. With the Iraq War Logs, WikiLeaks overshot and ended up deleting more things than even the Defense Department did in [in answer to] FOIA requests,” he said.

Goetz, who worked with WikiLeaks and other media partners on a cache of leaked US diplomatic documents, said he did not know of any person suffering harm from the publication of the cables.

“Each media partner would flag documents and pass them to WikiLeaks. There was a regular redaction process,” he said.

Der Spiegel held a conference call with the US Department of State. Officials read the numbers of documents they felt were sensitive, with the understanding that these numbers would be passed to WikiLeaks to redact the documents.

“Of course, we were writing down the documents and quickly looking them up,” said Goetz. “They were giving us an index of the most interesting documents.”