Leaks Unplugged

The first casualty of war is always the truth. This seemingly innocuous statement packs a vicious sting in itself. And for the US government,the ‘truth’ about its ‘war’ campaign in Iraq became the biggest public embarrassment to date after incriminating documents from Wikileaks,an international non-profit organisation,were splashed across the world last year. The one-hour programme tracks the origins of Wikileaks to its current unraveling of conspiracies. It investigates the motives behind work done by one of the founders,Julian Assange and whether the people associated with this whistle-blowing group are modern day ‘Robin Hoods’ or just plain ‘irresponsible hackers’ in search of fame. By following the functioning of the operators of this website from their nondescript shelters across the world,one understands how they were able to expose the biggest political cover-ups about the current war crisis in the Middle-East.

Directed by French investigative reporters,Paul Moreira and Luc

Hermann,the film looks into the myths and mysteries associated with some of the revelations by the website. It shows how the huge packets of data were analysed with the help of senior journalists from international dailies like The New York Times and Guardian.

Who’s in it?

Besides extensive interviews with Assange,the one-off special show reveals the contributions of his right-hand man,Daniel Domscheit-Berg,an experienced hacker pivotal to the exposes. Starting with the site’s first expose of the killing of innocent Iraqi civilians and journalists in an unprovoked air strike by US Apache helicopters in 2007 through a video that went viral online,the show gets a first hand account of the sequence of events from one of the US soldiers on duty that day. The programme is structured to include all the major exposes by the organisation and reveals their back stories.

What’s hot?

Besides showing some of the known exposes,one gains an understanding of how Wikileaks is financed and how none of the employees receive salaries. There are also internal differences between the sites co-founders which are brought to light,especially after one of the founders begins hogging all the attention. One great attraction is the sneak-peak into the secret offices of Wikileaks.

What’s not?

Beyond decoding the known exposes,the show does not give a glimpse into the personal lives of the operators or their associates. It limits itself to the site’s exposes about the US War on Iraq and does not include other relevant stories like the recent furore over the Swiss bank accounts with Indians on the list.

Should you be watching it?

It is a must-watch to understand how a small set-up was able to bring the most powerful nation,the USA,to

its knees and set in motion a revolution in cyberspace of more whistleblower sites.