Secret Power: Wikileaks and Its Enemies w/ Stefania Maurizi

On this edition of Parallax Views, Stefania Maurizi, an investigative journalist reporting for Italy's Il Fatto Quotidiano who has dedicated a large portion of her career to covering Julian Assange and Wikileaks, joins us to discuss her book Secret Power: Wikileaks and Its Enemies. The book details how Wikileaks related to the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq as part of the War on Terror, diplomatic cables, the War on Terror, CIA cyberweapons, and more as well as the story of Julian Assange and his eventual imprisonment at Belmarsh Prison.

In this conversation Stefania and I discussed:

- How Wikileaks first came under Stefania's journalistic radar in 2008

- Cryptography, protected communications, and journalistic source protection in the age of mass surveillance; PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) encryption

- Wikileaks publication of a manual relevant to the question of torture at the U.S.'s Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp during the War on Terror; the Pentagon vs. Wikileaks

- Stefania's first contact with Julian Assange

- The Wikileaks documents on Julius Baer, a Swiss bank alleged to have been involved in money laundering activities; how big financial institutions try to pressure news and media

- Wikileaks and the Vault 7 documents about CIA cyberweapons; these documents detailed how the CIA was using software vulnerabilities to access smart TV, cars, phones, etc.; the CIA, Weeping Angel, and the hacking of TVs; a bit of the inside story of how Stefania covered the Vault 7 story, the fears she had covering the story, and the cautions she took while reporting on it; Mike Pompeo and the CIA's response to the Vault 7 documents; the alleged leaker of the Vault 7 documents, Joshua Schulte

- Wikileaks and the public interest

- Stefania discusses the Julian Assange she knows based on her years of experience with him

- Stefania addresses the criticisms of Julian Assange and Wikileaks; the accusation that Wikileaks put lives in danger through its leaks; the rape allegations against Assange; accusations of Assange and Wikileaks being in bed with Russian and Donald Trump

- State criminality, war crimes, and the persecution of whistleblowers

- Stefania discusses her response to people that ask her if "Assange will be killed"; she argues in many ways Assange has already been "killed" in terms of the deterioration of his mental and physical well-being during his imprisonment

- Wikileaks, democracy, and the freedom of the press

- Assange, Chelsea Manning, the FBI informant Siggi hakkari (aka Siggi the Hacker aka Sigurdur Ingi Thordarson), and the password cracking/hacking charges against Assange

- What Stefania sees as the stakes of the Julian Assange extradition case; the CIA and extraordinary rendition; Stefania's belief that Assange has no change of a fair trial in the U.S. and that his extradition would open a Pandora's box that'd have a chilling effect on freedom of the press in the U.S. and other countries as well as

- Comparing and contrasting the Assange case to that of Daniel Ellsberg, who famously leaked the Vietnam War-era Pentagon Papers and was targeted by the Richard Nixon administration

- The story of how Assange was targeted by the late, deep pocketed GOP megadonor Sheldon Adelson's security firm UC Global; the investigation in Spain regarding UC Global

- Stefania's story of being spied on and targeted while covering Julian Assange and Wikileaks; The Crown Prosecution Service and the destruction of crucial documents on the Julian Assange case

- And more!