Reykjavík Grapevine - 22.03.2019, Blaðsíða 16

16 The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 04— 2019
“When you've had
people shouting at you
from all corners of
the political spectrum
then you're probably
doing your job right.”
The wake of the financial crash
would end up introducing Kristinn to
Wikileaks, in part due to a data dump
the site made that vindicated a story
Kristinn had been working on about
Robert Tchenguiz, a financier who was
deeply involved with the failed Kaupth-
ing bank. In fact, the legal blowback to
the Tchenguiz story is what began to
sour Kristinn’s taste for journalism.
This started in January 2009,
when Kristinn received informa-
tion on Tchenguiz’s borrowing in the
days before Iceland’s collapse, which
included offshore accounts in tax shel-
ters. While Kompás shuttered its doors
early in the year for financial reasons,
the story was picked up by Kastljós,
RÚV’s roundtable news discussion
show. This, however, sparked an inves-
tigation of Kristinn having possibly
broken the bank secrecy act, the same
legislation which nearly ten years later
would be used to attempt to silence the
magazine Stundin’s coverage of the
pre-crash money dealings of Minister
of Finance Bjarni Benediktsson. The
injunction against Kristinn’s reporting
would end up falling apart in autumn
2009, but it had a lasting effect on him.
"My taste for the profession had
been souring for quite a bit in light
of all this,” he recalls. “It was quite a
revelation then when in the begin-
ning of August 2009 when I was work-
ing at RÚV again, I was given a tip to
check out this site called Wikileaks.
I had never heard of it before. But lo
and behold, but there was the entire
Kaupthing loan book, with the inter-
nal evaluation a few days before the
banking crisis." Robert Tchenguiz so
happened to be in this leak. This led to
"this bizarre episode in Icelandic jour-
nalism" when the Kaupthing resolu-
tion committee sought an injunction
against RÚV reporting on what was in
the Wikileaks loan book dump. "I was
amazed. I got confirmation of the loan
book's authenticity very easily." He had
sent the leak out in a pdf to a number
of business insiders. "Within minutes,
I got a call back of someone asking me,
'Where the hell did you get this?', and
I was like, 'Well, thanks for confirm-
ing.'" Kristinn laughs. "It was incred-
ible. I had been working for months to
get information on this individual, and
there it was, all of it."
Wikileaks appealed to Kristinn’s
journalistic sensibilities. "This was
something that was adding to the
transparency,” he says. “It was legally
difficult to stop. On that basis, I sought
out Julian [Assange]. He was invited to
Iceland in the autumn of 2009. We met,
befriended, and that led to my involve-
ment."
THE GAME-CHANGER
2010 was a banner year for Wikileaks.
Leaks such as Collateral Murder, the
Afghan war diary, a similar report
from Iraq, and the Cablegate leaks
were all highlights of the organisation
and would put them at the forefront of
international headlines. The impor-
tance of this work cannot be over-
stated.
"In journalism, Wikileaks did two
things,” Kristinn says. “First, it showed
the power of huge leaks of this nature,
and that you can really move things by
exposing many aspects of corruption
and war crimes. Second, we pooled
together resources of the mainstream
media. We demanded that people work
together, which was often difficult."
The organisation created a media alli-
ance with hundreds of outlets around
the world. "It laid the groundwork
for the [International Consortium
of Investigative Journalists’ (ICIJ)]
cooperation on the Panama Papers,
for example. This also inspired other
whistleblowers. Edward Snowden has
confirmed that if it hadn't been for
those leaks in 2010, there would not
have been Snowden leaks later on."
This work, though, has not been
without criticism, neither about
Wikileaks or its founder, Julian
Assange. One of the most prominent
criticisms about Wikileaks is that they
dump files without making any redac-
tions. There is no filter to the informa-
tion Wikileaks might post, prompting
what Kristinn describes as “counter-
spin,” most prevalent after the Collat-
eral Murder leak: that the release of
unfiltered information could put inno-
cent lives at risk. Kristinn isn’t having
it.
“It was quite extraordinary to see
the Joint Chief of Staff on television,
almost in tears over the supposed
dangers, saying that Wikileaks could
already have blood on their hands for
releasing this information,” he says.
“But this hasn't materialised. Infor-
mation is never neutral. It can have
adverse effects to some degree. Every
journalist knows that. But to this day,
there has not been a single incident
from this biggest leak in military
history exposing all these internal
secrets of the most powerful mili-
tary machine in the world. No harm
has befallen anyone; no one has lost
their lives. I'm pretty sure we would
have heard about it if that would have
happened. This was confirmed during
the Chelsea Manning trial of 2013 by
the Pentagon officials—the leak had
not caused harm.”
Ultimately, the ethos of Wikileaks
is fairly simple: everything should be
in the public domain except sensitive
personal information. "Transparency
should be the norm, and exceptions
from transparency should be very
few and must be justified,” Kristinn
explains. “All freedom of information
laws were based on that principle, but
for some reason it doesn't seep in.
We're still fighting this endless war
against secrecy."
ON ASSANGE
Beyond Wikileaks, Assange is also a
polarising figure, and many people put
off by Wikileaks are so because of him.
Kristinn addresses the criticisms of
Assange directly.
"Well, the Swedish case was
dropped,” Kristinn says, referring to
the sexual assault allegations made
against Assange. “This is something
we maintained for a very long time
was very spurious, in how it was being
pushed. We got confirmation of that,
through a FOIA request by an Italian
journalist, Stefania Maurizi. There we
saw email exchanges from Sweden
showing that Swedish authorities
were not pursuing the case; they were
actually being directed by the Crown
Prosecution Service in London telling
[Swedish authorities] not to give up
and to keep the pressure on. All this is
in the public domain now. The Swedes
were ready to drop the case years
before they eventually did.”
Kristinn believes the Swedish case
was, in part, an extension of a great
campaign against Wikileaks. "We also
knew early on that a grand jury inves-
tigation against Wikileaks had started,
in early 2010, because of the leaks that
year, and it has continued for almost
a decade now," he says, adding that
this investigation has been renewed
repeatedly. "Unparalleled in scope and
nature. Years ago we heard the docu-
ments gathered for the investigation
exceeded 40,000. We've always known
that this was ongoing and brewing.
We were called conspiracy theorists
because of that, ridiculed for main-
taining that there was a real danger
of extradition to the US. Until the
confirmation came a few months ago,
inadvertently and by mistake, that
an indictment against Julian is ready
and sealed, along with an extradition
request to the US."
WIKILEAKS,
RUSSIANS, AND THE
2016 ELECTIONS
Wikileaks also caught plenty of flack
for the Democratic National Commit-
tee emails leak, which started in June
2016. Critics have contended that the
leak was the work of Russian hack-
ers, working at the behest of Donald
Trump’s campaign team, and that
figures such as Roger Stone and Paul
Manafort allegedly either speaking
with or meeting Assange underscores
a conspiracy to steal the election from
Hillary Clinton, with Wikileak’s collu-
sion. Kristinn addresses these charges
in a systematic fashion.
"What people are missing about
this story is the core principle here,”
Kristinn says. “That journalists are
supposed to publish materials on
politicians, and especially candidates
prior to election. That's the role of
journalists; that's why it's called the
fourth estate. It's totally amazing
that even journalists are telling me,
'You shouldn't have published [the
emails] before the election.' Are we
not supposed to inform the elector-
ate about the candidates? Isn't that
your job? If you have internal infor-
mation about a candidate or a party,
it's your duty. It would be a journalis-
tic crime to withhold it. Then I heard
'You should have waited until you had
something on Trump so that you could
be balanced.' But it doesn't work that
way. The DNC emails had information
that was newsworthy, and definitely
it should have been published prior
to the election, and that's the end of
it. It doesn't really matter where it
came from. It's not the concern of the
journalist to disregard information
because it comes from some source
that might have an agenda. You always
have to evaluate the information that
is in front of you. Is it in the public
interest to publish it? It's a no-brainer:
either it is, or it isn't."
Kristinn believes that rather than
blame Wikileaks, the DNC should
instead do some soul searching.
“The DNC wants to maintain [the
email leak] had an effect, to try and
brush over the humiliation of their
defeat in the electoral college,” he says.
“The Democratic Party just needs to
come to terms with the fact that Hill-
ary Clinton was not a charismatic
candidate that people were excited
about. Of course, it's a hard thing to
swallow, but it's a necessary thing to do
if the Democratic Party wants to come
to terms with this and try to move
forward. I haven't seen any discussion
within their ranks about how it's possi-
ble you could win the popular vote and
still lose the election. For us who have
a hard time understanding the elec-
toral college, when you get an instant
like that, it should call for introspec-
tion and that the system needs to be
changed. It's a very serious situation
that demands examination.
"In the general scheme of things, is
the country that came to be the bastion
of democracy in the world going to
accept and acknowledge that a few
dozen rogue trolls in Saint Petersburg
can actually upset the entire process,
working on a budget that is basically
a fraction of what is spent on the elec-
tion?,” he asks. “That would actually be
an admittance of an extreme weakness
of the system, I would say.”
ON ROGER STONE,
PAUL MANAFORT AND
CHELSEA MANNING
"It's rather pathetic how people are
trying to connect the dots about
some kind of collaboration" between
Team Trump and Wikileaks, Kris-
tinn says, citing the fact that early on,
Assange broke from past precedent
and disclosed that the DNC email leak
source was a non-state actor. "I think it
was a sort of clearing of the air. If you
look at what has happened since, with
the Mueller investigation, nothing has
emerged that changes what I've said."
Roger Stone, a lifelong weasel of the
Republican Party who was an advisor
to the Trump campaign, has gone on
record saying he spoke with Assange.
This was also brought up in the testi-
mony being given by former Trump
lawyer Michael Cohen.
“If you read through [Stone’s indict-
ment], and it's only 23 pages long, it's
basically a confirmation that there
was no communication between Roger
Stone and Julian Assange,” Kristinn
says. “Stone claimed that there had
been. He was trying to elevate his posi-
tion. He's a player in that circle. It's
Roger Stone.” In fact, Kristinn says,