WikiLeaks has informed us how illegal wars are fabricated, how governments are overthrown and violence is used in our name, how we are spied upon through our phones and screens. The true lies of presidents, ambassadors, political candidates, generals, proxies, political fraudsters have been exposed. One by one, these would-be emperors have realized they have no clothes.
It has been an unprecedented public service; above all, it is authentic journalism, whose value can be judged by the degree of apoplexy of the corrupt and their apologists.
For example, in 2016, WikiLeaks published the leaked emails of Hillary Clinton's campaign manager John Podesta, which revealed a direct connection between Clinton, the foundation she shares with her husband and the funding of organized jihadism in the Middle East terrorism.
One email disclosed that Islamic State (ISIS) was bankrolled by the governments of Saudi Arabia and Qatar, from which Clinton accepted huge "donations." Moreover, as US Secretary of State, she approved the world's biggest ever arms sale to her Saudi benefactors, worth more than $80 billion. Thanks to her, US arms sales to the world for use in stricken countries like Yemen doubled.
Revealed by WikiLeaks and published in The New York Times, the Podesta emails triggered a vituperative campaign against editor-in-chief Julian Assange, bereft of evidence. He was an "agent of Russia working to elect Trump"; the nonsensical "Russia-gate" followed. That WikiLeaks had also published more than 800,000 frequently damning documents from Russia was ignored.
On an Australian Broadcasting Corporation program, Four Corners, in 2017, Clinton was interviewed by Sarah Ferguson, who began: "No one could fail to be moved by the pain on your face at [the moment of Donald Trump's inauguration] " Do you remember how visceral it was for you?"
Having established Clinton's visceral suffering, the fawning Ferguson described "Russia's role" and the "damage done personally to you" by Julian Assange.
Clinton replied, "He [Assange] is very clearly a tool of Russian intelligence. And he has done their bidding."
Ferguson said to Clinton, "Lots of people, including in Australia, think that Assange is a martyr of free speech and freedom of information. How would you describe him?"
Again, Clinton was allowed to defame Assange a "nihilist" in the service of "dictators" while Ferguson assured her interviewee she was "the icon of your generation."
There was no mention of a leaked document, revealed by WikiLeaks, called Libya Tick Tock, prepared for Hillary Clinton, which described her as the central figure driving the destruction of the Libyan state in 2011. This resulted in 40,000 deaths, the arrival of ISIS in North Africa and the European refugee and migrant crisis.
For me, this episode of Clinton's interview -- and there are many others -- vividly illustrates the division between false and true journalism. On 24 February, when Julian Assange steps into Woolwich Crown Court, true journalism will be the only crime on trial.
I am sometimes asked why I have championed Assange. For one thing, I like and I admire him. He is a friend with astonishing courage; and he has a finely honed, wicked sense of humor. He is the diametric opposite of the character invented then assassinated by his enemies.
As a reporter in places of upheaval all over the world, I have learned to compare the evidence I have witnessed with the words and actions of those with power. In this way, it is possible to get a sense of how our world is controlled and divided and manipulated, how language and debate are distorted to produce the propaganda of false consciousness.
When we speak about dictatorships, we call this brainwashing: the conquest of minds. It is a truth we rarely apply to our own societies, regardless of the trail of blood that leads back to us and which never dries.
WikiLeaks has exposed this. That is why Assange is in a maximum security prison in London facing concocted political charges in America, and why he has shamed so many of those paid to keep the record straight. Watch these journalists now look for cover as it dawns on them that the American fascists who have come for Assange may come for them, not least those on the Guardian who collaborated with WikiLeaks and won prizes and secured lucrative book and Hollywood deals based on his work, before turning on him.
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