The WikiLeaks Video That Made Julian Assange a Marked Man

"Collateral Murder," an unedited gun-camera video released by WikiLeaks in 2007, exposed a war crime that US government didn’t want anyone to see.

CC BY-NC: Kirsty Wigglesworth

Seventeen years ago this week, Julian Assange created WikiLeaks.

I didn’t know what to make of WikiLeaks when it was first created in 2006. The United States was still fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan at the time, and Assange—an odd looking fellow who seemed like a bit of a snob—seemed to be doing things that aided the enemy.

But I was having emerging doubts about the War on Terror. Having served briefly in the Bush Administration, I had seen there was a disconnect in what the White House said about these conflicts versus what was actually happening.

I’d eventually reach the dark conclusion that it wasn’t just that these conflicts were built on lies; they were also sustained by lies. I’d also reach the conclusion that Assange was working to expose the lies and the atrocities our government was committing.

One video that opened my mind was "Collateral Murder," an unedited gun-camera video released by WikiLeaks on July 12, 2007, which shows two Reuters journalists and numerous Iraqis killed by fire from an American chopper.

In 2010, the New York Times wrote this about the video:

A senior American military official confirmed that the video was authentic.

Reuters had long pressed for the release of the video, which consists of 38 minutes of black-and-white aerial video and conversations between pilots in two Apache helicopters as they open fire on people on a street in Baghdad. The attack killed 12, among them the Reuters photographer, Namir Noor-Eldeen, 22, and the driver, Saeed Chmagh, 40.

Reuters employees were allowed to view the video on an off-the-record basis two weeks after the killings, but they were not allowed to obtain a copy of it. The news organization said its Freedom of Information Act requests were not approved.

At a news conference at the National Press Club, WikiLeaks said it had acquired the video from whistle-blowers in the military and viewed it after breaking the encryption code. WikiLeaks released the full 38-minute video as well as a 17-minute edited version.

The video, shown below, is terrifying. People can watch for themselves and determine if the strikes were justified or not. I happen to agree with those who say the vast majority of those shot in the initial strike, if not all, were clearly unarmed, and that the second strike was clearly unjustified.

What matters is that that the video was something the US government did not want out there, and they’ve been making Julian Assange’s life a hell ever since, despite the First Amendment.

On Tuesday, Assange’s wife published this message on X:

Julian is 52 now. He was 38 when WikiLeaks published Collateral Murder and was last free. The video shows the US army killing a dozen civilians, including two Reuters employees on assignment and the rescuers who stopped to help the wounded. Reuters formally attempted to obtain the video but the Pentagon refused to hand it over. The evidence of what had happened remained on US military servers until intelligence whistleblower Chelsea Manning sent it to WikiLeaks. Collateral Murder had a massive impact. The millions of dollars that had been poured into Pentagon PR messaging couldn’t make the public unsee the war crime.

Julian Assange is today confined at a prison in London, where he’s been held since April 2019. The United States government is seeking to extradite him, an effort that is being contested by British courts.

He sits there for exposing a war crime that US government didn’t want anyone to see.

“In a sane world, #Assange would not only be freed, but awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom,” one person observed on X.

I agree. #FreeAssange