public interest, the paper acted responsibly, and it followed proper journalistic procedures. (The case got its name after Albert Reynolds, the Irish premier, sued the London Sunday Times.) But the Reynolds judgment wasn’t a Get Out of Jail Free card; in some cases the Guardian had still, if necessary, to be able to prove in court the truth of what it had published.
Silvio Berlusconi was a case in point. The cables alleged that the controversial Italian prime minister had profited “personally and handsomely” from a close – the cables said too close – relationship with Vladimir Putin, Russia’s prime minister and former president. But might Berlusconi sue the Guardian in Rome, Phillips wondered? In the event, the Italian papers beat the Guardian to that one, and sprayed the detailed allegations all over the world.
There were further considerations. Responsible journalists normally approach the person they are writing about before publication, giving them the opportunity for comment or even rebuttal. In this case, however, there was a big danger in going too soon. That would reveal the Guardian possessed the cables: the other, alerted party could immediately seek an injunction, on the grounds that the paper was in unlawful possession of confidential documents. A sweeping UK gag order could be disastrous for the Guardian’s journalism: it might scupper their entire cables project.
Phillips, and Jan Thompson, the Guardian’s managing editor, held rambunctious meetings with the battle-scarred Leigh. His objective was to publish the best stories possible. The equally experienced lawyer’s task was to keep the paper out of the courts and the editor out of jail. Leigh proposed what he thought were ingenious solutions to libel problems. Sometimes the lawyer agreed. It was a very fine line. “We were incredibly careful legally, and responsible,” Phillips says. But “legalling” the Guardian’s cable stories was “exhilarating”, she adds. “You got completely sucked in. Suddenly you find yourself becoming an expert on all the world’s governments.” Phillips felt confident in the end. She nevertheless arranged for both a QC and junior barrister to be on stand-by on the evening of the planned cables launch. Legal opponents had been known in the past to wake up British judges, fully prepared to issue gag orders against the Guardian, even in their pyjamas.
There was a final grand conference in London of all the parties on Thursday 11 November to fine-tune the elaborate publication grid of day-by-day cable stories. Assange arrived in the Guardian offices rigged out this time in chief executive style, with a sharp, well-fitting blue suit. His Australian lawyer Jennifer Robinson was by his side. Representatives from Der Spiegel, El Pais, and Le Monde had flown in, together with Ian Fisher, a deputy foreign editor with the New York Times. In contrast to the difficult atmosphere at the last meeting, Assange was a model of bonhomie and charm; Leigh, with whom he had previously had some angry words, decided to be absent with what some suspected to be a case of diplomatic flu. The meeting went surprisingly smoothly.
Afterwards, the partners again headed for dinner in the Rotunda restaurant beneath the Guardian offices. Here, as the journalists sank pints of Pilsner Urquell, Assange confided he was thinking about going to Russia. Russia was an odd choice – especially in the light of soon-to-be-published cables that described it as a “virtual mafia state”. He did not disclose, however, details of the relationship he had privately struck up with WikiLeaks’ new “Russian representative”, the bizarre figure of Israel Shamir.
How much did the US administration know of this planned challenge to their secrets? The journalists assumed the CIA had followed every twist and turn of the project. The US army had certainly been aware that thousands of diplomatic cables had gone astray since the summer, when Private Bradley Manning had been specifically indicted for purloining them. But the Obama administration appeared remarkably unaware of just which cables WikiLeaks and its media partners now had in their possession.
In the week before publication, the state department warned many of its allies about the cables’ embarrassing contents. But they appeared not to know that the leaked cables ceased at the end of February, believing some to be more recent. Rumours circulated that Washington had been unimpressed with David Cameron and Britain’s new coalition government, which took power in May. The US ambassador in London, Louis B Susman, allegedly said as much in a post-election cable. The Americans, it was gathered, had now sheepishly briefed Downing Street about its contents. They were under the impression the leaked cables went up to June 2010, the month of Manning’s arrest.
The Guardian didn’t have that Cameron cable. As a result Cameron survived the WikiLeaks drama relatively unscathed. “We were amazed about how little the US knew about what we were doing,” Katz says. ‘They clearly had no idea which data set we had. They massively over-briefed about what was in the cables.”
The New York Times had decided to forewarn the state department which cables it was intending to use. The Guardian – which worked in Britain under a peculiarly oppressive legal regime – was not going to follow the Americans quite that far. The paper was willing to listen, but was already doing all it could, without official prompting, to protect sensitive human contacts from reprisal, and not to publish irresponsibly.
A few days before the cables’ release, two senior figures from the US embassy in Grosvenor Square called in to the Guardian’s London offices for a chat. This discussion led to a surreal transatlantic telephone call on Friday 26 November – two days before D-Day. Rusbridger had agreed to ring Washington. He made the conference call from the circular table in his office. On the line in Washington was PJ Crowley, the US assistant secretary of state for public affairs. The conversation began:
“OK, here’s PJ Crowley. I just want you to know in this phone call we’ve got secretary of state Clinton’s private secretary, we have representatives of the DoD, the intelligence communities, and the National Security Council.”
All Rusbridger could offer in reply was, “We have our managing editor here …”
Crowley then set out how the cable scandal looked from the lofty heights of US power: “Obviously, from our perspective these are stolen documents. They reveal sensitive military secrets and addresses that expose people to security risks.”
Crowley made his pitch. He said the US government was “willing to help” the Guardian if the newspaper was prepared to “share the documents” it had – in other words, tip off the state department which cables it intended to publish. Rusbridger was non-committal. He said: “I don’t think we are going to agree on that now, so why don’t we return later to that.”
Crowley said some special forces operations and dealings with some countries were sensitive. He then asked for a pause. He came back a couple of minutes later: “Mr Rusbridger, we don’t feel this conversation is working for us because at the moment we are just giving a lot of stories, and we are not getting a lot in return.”
Clinton’s private secretary chipped in. She said: “I’ve got a very direct question for you, Mr Rusbridger. You journalists like asking direct questions and I know you expect direct answers. So I’m going to ask you a direct question. Are you going to give us the numbers of the cables or not?”
