Julian Assange ‘concerned’ to keep cull names from US cables

A German journalist who collaborated with ­Julian Assange to publish US secrets says the WikiLeaks founder was ‘very concerned’ with minimising harm and removing names.

A Julian Assange supporter outside London’s Old Bailey court ion Monday. Picture: AFP

An award-winning German journalist who collaborated with ­Julian Assange to publish US military and government secrets says the WikiLeaks founder was “very concerned” with minimising harm and removing names from the huge trove of information.

John Goetz took part in a collab­oration between The Guardian, Der Spiegel and the New York Times that liaised with ­Assange and WikiLeaks about publication of documents in 2010 and 2011. Goetz said the unanticip­ated actions of others resulted in the publication of ­unredacted documents against Assange’s wishes.

He told London’s Old Bailey, hearing Assange’s US extradition trial, that in regards to Afghan war logs, there had been co-operation with the White House about the removal of 15,000 documents considered necessary for “harm minimisation’’.

Goetz said it was agreed “the 15,000 documents would not be published … and that’s what happened’’.

He said that during the release of Iraq war logs more information was suppressed by WikiLeaks than what the US Department of Defence redacted in freedom-of-information requests.

Before the newspapers published State Department cables, Goetz said Der Spiegel had a conference call with US officials, includin­g former State Department spokesman PJ Crowley. “They were not pointing us to names in this. They were pointing out things that were politically sensitive,” he said.

“They actually read numbers to us of documents they felt were sensitive, with the understanding that we would give these numbers to WikiLeaks to properly redact the documents. WikiLeaks did ­exactly that when requested.’’

He said the release of unredacted information came about in late 2011 when a member of WikiLeaks left the group and a codeword was published in a book by Guardian journalist David Leigh.

The German publication Der Freitag learned of the codeword and published a story, after which the Cryptome website published the entire dump of information.

“Cryptome published the unredacted cables first, there is no dispute about that. WikiLeaks did the republish,’’ Goetz said.

He said Assange had made “strong attempts’’ to prevent the unredacted material becoming available and that the Australian WikiLeaks founder attempted to warn the State Department.

Assange faces 18 espionage counts and 175 years in jail if he is extradited and convicted in the US. The trial continues.