We Steal Secrets

Director: Alex Gibney

Documentary (2013), 2h 10 min

We steal secrets is a biased view against the Wikileaks endeavor and paints whistle-blowing as a deviant behavior. The film focuses on all the caricatures Julian Assange (the editor in chief of Wikileaks) and admitted source Pfc Bradley Manning (disclosed sensitive military and diplomatic documents to Wikileaks), exaggerates them and adds some new ones. Alex Gibney furnishes a narrative that is not substantiated by known facts. Selective editing of many facts and news is used to create an image which shows Assange and Manning to be criminals. Whereas, legally speaking, a whistle-blower’s motive is irrelevant, as long as a government employee discloses what he or she reasonably believes evidences fraud, waste abuse, illegality, or a danger to public health or safety.

While Gibney presents the documentary as a search for truth about Manning’s motivations and Assange’s duplicity, the truth it actually reveals is that even an enlightened Academy award winning documentarian can be tarnished by the power of the government’s self-serving stereotype of whistle-blowers and the people who support them.

PFC: A position in the army