New documentary on WikiLeaks criticized for trivializing issues

Academy Award-winning director Alex Gibney held a special screening for his new documentary, We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks, in Washington, DC, on May 21. Gibney also participated in a question and answer session after the film that was moderated by POLITICO‘s Josh Gerstein.

First, the title reinforces widespread perceptions created by the United States government that the WikiLeaks organization is out to “steal” secrets. Gibney has claimed that the title is “ironic.” Actually, the US government steals secrets. Former NSA director Michael Hayden says this in the film, but this aspect of US government operations takes up only a few seconds of the film. He does not explore how US government agencies are actually the ones engaged in stealing so the “irony” does not come through at all.

The opening of the film charts the rise of WikiLeaks—why editor-in-chief Julian Assange was “obsessed” with secrets, how the organization took on bank corruption in Iceland and who worked together to release the “Collateral Murder” video showing a 2007 Apache helicopter attack that killed two Reuters employees in Iraq. The expansion of the surveillance state after the September 11th attacks and the rise of what William Arkin and Dana Priest explored with their “Top Secret America” project provides a bit of context.