The man who blew the whistle on WikiLeaks

Daniel Domscheit-Berg spent four years working with Julian Assange on the controversial website WikiLeaks. But now that the two have fallen out, he has set up a rival organisation and become 'the whistleblower on the whistleblowers', he tells BRIAN BOYD

‘DANIEL SCHMITT” may not have the ubiquitous media profile of Julian Assange, but for three years he was Assange’s righthand man, the official WikiLeaks press spokesman and widely regarded as the second-in-command at the whistleblowing organisation.

“WikiLeaks worked so well because I am quite conservative and grounded whereas Julian is more extreme in his working methods – we balanced each other out perfectly,” says the 32-year-old German IT specialist and activist, who now uses his real name, Daniel Domscheit-Berg.

Berg and Assange worked closely together and Berg regarded the pair as good friends. Last year, however, Assange suspected someone inside WikiLeaks was giving personal information about him to Newsweekmagazine. Berg claims Assange suspected him. Leaked internal messages from WikiLeaks, which have now been made public, show a heated exchange between the two men with Berg writing that Assange was behaving "like an emperor or a slave trader".

Assange writes back: “You are suspended for one month – effective immediately.”

“He was acting as if WikiLeaks was his baby and his baby alone, which is isn’t,” says Berg.

When Berg left the organisation last year and announced plans to set up a rival organisation – “OpenLeaks” – he claims Assange traduced him in the press.

“He never reacted well to criticism and when I began to criticise his role in WikiLeaks, he began to publicly question my motivation,” says Berg.

Oddly, however, an online search for information about the pair reveals hundreds of examples of Berg criticising Assange, and scant evidence of the remarks Berg alleges Assange made about him.

“He was also distorting the truth about why I left,” says Berg. “He said that he was the boss and that he fired me. But there never were any such roles as a ‘boss’ in WikiLeaks. Because WikiLeaks has become such a big story I wanted to set the record straight for history. I had to get my perspective out there.”

In Berg's book, Inside WikiLeaks – My Time with Julian Assange At The World's Most Dangerous Website, explains "why I felt I had to leave WikiLeaks and detail the financial, ethical and personal problems I had with the organisation. I feel there has been an abandonment of political neutrality and a lack of transparency within WikiLeaks and that there is too much concentration of power in Assange."

Assange comes across as flamboyant and dramatic as Assange in his public statements, whereas Berg is a fastidious and circumspect individual. He selects his words carefully. At one stage, he uses the word “dodgy” to describe Assange, but then apologies for using an inaccurate term.

Like many who were on the central nine-person board of WikiLeaks, he is ideologically motivated: “For the first time ever we are now in a position where ordinary citizens can have a real impact on a global level – and I’m not just talking about how if I buy a pair of trainers, I can find out if they were made by children in Asia,” says Berg. “But at the same time as the world has become a more globalised place, it has become more complex and political, and economic bodies are using the complexity that now exists in global structures to cover information up.”

He was enthused by how WikiLeaks was able to leak classified information which many felt to be in the public interest, but believes there was a change of emphasis in the organisation’s work after it published such extensive material about US actions in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As more and more information flooded into WikiLeaks from all corners of the world, he felt Assange was “editing” the material – and focusing on the US administration, to the detriment of other stories.

“Julian didn’t use WikiLeaks as a neutral tool; he released only the information that he felt he could handle. While it is true that the US and China are the only remaining superpowers and the US is involved in most of the violent conflicts taking place around the world and as such should be put under public scrutiny, there was also all this information we had about corrupt third world countries,” he says.

In this sense Berg felt that WikiLeaks’ sense of political neutrality had been compromised. He also had questions about how the site was being funded, but claims he never got a satisfactory answer. “We were funded by private donations – everyone knows that – but a lot of money used to run the site also came from Julian’s bank account in Australia. We all asked him about this account, where the money in it was coming from. But he refused to tell us and refused to share any information about the Australian account,” he says. “I have nothing to hide about my finances – why was he doing this? There was a responsibility that came with all the information we received but he couldn’t answer the most basic question about our funding.”

BERG BELIEVES A "cult of personality" began to grow around Assange from the time he was being mentioned as a contender for Timemagazine's Person Of The Year. "The media wanted a face for WikiLeaks and he became just that," he says. "But the values that Julian enforces on everyone else he has not created within WikiLeaks. This is the big irony – there is no transparency within WikiLeaks."

A number of ex-WikiLeaks operatives have now “defected” to OpenLeaks – a newer generation of whistleblowing site that is currently live but doesn’t expect to make any information available until later this year. Berg is the public contact for OpenLeaks.

Whereas WikiLeaks was a suppository for leaked information (thus leaving its members exposed to legal action), OpenLeaks will not accept or publish documents on its own platform. Berg says the platform will not edit or release leaked documents but instead will act as a conduit between the “whistleblower” and the organisation of disclosure of their choice.

"OpenLeaks will work in conjunction with NGOs, labour unions and selected media outlets," he says. "For example, if you come across evidence of corruption in Dublin and The Irish Timesis a media outlet for OpenLeaks, there will be a link on the newspaper's homepage which will allow you to submit the information, and then it is up to the media outlet to publish or not publish. This will mean less information being transmitted by email, and the one thing I learned from my time at WikiLeaks is the less emails the better."

It is envisaged the same “click through” method will also be used by individuals who wish to disclose their information to trade unions or NGOs.

OpenLeaks will be a "complementary project" to WikiLeaks and in a recent statement, the site said it would be "democratically governed by all its members rather than limited to one group or individual". There was always disquiet within WikiLeaks that Assange had "favourites" in the media who would get leaked information first – namely the Guardianand the New York Times. (Both newspapers have since fallen out with Assange).

Berg says by publishing his book he knows he will become known as the whistleblower on the whistleblowers. “I just wanted the truth about what happened to be known.”

If he met Assange on the street tomorrow what would he say to him? “I’d have nothing to say to him – but an apology would be nice”.

Inside WikiLeaks: My Time with Julian Assange At The World's Most Dangerous Websiteby Daniel Domscheit-Berg is published by Jonathan Cape on February 15th