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Chapter 1: What led to Annie's recruitment into MI5?
When we think of whistleblowers who have risked their lives and their freedom in the pursuit of keeping those in power accountable for their actions, I think one name will stand at the forefront of most. Australian-born Julian Assange.
We publish CIA reports all the time that are legitimate CIA reports. That doesn't mean the CIA is telling the truth.
Who founded the now infamous WikiLeaks in 2006. He would gain worldwide attention in 2010 when WikiLeaks would publish a series of leaks from US Army intelligence of footage from airstrikes conducted by US Apache helicopters in 2007 during the Iraq insurgency. These airstrikes would claim the lives of several people, including two journalists and civilians.
The crews can be heard laughing about some of the casualties.
Come on, fire!
Keep shooting. God damn it, Kyle. Oh, yeah. Look at that. Right through the windshield.
Hey, I need to get the brass to drop ramps. I got a wounded girl. We need to take the rough to mine. Oh, it's their fault for bringing their kids to battle. That's right.
In November of 2010, Sweden would issue an arrest warrant for Assange for questioning in an ongoing investigation. After losing his appeal against the warrant, he would breach bail and take refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
A security camera shows the rooms inside the Ecuadorian embassy where the WikiLeaks founder languished under diplomatic protection and therefore immunity from arrest.
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Chapter 2: How did Annie and David become whistleblowers?
On July 26, 1994, on a sunny day in London, a smartly dressed woman, said to be of Mediterranean appearance, would drive a grey Audi through police checkpoints at Kensington Gardens, London's main diplomatic quarter. She would park the vehicle next to the Israeli embassy.
She was quickly picked up by security surveillance and a policeman from the Diplomatic Protection Corps was sent to investigate. She would tell the officer she was visiting the flats next door but was first going to buy some cigarettes down the high street. A few moments after she vanished from sight, the bomb exploded.
Mr Minister, do you have just one comment at all on this London bombing? I haven't got many details.
I have the details. It was a car bomb and apparently one of our employees at the embassy warned the police.
so happily nobody seems to be hurt.
Witnesses would say they saw debris rise 100 feet above the trees. 13 people were injured, but luckily no one was killed. A second bomb would go off five miles north shortly after midnight. In January of 1995, six Palestinians would be arrested. Only two would be convicted for conspiring to cause explosions and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
According to Annie and David, MI5 possessed information that was never released to the defence, which they believe would have likely changed the verdict of the jury. The two men, who have always maintained their innocence, would end up serving 15 years each in prison.
However, the final case, the one that broke the camel's back, so to speak, the one that made them resign, was a failed assassination attempt.
You've spoken as well in the past about the Gaddafi, the failed assassination attempt is another situation that was involving the MI5. You say that someone, I can't remember the term you used, but an off-the-street person came in to suggest that they would like to get rid of Gaddafi, essentially. So this guy was walking to the Tunisian embassy in 1995, I think it was.
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Chapter 3: What controversies surrounded Julian Assange and WikiLeaks?
I was particularly concerned about the implications for our family and our friends. And I was right to be. It was a fallout afterwards, Jesus.
um and it took a while for the whole thing to build up anyway because david had to start a conversation with a journalist and then there was a sort of very long courtship between the journalist and him because the journalist thought it might be an mi5 sting type story and david thought he might get shot so that took a few months too which of course ramped up the tension but he kept me pretty much out of that sleep because he wanted to protect me so the less i knew the less vulnerable i'd be
Actually, I was going to ask the question. I thought, no, it's a stupid question. But then you mentioned there that David was concerned that he could get shot. Did you genuinely fear for your lives with what you were doing? Yes. At certain points, we did. And we were right to because there were certain instances where our lives were definitely at risk. It's ridiculous.
I'm not saying MI5 or MI6 were out gunning for us, but there were other situations where people People wanted information. And I suppose MI5 and MI6 probably would have known if there was something going on against you, but it wouldn't have been any loss to them if anything happened to you guys.
Exactly. I mean, this is the ultimate irony.
If you're working on the inside and you're running an operation, no matter how tricky it is or how dangerous it is, often as the officer running the operation, you're the most protected person there. So you are very little at risk. As soon as, of course, you step outside the organisation...
Leaving, however, was not a case of simply drop everything and run. It would take around eight months before David and Annie would leave the country, and in that time they spent their lives watching everything they did and everything they said, especially in the confines of their own homes.
Did you guys resign once David had already built this relationship with a journalist who was like, okay, yeah, great, let's run this story. And that's when you resigned. So you had to keep up sort of appearances while this was going on, this courtship was going on?
As far as I know, he had made early contact at that point. But beyond that, I know nothing.
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Chapter 4: What ethical concerns did Annie and David have about MI5's operations?
And he had to go into the newspaper and do all the debriefing and write the stories and all that sort of stuff. in those days. So I was left with the happy task of trying to organise the exfiltration out of the UK, which I did. But it was tricky. It was a lot of running around London using, you know, red call boxes and taxis and things. Did you have a plan of where you were headed?
It was a tricky one because it was a huge bank holiday weekend and I think I got about the last two tickets out of London on a flight. We had to fly out on a very, very early morning flight to Amsterdam and David and I met in a crappy hotel near Heathrow that evening before. I set about four alarm clocks to make sure we got the flight
I remember as well when we were sitting in the plane and the tires left the tarmac. It was like, thank God we're out of the country. Now we just have to get through the security at the other end in Amsterdam.
Welcome to Amsterdam. The local time is approaching 5.45 p.m. Keep your seatbelt fastened or remain seated until the seatbelt sign is switched off. Doors are open and you're invited to disembark. So we landed there and then we went on the run all the way around these strange little towns in the Netherlands.
And then we hightailed all the way down to the far southwest of France, then across France and Spain, all the rest of it. So it was a month of literally being on the run. And we knew we were being hunted by the secret police, Special Branch, and also by my five. So it was a very surreal experience. GameCube pretend poacher, I suppose is the phrase.
The Metropolitan Police's special branch in the UK was a unit formed in 1883. It was tasked with combating the rising threat of Irish Republican terrorism. Over the years, this unit was tasked with many aspects of counter-terrorism and undercover infiltrations into organised crime groups as well as trade unions.
It would later become the executive arm of MI5 in dealing with espionage cases and, of course, tracking Annie and David.
You worked in that organization and you know the taxes that are used to find someone. So I suppose in a way that gives you an upper hand in knowing what to do and what not to do. So what was your main, you know, okay, we cannot do this, we cannot do that, you know, I'm assuming no credit cards.
No, absolutely. No ATMs, all that sort of stuff.
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Chapter 5: What illegal activities did MI5 engage in according to Annie?
And the first of the initial articles based on the leaked documents that he supplied was published on June 5th. On the 23rd of the same month, Edward travelled to Russia from Tokyo, where he'd been when the articles were published, with a plan to continue on to Cuba. However, the US would cancel his passport in an attempt, he says, to make him look like a Russian spy.
Edward would apply for asylum in over 20 countries, four of which would offer him permanent asylum. However, there were no direct flights to any of these countries from Moscow, and with the US pressuring countries along the flight path to detain him, he would decide to seek asylum in Russia.
Edward Snowden would manage to avoid being arrested by authorities and made his way to a country with no extradition treaty with the United States. Annie and David, however, were running around Europe, countries where their former colleagues could most certainly follow them.
Even then it was hard enough because we knew all the techniques. And because it had created such a big scandal, we knew we were high targets, high value targets.
So it sounds crap to say that. It's almost like self-aggrandizing because they were after us, but they really were. We caused such a huge amount of embarrassment. Did you have any moments where you felt like you may get caught at any stage?
Yes. The first one. Being very early on, actually, because we went on the run on, I think, Saturday the 24th.
And David did his first big media interview on the Monday. It was Newsnight, which is a big BBC flagship news programme. And they came over and we rendezvoused with them in Amsterdam at the Posh Hotel. And...
The guy who did the interview, I think, of course, ratted us out and said, this is where they are. So the next morning, very early, I was like, up, up, up. We've got to go. We've got to go. Flap, flap, flap. And Dave was saying, oh, no, they won't find us quickly. And from what I heard afterwards, they got within an hour of us. So it's just like, we've got to go. We've got to go. Go now.
Sort of thing.
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Chapter 6: How did Annie and David's actions impact their personal lives?
This is old 90s text. I mean, it was just more work intensive, but yeah, it's much worse now.
So Annie and David had a plan. The plan was to create enough of a media storm to create change, to make people ask questions and want answers. The problem was they needed the media in which to do this. Little did they know they were just days away from a news story breaking that would not only take over the British media, but the world media.
What we had planned was the idea that we'd create a bit of a scandal and therefore there would be a certain reaction, which would be let's gag David Shaler and let's gag the media to make sure further revelations can't come out. And we thought that would be good. And that's what happened in the first week, which was great.
Because then, of course, the national media comes out saying, you can't gag us with the free British press. And then Princess Diana died a week after we went public in that horrible accident in Paris, which wiped out any other news story. So we were just, yeah, we just found ourselves lost.
So we lost that media support in terms of pushing for an inquiry, pushing for a reform of what the spies were doing. That was our game plan. And so we found ourselves sort of lost in France.
Now, Annie and David faced the decision of what to do next. And it would be Annie who would initially head home first, knowing full well she would be arrested. In fact, she would hand herself in. And she could also be facing a lengthy prison sentence.
I had always intended to because we left with such a bank, you know.
None of our family, none of our friends had any warning. So the first they all found out was the front pages of newspapers and newspapers. Each of them had some particular horror story about how they reacted to that. So I always knew I'd have to go back. But at that point, I was just the girlfriend.
And I flew back voluntarily, accompanied by my lawyer, who was the head of Liberty, a lovely man called John Wadham. Liberty is like the ACLU in the US. And I turned myself in. So I got arrested. I got threatened. I was interviewed for hours, booked. couldn't say anything, and was held on police bail for six months.
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Chapter 7: What challenges did they face while on the run?
So instead of getting two years or 13 months, whatever the judge was planning, he got six months. I find that fascinating that they even bother having a jury trial when they don't allow any defence. It's like, what is the point? It's almost, it's laughable. It's like, we're going to have a jury trial here and put you on trial, but you've got no defence, so.
I think I suppose justice has to be seen to be done, even if it's not done. That's the key point. But yeah, it was incredibly hard to go through that. I mean, six weeks. For some strange reason, I was allowed down in the well of the court. I mean, you think about your stereotype It's all going to be paneling and galleries and judges and wigs and all that sort of crap. And it was.
So it's all designed for a sort of theatre. And strangely, I was allowed down in the well of the court, sitting just behind Dave and his team, which is unexpected. And right next to me were the benches containing the MI5 officers.
They're looking at me sideways, you know, all the way through six weeks of trial. It's horrible. I'm glad to be out of prison, but I shouldn't have had to spend four months in prison for criticizing MI5. This is a very happy day for me in civil liberties and a very sad one, an embarrassing one for MI5 and the government. You spent a number of years paranoid and, you know, being followed.
It must have affected you psychologically.
Are you saying I'm nuts?
You'd have to be, surely. I mean, you've been on the run for years. Your phones were tapped. It was terrifying. MI5 take you at any minute. I mean, it must affect you, surely, Annie.
Of course it does, yes.
And after David had paid his debt to society, he was a free man in 2003. I mean, both of us sort of came out of what had been seven years of this whistleblowing bloody case.
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Chapter 8: What lessons can be learned from Annie and David's experiences?
What you don't necessarily realize is that the monolithic sort of bureaucracy will grind on and on and on. Whereas you're only one person or two people or whatever, a few people or activists, an activist group. So it's very difficult to try and keep going or try and find new people who take it forward and keep going. to make that change. I don't want to sound overly pessimistic.
I think you can shift the discussion and the awareness and you can form the ongoing and future debates, which is what I still try and do. But in terms of creating a bit of a scandal and having a big change, that didn't happen. And I'm really regretful of that.
And what I find very distressing is, of course, what's happening with the new updated proposed Official Secrets Act, because that's going to get worse and make it harder to What I found very interesting, though, I mean, I used to write and speak, I've very often spoken about the whole Wikileaks case. Julian Assange is not a whistleblower.
He's a high-tech publisher and an award-winning journalist, by the way. And Australia should be defending him.
But so then we had the Snowden stuff. I mean, he was the one who rescued Snowden from Hong Kong. And that's even a decade ago.
And then, weirdly, we had the Tehera case, you know, the guy, military guy in America that was releasing information a couple of weeks ago, who's been arrested. And he was just confirming all sorts of horrors that the American government is still doing and war crimes and all that sort of thing. But he was using not the old mainstream media and not Wikileaks.
He was using social media to spread the word. Not obvious open social media, but I think it was Discord it started out and then it started tweeting. So there are evolutions and various ways that people on the inside can get information out. But the risk is still the same.
So the fact that despite all the hideous previous examples, Snowden came out straight after the Chelsea Manning case and knew the risks and still did what he did. Others have come out immediately after other hideous whistleblowing cases and the penalties faced. And people still will do it.
There is a drive for freedom and a drive for human rights, I think, in most decent people that we all need to remember. And if people...
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