We Steal Secrets: The Story of WikiLeaks

This two hour documentary attempts to tell the story of Wikileaks and does so using TV footage, interviews with government people and former Wikileaks employees and even Adrian Lamo.

Is it a fair documentary? I don't really know. It builds the case against Assange, but it keeps a friendly and supportive view of Wikileaks. It shows that Bradley Manning is practically being tortured under US incarceration, but does its best to describe the boy as an uber-gay mal-adapted geek. It seems to try to be as objective as possible, but does not interview either Assange or Manning and makes them both look like defective weirdos.

My opinion? If this were a politically commanded documentary, then it is a very subtle one, trying to polarize the audience, break any collaboration between Assange and his former employees and fans, even going so far as to show the regret of Adrian Lamo (the guy that ratted out Manning) when he cries on camera, so that he can never be an objective party in the story. This is the usual way official documentaries work, though. They gain power through polarization.

But if this is not a political order, then the documentary doesn't actually say much, other than go through a weak and one sided timeline amongst the various special effects and dramatic music that fill the movie and make it rather boring. At one time I fell asleep while watching it.

Therefore I cannot rate it but below average. I have this fear that the makers of the film were actually trying to show the story and report it accurately, but I fell into the trap of sympathizing with one side or another, but then again, if they wanted objectivity, they should have surfed the middle line, not throw Assange to the wolves.

I found it to be a good documentary but it is not consistent over the 2hrs. It tells the story of Wikileaks & Julian Assange & Peter Manning. But it barely manages to scratch surface of the subjects, does not focus on each subjects properly & switches to something else. In my opinion it would have been great if it focused on one topic say Peter Manning & act of whistle blowing. In the last 10 minutes , 2 guys who were affiliated to Wikileaks talk about whistle blowers. "Whistle blowing is an isolating act. You are doing something which your colleagues and friends won't like you to do or they won't understand. That alienated you further from them. " "In the end everybody is just human, if you are leaking something important to a reporter , something that's really makes a difference, then from a human perspective it is difficult not to get credit for it, no one can tap you on shoulder & say courageous thing you did. & that's the complicated part about it , how do you make sure your source don't compromise themselves" It would have been better if more insight into mind of whistle blower was given to us. That would be something which I have n't seen, (except in The Insider (1999), which is a masterpiece). The interviewees could tell more about how the delicacy of the whole process of getting some classified information, protecting the source of information. The whole material of the documentary, with proper story telling can make a very good movie, but not an excellent documentary. I believe documentaries are supposed to be about insight into something & draw some conclusion. It does provide us with lot of information but less insight.

A documentary that details the creation of Julian Assange's controversial website, which facilitated the largest security breach in United States history.

How do you make a documentary on Assange without being political? Even if you try to be neutral, you will inevitably be able to lump interview into two groups: his supporters and his detractors. And he has plenty of both.

For supporters, you can rally around the "Collateral Murder" video and how it shows war in its unvarnished form. Whether or not this video showed a crime or a mistake, it makes us aware of what war is -- something that most of us today will never experience.

Detractors can appreciate how this film not only focuses on Assange's hacking (which is good or bad depending on who you are), but also shows how he is something of a sketchy person, abandoning his children and allegedly assaulting women. And then, he may even have been using Wikileaks funds to pay for his assault defense, which would be wrong.

The documentary also looks closer at Bradley (or Chelsea) Manning than any other source thus far. The e-mails, the access he had and his personal problems. I learned relatively little about Wikileaks from this film, but a good deal on Manning. And for that, I would highly recommend it.

This is a fairly straightforward documentary with some fancy graphic interludes between segments, but some character development that was somewhat surprising. It proceeds primarily chronologically, from an early hacking of NASA & government sites to the establishment of Wikileaks as a self-made depository of accountability and "open source" government. It progresses through the early publishing of government data through the Bradley Manning data provided at the behest of background hacker and the final outing of the State Department cables. I thought the film did a reasonably good job of depicting Assange and his motives, from his early teenage hacking of government sites purely for fun to his firm belief in the right of the public to know what its government is doing behind its back. I had followed some of the developments around 2010-11, but learned a lot more about the background of the other players besides the charismatic and rather self-serving Assange. In particular, a fair amount of time is spent on Manning, including interviews with friends, a superior in his unit, and video and photo clips of him prior to the story breaking. I had known nothing about Adrian Lamo, a mysterious hacker in the background whom Manning confided in anonymously and eventually trusted enough to follow through with recommendations for disclosing the material, only to have Lamo rat him out. Although the popular press had always depicted Manning as simply "apparently gay" the film delves much deeper into his sexual identify conflicts (prior to and during his deployment and throughout the leaking process he struggled with whether to pursue transgender surgery) and marked self-esteem and isolation issues. Assange initially comes across as a quasi-anarchist on a mission to make government accountable, but narcissistic and borderline personality traits become quite apparent as his fame and infamy grow. The "rape" charges are explored, including an interview with one of the two women. What we've heard in the press about one of them being a CIA agent affiliated with Miami/Cuba is blown apart, and (IFF the woman is to be believed) the charge that he had sex and broke a condom but kept going are depicted as true. The woman sounds like she just wants him to admit it. However, the take home message from this film is that everyone may-- or may not-- be lying part or all of the time: Assange, Manning, Lamo, the two purported "rape" victims, and above all governments. Lamo is described in the film as having Asperger's syndrome, but his stilted speech suggests he falls more to the autistic side of the pervasive developmental spectrum. The film succeeds as a character study of the major players even if it does not move in interesting directions or reveal much more than is already known. The saddest aspect is the fate of Manning, whose naiveté is likely to result in a lifetime of torture in a Supermax while the real criminals in the Bush administration remain free.

After viewing We Steal Secrets, you will have a sense that you know Julian Assange and Bradley Manning much better than you could simply by reading mainstream news reports on either one of them.

It's easy to understand why Assange would disapprove of Gibney's portrayal of the Wikileaks founder. Assange is a man with passion, vision and uncommon talent who accomplished something many of us would have considered impossible or at minimum, too daunting. But we now know it changed the dynamics of international relations in very real ways.

Besides his technical brilliance, Assange is possessed of tremendous arrogance. Without it, he most certainly would have been intimidated and stifled well before causing the controversies that made him an overnight rock star of cyberspace.

Bradley Manning -- the movie sheds light on why he did what he did, and HOW he was able to do it, right under the noses of his colleagues and supervisors. In doing so, we come to understand much more about the American military culture in Iraq than even the most devoted news junkie could get from corporate news outlets.

Where other documentaries merely regurgitate what news readers already know, this one goes far beyond.

One criticism I'd make is that the title, We Steal Secrets, is misleading. It is a quote from former CIA director Michael Hayden referring to the US government stealing secrets, NOT Wikileaks.

After a first draft of this review, I read one with incisive insight written by Chris Hedges. He may have had the opportunity to view the movie more than once. Or at least it seems that way given the incredible depth and detail in his surgically precise cutting through producer Alex Gibney's tactics. Why was Assange's human imperfection highlighted. Then, in contrast, former CIA director Michael Hayden's perspective (the American government's point of view), on how the revelation of the documents and videos provided by PFC Manning harmed American interests is taken for granted.

The movie, however, IS the story of Wikileaks, Assange and Manning, and is worth your time. It's longer than most other political documentaries, but will not leave you bored. Then read through Chris Hedges very detailed review.