Press Release - First Letter from Julian Assange to Benedict Cumberbatch Over The Fifth Estate
From WikileaksWednesday 09 October 2013, 15:25 UTC
Today WikiLeaks publishes the first letter from Julian Assange to Benedict Cumberbatch regarding "The Fifth Estate", a Dreamworks movie about WikiLeaks set to open in the UK on Friday 11 Oct, and in the US on Friday 18 Oct. The press release about this letter is here. The letter was sent to Benedict Cumberbatch after he made overtures to contact Julian Assange in January this year, immediately before principal photography commenced.
Date: Tue, 15 Jan 2013
From: Julian Assange
To: Benedict Cumberbatch
Subject: Message from Assange
Dear Benedict,
Thank you for trying to contact me. It is the first approach by anyone from the Dreamworks production to me or WikiLeaks.
My assistants communicated your request to me, and I have given it a lot
of thought and examined your previous work, which I am fond of.
I think I would enjoy meeting you.
The bond that develops between an actor and a living subject is significant.
If the film reaches distribution we will forever be correlated in the
public imagination. Our paths will be forever entwined. Each of us will
be granted standing to comment on the other for many years to come and
others will compare our characters and trajectories.
But I must speak directly.
I hope that you will take such directness as a mark of respect, and not as an unkindness.
I believe you are a good person, but I do not believe that this film is a good film.
I do not believe it is going to be positive for me or the people I care about.
I believe that it is going to be overwhelmingly negative for me and the people I care about.
It is based on a deceitful book by someone who has a vendetta against me and my organisation.
In other circumstances this vendetta may have gone away, but our
conflict with the United States government and the establishment press
has created a patronage and commissioning market – powerful, if
unpopular – for works and comments that are harmful to us.
There are dozens of positive books about WikiLeaks, but Dreamworks decided
to base its script only on the most toxic. So toxic is the first book
selected by Dreamworks that it is distributed to US military bases as a
mechanism to discourage military personnel from communicating with us.
Its author is publicly known to be involved in the Dreamworks production
in an ongoing capacity.
Dreamworks' second rights purchase is the next most toxic, biased book.
Published and written by people we have had a bitter contractual dispute
with for years, whose hostility is well known. Neither of these two
books were the first to be published and there are many independent
authors who have written positive or neutral books, all of whom
Dreamworks ignored.
Dreamworks has based its entire production on the two most discredited books on the market.
I know the film intends to depict me and my work in a negative light.
I believe it will distort events and subtract from public understanding.
It does not seek to simplify, clarify or distil the truth, but rather it seeks to bury it.
It will resurrect and amplify defamatory stories which were long ago shown
to be false.
My organisation and I are the targets of political adversary from the United States government and its closest allies.
The United States government has engaged almost every instrument of its
justice and intelligence system to pursue—in its own words—a ‘whole of
government’ investigation of ‘unprecedented scale and nature’ into
WikiLeaks under draconian espionage laws. Our alleged sources are facing
their entire lives in the US prison system. Two are already in it.
Another one is detained in Sweden.
Feature films are the most powerful and insidious shapers of public
perception, because they fly under the radar of conscious exclusion.
This film is going to bury good people doing good work, at exactly the time that the state is coming down on their heads.
It is going to smother the truthful version of events, at a time when the truth is most in demand.
As justification it will claim to be fiction, but it is not fiction. It
is distorted truth about living people doing battle with titanic
opponents. It is a work of political opportunism, influence, revenge
and, above all, cowardice.
It seeks to ride on the back of our work, our reputation and our struggles.
It seeks to cut our strength with weakness. To cut affection with
exploitation. To cut diligence with paranoia. To cut loyalty with
naivety. To cut principle with hypocrisy. And above all, to cut the
truth with lies.
The film's many distortions buttress what the prosecution will argue.
Has argued. Is arguing. In my case, and in that of others. These cases
will continue for years.
The studio that is producing the film is not a vulnerable or weak party.
Dreamworks' free speech rights are not in jeopardy – ours are.
Dreamworks is an extremely wealthy organisation, with ties to powerful interests in the US government.
I must therefore question the choices and motives behind it: the
opportunism, fears and mundanity; the unwritten rules of film financing
and distribution in the United States; the cringe against doing
something useful and brave.
I believe that you are a decent person, who would not naturally wish to harm good people in dire situations.
---
You will be used, as a hired gun, to assume the appearance of the truth
in order to assassinate it. To present me as someone morally compromised
and to place me in a falsified history. To create a work, not of
fiction, but of debased truth.
Not because you want to, of course you don't, but because, in the end,
you are a jobbing actor who gets paid to follow the script, no matter
how debauched.
Your skills play into the hands of people who are out to remove me and WikiLeaks from the world.
I believe that you should reconsider your involvement in this enterprise.
Consider the consequences of your cooperation with a project that
vilifies and marginalises a living political refugee to the benefit of
an entrenched, corrupt and dangerous state.
Consider the consequences to people who may fall into harm because of this film.
Many will fight against history being blackwashed in this way. It is a
collective history now, involving millions of people, because millions
have opened their eyes as a result of our work and the attempts to
destroy us.
I believe you are well intentioned but surely you can see why it is a bad idea for me to meet with you.
By meeting with you, I would validate this wretched film, and endorse
the talented, but debauched, performance that the script will force you
to give.
I cannot permit this film any claim to authenticity or truthfulness. In
its current form it has neither, and doing so would only further aid the
campaign against me.
It is contrary to my interests, and to those of my organisation, and I
thank you for your offer, and what I am sure is your genuine intent, but
I must, with inexpressible regret, turn it down.
Julian AssangeREAD THE WIKILEAKS MEMO HIGHLIGHTING INACCURACIES IN THE FILM HERE.
VIEW AN ADVANCE VERSION OF THE FIFTH ESTATE SCRIPT HERE
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