比尔·科勒尔[注1]
2011年1月26日
去年6月，《卫报》编辑阿兰·鲁斯布里格[注2]给我打来电话，问我知不知道怎样确保通话的保密性。说实在的，我有点惭愧，因为《纽约时报》并无加密电话线路，亦无静锥区[注3]。而他说没关系，他可以尽量说得婉转些，而在他隐晦的字句中，我得到了这样一个非比寻常的信息：一个叫做“维基解密”的组织，一个由一群反对向公众隐瞒机密的人自发组成的团队，他们掌握相当数量的美国政府对外通信的内容。维基解密的领袖朱利安·阿桑奇曾做过黑客，这个怪人生于澳大利亚，无固定居所，他向《卫报》提供了来自阿富汗和伊拉克战场的部队许多急件，其数目足有50万份之多，而且事成之后还会有更多的机密外交文件提供。出于增加影响力的需要，也是为了通过合作提高工作效率，《卫报》邀请《纽约时报》一同参与到这个项目中来，一起分享这份机密带来的财富，而且维基解密也同意我们加入工作，只待我回复，《纽约时报》对此有没有兴趣？
I was interested.
我当然是很有兴趣了。
Theadventure that ensued over the next six months combined thecloak-and-dagger intrigue of handling a vast secret archive with themore mundane feat of sorting, searching and understanding a mountain ofdata. As if that were not complicated enough, the project also entailed asource who was elusive, manipulative and volatile (and ultimatelyopenly hostile to The Times and The Guardian); an international cast ofjournalists; company lawyers committed to keeping us within the boundsof the law; and an array of government officials who sometimes seemed asif they couldn’t decide whether they wanted to engage us or arrest us.By the end of the year, the story of this wholesale security breach hadoutgrown the story of the actual contents of the secret documents andgenerated much breathless speculation that something — journalism,diplomacy, life as we know it — had profoundly changed forever.
接下来的6个月时间里，我们就好像特工电影里一样，对机密文件进行破解，而解密过程却又很现实，我们的工作是将海量信息进行分类，展开搜索，然后再加以解读。仿佛是觉得这一切还不够繁琐，我们的工作还包含一个捉摸不定、精于世故而且变化无常的消息源，也就是阿桑奇（最终，他公开表示对《纽约时报》和《卫报》反感）；一个国际化的记者团队；一群协助我们工作以确保我们的合法性的律师；还有一众恐怕对我们是不置可否的政府官员，因为他们自己也不知道是该加入我们还是抓了我们。到了年底的时候，这个事件本身引爆的关注度，已经超越了它原本要泄露的那些机密，在世人眼里，新闻行业，外交，乃至我们的生活，都被彻底改变了。
Soonafter Rusbridger’s call, we sent Eric Schmitt, from our Washingtonbureau, to London. Schmitt has covered military affairs expertly foryears, has read his share of classified military dispatches and hasexcellent judgment and an unflappable demeanor. His main assignment wasto get a sense of the material. Was it genuine? Was it of publicinterest? He would also report back on the proposed mechanics of ourcollaboration with The Guardian and the German magazine Der Spiegel,which Assange invited as a third guest to his secret smorgasbord.Schmitt would also meet the WikiLeaks leader, who was known to a fewGuardian journalists but not to us.
接到鲁斯布里格的电话后，我们从华盛顿办事处派出埃里克·施密特（Eric Schmidtt）前往伦敦。施密特有多年报道军事消息的丰富经验，读完分配给他的那部分部队信件后，他的主要任务是要回答两个关键问题：这些信件是不是原件？能不能引起公众关注？此外他还需要发回我们和《卫报》以及德国杂志《镜报》（也是经阿桑奇提议，作为第三家来“一锅端”的媒体）的合作计划。施密特还要见见维基解密的领头人，因为阿桑奇认识几位《卫报》记者，但他还不认识我们《纽约时报》的人。
Schmitt’sfirst call back to The Times was encouraging. There was no question inhis mind that the Afghanistan dispatches were genuine. They werefascinating — a diary of a troubled war from the ground up. And therewere intimations of more to come, especially classified cablesfrom theentire constellation of American diplomatic outposts. WikiLeaks washolding those back for now, presumably to see how this venture with theestablishment media worked out. Over the next few days, Schmitt huddledin a discreet office at The Guardian, sampling the trove of wardispatches and discussing the complexities of this project: how toorganize and study such a voluminous cache of information; how tosecurely transport, store and share it; how journalists from three verydifferent publications would work together without compromising theirindependence; and how we would all assure an appropriate distance fromJulian Assange. We regarded Assange throughout as a source, not as apartner or collaborator, but he was a man who clearly had his ownagenda.
施密特打回给纽约总部的第一个电话令人振奋：有关驻阿部队的文件经鉴定为真。这一场从头开始就注定困难重重的战争，其幕后细节可谓是精彩纷呈。而更诱人的是，这之后很可能还会有更多劲爆内容，特别是关于美国外交前哨的各种分类信息。只不过在当时，维基解密尚未向我们披露这些文件，想来他们也持观望态度，想看看和传统媒体合作的效果如何。接下来的几天里，施密特在《卫报》提供的秘密办公室里忙个不停，要从军事文件中提取有用信息。他面对的问题繁多而复杂：怎样把这些浩如烟海的信息加以组织然后展开研究？怎样确保信息发送、储存和分享的安全性？怎样让来自三家不同媒体的记者们求同存异、精诚合作？又怎样让我们与朱利安·阿桑奇保持恰当的距离？我们一度只把阿桑奇当做消息源，而非合作伙伴或者同事，但我们却忘了，他本人也是有自己的安排的。
Bythe time of the meetings in London, WikiLeaks had already acquired ameasure of international fame or, depending on your point of view,notoriety. Shortly before I got the call from The Guardian, The NewYorkerpublished a rich and colorful profile of Assange, by RaffiKhatchadourian, who had embedded with the group. WikiLeaks’s biggestcoup to that point was the release, last April, of video footage takenfrom one of two U.S. helicopters involved in firing down on a crowd and abuilding in Baghdad in 2007, killing at least 18 people. While some ofthe people in the video were armed, others gave no indication of menace;two were in fact journalists for the news agency Reuters. The video,with its soundtrack of callous banter, was horrifying to watch and wasan embarrassment to the U.S. military. But in its zeal to make the videoa work of antiwar propaganda, WikiLeaks also released a version thatdidn’t call attention to an Iraqi who was toting a rocket-propelledgrenade and packaged the manipulated version under the tendentiousrubric “Collateral Murder.”
到我们在伦敦和他会面的时候，维基解密已经蜚声国际，亦或者如另一些人所见，是臭名昭著。就在我接到《卫报》的电话之前，同样参与到此次维基解密信息解读与发布工作的记者拉菲·哈查度良已经在《纽约客》上撰文为读者们展现了一个有血有肉的阿桑奇[注4]。维基解密所披露的最具爆炸性的内幕是在去年4月的时候，他们发布了一段拍摄于驻伊美军的一架直升机上的录像，录像呈现的是07年这架直升机同另一架直升机分别袭击巴格达的人群和建筑物的情景，当时造成了18人死亡。根据录像，直升机上除了武装人员以外的其他人并没有被挟持的迹象，其中2名为路透社的记者，在暴力屠戮面前，录像中的人不仅极其冷血，甚至还有闲心说笑。这个录像令观者胆寒，更令美国军方颜面全无。但是维基解密更想把这个视频做成反战宣传片，所以又发布了一个剪辑后的版本，当中有一个携带者火箭助推手榴弹的伊拉克人，他们将这段视频用红字做标题，命名为《并行刺杀》（Collateral Murder）。
Throughoutour dealings, Assange was coy about where he obtained his secret cache.But the suspected source of the video, as well as the militarydispatches and the diplomatic cables to come, was a disillusioned U.S.Army private first class named Bradley Manning, who had been arrestedand was being kept in solitary confinement.
在和我们的接触过程中，阿桑奇一直对他手头这些惊人内幕的来源闪烁其词。但我们怀疑这个视频以及后来陆陆续续的军事密件和外交信函均来自一名叫做布拉德利·曼宁（Bradley Manning）的美国一等兵，这位美国大兵已经被捕并且处于单独拘禁状态。
Onthe fourth day of the London meeting, Assange slouched into TheGuardian office, a day late. Schmitt took his first measure of the manwho would be a large presence in our lives. “He’s tall — probably6-foot-2 or 6-3 — and lanky, with pale skin, gray eyes and a shock ofwhite hair that seizes your attention,” Schmitt wrote to me later. “Hewas alert but disheveled, like a bag lady walking in off the street,wearing a dingy, light-colored sport coat and cargo pants, dirty whiteshirt, beat-up sneakers and filthy white socks that collapsed around hisankles. He smelled as if he hadn’t bathed in days.”
伦敦会晤的第四天，那时天已晚了，阿桑奇有些丧气的走进卫报办公室。施密特第一次接待了这位日后对我们都有着深远影响的男人。“他个挺高，大概6英尺2英寸到6英尺3英寸[注5]之间，清瘦，面色苍白，眼睛是灰色的，而最引人注意的是他的一头白发，”事后施密特曾这样给我写道，“他是个警惕性很高的人，但又不修边幅，穿着一双看着很脏的浅色运动服，工装裤，里面的白衬衫也是脏脏的，蹬一双脏兮兮的运动鞋，里面的白袜子（当然看着也很脏）松松垮垮的套在脚踝上，看上去就像是街上拾荒的妇女。那气味儿，简直是好几天都没洗过澡了。”
Assangeshrugged a huge backpack off his shoulders and pulled out a stockpileof laptops, cords, cellphones, thumb drives and memory sticks that heldthe WikiLeaks secrets.
阿桑奇耸耸肩，把身后的大背包卸下来，从里面捧出好些个笔记本电脑，数据线、手机、优盘和记忆棒——这些东西里面存储的，正是维基解密要解的“密”。
Thereporters had begun preliminary work on the Afghanistan field reports,using a large Excel spreadsheet to organize the material, then pluggingin search terms and combing the documents for newsworthy content. Theyhad run into a puzzling incongruity: Assange said the data includeddispatches from the beginning of 2004 through the end of 2009, but thematerial on the spreadsheet ended abruptly in April 2009. A considerableamount of material was missing. Assange, slipping naturally into therole of office geek, explained that they had hit the limits of Excel.Open a second spreadsheet, he instructed. They did, and the rest of thedata materialized — a total of 92,000 reports from the battlefields ofAfghanistan.
我们的基础工作由此开始。对于海量的来自阿富汗战场的信息，我们建立了巨大的Excel表格，用于整理材料，并创建搜索条目，然后将文档整合为新闻初稿。然而，这些信息却与阿桑奇的表述有所矛盾，按照他的说法，这些信息涵盖了从2004年初直到2009年末的军方急件，但我们整理的时候发现最近的文件是到2009年4月的，后面就没有下文了。我们问起他的时候，他一副计算机极客的架势，跟我们说这是因为文件太多，已经超出Excel整理容纳的上限了，叫我们再建一个Excel表。我们照做了之后，终于将总量达92,000份之多的阿富汗战场的文件梳理完毕。
Thereporters came to think of Assange as smart and well educated,extremely adept technologically but arrogant, thin-skinned,conspiratorial and oddly credulous. At lunch one day in The Guardian’scafeteria, Assange recounted with an air of great conviction a storyabout the archive in Germany that contains the files of the formerCommunist secret police, the Stasi. This office, Assange asserted, wasthoroughly infiltrated by former Stasi agents who were quietlydestroying the documents they were entrusted with protecting. The DerSpiegel reporter in the group, John Goetz, who has reported extensivelyon the Stasi, listened in amazement. That’s utter nonsense, he said.Some former Stasi personnel were hired as security guards in the office,but the records were well protected.
在记者们看来，阿桑奇天生聪明，而且受过良好教育；专业技术出众；自大的同时脸皮却很薄；足智多谋，却又很容易相信别人。有天在卫报的食堂吃午饭，阿桑奇跟我们谈论有关前东德国安局斯塔西的机密文件。他言之凿凿的说，原斯塔西的一些工作人员正在逐步将这些文件泄露出去。来自德国《镜报》的记者约翰·葛茨是我们团队的一员，他曾经写过有关斯塔西的大量文章，听到阿桑奇的描述也大吃一惊。但是他说，阿桑奇那一套全是无稽之谈，有些原斯塔西的特工还在那里工作，但原来机密文件一直保管的非常好。
Assangewas openly contemptuous of the American government and certain that hewas a hunted man. He told the reporters that he had prepared a kind ofdoomsday option. He had, he said, distributed highly encrypted copies ofhis entire secret archive to a multitude of supporters, and ifWikiLeaks was shut down, or if he was arrested, he would disseminate thekey to make the information public.
阿桑奇对美国政府的鄙夷世人皆知，而他也深知自己是美国政府一直以来的捉拿对象。他对记者说，他已经为“末日审判”做好了准备，他已经将所有的机密档案经过加密后分发给了多个支持者，如果有一天维基解密被迫关闭或者他被逮捕，他会向这些支持者们公开密码，从而将所有的档案公布于众。
Schmitttold me that for all Assange’s bombast and dark conspiracy theories, hehad a bit of Peter Pan in him. One night, when they were all walkingdown the street after dinner, Assange suddenly started skipping ahead ofthe group. Schmitt and Goetz stared, speechless. Then, just assuddenly, Assange stopped, got back in step with them and returned tothe conversation he had interrupted.
施密特跟我说，尽管阿桑奇吹牛无极限，而且是绝对的阴谋论者，实际上他却有点像彼得·潘[注6]一样，有个孩子般的内心，不愿长大。有天晚上几个人一块儿饭后散步时，阿桑奇突然蹦蹦跳跳的甩开他们几个，当时施密特和葛茨都一言不发的看着他，突然，阿桑奇停止了跳动的步伐，又跑回他们当中，和他们并行前进，继续着之前的聊天话题。
Forthe rest of the week Schmitt worked with David Leigh, The Guardian’sinvestigations editor; Nick Davies, an investigative reporter for thepaper; and Goetz, of Der Spiegel, to organize and sort the material.With help from two of The Times’s best computer minds — Andrew Lehrenand Aron Pilhofer — they figured out how to assemble the material into aconveniently searchable and secure database.
在那周接下来的时间里，施密特的同事们，包括《卫报》的“深度调查”版块编辑大卫·李（David Leigh），《卫报》调查记者尼克·戴维斯（Nick Davies），《镜报》的葛茨，大家共同的任务是将材料整合后分类。而《纽约时报》的两位顶尖电脑高手安德鲁·莱伦（Andrew Lehren）和阿伦·皮霍福尔（Aron Pilhofer）为我们的工作提供了技术支持，他们根据这些材料建立起安全并易于检索的数据库。
Journalistsare characteristically competitive, but the group worked well together.They brainstormed topics to explore and exchanged search results. DerSpiegel offered to check the logs against incident reports submitted bythe German Army to its Parliament — partly as story research, partly asan additional check on authenticity.
记者们虽然各有所长，但彼此合作也非常团结。他们会对每一个话题展开“头脑风暴”，然后互通有无。《镜报》负责检查由德国军方提交给议会的报告，一方面发掘事件背景，一方面鉴别报告真伪。
Assangeprovided us the data on the condition that we not write about it beforespecific dates that WikiLeaks planned on posting the documents on apublicly accessible Web site. The Afghanistan documents would go first,after we had a few weeks to search the material and write our articles.The larger cache of Iraq-related documents would go later. Suchembargoes — agreements not to publish information before a set date —are commonplace in journalism. Everything from studies in medicaljournals to the annual United States budget is released with embargoes.They are a constraint with benefits, the principal one being the chanceto actually read and reflect on the material before publishing it intopublic view. As Assange surely knew, embargoes also tend to buildsuspense and amplify a story, especially when multiple news outletsbroadcast it at once. The embargo was the only condition WikiLeaks wouldtry to impose on us; what we wrote about the material was entirely upto us. Much later, some American news outlets reported that they wereoffered last-minute access to WikiLeaks documents if they signedcontracts with financial penalties for early disclosure. The Times wasnever asked to sign anything or to pay anything. For WikiLeaks, at leastin this first big venture, exposure was its own reward.
阿桑奇为我们提供信息，但有个条件，就是我们在维基解密指定的日期前不得将其发布在网站上。在我们完成检索和完成撰稿之后，关于阿富汗的文件得以公诸于世。之后便是关于伊拉克战争的文件。其实这种约定在某个特定日期之前不得报道的封口令，在新闻出版界是很司空见惯的事情，小到医学期刊的研究成果，大到美国年度预算，都存在着这种封口令。这即是为利益考虑，也是行业规则，在这些材料公布之前，需要给主要领导先行阅读并给出意见。阿桑奇很清楚的知道，采取这种封口令将吊足公众胃口，从而使最终发布的消息越发吸引眼球，特别是数家媒体同时发布的时候，那轰动性，不言而喻。而“封口令”是维基解密给我们提出的唯一条件，至于新闻写成什么样，完全随我们的意。在我们着手“解密”工作很久以后，很多美国新闻媒体说他们收到了维基解密提供的机密文件使用权，但要求与之签署协议，承诺一旦提前将消息泄露，他们需要支付罚款。而实际上，《纽约时报》从未与维基解密签订过什么，也没有向他们支付过什么。至少对维基解密的第一次尝试来说，将这些秘密曝光便是他们期望的回报。
Backin New York we assembled a team of reporters, data experts and editorsand quartered them in an out-of-the-way office. Andrew Lehren, of ourcomputer-assisted-reporting unit, did the first cut, searching terms onhis own or those suggested by other reporters, compiling batches ofrelevant documents and summarizing the contents. We assigned reportersto specific areas in which they had expertise and gave them passwordaccess to rummage in the data. This became the routine we would followwith subsequent archives.
回到纽约的总部，我们成立了一支团队，其成员有记者，有数据处理专家，还有编辑，这些人被安置在一间僻静的办公室里，来自计算机辅助编辑部门的安德鲁·莱伦执行第一道工序，结合他本人和其他记者提议的词条进行搜索，把相关文档进行编辑后进行汇总。我们根据每位记者的擅长领域，给他们相应的数据库的密码，让他们展开细致的检查。后来阿桑奇提供的档案，我们也采用了同样的流程操作。
Anair of intrigue verging on paranoia permeated the project, perhapsunderstandably, given that we were dealing with a mass of classifiedmaterial and a source who acted like a fugitive, changing crash pads,e-mail addresses and cellphones frequently. We used encrypted Web sites.Reporters exchanged notes via Skype, believing it to be somewhat lessvulnerable to eavesdropping. On conference calls, we spoke in amateurishcode. Assange was always “the source.” The latest data drop was “thepackage.” When I left New York for two weeks to visit bureaus inPakistan and Afghanistan, where we assume that communications may bemonitored, I was not to be copied on message traffic about the project. Inever imagined that any of this would defeat a curious snoop from theNational Security Agency or Pakistani intelligence. And I was neverentirely sure whether that prospect made me more nervous than thecyberwiles of WikiLeaks itself. At a point when relations between thenews organizations and WikiLeaks were rocky, at least three peopleassociated with this project had inexplicable activity in their e-mailthat suggested someone was hacking into their accounts.
随着工作不断深入，我们每个人都在渐渐的从阴谋论者转变为偏执狂，也难怪，我们在处理着海量的分类信息，而这些信息的来源则是一个不断更换住处、邮件地址和手机号的准亡命之徒。我们对网站进行加密，工作人员交换笔记用的是Skype，以减少被窃听的风险。而我们在电话会议时，则用一些简单的密码。阿桑奇永远是我们的“源”，而最近的一组数据是成包出现的。这当中我曾经出差两周去驻巴基斯坦和阿富汗办事处，因为我们觉得这些地方收发信息可能会被监控，而且我认为美国国家安全局或者巴基斯坦当地的情报机构会不对我们的工作进行调查，我在路上就根本没有跟同事发信交流过工作进度。我也说不清楚这种被审查的可能性与维基解密本身提供的劲爆内容相比，哪一个更令我感到不安。当时我们新闻媒体和维基解密的关系还很亲密，但已有至少3个参与此次工作的人在他们的电邮中说，有黑客侵入了他们的账户。2
Fromconsultations with our lawyers, we were confident that reporting on thesecret documents could be done within the law, but we speculated aboutwhat the government — or some other government — might do to impede ourwork or exact recriminations. And, the law aside, we felt an enormousmoral and ethical obligation to use the material responsibly. While weassumed we had little or no ability to influence what WikiLeaks did, letalone what would happen once this material was loosed in the echochamber of the blogosphere, that did not free us from the need toexercise care in our own journalism. From the beginning, we agreed thatin our articles and in any documents we published from the secretarchive, we would excise material that could put lives at risk.
我咨询了一些律师，得到的答复是，我们揭露这些机密文件的行为本身是合法的，但是我们担心的是美国或者别国政府会干预我们的工作，或者会对我们大肆批评。除此之外，我觉得作为媒体人，我们内心的道德准则要求我们对所用的材料负责。尽管我们也知道，我们不能干预维基解密的工作，更不能防止出现大量信息通过博客泄露出去，但我们的职业操守仍使得我们心里惴惴不安。因此从第一篇稿开始，我们就取得这样一个共识，不能把任何对他人安全造成威胁的内容公布于众。
Guidedby reporters with extensive experience in the field, we redacted thenames of ordinary citizens, local officials, activists, academics andothers who had spoken to American soldiers or diplomats. We edited outany details that might reveal ongoing intelligence-gathering operations,military tactics or locations of material that could be used to fashionterrorist weapons. Three reporters with considerable experience ofhandling military secrets — Eric Schmitt, Michael Gordon and C. J.Chivers — went over the documents we considered posting. Chivers, anex-Marine who has reported for us from several battlefields, brought apracticed eye and cautious judgment to the business of redaction. If adispatch noted that Aircraft A left Location B at a certain time andarrived at Location C at a certain time, Chivers edited it out on theoff chance that this could teach enemy forces something useful about thecapabilities of that aircraft.
在各路资深记者的协力合作下，我们将机密文件里的事件发生地点、当地官方机构名称、相关的活动家、学者等等所有和美国军队或外交人员有过交谈的人名，统统都做了修改。我们还把可能反映情报收集行动进展、军事战略或者可能存在恐怖主义武器的地区位置等信息给编辑掉。我们有3位处理军事机密的杰出记者：埃里克·施密特、迈克尔·戈登和C.J. 齐维斯，这3位老记者为我们要最终刊出的文章进行检查。前水军成员齐维斯以其专业的眼光和严谨的态度，为我们的编辑工作把关。比如说我们如果写，飞机A在某个时间从地点B起飞，于某个时间在地点C降落，齐维斯则指出，这样写就有可能向敌军透露出这架飞机的性能了。
The?rst articles in the project, which we called the War Logs, werescheduled to go up on the Web sites of The Times, The Guardian and DerSpiegel on Sunday, July 25. We approached the White House days beforethat to get its reaction to the huge breach of secrecy as well as tospecific articles we planned to write — including a major oneaboutPakistan’s ambiguous role as an American ally. On July 24, the daybefore the War Logs went live, I attended a farewell party for RogerCohen, a columnist for The Times and The International Herald Tribune,that was given by Richard Holbrooke, the Obama administration’s specialenvoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan. A voracious consumer of insideinformation, Holbrooke had a decent idea of what was coming, and hepulled me away from the crowd to show me the fusillade of cabinet-levele-mail ricocheting through his BlackBerry, thus demonstrating both thefrantic anxiety in the administration and, not incidentally, the factthat he was very much in the loop. The Pakistan article, in particular,would complicate his life. But one of Holbrooke’s many gifts was hisability to make pretty good lemonade out of the bitterest lemons; he wasalready spinning the reports of Pakistani duplicity as leverage hecould use to pull the Pakistanis back into closer alignment withAmerican interests. Five months later, when Holbrooke — just 69, andseemingly indestructible — died of a torn aorta, I remembered thatevening. And what I remembered best was that he was as excited to be onthe cusp of a big story as I was.
我们将即将发表的第一批文章命名为“战地日志”，计划在7月25号通过《纽约时报》《卫报》和《镜报》3家媒体同时向读者公开。在这之前，我们和白宫通过气，一来我们想知道对我们这样大肆泄露其机密的行为他们会作何反应，二来我们也在为计划中进行的专题搜集素材，我们希望挖掘一下作为美国盟友的巴基斯坦，其暧昧态度的背后究竟有什么内幕。7月24号，也就是“战争日志”公布的前一天，我出席了《纽约时报》和《国际先驱导报》专栏作家罗杰·科恩（Roger Cohen）的告别派对，派对主持人是担任奥巴马办公室派驻阿富汗和巴基斯坦特使的理查德·霍尔布鲁克（Richard Holbrooke）。作为一个掌握诸多内部消息的人，霍尔布鲁克很清楚的知道接下来会有什么发生。在派对进行中，他将我拉到一旁，给我看了他黑莓手机里蜂拥而至的政府邮件，这意味着政府对我们即将发布的文章表现出极其不安，而且毫无疑问，霍尔布鲁克也被牵扯进去了。特别是关于巴基斯坦的文章，将会极大的干扰他的生活。所幸霍尔布鲁克的最突出的才能之一，便是他总能利用最不利的条件，结出最美的果实；在我们着手关于巴基斯坦的专题报道时，他已经利用这些专题文章作为筹码，要求巴基斯坦恢复与美国的亲密盟友关系。5个月后，年仅69岁的霍尔布鲁克因动脉破裂猝死。我仍然记得听闻死讯的那天晚上，因为这之前，他看上去那么健康，他的离去实在是毫无征兆。而我对他最深刻的记忆，便是他对于自己能够站在这样一个大事件的尖端，表现得和我一般兴奋。
Weposted the articles on NYTimes.com the next day at 5 p.m. — a timepicked to reconcile the different publishing schedules of the threepublications. I was proud of what a crew of great journalists had doneto fashion coherent and instructive reporting from a jumble of raw fieldreports, mostly composed in a clunky patois of military jargon andacronyms. The reporters supplied context, nuance and skepticism. Therewas much in that first round of articles worth reading, but my favoritesingle piece was one of the simplest. Chivers gathered all of thedispatches related to a single, remote, beleaguered American militaryoutpost and stitched them together into a heartbreaking narrative. Thedispatches from this outpost represent in miniature the audaciousambitions, gradual disillusionment and ultimate disappointment thatAfghanistan has dealt to occupiers over the centuries.
次日下午5点，我们在纽约时报网站上发表了这批文章[注7]，之所以选在这个时间是为了保证三家媒体的发布时间统一。我为我们这个杰出的记者团队而感到自豪，他们交出了一份完美的答卷，一份由语言干练、情节紧凑、富于阅读性的文章组成的答卷。要知道，这些最终成文的报道背后，是一堆纷繁文章的原始记录，里面充斥着含混不清的军方暗语和缩略语，我们的记者为其赋予了合适的语境，小到原文里的细微差异和怀疑态度都表达了出来。我们发布的第一批文章中有很多值得阅读的东西，但我个人最喜欢的还是最简单的一篇。齐维斯将有关某一支驻地偏远的美军前哨遭受包围的材料整理过后，以叙事的口吻写成了一篇令人伤感的文章[注8]。从这支前哨部队的材料中我们可以窥见这几个世纪以来，阿富汗的占领者们的真实感受：从一开始盲目的踌躇满志，到之后逐渐认清现实，再到最终彻底的失望。
Ifanyone doubted that the three publications operated independently, thearticles we posted that day made it clear that we followed our separatemuses. The Guardian, which is an openly left-leaning newspaper, used thefirst War Logs to emphasize civilian casualties in Afghanistan,claiming the documents disclosed that coalition forces killed “hundredsof civilians in unreported incidents,” underscoring the cost of what thepaper called a “failing war.” Our reporters studied the same materialbut determined that all the major episodes of civilian deaths we foundin the War Logs had been reported in The Times, many of them on thefront page. (In fact, two of our journalists, Stephen Farrell and SultanMunadi, were kidnapped by the Taliban while investigating one majorepisode near Kunduz. Munadi was killed during an ensuing rescue byBritish paratroopers.) The civilian deaths that had not been previouslyreported came in ones and twos and did not add up to anywhere near“hundreds.” Moreover, since several were either duplicated or missingfrom the reports, we concluded that an overall tally would be littlebetter than a guess.
我想，看了我们三家同天发布的文章后，任何人都不会再怀疑我们在协同工作之外保留了各自的个性。众所周知，《卫报》是一家左倾的媒体，因此他们的第一批《战地日志》着重报道了阿富汗的平民死伤情况，指出泄密文件中披露了很多美英联军不为人知的事件，却造成了数以百计的平民死亡，而这正是这场“失败的战争”的代价。其他记者研究了原始材料后发现《战地日志》中提过的所有比较重大的平民伤亡事件，《纽约时报》都有报道过，很多都还是头版。（事实上，我们的两名记者斯蒂芬·法瑞尔和苏丹·穆纳迪曾经在调查昆都士附近一起重大伤亡事故时遭到塔利班绑架，后英国伞兵部队展开人质营救，但穆纳迪在营救行动中不幸丧生。[注9]）这些号称以前未被披露的死伤事件通常都是时有发生，但累计死亡人数远未达到“数以百计”之多。而且考虑到有些消息存在重复报道亦或是遗漏未报的现象，我们认为一个确切的累计数还是要好过一个猜测性的统计结果。
Anotherexample: The Times gave prominence to the dispatches reflectingAmerican suspicions that Pakistani intelligence was playing a doublegame in Afghanistan — nodding to American interests while abetting theTaliban. We buttressed the interesting anecdotal material of Pakistanidouble-dealing with additional reporting. The Guardian was unimpressedby those dispatches and treated them more dismissively.
另一个体现出我们几家媒体之间不同的例子便是《纽约时报》侧重于巴基斯坦在阿富汗战争期间的暧昧表现。根据军方密件，美国怀疑巴基斯坦情报机构在阿富汗战争中扮演了双重间谍的表现，一方面承诺维护美方利益，另一方面又煽动塔利班对美军的敌对情绪。我们用了很多篇幅，来证实此前普遍传闻的巴基斯坦的双重间谍行动。而《卫报》则对这方面的密件并无太多兴趣，自然也没有多少着墨。
Threemonths later, with the French daily Le Monde added to the group, wepublished Round 2, the Iraq War Logs, including articles on how theUnited States turned a blind eye to the torture of prisoners by Iraqiforces working with the U.S., how Iraq spawned an extraordinary Americanmilitary reliance on private contractors and how extensively Iran hadmeddled in the conflict.
3个月后，法国的《世界报》（Le Monde）也加入了我们的报道团队。我们发布了第二批文章，称作《伊拉克战地日志》。当中提到，美国对伊拉克军队和美军共同的虐囚行为充耳不闻，在伊美国军方过分信赖私人保镖，以及伊朗从中作梗，等等。
Bythis time, The Times’s relationship with our source had gone from waryto hostile. I talked to Assange by phone a few times and heard out hiscomplaints. He was angry that we declined to link our online coverage ofthe War Logs to the WikiLeaks Web site, a decision we made because wefeared — rightly, as it turned out — that its trove would contain thenames of low-level informants and make them Taliban targets. “Where’sthe respect?” he demanded. “Where’s the respect?” Another time he calledto tell me how much he disliked our profile of Bradley Manning, theArmy private suspected of being the source of WikiLeaks’s most startlingrevelations. The article traced Manning’s childhood as an outsider andhis distress as a gay man in the military. Assange complained that we“psychologicalized” Manning and gave short shrift to his “politicalawakening.”
与此同时，《纽约时报》与消息源，也就是阿桑奇之间的关系，已经从最初的小心翼翼转为充满敌意。我和阿桑奇有过几次通话，他的怨气不少。他对于我们拒绝把维基解密网站附在在线报道中的举动感到非常恼火，而我们之所以不能在报道中公开维基解密的链接，也有我们的苦衷，因为这些材料中有一些社会地位相对不高的消息提供者，我们担心维基解密的原始内容一旦公开，这些人会成为塔利班的攻击目标。“你们所谓的尊重呢？你们所谓的尊重呢？”阿桑奇质问着。还有一次，阿桑奇给我打来电话，跟我说他对我们写的关于美国大兵布拉德利·曼宁（Bradley Manning）的文章有多么火大。曼宁被疑为维基解密最劲爆内幕的主要提供者，我们写的这篇文章追溯了曼宁身为“局外人”的孩提时代，以及他作为一个同性恋者，在部队里的苦闷生活。阿桑奇认为我们对曼宁的心理分析过多，却忽略了他的“政治觉醒”。
Thefinal straw was a front-page profile of Assange by John Burns and RaviSomaiya, published Oct. 24, that revealed fractures within WikiLeaks,attributed by Assange’s critics to his imperious management style.Assange denounced the article to me, and in various public forums, as “asmear.”
而发表于10月24日头版的阿桑奇侧记，则使我们和维基解密的关系走向决裂。这篇由约翰·伯恩斯和拉维·索迈亚执笔的文章揭露了维基解密内部的重重矛盾，并引用旁人的评论说，维基解密的内部矛盾源起阿桑奇独断专横的管理方式。阿桑奇因此对我大为光火，还在各种公共场合将我们的这篇报道斥为“纯诽谤”。
Assangewas transformed by his outlaw celebrity. The derelict with the backpackand the sagging socks now wore his hair dyed and styled, and he favoredfashionably skinny suits and ties. He became a kind of cult figure forthe European young and leftish and was evidently a magnet for women. TwoSwedish women filed police complaints claiming that Assange insisted onhaving sex without a condom; Sweden’s strict laws on nonconsensual sexcategorize such behavior as rape, and a prosecutor issued a warrant toquestion Assange, who initially described it as a plot concocted tosilence or discredit WikiLeaks.
阿桑奇在各路媒体的风传下变成了当世奸雄。他双肩背包搭配松垮垮的短袜的特色，他特异的发型搭配染白的发色，他偏爱的紧身外套搭配领带的潮人装扮，以及他特立独行的方式，令他成为了欧洲左派青年心中的cult偶像，自然迷倒了万千女性。两名瑞典女子向警方举报，声称阿桑奇坚持与她们发生关系而不肯带安全套；而根据瑞典严格的法律规定，这种非自愿的性行为即可定为强奸。检察官给了阿桑奇保释机会，而此前阿桑奇坚称这项指控只是各界合伙要搞臭维基解密的阴谋。
Icame to think of Julian Assange as a character from a Stieg Larssonthriller — a man who could figure either as hero or villain in one ofthe megaselling Swedish novels that mix hacker counterculture,high-level conspiracy and sex as both recreation and violation.
我情不自禁的把阿桑奇和瑞典畅销书作家史迪格·拉尔森[注10]笔下的人物联系到了一起，因为他们是何其相像：兼有英雄气质和恶棍脾性，同样是带着黑客反文化、高智商犯罪和性犯罪的故事背景。
InOctober, WikiLeaks gave The Guardian its third archive, a quarter of amillion communications between the U.S. State Department and itsoutposts around the globe. This time, Assange imposed a new condition:The Guardian was not to share the material with The New York Times.Indeed, he told Guardian journalists that he opened discussions with twoother American news organizations — The Washington Post and theMcClatchy chain — and intended to invite them in as replacements for TheTimes. He also enlarged his recipient list to include El País, theleading Spanish-language newspaper.
10月，维基解密向《卫报》提供了第三批档案，是关于美国国务院及其外交前哨在全球范围内的来往通信，数量达25万份。这一次，阿桑奇比以往多了一个条件：《卫报》不得与《纽约时报》共享这批档案。实际上他跟卫报记者所说的是，他已经和美国的另两家新闻媒体——《华盛顿邮报》以及麦克莱齐集团——进行接洽，希望让这两家代替《纽约时报》，继续参与这项工作。他还希望邀请西班牙语头号大报《世界报》（ElPaís）进来，共同合作。
TheGuardian was uncomfortable with Assange’s condition. By now thejournalists from The Times and The Guardian had a good workingrelationship. The Times provided a large American audience for therevelations, as well as access to the U.S. government for comment andcontext. And given the potential legal issues and public reaction, itwas good to have company in the trenches. Besides, we had come tobelieve that Assange was losing control of his stockpile of secrets. Anindependent journalist, Heather Brooke, had obtained material from aWikiLeaks dissident and joined in a loose alliance with The Guardian.Over the coming weeks, batches of cables would pop up in newspapers inLebanon, Australia and Norway. David Leigh, The Guardian’sinvestigations editor, concluded that these rogue leaks released TheGuardian from any pledge, and he gave us the cables.
阿桑奇的这个条件，让《卫报》不太愉快，毕竟我们双方的记者此前合作非常好。而且《纽约时报》在拥有广大的美国读者群之外，还能及时从美国政府获得反馈意见。为了应对可能的法律问题以及公众意见，我们双方都深知此刻并肩作战的重要性。除此之外，我们都有这样的感觉：阿桑奇已经难以掌控他手头的这些机密文件了。希瑟·布鲁克（Heather Brooke）是一位独立记者，他通过维基解密的一名反对者那里获得了一些内部资料，并且也算是我们团队的一份子，尽管我们的联系不很紧密。如果他将手头的资料散播出去，那么未来几周内，会有大量的密电见诸于黎巴嫩、澳大利亚和挪威等过的报端。《卫报》的调查记者大卫·李认为一旦发生这种情况，《卫报》将失信于阿桑奇和维基解密，因此让布鲁克把这些密电都交给了我们。
OnNov. 1, Assange and two of his lawyers burst into Alan Rusbridger’soffice, furious that The Guardian was asserting greater independence andsuspicious that The Times might be in possession of the embassy cables.Over the course of an eight-hour meeting, Assange intermittently ragedagainst The Times — especially over our front-page profile — while TheGuardian journalists tried to calm him. In midstorm, Rusbridger calledme to report on Assange’s grievances and relay his demand for afront-page apology in The Times. Rusbridger knew that this was anonstarter, but he was buying time for the tantrum to subside. In theend, both he and Georg Mascolo, editor in chief of Der Spiegel, madeclear that they intended to continue their collaboration with The Times;Assange could take it or leave it. Given that we already had all of thedocuments, Assange had little choice. Over the next two days, the newsorganizations agreed on a timetable for publication.
11月1日，阿桑奇和他的2名律师突然闯入阿兰·鲁斯布里格的办公室，怒斥《卫报》对独立报道的过度要求，并且怀疑《纽约时报》仍然共享了维基解密提供的外交密电。在长达8小时的会谈当中，阿桑奇时不时的对《纽约时报》火冒三丈，尤其是那篇关于他的头版专稿，而《卫报》的记者们则尽量的让他冷静下来。趁着阿桑奇发火的间隙，鲁斯布里格给我打了个电话，让我记下阿桑奇的这些怨言，并且为了维持和他的关系，在头版发个致歉信。鲁斯布里格也知道此举没有实质性作用，他只是想争取时间，让阿桑奇平息怒火。最终，他和《镜报》总编戈尔格·马斯科罗向他明确表态，他们会继续和我们《纽约时报》合作，而阿桑奇要么接受这个事实，要么另寻高明。要知道眼下我们已经掌握的全部文件，阿桑奇也别无选择。接下来的两天时间里，我们几家媒体便为今后要发表的文章定下了时间表。
Thefollowing week, we sent Ian Fisher, a deputy foreign editor who was aprincipal coordinator on our processing of the embassy cables, to Londonto work out final details. The meeting went smoothly, even afterAssange arrived. “Freakishly good behavior,” Fisher e-mailed meafterward. “No yelling or crazy mood swings.” But after dinner, asFisher was leaving, Assange smirked and offered a parting threat: “Tellme, are you in contact with your legal counsel?” Fisher replied that hewas. “You had better be,” Assange said.
之后这周，我们派出了海外部副主编伊恩•费舍尔（IanFisher）前往伦敦会谈，以商议最终细节，此前费舍尔就一直是我们处理外交密电工作的主要合作人。会谈进行的很顺利，即便是在阿桑奇到场之后。之后费舍尔给我的邮件中这样写道：“（阿桑奇）出人意料的表现的很有风度，既无大喊大叫，也无情绪波动。”但在晚餐后，费舍尔正要离开时，阿桑奇突然一脸虚伪的笑容，威胁道：“来，告诉我，你和你的法律顾问有没有保持联系？”费舍尔回答说有。“嗯，你最好有。”阿桑奇说。
Fisherleft London with an understanding that we would continue to have accessto the material. But just in case, we took out a competitive insurancepolicy. We had Scott Shane, a Washington correspondent, pull together along, just-in-case article summing up highlights of the cables, which wecould quickly post on our Web site. If WikiLeaks sprang another leak,we would be ready.
费舍尔在确认我们仍有资格继续接触这些材料后离开了伦敦。但也为了预防万一，我们采取了一些保险措施。我们让驻华盛顿的记者斯科特•肖恩（ScottShane）把这些材料整理了一下，写了一篇长文摘要，用来记录下这些密电的重点内容。一旦维基解密再有东西外泄，我们可以尽快的将此前的内容发布在网上。
Becauseof the range of the material and the very nature of diplomacy, theembassy cables were bound to be more explosive than the War Logs. DeanBaquet, our Washington bureau chief, gave the White House an earlywarning on Nov. 19. The following Tuesday, two days before Thanksgiving,Baquet and two colleagues were invited to a windowless room at theState Department, where they encountered an unsmiling crowd.Representatives from the White House, the State Department, the Officeof the Director of National Intelligence, the C.I.A., the DefenseIntelligence Agency, the F.B.I. and the Pentagon gathered around aconference table. Others, who never identified themselves, lined thewalls. A solitary note-taker tapped away on a computer.
由于此番外交密电的范围非常之广，加之外交密电本身内容的敏感性，一旦公开，其爆炸性必然远在战争日志之上。《纽约时报》驻华盛顿办事处的主编迪恩·巴奎特（Dean Baquet）于11月19日向白宫发出过警告，之后那周二，也就是感恩节的前2天，巴奎特以及另两名同事被请进国务院一间没有窗户的房间，与一群不苟言笑的人围坐一桌，这些人有来自白宫、国务院、国家情报总监办公室、中央情报局、国防情报局、联邦调查局和五角大楼等部门，一些并未透露身份的人倚墙列着，还有一名记录员不停的敲电脑。
Themeeting was off the record, but it is fair to say the mood was tense.Scott Shane, one reporter who participated in the meeting, described “anundertone of suppressed outrage and frustration.”
虽然不是正式会面，但现场的气氛不可谓不紧张。据与会的斯科特·肖恩回忆，看得出与会者是在尽量克制自己的暴怒情绪。
Subsequentmeetings, which soon gave way to daily conference calls, were morebusinesslike. Before each discussion, our Washington bureau sent over abatch of specific cables that we intended to use in the coming days.They were circulated to regional specialists, who funneled theirreactions to a small group at State, who came to our daily conversationswith a list of priorities and arguments to back them up. We relayed thegovernment’s concerns, and our own decisions regarding them, to theother news outlets.
接下来与华盛顿办公室的几次会面（后来转变为每天进行的电话会议）渐渐有了实质性的进展。每次讨论前，我们的华盛顿办事处都会把计划在未来几天用到的某一组密电发送出去，让相关地区问题的专家仔细研究后，总结出几条反馈意见，然后到了每天会议的时候大家会给出一张单子，上面列举了比较重要的问题，还注上了相应的依据。我们在给其他新闻媒体转达美国政府的意见的同时，也附上了我们自己对此的观点。
Theadministration’s concerns generally fell into three categories. Firstwas the importance of protecting individuals who had spoken candidly toAmerican diplomats in oppressive countries. We almost always agreed onthose and were grateful to the government for pointing out some weoverlooked.
政府的意见主要有三个方面。第一便是要求保护密电中提到的一些个人，这些人身在比较专制的国家，而对美国外交官交谈时言辞又比较恳切。我们也非常赞同这一条意见，并且很感谢政府指出了我们在保护个人信息工作上的疏漏之处。
“Wewere all aware of dire stakes for some of the people named in thecables if we failed to obscure their identities,” Shane wrote to melater, recalling the nature of the meetings. Like many of us, Shane hasworked in countries where dissent can mean prison or worse. “Thatsometimes meant not just removing the name but also references toinstitutions that might give a clue to an identity and sometimes eventhe dates of conversations, which might be compared with surveillancetapes of an American Embassy to reveal who was visiting the diplomatsthat day.”
“我们都很清楚如果不把密电中提到的那些人的身份隐去，他们会陷入多么可怕的险境。”肖恩后来在回忆与官方会面时跟我如是写。肖恩和我们多数人一样，在很多国家工作过，深知在很多地方，异见者面临的往往是牢狱之灾乃至更甚的苦难。“我们往往不仅需要把当事人的名字给隐去，而且需要注意相关的机构乃至谈话的日期都需要作出改动，因为如果查询美国大使馆的监控录像也能知道在确定日期前来访问的人是谁。”
Thesecond category included sensitive American programs, usually relatedto intelligence. We agreed to withhold some of this information, like acable describing an intelligence-sharing program that took years toarrange and might be lost if exposed. In other cases, we went awayconvinced that publication would cause some embarrassment but no realharm.
第二条意见涉及美国的一些敏感工作，一般都是关于情报工作方面的。我们也同意对部分信息作出保留，比如有关情报分享程序的密电，我们选择不作公开。因为这些程序的设计成形耗费了多年心血，一旦这类密电完全公布，那这些程序很可能将不再可用了。而其他的一些敏感问题，我们也坚持我们的观点，就是虽然可能会引发民众哗然，但对政府没有什么危害。
Thethird category consisted of cables that disclosed candid comments byand about foreign officials, including heads of state. The StateDepartment feared publication would strain relations with thosecountries. We were mostly unconvinced.
而第三条意见是针对一些别国官员乃至元首的发言的，这些话言辞比较直来直去，美国国务院担心一旦公布可能会使美国和这些国家关系紧张，而我们不这么认为。
Theembassy cables were a different kind of treasure from the War Logs. Forone thing, they covered the entire globe — virtually every embassy,consulate and interest section that the United States maintains. Theycontained the makings of many dozens of stories: candid Americanappraisals of foreign leaders, narratives of complicated negotiations,allegations of corruption and duplicity, countless behind-the-scenesinsights. Some of the material was of narrow local interest; some of ithad global implications. Some provided authoritative versions of eventsnot previously fully understood. Some consisted of rumor and flimsyspeculation.
外交密电是不同于战争日志的一种资源。一方面，外交密电范围之广涵盖全球——每个大使馆，每个领事馆甚至每个和美国有利益往来的小部门。这些密电的背后有着太多故事：有美国对各国领导人的真实评价，有诸多关于谈判、辩论、腐败现象和造假事件的详细记录，以及不计其数的内幕。有些密电只关乎局部地区利益，有些则是有着全球性的影响力。有些是重要事件的官方记录版本，只是此前我们未曾窥见全貌；有些当中还有一些不实的描述，需要去伪存真。
Unlikemost of the military dispatches, the embassy cables were written inclear English, sometimes with wit, color and an ear for dialogue. (“Whoknew,” one of our English colleagues marveled, “that American diplomatscould write?”)
与军方信件中隐语层出不穷不同，外交密电写的很明白，有的措辞还非常生动活泼，引人入胜。（我们一个英国同行还笑言：“谁能想到美国外交官写文章还挺有水平啊？”）
Evenmore than the military logs, the diplomatic cables called for contextand analysis. It was important to know, for example, that cables sentfrom an embassy are routinely dispatched over the signature of theambassador and those from the State Department are signed by thesecretary of state, regardless of whether the ambassador or secretaryhad actually seen the material. It was important to know that much ofthe communication between Washington and its outposts is given even morerestrictive classification — top secret or higher — and was thusmissing from this trove. We searched in vain, for example, for militaryor diplomatic reports on the fate of Pat Tillman, the former footballstar and Army Ranger who was killed by friendly fire in Afghanistan. Wefound no reports on how Osama bin Laden eluded American forces in themountains of Tora Bora. (In fact, we found nothing but second- andthirdhand rumors about bin Laden.) If such cables exist, they werepresumably classified top secret or higher.
同样区别于军方信件，外交密电需要花费更多心力去解读。首先需要知道的一点是，根据惯例，大使馆发出的信件需要有大使或者国务院办公人员的签章，并且需要国务卿签字，而国务卿或者大使本人有没有看过这些文件倒很难讲。然后还需要明确的是，由华盛顿发往其他外交前哨的信件有着严格的分类，可以是最高机密乃至更高级别，而这类级别的密电我们是无法获得的。比如说，我们一直在努力想从这些密电中寻找有关前橄榄球运动员、游骑兵帕特·提尔曼[注11]在阿富汗被友军误伤身亡的事故真相，但却是徒劳无功。我们也没有从中找到讲述奥萨马·本·拉登如何隐匿在托拉搏拉山中而不被美国军队发现的报告。（我们只是找到了一些有关拉登的不知口耳相传了多少次的流言。）像这类文件，如果外交密电中有提到的话，那肯定属于最高机密乃至更高级别的文件。
Andit was important to remember that diplomatic cables are versions ofevents. They can be speculative. They can be ambiguous. They can bewrong.
此外外交密电有个特点，就是其中虚实混杂，同一事件，可以有多种版本，可以是推测型的，可以是语焉不详型的，也可以完全是假的。
Oneof our first articles drawn from the diplomatic cables, for example,reported on a secret intelligence assessment that Iran had obtained asupply of advanced missiles from North Korea, missiles that could reachEuropean capitals. Outside experts long suspected that Iran obtainedmissile parts but not the entire weapons, so this glimpse of theofficial view was revealing. The Washington Post fired back with adifferent take, casting doubt on whether the missile in question hadbeen transferred to Iran or whether it was even a workable weapon. Wewent back to the cables — and the experts — and concluded in asubsequent article that the evidence presented “a murkier picture.”
比如，我们根据这些密电完成的第一批文章[注12]是关于伊朗从朝鲜引进先进导弹的（这些导弹据说攻击范围可以达到欧洲国家的首都），此前外界的专家一直都猜测伊朗只是进口了导弹而不是所有武器，这篇文章证实了外界的猜想。《华盛顿邮报》对我们的文章提出异议，认为这些导弹是否已经运到了伊朗甚至这些导弹能否派上用场都尚存疑问。经过我们和有关专家的重新审阅，我们将后续结论也公布于众，比我们此前的结论更确凿。
Thetension between a newspaper’s obligation to inform and the government’sresponsibility to protect is hardly new. At least until this year,nothing The Times did on my watch caused nearly so much agitation as twoarticles we published about tactics employed by the Bush administrationafter the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The first, which was published in2005 and won a Pulitzer Prize, revealed that the National SecurityAgency was eavesdropping on domestic phone conversations and e-mailwithout the legal courtesy of a warrant. The other,published in 2006,described a vast Treasury Departmentprogram to screen internationalbanking records.
媒体的责任是揭露真相，政府的职责却是掩盖事实，这样的矛盾由来已久。但至少依我所见，直到今年为止，《纽约时报》让政府最为恼火的是两篇关于后“9·11”时代布什政府策略的文章，第一篇发表于05年，指出国家安全局在未曾提醒的情况下就对家用电话和电邮进行窃听和监视，这篇文章后来获得了普利策奖。第二篇发表于06年，爆出美国财政部计划对全球银行的往来记录进行检查。
Ihave vivid memories of sitting in the Oval Office as President GeorgeW. Bush tried to persuade me and the paper’s publisher to withhold theeavesdropping story, saying that if we published it, we should share theblame for the next terrorist attack. We were unconvinced by hisargument and published the story, and the reaction from the government —and conservative commentators in particular — was vociferous.
我对那次被叫到总统办公室的谈话记忆犹新。当时，布什总统警告我和报纸出版商说，如果我们坚持要登出那篇关于窃听电话的文章的话，一旦再发生恐怖袭击，我们将是罪魁祸首。我们没有理会他的警告，仍然登出了那篇文章，当然，政府方面，尤其是那些保守派的评论家，对我岂止是出离愤怒。
Thistime around, the Obama administration’s reaction was different. It was,for the most part, sober and professional. The Obama White House, whilestrongly condemning WikiLeaks for making the documents public, did notseek an injunction to halt publication. There was no Oval Officelecture. On the contrary, in our discussions before publication of ourarticles, White House officials, while challenging some of theconclusions we drew from the material, thanked us for handling thedocuments with care. The secretaries of state and defense and theattorney general resisted the opportunity for a crowd-pleasing orgy ofpress bashing. There has been no serious official talk — unless youcount an ambiguous hint by Senator Joseph Lieberman — of pursuing newsorganizations in the courts. Though the release of these documents wascertainly embarrassing, the relevant government agencies actuallyengaged with us in an attempt to prevent the release of materialgenuinely damaging to innocent individuals or to the national interest.
倒是这一次，奥巴马政府的反应截然不同，他们基本上表现的比较冷静和理智。尽管白宫方面也对维基解密公开这些文件的行为大加谴责，他们却并未对我们施压禁止我们的报道。自然我也没被叫去办公室谈话。相反的，我们每次发表文章前都会进行讨论会，白宫官员虽然会在会上对我们的一些结论提出异议，却也会赞赏我们处理这些文档时认真细心的工作态度。从国务卿到国防部长，到首席检察长，他们的共同态度便是坚决反对媒体毫无节制与依据的批判政府，从而使全民陷入混乱。目前为止还没有正式的官方会谈——除非你跟政府官员说起约瑟夫·利伯曼参议员[注13]对我们有过暗示禁止新闻媒体进入法庭。尽管都是这些文件的公开都必将影响这些政府机构的声誉，他们和我们合作的时候，还是将避免伤害无辜和避免侵犯国家利益放在了首位。
Thebroader public reaction was mixed — more critical in the first days;more sympathetic as readers absorbed the articles and the sky did notfall; and more hostile to WikiLeaks in the U.S. than in Europe, wherethere is often a certain pleasure in seeing the last superpower takendown a peg.
大众对我们的报道反应各异，一开始几天，批评声居多，之后伴随着读到的越来越多，而且也未见局势有何波动，民众的态度趋于温和，而与美国人相比，欧洲人对维基解密的敌意没那么强，或许是他们更乐于见到最后一个超级大国遭遇困境吧。
Inthe days after we began our respective series based on the embassycables, Alan Rusbridger and I went online to answer questions fromreaders. The Guardian, whose readership is more sympathetic to theguerrilla sensibilities of WikiLeaks, was attacked for being toofastidious about redacting the documents: How dare you censor thismaterial? What are you hiding? Post everything now! The mail sent to TheTimes, at least in the first day or two, came from the opposite field.Many readers were indignant and alarmed: Who needs this? How dare you?What gives you the right?
刚开始着手分门别类处理外交密电的那几天，阿兰·鲁斯布里格和我曾经有过在线与读者交流。《卫报》的读者对维基解密的英雄主义更富好感，因而对卫报将文档先编辑再发表的行为表示强烈不满：你们凭什么审查这些材料？你们有什么知情不报的东西？都给我们登出来！而《纽约时报》头几天收到的读者意见却是恰恰相反。许多读者义愤填膺的指责我们：你们这东西是给谁看的？你们怎么敢发出来？谁允许你们登了？
Muchof the concern reflected a genuine conviction that in perilous timesthe president needs extraordinary powers, unfettered by Congressionaloversight, court meddling or the strictures of international law andcertainly safe from nosy reporters. That is compounded by a popularsense that the elite media have become too big for their britches and bythe fact that our national conversation has become more polarized andstrident.
之所以国内会有这样的反响，也是因为大家普遍认为在如今的危机时刻，总统需要绝对的权利，而不应受制于国会的监管，法院的干预或者是国际法的掣肘，更不应受到我们这些好管闲事的记者的骚扰。考虑到时下美国民众普遍认为精英媒体摊子太大无暇自顾，再加上我们的国民舆论越来越单一、尖刻，有这些负面反响也是再正常不过。
Althoughit is our aim to be impartial in our presentation of the news, ourattitude toward these issues is far from indifferent. The journalists atThe Times have a large and personal stake in the country’s security. Welive and work in a city that has been tragically marked as a favoriteterrorist target, and in the wake of 9/11 our journalists plunged intothe ruins to tell the story of what happened here. Moreover, The Timeshas nine staff correspondents assigned to the two wars still being wagedin the wake of that attack, plus a rotating cast of photographers,visiting writers and scores of local stringers and support staff. Theywork in this high-risk environment because, while there are many placesyou can go for opinions about the war, there are few places — and fewerby the day — where you can go to find honest, on-the-scene reportingabout what is happening. We take extraordinary precautions to keep themsafe, but we have had two of our Iraqi journalists murdered for doingtheir jobs. We have had four journalists held hostage by the Taliban —two of them for seven months. We had one Afghan journalist killed in arescue attempt. Last October, while I was in Kabul, we got word that aphotographer embedded for us with troops near Kandahar stepped on animprovised mine and lost both his legs.
尽管我们一直致力于用客观的态度报道新闻，我们面对要报道的话题也很难保证绝无立场。每位《纽约时报》的记者对国家安全问题都有自己的看法。我们很不幸的生活工作在这个恐怖袭击的重点关注城市，9•11事件刚刚发生的时候，我们的记者就奋不顾身的冲进废墟为大家带来第一手的消息。《纽约时报》还有9名报道阿富汗和伊拉克战事的特派记者，他们也参与了9•11的报道工作，此外我们还有轮值摄影师、访问作家、许多当地特约记者以及后勤人员。他们为了能获得关于战事的信息，经常去那些为数不多的可以发掘最真实资料的地方，为此，他们每天都身处险境。我们尽最大的努力，去保障他们的人身安全，但仍然有两名伊拉克籍记者因公殉职，有四名记者被塔利班扣为人质，其中两名已经被关了7个月。我们有一名阿富汗籍的记者在救援行动中牺牲。去年10月我去喀布尔的时候我还听到一件事，我们派去那里的一名摄影师为了拍摄而加入坎大哈附近的一个部队，结果不小心踩到地雷，从此失去了双腿。
Weare invested in the struggle against murderous extremism in anothersense. The virulent hatred espoused by terrorists, judging by theirliterature, is directed not just against our people and our buildingsbut also at our values and at our faith in the self-government of aninformed electorate. If the freedom of the press makes some Americansuneasy, it is anathema to the ideologists of terror.
另一方面，我们还需要提防极端主义给我们带来的危险。恐怖主义者的极度仇恨情绪不仅仅是针对我们的人和建筑物，我们的价值观，以及我们作为知情选民的自治方式。如果说我们的媒体言论自由在部分美国人眼里是不安定因素的话，这样的自由在恐怖主义者看来就是罪大恶极。
Sowe have no doubts about where our sympathies lie in this clash ofvalues. And yet we cannot let those sympathies transform us intopropagandists, even for a system we respect.
所以我们很清楚，当不同价值观发生碰撞时，我们会站在哪一方。但我们也很清楚我们不能因为自己所处的立场而让自己成为极端的布道者，即便是布自己所信仰的道。
I’mthe first to admit that news organizations, including this one,sometimes get things wrong. We can be overly credulous (as in some ofthe prewar reporting about Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction)or overly cynical about official claims and motives. We may err on theside of keeping secrets (President Kennedy reportedly wished, after thefact, that The Times had published what it knew about the planned Bay ofPigs invasion, which possibly would have helped avert a bloody debacle)or on the side of exposing them. We make the best judgments we can.When we get things wrong, we try to correct the record. A free press in ademocracy can be messy. But the alternative is to give the government aveto over what its citizens are allowed to know. Anyone who has workedin countries where the news diet is controlled by the government cansympathize with Thomas Jefferson’s oft-quoted remark that he wouldrather have newspapers without government than government withoutnewspapers.
我是最早承认新闻媒体（包括我们自己）存在错误的。对于官方的要求和动机我们往往要么过分信任（比如在伊拉克战争之前，一些报道就坚称伊拉克确有大规模杀伤性武器），要么过分愤青。我们保守秘密（据称在猪湾事件[注14]后，肯尼迪曾表示说如果在这之前我们《纽约时报》将所掌握的信息刊登出来的话，这一场失败的军事行动及其带来的伤亡惨剧或将避免了）亦或者公开秘密都有可能铸成大错。因此我们都在尽力作出正确的选择。如果我们弄错了，我们也要想办法弥补。民主社会里的自由言论将会引发混乱，但与之相反的情况便是政府有权向老百姓隐瞒那些大家本该知道的事。任何一个在监控言论的国家工作的人都会赞同托马斯·杰弗逊[注15]那句名言：宁要没有政府的媒体，也不要没有媒体的政府。
Theintentions of our founders have rarely been as well articulated as theywere by Justice Hugo Black 40 years ago, concurring with the SupremeCourt ruling that stopped the government from suppressing the secretVietnam War history called the Pentagon Papers: “The government’s powerto censor the press was abolished so that the press would remain foreverfree to censure the government. The press was protected so that itcould bare the secrets of government and inform the people.”
当然，杰弗逊总统的关于言论自由的表态并不很明晰，而40年前大法官雨果·布莱克[注16]则在要求政府公开越战记录（也就是《五角大楼文件》）[注17]时明确了最高法院的态度：“媒体有权问责政府，而政府无权审查媒体。我们需要保护媒体的权利，让它们得以向民众公开政府的秘密。”
Thereis no neat formula for maintaining this balance. In practice, thetension between our obligation to inform and the government’s obligationto protect plays out in a set of rituals. As one of my predecessors,Max Frankel, then the Washington bureau chief, wrote in a wise affidavitfiled during the Pentagon Papers case: “For the vast majority of‘secrets,’ there has developed between the government and the press (andCongress) a rather simple rule of thumb: The government hides what itcan, pleading necessity as long as it can, and the press pries out whatit can, pleading a need and a right to know. Each side in this ‘game’regularly ‘wins’ and ‘loses’ a round or two. Each fights with theweapons at its command. When the government loses a secret or two, itsimply adjusts to a new reality.”
至于如何在和政府的博弈中取得双赢的结果，这门学问讲究的很。在实际工作中，我们努力揭露秘密和政府努力隐瞒真相之间也形成了一种定式。我的前任、后担任驻华盛顿办事处主编的马克思·弗兰克尔（Max Frankel）曾为应对《五角大楼文件》诉讼写过一篇宣誓书，当中写到：“对多数‘机密’而言，政府与媒体（或者是国会）一般都会分列两种立场：政府认为他们有必要尽可能的保护机密不公开，而媒体则认为他们有必要公开机密，因为他们有知情权。双方在对阵过程中都各有输赢，但也为了各自的利益拼尽全力。而一旦政府有些机密公之于众了，他们就会知道原有的斗争方式行不通了，得采取新的策略。”
Infact, leaks of classified material — sometimes authorized — are part ofthe way business is conducted in Washington, as one wing of thebureaucracy tries to one-up another or officials try to shift blame orclaim credit or advance or confound a particular policy. For furtherevidence that our government is highly selective in its approach tosecrets, look no further than Bob Woodward’s all-but-authorized accountsof the innermost deliberations of our government.
事实上，如果两党中有一方想要压倒另一方，或者当局想转移矛盾、借机邀功亦或是想刻意炒作或淡化某个政策的话，将一些分门别类的材料甚至有时是权威材料公开于民众，这是政府部门的惯用手段。若是对我这番结论有怀疑的话，不妨看看鲍勃·伍德沃德（Bob Woodward）手上掌握的大批政府内部的机密权威审议意见。
Thegovernment surely cheapens secrecy by deploying it so promiscuously.According to the Pentagon, about 500,000 people have clearance to usethe database from which the secret cables were pilfered. Weighing in onthe WikiLeaks controversy in The Guardian, Max Frankel remarked thatsecrets shared with such a legion of “cleared” officials, includinglow-level army clerks, “are not secret.” Governments, he wrote, “mustdecide that the random rubber-stamping of millions of papers andcomputer files each year does not a security system make.”
政府随意散布机密文件这一行为本身已经说明了政府对保密工作的态度。以五角大楼为例，大约有500,000人能够随意的使用其数据库，这也正是密电外泄的来由。在和《卫报》讨论维基解密的争议时，马克思·弗兰克尔就指出，这么多包括低级别文员在内的实名实姓的所谓机密文件“算不得机密”，他说，政府“知道，每年都有这数以百万计的文件随随便便就能盖章的话，这些文件就肯定不在安全系统的保密范围之内了。”
Beyondthe basic question of whether the press should publish secrets,criticism of the WikiLeaks documents generally fell into three themes:1. That the documents were of dubious value, because they told usnothing we didn’t already know. 2. That the disclosures put lives atrisk — either directly, by identifying confidential informants, orindirectly, by complicating our ability to build alliances againstterror. 3. That by doing business with an organization like WikiLeaks,The Times and other news organizations compromised their impartialityand independence.
抛开媒体是否应该公开解密内容不谈，对于维基解密提供的文件，我们的主要观点有3条：1. 这些文件谈论的都是我们此前或多或少知道的东西，因而其价值算不得高。2. 这些内容的公开将会使一些人生命安全受到威胁，这当中包括会直接受害的告密者，也包括可能会阻碍我们建立反恐统一联盟带来的危害。3. 与维基解密这样的机构进行交涉，就已经损害到了纽约时报等几家媒体自身的公正性和独立性。
I’ma little puzzled by the complaint that most of the embassy traffic wedisclosed did not profoundly change our understanding of how the worldworks. Ninety-nine percent of what we read or hear on the news does notprofoundly change our understanding of how the world works. News mostlyadvances by inches and feet, not in great leaps. The value of thesedocuments — and I believe they have immense value — is not that theyexpose some deep, unsuspected perfidy in high places or that they upendyour whole view of the world. For those who pay close attention toforeign policy, these documents provide texture, nuance and drama. Theydeepen and correct your understanding of how things unfold; they raiseor lower your estimation of world leaders. For those who do not followthese subjects as closely, the stories are an opportunity to learn more.If a project like this makes readers pay attention, think harder,understand more clearly what is being done in their name, then we haveperformed a public service. And that does not count the impact of theserevelations on the people most touched by them. WikiLeaks cables inwhich American diplomats recount the extravagant corruption of Tunisia’srulers helped fuel a popular uprising that has overthrown thegovernment.
我能听到一些人抱怨说，我们披露的这些外交密电好像也并没有大大改变我们对这个世界动向的认识，这种言论本身就很让人摸不着头脑。我们读到或听到的东西当中，有99%都不怎么会改变我们对世界的认识。新闻的推动力量总是跬步前行而非一日千里。因此我虽相信这些文件有着重要的价值，但他们的价值却并不是揭露了高层官员那些尚待证实的欺骗行为，也不是颠覆了你的世界观。如果你非常关注对外政策，那么这些文件可以说为你提供了很好的素材，甚至包括其中很戏剧化的描写。他们有助于加深并且修正你的认识，让你更好的了解如何公开一些事实；他们改变了你对各国领导人的看法，无论是正面的还是负面的。如果你不是那么关心对外政策问题，你也可以借此机会学到了解更多的东西。如果我们此次发布的专题文章引发了民众的关注，并且启迪各位进一步思考、进一步理解周遭正在发生的事情，那么我们就算是成功的完成了一次公益服务。这还没有算进那些受这些文章触动最多的人们。在维基解密的外交密电中，有美国外交官讲述突尼斯当局严重腐败现象的内容，这些文章在突尼斯人民推翻腐败政府的起义中，起了推动作用。
Asfor the risks posed by these releases, they are real. WikiLeaks’s firstdata dump, the publication of the Afghanistan War Logs, included thenames of scores of Afghans that The Times and other news organizationshad carefully purged from our own coverage. Several news organizations,including ours, reported this dangerous lapse, and months later aTaliban spokesman claimed that Afghan insurgents had been perusing theWikiLeaks site and making a list. I anticipate, with dread, the day welearn that someone identified in those documents has been killed.
当然，公开这些机密带来的危险是千真万确的。维基解密发布的第一批文件，也就是后来公开的阿富汗占地日志，当中出现了许多阿富汗人的名字，他们并未像《纽约时报》等媒体那样很小心的将人名隐去。结果几个月后，塔利班一名发言人说，他们仔细研读了维基解密网站上的内容，列出了阿富汗“叛乱分子”的名单。纵然一万个不愿意，我也知道终将有一天，这些文章中的某个名字将出现在死难者的新闻中。
WikiLeakswas roundly criticized for its seeming indifference to the safety ofthose informants, and in its subsequent postings it has largely followedthe example of the news organizations and redacted material that couldget people jailed or killed. Assange described it as a “harmminimization” policy. In the case of the Iraq war documents, WikiLeaksapplied a kind of robo-redaction software that stripped away names (andrendered the documents almost illegible). With the embassy cables,WikiLeaks posted mostly documents that had already been redacted by TheTimes and its fellow news organizations. And there were instances inwhich WikiLeaks volunteers suggested measures to enhance the protectionof innocents. For example, someone at WikiLeaks noticed that if theredaction of a phrase revealed the exact length of the words, an alertforeign security service might match the number of letters to a name andaffiliation and thus identify the source. WikiLeaks advised everyone tosubstitute a dozen uppercase X’s for each redacted passage, no matterhow long or short.
维基解密因为这种对线人安危不负责的态度而广受批评指责，在后来公开的记录中，维基解密也学着像新闻媒体那样，将有可能引起个人被捕乃至被害的文件作了修改。阿桑奇将其形容为“危险最小化”政策。后来的伊拉克战争文件中，维基解密就用了一种过滤软件，把人名自动略去，结果这样出来的文件几乎无法阅读。而到了发布外交密电的时候，他们是在我们和其他媒体的帮助下，将文章修改后发布在网站上的。其实维基解密的志愿工作者在工作中也是群策群力，为保护无辜百姓的安慰出了很多主意。比如，有一位员工提出，如果我们改写的时候留下单词长度信息的话，国外安全部门还是可以从中推断出单词长度，并且对应上某个人的名字而最终找到消息来源。因此，维基解密建议我们把每个隐去的单词都用12个大写的X来表示，这样就看不出原文的长度了。
WhetherWikiLeaks’s “harm minimization” is adequate, and whether it willcontinue, is beyond my power to predict or influence. WikiLeaks does nottake guidance from The New York Times. In the end, I can answer onlyfor what my own paper has done, and I believe we have behavedresponsibly.
至于维基解密的“危险最小化”能小到什么地步，能坚持多久，我无法预见，亦无法改变。维基解密并不受制于《纽约时报》的安排。我只能告诉你们我们自己做了多少，而且我相信我们已经尽到了我们的责任。
Theidea that the mere publication of such a wholesale collection ofsecrets will make other countries less willing to do business with ourdiplomats seems to me questionable. Even Defense Secretary Robert Gatescalled this concern “overwrought.” Foreign governments cooperate withus, he pointed out, not because they necessarily love us, not becausethey trust us to keep their secrets, but because they need us. It may bethat for a time diplomats will choose their words more carefully orcirculate their views more narrowly, but WikiLeaks has not repealed thelaws of self-interest. A few weeks after we began publishing articlesabout the embassy cables, David Sanger, our chief Washingtoncorrespondent, told me: “At least so far, the evidence that foreignleaders are no longer talking to American diplomats is scarce. I’veheard about nervous jokes at the beginning of meetings, along the linesof ‘When will I be reading about this conversation?’ But theconversations are happening. . . . American diplomacy has hardlyscreeched to a halt.”
有人认为把这么多外交机密公之于众会使别国不太愿意继续和我国外交人员进行来往，这种想法实在多虑，就连国防部长罗伯特•盖茨也认为这是杞人忧天。他说，别国政府与我们合作并不是因为他们欣赏我们，也不是因为信任我们能够替他们保守秘密，而是因为他们需要我们。可能在这次泄密之后会有那么一阵，外交官们说话会更加谨小慎微，表达态度也更加有所保留，但是维基解密的出现并没有破坏利己原则。在我们开始刊登外交密电的几个星期后，我们驻华盛顿的首席记者大卫•桑格（DavidSanger）跟我说：“至少到目前为止，还没几个外国领导人因此就不敢跟美国外交官说话了。我倒是听说现在会面前他们会拿这事当冷笑话讲，比如说‘我们这次谈话大概多久后会见报啊？’这样。但是谈话一直在继续，美国外交又不会因此戛然而止。”
Asfor our relationship with WikiLeaks, Julian Assange has been heard toboast that he served as a kind of puppet master, recruiting several newsorganizations, forcing them to work in concert and choreographing theirwork. This is characteristic braggadocio — or, as my Guardiancolleagues would say, bollocks. Throughout this experience we havetreated Assange as a source. I will not say “a source, pure and simple,”because as any reporter or editor can attest, sources are rarely pureor simple, and Assange was no exception. But the relationship withsources is straightforward: you don’t necessarily endorse their agenda,echo their rhetoric, take anything they say at face value, applaud theirmethods or, most important, allow them to shape or censor yourjournalism. Your obligation, as an independent news organization, is toverify the material, to supply context, to exercise responsible judgmentabout what to publish and what not to publish and to make sense of it.That is what we did.
在这之后，我也听说朱利安·阿桑奇不时跟人吹牛，说他就是操纵木偶的大导，他如何把各路媒体召集到一起，如何命令我们协作又如何编排我们的工作。这人是真的吹牛不打草稿，要按我在《卫报》的同事的话说，他尽是瞎扯淡。实际上，我们将阿桑奇视作我们的消息源来对待。当然我也不会说，他只不过是个“纯粹的、简单的”消息源，毕竟任何一个记者和编辑都有数，消息源从来不纯粹，不简单，阿桑奇自然也不例外。但是，我们和消息源之间的关系确是非常直截了当的：你不需要去迎合他们的工作日程，不需要模仿他们的修辞方式，不需要照搬他们的文字，不需要赞同他们的工作方式，更不需要让他们来决定甚至是审查你的新闻稿。作为一家具有独立性的新闻媒体，你的工作是要鉴别原材料的真伪，为新闻报道配上相应的事件背景，并且以认真负责的态度筛选出哪些适于公开而哪些不适合，这正是我们所做的。
Butwhile I do not regard Assange as a partner, and I would hesitate todescribe what WikiLeaks does as journalism, it is chilling tocontemplate the possible government prosecution of WikiLeaks for makingsecrets public, let alone the passage of new laws to punish thedissemination of classified information, as some have advocated. Takinglegal recourse against a government official who violates his trust bydivulging secrets he is sworn to protect is one thing. But criminalizingthe publication of such secrets by someone who has no officialobligation seems to me to run up against the First Amendment and thebest traditions of this country. As one of my colleagues asks: IfAssange were an understated professorial type rather than a characterfrom a missing Stieg Larsson novel, and if WikiLeaks were not suffusedwith such glib antipathy toward the United States, would the reaction tothe leaks be quite so ferocious? And would more Americans be speakingup against the threat of reprisals?
虽然我没把阿桑奇看做是我们的合作伙伴，我还是很难形容维基解密作为新闻业的一份子的所作所为。很难想象政府会因其泄密行为而起诉他们，更难以接受的是还有人提议要通过立法来处罚那些散播分类信息的行为。虽说骗取政府官员信任从而通过合法途径获得消息，然后又将机密泄露出去，这种行为确实值得商榷，但是对于非政府官员而言，仅仅因为把这些机密公开而获罪，在我看来是违背第一修正案、违背我们这个国家最优秀的传统的。我有个同事就质问说：如果阿桑奇只是一个低调的从业者而非如史迪格·拉尔森笔下人物那样醒目，如果维基解密不是如此针对美国，他们的泄密行为还会不会引发这么多恶毒的诅咒？会不会有更多的美国人站出来指责美国所谓要展开报复的威胁？
Whetherthe arrival of WikiLeaks has fundamentally changed the way journalismis made, I will leave to others and to history. Frankly, I think theimpact of WikiLeaks on the culture has probably been overblown. Longbefore WikiLeaks was born, the Internet transformed the landscape ofjournalism, creating a wide-open and global market with easier access toaudiences and sources, a quicker metabolism, a new infrastructure forsharing and vetting information and a diminished respect for notions ofprivacy and secrecy. Assange has claimed credit on several occasions forcreating something he calls “scientific journalism,” meaning thatreaders are given the raw material to judge for themselves whether thejournalistic write-ups are trustworthy. But newspapers have beenpublishing texts of documents almost as long as newspapers have existed —and ever since the Internet eliminated space restrictions, we have doneso copiously.
有人问，维基解密是否根本性的改变了新闻行业，我想，这个问题得交由其他人回答，交由历史来回答。实话实说的话，我认为维基解密之于文化方面的影响力恐怕被高估了。早在维基解密诞生之前，互联网已经让新闻业的面貌发生了翻天覆地的变化，因为互联网，我们和读者，和消息源之间的关系，都变得更加密切，更加快捷。互联网为我们搭建了一个新的分享、审核信息的平台，在这里，消息更新的更快，但是隐私却更加不被重视。阿桑奇经常很得意的声称说他创建了一种叫做“科学新闻业”的机制，就是说先把原材料给读者看，然后读者据此判断成文的新闻稿是否可信。其实新闻媒体早就这样做了，而且自从互联网取消空间限制后，我们放在网上供读者参考的文档更是不计其数。
Noris it clear to me that WikiLeaks represents some kind of cosmic triumphof transparency. If the official allegations are to be believed, mostof WikiLeaks’s great revelations came from a single anguished Armyprivate — anguished enough to risk many years in prison. It’s possiblethat the creation of online information brokers like WikiLeaks andOpenLeaks, a breakaway site announced in December by a former Assangecolleague named Daniel Domscheit-Berg, will be a lure forwhistle-blowers and malcontents who fear being caught consortingdirectly with a news organization like mine. But I suspect we have notreached a state of information anarchy. At least not yet.
不过，在我看来，维基解密也并非代表着信息透明的重大胜利。如果官方的解释是真的，维基解密大部分重要信息都来自一个愤世的美国大兵，这个人真的够愤，愤得他甚至愿意为自己的告密行为承受多年的牢狱之苦。像维基解密和开放解密（从维基解密分离出去的一个网站，由曾经和阿桑奇同事过的丹尼尔·多姆沙伊特-伯格（Daniel Domsheit-Berg）于12月创办）这样的在线情报收集网站应该对一些告密者，以及那些对现实不满而又担心直接跟我们这种新闻机构交流会被盯上的人都有着不错的吸引力。但是我认为这些网站的存在并不意味着一个去政府化的信息国家就诞生了，至少眼下还没有。
As2010 wound down, The Times and its news partners held a conference callto discuss where we go from here. The initial surge of articles drawnfrom the secret cables was over. More would trickle out but without afixed schedule. We agreed to continue the redaction process, and weagreed we would all urge WikiLeaks to do the same. But this period ofintense collaboration, and of regular contact with our source, wascoming to a close.
在2010年行将过去的时候，《纽约时报》和它的新合作伙伴们举行了一次电话会议，讨论了一下将来的合作方向。根据这些机密文件撰写的第一波文章已经全部面世了，将来还会有文章陆陆续续的发出，但见报日期还有待确定。我们都认为应当继续对原文进行修改，也敦促维基解密继续这个工作。但是曾经那一段紧密联系精诚合作的时光已经成为了过去。
Justbefore Christmas, Ian Katz, The Guardian’s deputy editor, went to seeAssange, who had been arrested in London on the Swedish warrant, brieflyjailed and bailed out by wealthy admirers and was living under housearrest in a country manor in East Anglia while he fought Sweden’sattempt to extradite him. The flow of donations to WikiLeaks, which heclaimed hit 100,000 euros a day at its peak, was curtailed when Visa,MasterCard and PayPal refused to be conduits for contributors —prompting a concerted assault on the Web sites of those companies byAssange’s hacker sympathizers. He would soon sign a lucrative book dealto finance his legal struggles.
就在圣诞节前，《卫报》的副总编伊恩·凯兹（Ian Katz）跟阿桑奇见了一面，他受到瑞典的指控，于伦敦被捕，短期羁押后被一个很崇拜他的有钱人给保释了出来，现在他被软禁在英格兰东部一个庄园里，拒绝了瑞典方面的引渡要求。据阿桑奇说，给维基解密捐款的数额最高峰达到过100,000欧元一天，由于Visa、万事达和支付宝都拒绝为捐款人提供支付渠道，那些支持阿桑奇的黑客们联合起来，攻击了这些公司的网站。不久阿桑奇将签约出版一本书，他觉得这本书应该能为他的正义事业筹到不少钱。
TheGuardian seemed to have joined The Times on Assange’s enemies list,first for sharing the diplomatic cables with us, then for obtaining andreporting on the unredacted record of the Swedish police complaintsagainst Assange. (Live by the leak. . . .) In his fury at this perceivedbetrayal, Assange granted an interview to The Times of London, in whichhe vented his displeasure with our little media consortium. If hethought this would ingratiate him with The Guardian rival, he was naïve.The paper happily splashed its exclusive interview, then followed itwith an editorial calling Assange a fool and a hypocrite.
现在，《卫报》似乎也和《纽约时报》一同进入了阿桑奇的黑名单，究其原因，一是阿桑奇对《卫报》将外交密电和我们共享感到不满，二是将瑞典警方针对阿桑奇的指控毫无修改的登了出来（其实这些内容早就被放出来了..）。尽管对我们的“背叛”行为火冒三丈，阿桑奇还是答应在伦敦接受《纽约时报》的采访。在接受采访过程中，他狠狠的吐槽了一番，说他对我们的媒体团队有多么不满。他还以为他这样的说法会让《卫报》的竞争者们看了高兴，真是天真的可以。管他发泄的多么很，最后我们的收获可是他的独家专访，以及一篇将其斥为笨蛋兼伪君子的社论。
Atthe mansion in East Anglia, Assange seated Katz before a roaring firein the drawing room and ruminated for four hours about the Swedish case,his financial troubles and his plan for a next phase of releases. Hetalked vaguely about secrets still in his quiver, including what heregards as a damning cache of e-mail from inside an American bank.
在英格兰东部的这家庄园里，凯兹坐在会客厅的火炉前，和阿桑奇谈了4个小时，谈到受到瑞典指控的案子，谈到他经济上面临的困难，以及他下一步泄密的计划。阿桑奇称，他手上还有未公开的机密，包括被他称为罪大恶极的、一家美国银行内部的电邮记录。
Hespun out an elaborate version of a U.S. Justice Department effort toexact punishment for his assault on American secrecy. If he was somehowextradited to the United States, he said, “I would still have a highchance of being killed in the U.S. prison system, Jack Ruby style, giventhe continual calls for my murder by senior and influential U.S.politicians.”
他深知美国司法部门一直都想给他定罪，因为他侵犯了美国的机密。他说，如果他最终被引渡到美国的话，“看看美国高层知名政客们都不断要求要刺杀我，我极有可能死在美国的监狱里，就像杰克·路比那样[注18]。”
WhileAssange mused darkly in his exile, one of his lawyers sent out a mockChristmas card that suggested at least someone on the WikiLeaks team wasnot lacking a sense of the absurd.
当阿桑奇在流亡中冥想神伤时，他的一位律师还不忘给他寄张圣诞卡调侃一下，也是提醒他，在维基解密的队伍中，还有人保持着充分的娱乐精神。
The message:
这张卡是这样写的：
“Dear kids,
“亲爱的孩子们：
Santa is Mum & Dad.
圣诞老人就是你们的爸爸妈妈。
Love,
爱你们的，
WikiLeaks.”
维基解密。”
本文主要注释及参考阅读：
[注1] Bill Keller，纽约时报执行主编。这篇文章是他为《公开的秘密——维基解密、战争与美国外交：来自纽约时报的全面多角度报道》一书写的介绍，这本书的电子版可以通过http://www.nytimes.com/opensecrets/购买。
[注2] Alan Rusbridger，卫报新闻与媒体部门总编，他主笔的文章详见：http://www.guardian.co.uk/profile/alanrusbridger
[注3] 静锥区，亦称锥型无声区（Cone of Silence），指以天线顶点为一个锥型区域，因为辐射方向和辐射量的限制，此区域不能被天线扫描到。
[注4] Raffi Khatchadourian，原文见：http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/06/07/100607fa_fact_khatchadourian，译文见：http://article.yeeyan.org/view/103880/109416
[注5] 大约是188~190公分。
[注6] 彼得·潘，苏格兰作家詹姆斯·巴里笔下永远活在“永无乡”（Neverland）里的永不长大的小男孩，现实中有一种“彼得·潘综合症”，指一些人拒绝长大，渴望回到儿童世界。
[注7] 《战争日志》文章专题：http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/world/war-logs.html#nytint-afghan
[注8] 全文见：http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/26/world/asia/26keating.html?_r=1
[注9] 09年9月，《纽约时报》的英籍记者法瑞尔和他的翻译穆纳迪进入受塔利班控制的地区进行采访，遭到绑架。11日，首相布朗批准了特种部队的突击行动以救出这名英国记者，此次冲突造成翻译穆纳迪、两个平民和一名特种兵丧生。记者法瑞尔此前在伊拉克战场也曾遭遇绑架。详细报道见：http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/world/asia/10rescue.html
[注10] Stieg Larsson（1954-2004），瑞典作家与新闻记者，长期致力于揭发瑞典极右派组织的不法行动，多年来一直受到程度或重或轻的死亡恐吓与威胁。2001年开始“千禧三部曲”系列小说，2004年三部曲完成后，于11月因心脏病突发辞世。2005年三部曲首部《龙纹身的女孩》出版，此系列小说轰动全球，雄踞欧洲各国畅销书排行榜。2008年2月，拉尔森入选英国《每日电讯报》“一生必读的五十位犯罪小说家”。
[注11] Pat Tillman（1976-2004），曾经是一名橄榄球员动员，9·11之后选择入伍，后作为游骑兵前往阿富汗战场，04年身亡。起初军方报告称他死于敌方开火，2005年5月，《华盛顿邮报》一篇报道指出，早在提尔曼死后没几天，美国军方就知道他是死于同伴开火。
[注12] 文章链接：http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/29/world/middleeast/29missiles.html?_r=1
[注13] Senator Joseph Lieberman，康州参议员。88年被选为参议员，并在94年和2000年获选连任。2000年大选时他被戈尔提名为副总统人选，但在2008年总统大选时，他选择支持共和党的麦凯恩。详细介绍见：http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Lieberman
[注14] 猪湾事件（Bay of Pigs invasion），1961年，在美国中央情报局的协助下，逃亡美国的古巴人对古巴西南的猪湾发起进攻，最后以失败告终。这次行动失败使刚上任的肯尼迪政府信誉大失，并巩固了卡斯特罗政权。此后由于古巴担心美国再次进攻，开始与苏联接近，并导致了1962年的古巴导弹危机。详见：http://zh.wikipedia.org/zh/%E7%8C%AA%E6%B9%BE%E4%BA%8B%E4%BB%B6
[注15] Thomas Jefferson，美国第三任总统。
[注16] Hugo Black，1937-1971年间任美国最高法院大法官，由罗斯福总统任命。布莱克大法官是第一修正案（First Amendment，有关新闻出版自由）及言论媒体自由的著名支持者，反对“言论自由危害国家安全”的观点。他不顾尼克松政府对国家安全的担心，在纽约时报诉讼美国政府一案中支持媒体刊登《五角大楼文件》（Pentagon Papers，其具体解释见注13），他说：“开国元勋给我们留下了第一修正案的目的，是为了保护媒体的言论自由，让它们发挥出在民主制度下应有的作用。媒体是为被管理者而非管理者服务的，因而我们不能让政府来审查媒体，而要让媒体来问责政府。媒体有权向人民公开政府的秘密，这一权利受法律保护，只有自由不受限的媒体，才能有效的揭露政府的弊端，…相形之下，‘安全’是一个太过宽泛、模糊的概念，不应以此为由违背第一修正案的规定。”详细内容见：http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Black
[注17] Pentagon Papers，正式名称：《1945-1967年的美越关系：来自国防部的研究报告》，其内容涉及美国于1945到1967年间在越南的军政干涉历史，属国防部的最高机密。这些文件最早由《纽约时报》于1971年头版爆料，援引《纽约时报》1996年一篇文章中的话，《五角大楼文件》说明约翰松政府不仅是蓄意向外界群众撒谎，在这件事关国家重大利益的问题上，他们还有组织有预谋的欺骗了国会。在踢爆文件内容之前，《纽约时报》曾寻求过法律咨询帮助，为《纽约时报》担任定期法律顾问的洛代洛（Lord Day & Lord）律师行建议是不要公布这些文件，但是专职顾问詹姆斯·顾戴尔（James Goodale）则认为应根据第一修正案的规定，向民众公开这些文件，以便他们更好的了解政府的政策。起初尼克松总统认为，此文件涉及到的是肯尼迪和约翰松两位总统，而与自己无关，因此无需干预媒体的行为。但是在国务卿基辛格看来，如果此次不阻止媒体发布机密文件，将来媒体再揭露什么不利于自己的秘密的话政府就无能为力了，因而政府决定起诉兰德公司（RAND Corporation）两位将机密外泄的人员埃尔斯伯格（Daniel Ellsberg）和卢梭（Anthony Russo）违反了《反间谍法》（the Espionage Act of 1917）。由于截至7月17日，《纽约时报》仍然拒绝终止《五角大楼文件》的发布，首席检察长约翰·N·米切尔（John N. Mitchell）和尼克松总统发布了联邦法院禁令，强令《纽约时报》在已公布的3篇文章之后停止继续发表文章。纽约时报公开了此条禁令，不久，这桩官司就一路打到了最高法院。71年7月30日，最高法院以6比3的投票结果，认定美国政府不能拿出足够的证据支持此前的禁令。详细内容见：http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagon_Papers
[注18] Jack Leon Rubenstein（1911-1967），后改名为Jack Leon Ruby。1963年，美国总统肯尼迪被李·哈维·奥斯华德（Lee Harvey Oswald）刺杀，后被警方逮捕，在达拉斯警局里，杰克·路比射杀了奥斯华德，外界普遍认为这是一起谋杀案。
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