The myth of Julian Assange

WikiLeaks first burst into my consciousness in 2010 with the publication of a video that purported to show a U.S. Army Apache helicopter crew gunning down innocent civilians in Baghdad in 2007.

The video was part of the cache of classified material stolen by Chelsea (then Bradley) Manning at the behest of the online database WikiLeaks and published under the description “Collateral Murder.” To this day, people who should know better refer to that 2007 engagement glibly as a “war crime” committed by trigger-happy pilots who indiscriminately murdered more than a dozen people.