Secret Power

WikiLeaks and Its Enemies

By: Stefania Maurizi, Ken Loach - foreword, Lesli Cavanaugh-Bardelli - translator

Narrated by: Ken Loach, Sarah Powell

Length: 11 hrs and 16 mins

Publisher's summary

*Winner of the European Award for Investigative And Judicial Journalism 2021*

*Winner of the Premio Alessandro Leogrande Award for Investigative Journalism 2022*

*Winner of the Premio Angelo Vassallo Award 2022*

'I want to live in a society where secret power is accountable to the law and to public opinion for its atrocities, where it is the war criminals who go to jail, not those who have the conscience and courage to expose them.'

It is 2008, and Stefania Maurizi, an investigative journalist with a growing interest in cryptography, starts looking into the little-known organisation WikiLeaks. Through hushed meetings, encrypted files and explosive documents, what she discovers sets her on a life-long journey that takes her deep into the realm of secret power.

Working closely with WikiLeaks' founder Julian Assange and his organization for her newspaper, Maurizi has spent over a decade investigating state criminality protected by thick layers of secrecy, while also embarking on a solitary trench warfare to unearth the facts underpinning the cruel persecution of Assange and WikiLeaks.

With complex and disturbing insights, Maurizi’s tireless journalism exposes atrocities, the shameful treatment of Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, on up to the present persecution of WikiLeaks: a terrifying web of impunity and cover-ups.

At the heart of the book is the brutality of secret power and the unbearable price paid by Julian Assange, WikiLeaks and truthtellers.

©2022 Stefania Maurizi, Ken Loach, Lesli Cavanaugh-Bardelli (P)2023 Pluto Press

Critic reviews

'The vindictive hounding of Julian Assange by the US government deserves as wide an audience as possible. There is no journalist better placed to tell the story than Stefania Maurizi.... As well as being the most detailed account of the persecution of Julian Assange, Maurizi weaves in the stories of whistle-blowers such as Chelsea Manning and Edward Snowden, making it one of the most comprehensive accounts yet of the battle between the national security apparatus and advocates of privacy and press freedom.' (Ewen MacAskill, Pulitzer Prize winner for Public Service 2014)

'A rigorous, compelling and highly readable reconstruction of the WikiLeaks case. I highly recommend this work. No one conveys better the urgency of averting the extradition and prosecution of Assange.' (Daniel Ellsberg, US whistleblower who leaked the Pentagon Papers)

'Stefania Maurizi's book on the persecution of Julian Assange is the definitive text on this tragedy. To read it is to resist, it is a must read. Free Assange.' (Roger Waters, co-founder of Pink Floyd)