POLITICS: Assange: WikiLeaks Shares Founding Fathers' Values!

Julian Assange says he doesn’t dislike the US; instead, WikiLeaks is motivated by the same values as the Founding Fathers. “Our founding values are those of the US revolution,” he told 60 Minutes last night. “They are those of people like Jefferson and Madison.” Indeed, the website doesn’t “go after a particular country” or “organizational group,” he said, holding that there’s no political agenda.

“It's not about saving the whales. It's about giving people the information they need to support whaling or not support whaling,” he told Steve Kroft. The site “operated just like any US publisher operates,” and stays “inside the rules.” If the operation were “prevented” from publishing—“if a number of people were imprisoned or assassinated”—his team would release a trove of encrypted documents; some 100,000 people have backups of the files, and just need an encryption key.