Anyone who leaks information about war crimes is useful, but did it have to be Julian Assange? Yeesh. Part Ellsberg and part Polanski, he’s retreated for the past two years from international law to the safe haven of Ecuador’s embassy, a veritable house arrest of his own design, dodging sex-crime charges. Assange just did an Ask Me Anything at Reddit. A few exchanges follow.

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Question:

What is your opinion on Edward Snowden? 

Julian Assange:

Edward Snowden performed an intelligent and heroic act. I and others had been calling for exactly this act for years (you can read about that here) co-ordinated his asylum. Our Sarah Harrison kept him secure in his path out of Hong Kong and spent 40 days making sure he was OK in Moscow’s airport. Just last week I co-launched a new international organisation, the Courage Foundation in Berlin. Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, Nobel Peace Prize winner Mairead Maguire and many other great people are involved. 

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Question:

If you had a chance to do this all again, would you, and what changes would you make?

Julian Assange:

Again – definitely; we only live once and every day spent living your principles is a day at liberty. It is clear that history is on our side. Most of our difficult decisions are constrained by resource limits, not ideas. But I was ignorant about the extent of Sweden’s geopolitical reliance with the United States and to some extent the structure of UK society.

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Question:

In regards to President Obama you were recently quoted as saying, “You must surely, now, start to reflect on what your legacy will be.” How do you think history will remember you, and how do you feel about that?

Julian Assange:

For presidents it is important, but for the rest of us it is more important to get things done and see your legacy in the world. We’re doing well in the more academic or comprehensive histories and outside the worst aspects of the English speaking mainstream press. Smears don’t have much staying power on their own because they deviate from the foundations of reality (what actually happened). They require constant energy from our opponents to keep going. The truth has a habit of reasserting itself.

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Question:

Hi Julian, I have 2 questions.

First, what do you do to stop yourself going mental with boredom? From my understanding, you cannot leave the embassy or you’ll be arrested, so you’ve basically placed yourself under house arrest. What are you day to day activities?

Second, (and I don’t mean this to sound inflammatory), why did you start a website to leak classified information? Surely you can understand that many things kept confidential are for the reasons of national security, and releasing secret documents puts lives and international relations at risk?

Julian Assange:

1) I only wish there was a risk of boredom in my present situation. Besides being the centre of a pitched, prolonged diplomatic standoff, along with a police encirclement of the building I am in and the attendant surveillance and government investigations against myself and my staff, I am in one of the most populous cities in Europe, and everyone knows my exact location. People visit me nearly every day. I also continue to direct a small multinational organisation, WikiLeaks, which is a serious logistical and occupational endeavour. I barely have time to sleep, let alone become bored.

2) Confidential government documents we have published disclose evidence of war crimes, criminal back-room dealings and sundry abuses. That alone legitimates our publications, and that principally motivates our work. Secrecy was never intended to enable criminality in the highest offices of state. Secrecy is, yes, sometimes necessary, but healthy democracies understand that secrecy is the exception, not the rule. “National security” pretexts for secrecy are routinely used by powerful officials, but seldom justified. If we accept these terms of propaganda, strong national security journalism becomes impossible. Our publications have never jeopardized the “national security” of any nation. When secrecy is a cover-all for endemic official criminality, I suggest to you, it bespeaks a strange set of priorities to ask journalists to justify their own existence.•