In the late summer of 2012, Julian Assange was living in a small set of rooms inside Ecuador's embassy in London, having just been granted political asylum. From there he gave a long television interview to the Uruguayan journalist Jorge Gestoso, broadcast on Ecuador's GamaTV on 30 August 2012, according to the original upload. This page collects that interview with two other pieces from the same year, and explains what was happening around them and how the story ended twelve years later.
The Gestoso interview is the main video here. It covers why Assange sought asylum, how he saw the role of WikiLeaks and what he feared would happen if he left the building.
How Assange ended up inside the embassy
Assange, an Australian born in 1971, founded WikiLeaks in 2006. By 2010 the site had published huge troves of classified US military and diplomatic material, making him one of the most talked-about people in the world.
In August 2010, two women in Sweden made sexual-offence allegations against him, and Swedish prosecutors opened a preliminary investigation. Assange denied wrongdoing and left for the UK in September 2010. After losing his fight in the British courts against extradition to Sweden, he breached his bail conditions in June 2012 and walked into the Ecuadorian embassy to ask for asylum. His stated fear was that Sweden would pass him on to the United States, where he believed he could face espionage charges over the WikiLeaks publications.
Ecuador, then led by President Rafael Correa, granted him asylum on 16 August 2012. The decision split governments: the UK and Sweden objected strongly, while several Latin American states backed Ecuador. British police kept watch outside, ready to arrest him the moment he stepped out.
What he argued about secrecy and information
Throughout the interview, Assange returns to one idea: that the information powerful organisations work hardest to hide is often the information most worth publishing. In his view, the effort spent on concealment is itself a signal that disclosure could lead to reform.
The quote on this image sums up the philosophy he set out in 2012: “You have to start with the truth. The truth is the only way that we can get anywhere.” He argued that decisions built on lies or ignorance cannot turn out well.
He was equally blunt about intelligence services. His claim was that “intelligence agencies keep things secret because they often violate the rule of law or of good behavior.” Supporters saw this as a core principle of accountability journalism. Critics, including some former allies, argued that WikiLeaks had at times published material without enough care for the people named in it.
A few days after asylum was granted, on 19 August 2012, Assange stepped onto the embassy balcony to address supporters and the press, his first public appearance in about two months. The video of that speech once embedded here has since been removed.
(The video originally embedded here is no longer available on YouTube.)
The Chomsky and Tariq Ali conversation
Before entering the embassy, Assange had hosted a twelve-part interview series called The World Tomorrow, which aired from April to July 2012. It was produced by his own company, Quick Roll Productions, and broadcast on RT, the Russian state-funded channel. That choice drew heavy criticism: commentators in The New York Times and The Guardian questioned why a transparency campaigner would partner with a Kremlin-controlled broadcaster, while others, such as Glenn Greenwald, defended the show on its content.
One episode, aired in June 2012, brought together the linguist and activist Noam Chomsky and the writer Tariq Ali to talk about protest movements, democracy and the Arab Spring.
Chomsky argued that the uprising in Egypt had deep roots, pointing to labour strikes and protests there from 2008 onwards that most Western observers ignored. He was candid that he had not seen the scale of it coming: “You asked if I predicted it, and no I didn't.” Both guests linked the global wave of protest to rising inequality, shrinking social mobility and a sense that voting no longer changes much.
Ali put it in terms of democracy losing its substance, an outer shell that remains while ordinary people feel their choices make little difference. Whether or not you agree, the conversation is a useful snapshot of how parts of the left read the events of 2011 and 2012.
This image carries another line widely shared under Assange's name, about how failing to act against injustice trains people into passivity. Like many quote graphics, it circulated without a precise source, so it is best treated as often attributed to him.
The Global Intelligence Files
The other big WikiLeaks release of 2012 was the Global Intelligence Files. Starting on 27 February 2012, WikiLeaks began publishing emails from Stratfor, a private intelligence and analysis company based in Austin, Texas, whose clients included government agencies and large corporations.
The emails came from a hack of Stratfor's systems in December 2011. One of the hackers, Jeremy Hammond, worked with members of Anonymous to pass the material to WikiLeaks. By July 2014 WikiLeaks had published more than 5.5 million Stratfor emails. They offered a rare look at how a private intelligence firm gathered and sold information, though much of the content was ordinary internal chatter.
What happened after 2012
Assange stayed inside the embassy for almost seven years. His relationship with his hosts soured over time, and on 11 April 2019 Ecuador withdrew his asylum. Police carried him out of the building and arrested him. A British court found him guilty of breaching bail and sentenced him to 50 weeks in prison.
He was held in HM Prison Belmarsh while the United States sought his extradition on charges under the Espionage Act and a computer-intrusion charge. Swedish prosecutors dropped their investigation in November 2019, saying the evidence had weakened over time.
The extradition fight dragged on for five years. In 2024 the High Court in London granted him permission to appeal, and soon afterwards a deal was reached. In June 2024 Assange pleaded guilty in a US federal court in Saipan, in the Northern Mariana Islands, to one count of conspiring to obtain and disclose national defence information. He was sentenced to the 62 months he had already served and flew home to Australia, arriving on 26 June 2024. He has since made occasional public appearances, including at the 2025 Cannes Film Festival.
Watching these interviews today
These videos are best seen as historical records of a moment, not the final word on anyone. A few tips for watching with fresh eyes:
- Note the date. In 2012 Assange had not been charged in the US; the indictments came later. His fears turned out to be partly justified, which is worth knowing when you hear him explain them.
- Consider the outlet. GamaTV interviewed him at a time when Ecuador's government was sheltering him, and RT funded his talk show. Both shaped the framing.
- Separate the issues. The Swedish allegations, the bail breach and the US publishing case were distinct legal matters, even though they became tangled in public debate.
- Check the quotes. Many images attribute lines to Assange without a source. The lines quoted directly here come from the interview footage itself.
Whatever your view of him, Assange's case raised lasting questions about press freedom, state secrecy and the limits of publishing leaked material, and those questions are still being argued over today.
Sources: Wikipedia: Julian Assange; Wikipedia: The World Tomorrow (TV series); Wikipedia: Global Intelligence Files leak; interview by Jorge Gestoso for GamaTV (2012); The World Tomorrow, RT (June 2012).
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