What It's Like To Interview For A WikiLeaks Job

Julian Assange apparently wants workers ready to skip sleep

By Matt Cantor

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange listens during a public debate chaired by Jason Cowley, editor of the New Statesman, in London, April 9, 2011.   (AP Photo/Akira Suemori)

Sample question from a WikiLeaks job interview: “What would you do if you had to kill one man to save a hundred?”

So Julian Assange asked Aled John, he writes in the Independent. John hesitated.

“You've got two minutes to think about it before they all die,” Assange said.

“This is the climax of his questioning, covering my family background, parents' upbringing, religious beliefs, economic and social philosophy,” writes John, who was applying for a job in the "press office" of WikiLeaks London.

Finally, he said he’d kill the one. Assange’s response: “Good answer.”

John explains that candidates for the PR job are asked to be “disciplined, articulate, quick-witted, capable of multi-tasking and accustomed to lack of sleep.”

In their interview, Assange constantly discusses “being ‘at war’”; he and “his disciples” have a “Stockholm Syndrome-lite relationship," writes John.

When John suggests “people would be less suspicious if WikiLeaks revealed its workings and exemplified the transparency for which it calls,” the team is cold to the idea.

“For all the initial excitement, I leave bewildered and deflated,” he concludes.