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Meet The New Public Face Of WikiLeaks: Kristinn Hrafnsson

This article is more than 10 years old.

Correction regarding Hrafnsson's involvement in the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative below.

Julian Assange has often described himself as the lightning rod for WikiLeaks: the single individual who both represents the group's cause and soaks up its critics' anger. On Tuesday, lightning struck; Julian Assange has been arrested for sex crimes in London and denied bail, leaving WikiLeaks without its primary persona.

But there's a second spokesperson for WikiLeaks who has been coming into the spotlight over the last few months: Icelandic investigative journalist and WikiLeaks staffer Kristinn Hrafnsson. Hrafnsson has been working with the whistleblowing group since April, and as Assange has become more reclusive and had his travel restricted by legal threats, Hrafnsson has become an increasingly visible spokesperson.

You can see Hrafnsson at the far right side in this video from the Frontline Club panel discussion on WikiLeaks' release of a quarter million secret diplomatic cables last week.

Hrafnsson couldn't be reached for comment, and there's been no indication that he will formally lead the organization in Assange's absence. But Hrafnsson remains the only other public face for the organization, and WikiLeaks' formal structure may be partly shifting to Iceland: in November Hrafnsson told the press that WikiLeaks has registered a limited company in Iceland at the apartment of a WikiLeaks staffer.

Like many Icelanders, Hrafnsson, formerly a journalist with Icelandic national broadcaster RUV, became aware of WikiLeaks when the loanbook of the now-defunct Kaupthing Bank was posted on the secret-spilling site in August of last year, ten months after the bank collapsed. The PDF detailed billions of dollars that the bank had lent to its own executives and the companies they owned.

In the midst of the ensuing scandal, Hrafnsson became an outside advisor to the Icelandic Modern Media Initiative, (IMMI) the legal movement to give Iceland the world's strongest free speech and whistle-blower protection laws; (See our cover story on Julian Assange, WikiLeaks and IMMI here.)

Update: an earlier version of this story stated that Hrafnsson helped launch IMMI, when in fact he was not involved in its creation and only worked as an advisor to the group.

When I met Hrafnsson in Reykjavik in November, he described the Kaupthing leak as "a tremendously important revelation, perhaps the most important after the banking crisis" and the trigger for his interest in both WikiLeaks and IMMI. "The shock was incredible for our society, and the urgency and need for information was creating pressure on journalists. There was a lot of banging our heads on the steel wall of the Bank Secrecy Act and getting only bits and pieces of information," he said. "It goes to show how important it is to have a venue like WikiLeaks, an anonymous channel to the public."

In April, Hrafnsson traveled to Baghdad to film an interview with the children of civilian victims of the Apache helicopter strike that WikiLeaks had exposed and aired under the title "Collateral Murder." Three months later, he was dismissed from RUV, though whether his connection to WikiLeaks was a factor in the decision isn't clear. A source at RUV who asked not to be named says that his firing stemmed from a personal disagreement with his superior over a news segment.

Hrafnsson is a far more taciturn character than Assange, and not one who seems to relish the spotlight. He emphasized in our November interview that WikiLeaks wants to "gradually put more emphasis on the leaks than on Wikileaks, and more emphasis on the organization than the founder."

As for the impact of Assange's potential arrest? "This is not a one man organization," he said. "We will continue our work."