iTWire Thursday, 17 December 2020 08:43 Audio shows Assange asked State Dept to help contain damage from 2011 leak Featured WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Courtesy YouTube The raw audio of a 75-minute phone call between WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and Obama era State Department attorney Cliff Johnson in August 2011 gives credence to claims made by the whistleblower organisation that a rogue former employee was behind the leak of unredacted classified State Department cables. The audio, which was released by the investigative journalism website Project Veritas, was tweeted out by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. The call between Assange and Johnson indicates that the WikiLeaks boss wanted to minimise any harm that could be caused by unredacted material being disseminated.