The Greatest Rube Goldberg Machine: How WikiLeaks Documents Reach Julian Assange

An elaborate labyrinth is used to safeguard, verify, and anonymize WikiLeaks documents prior to their publication. Writing Rendezvous has made an editorial decision to publish this secret procedure under the same philosophy as WikiLeaks itself. To the critic who argues we are undermining the mission of an important organization, we respond that anyone who is expending capital to conceal information from the public probably has impure motives and thus deserves to have their secrets revealed.

Without further ado, here is how they do it:

1.) Document is steganographically encrypted using Tomas Kinkade Paint By Numbers Kit and hung on the wall of the nearest Thomas Kinkade gallery. This is an ideal first drop-off point as there are several Kinkade galleries in every city on earth.

2.) Carefully trained runner undertakes the delicate mission of buying painting while keeping a straight face.

3.) Document is decrypted and translated into Navajo where it is then published in the classifieds section of Japan Business Times.

4.) Blackjack dealer at Fire Rock Navajo Casino in New Mexico buys a copy of Japan Business Times at Barnes & Noble and translates the document into English.

5.) A rigorous fact-checking procedure is used to insure that pranksters or malicious actors have not submitted inauthentic documents. In the case of a leaked military document, document is taken to a VA hospital and all park benches are surveyed for men who look like they might be veterans. WikiLeaks takes pains not to disturb veterans who are busy feeding pigeons or sleeping. Once a man is identified as looking like a veteran he is approached and shown the document whereupon he is asked the question “does this look legit to you?”

In cases of high-profile documents such as the Afghan War Diary, a second veteran sitting on another bench is consulted. In very high-level cases, WikiLeaks may wave its standard policy and disturb a sleeping veteran or one happily feeding pigeons, but only rarely and with the direct authorization of Julian Assange himself.

6.) If the document is authenticated, it is placed in a nondescript manilla envelope and mailed to Kurt Loder, who is known to be too stoned to check his mail during the days of monday-sunday.

7.) Kurt Loder’s neighbor assumes the document and makes several copies by hand, using a quill pen and only moonlight for illumination while spooky music plays in the background. This step is unnecessary, but Kurt Loder’s neighbor feels slighted by the banality of his role in the labyrinth.

8.) The extra copies along with an accompanying special message are placed into envelopes and addressed to Seymour Hersh, David Barstow, Susan Schmidt, the BBC, and Lil Wayne. These envelopes are stored in five separate safe-deposit boxes belonging to five different individuals living in different cities, each pledged to mail their envelope to its respective journalism arm in the event that the document is in some manner blocked from publication (as to be demonstrated by the document not appearing on the site by a certain date including the events of the site being shut down or Julian Assange dying a mysterious death).

9.) Additional copies produced in a similar manner are placed into jars of peanut butter where they are distributed around the globe to areas that give Uncle Sam a headache including but not limited to Sweden, Iceland, Belgium, The Cayman Islands, The Pakistani-Afghan Border Region, The North Caucasus, The Guatemala-Chiapas Border, as well as several of America’s ungovernable tribal regions such as Detroit, Camden, and St. Louis.

10.) The peanut butter is enjoyed with crackers and celery sticks and the document is translated back into electronic format where it sent via secure TOR networks to Australia.

11.) Steps 1-10 are repeated for fun.

12.) Fake documents labeled “wiki-leeks”, containing recipes for potato leek soup are delivered to the WikiLeaks PO box at the University of Melbourne.

13.) Real documents delivered to secret WikiLeaks headquarters (which changes location every 3 days) by Julian Assange’s confederates who have infiltrated the Australian Postal Service at all levels.

14.) Julian Assange personally reads every document to be published, types it up and formats it on his laptop while wearing a beaglepuss. The document is now ready to change history.

15.) A hamster wheel powers a conveyer belt which knocks a billiards ball onto a furnace blower which wakes up a cat who knocks over a bird cage which turns on a stove which boils water in a whistling tea kettle which whistles when boiled thus waking another sleeping cat which has been carefully trained to not wake up during any of the previous stages of the apparatus. The cat chases a mouse which knocks over a domino which knocks over another domino which in turn knocks over another domino which falls off a table and activates a spring loaded boxing glove on a stick which punches a soccer ball which tips over a glass milk bottle which activates a plastic “drinking bird” which pecks the “return key” on a computer keyboard which publishes the document on wikileaks.org for the world to behold.