WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange should never have been punished for working with a whistleblower to expose war crimes. Chelsea Manning, the whistleblower, has done more time in prison, under harsher conditions, than William Calley, a key perpetrator of the My Lai massacre. Remarkably, Manning is in jail again, failed by organizations that should unreservedly defend her, as the US tries to coerce her into helping inflict more punishment on Assange.
As for Assange, he has already been arbitrarily detained for several years, according to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention. Its 2016 press release on the matter stated:
The expert panel called on the Swedish and British authorities to end Mr. Assange’s deprivation of liberty, respect his physical integrity and freedom of movement, and afford him the right to compensation.
Now Assange could be punished even more brutally if the UK extradites him to the US, where he is charged with a “conspiracy” to help Manning crack a password that “would have” allowed her to cover her tracks more effectively. In other words, the alleged help with password-cracking didn’t work, and is not what resulted in the information being disclosed. It has also not been shown that it was Assange who offered the help, according to Kevin Gosztola (Shadowproof, 4/11/19). The government’s lack of proof of its charges might explain why Manning is in jail again.
The indictment goes even further, criminalizing the use of an electronic “drop box” and other tactics that investigate journalists routinely use in the computer age to work with a confidential source “for the purpose of publicly disclosing” information.
In other words, the purpose of the conspiracy was to gather evidence of government wrongdoing and report it to the public.
In 2010, the Guardian, like the New York Times and a few other corporate newspapers, briefly partnered with WikiLeaks to publish the contents of thousands of confidential US diplomatic cables, known as Cablegate. That year, WikiLeaks released other confidential US government information as well: the Afghanistan War Logs, the Iraq War Logs, the infamous “Collateral Murder” video.
The material exposed atrocities perpetrated by the US military, as well as other disgraceful acts—like US diplomats strategizing on how to undermine elected governments out of favor with Washington, spying on official US allies and bullying poor countries into paying wildly exorbitant prices for life-saving drugs.
The van from WikiLeaks‘ “Collateral Murder” video, attacked by the US military when it stopped to help victims of a US airstrike, including two Reuters reporters.
One US soldier involved in the “collateral murder” airstrike that Manning and Assange exposed, Ethan McCord, was threatened and reprimanded by a superior officer for requesting psychiatric help after the atrocity. (“Get the sand out of your vagina,” he was reportedly told.) McCord had tended to wounded children during the massacre. He was soon expelled from the military, apparently now “unsuited” for it.
The point of journalism is to expose horrific crimes like this so that the powerful people who order them pay legal consequences, not the ones who expose them. Presumably that is why “press freedom” is considered important, and why it’s guaranteed by the First Amendment. The law should have protected Manning from punishment, the same way it protects somebody who uses violence in justifiable self-defense or in defense of others.
In Manning’s case, that was especially true, because she exposed grave crimes while stationed in Iraq, as the US perpetrated an even higher-level crime—a war of aggression based on a fraudulent pretext. If the law should have protected Manning, who was at the very heart of the “conspiracy” to expose gruesome crimes, then it obviously should protect Assange, and any of the outlets that worked with him.
Last year, James Goodale, former general counsel to the New York Times, commented on the (now confirmed) idea that a “conspiracy” charge would be brought against Assange by the US government:
As a matter of fact, a charge against Assange for “conspiring” with a source is the most dangerous charge that I can think of with respect to the First Amendment in almost all my years representing media organizations.
The reason is that one who is gathering/writing/distributing the news, as the law stands now, is free and clear under the First Amendment. If the government is able to say a person who is exempt under the First Amendment then loses that exemption because that person has “conspired” with a source who is subject to the Espionage Act or other law, then the government has succeeded in applying the standard to all news-gathering.
One way to avoid being accused of a conspiracy is to simply not publish information that powerful people don’t want published, as independent journalist Matt Kennard, author of The Racket, noted on Twitter.
Another way to protect against prosecution would be to help the government unofficially designate a class of acceptable “journalists,” and join the government in vilifying anyone outside this club as a “spy,” “hacker”—anything but a journalist. 60 Minutes (1/26/11) suggested he was “not really a journalist at all” because “he is an anti-establishment ideologue with conspiratorial views.” An example of such paranoia? “He believes large government institutions use secrecy to suppress the truth and he distrusts the mainstream media for playing along.”
British journalists, too, have taken to this task with glee for many years. Unsurprisingly, Assange’s arrest prompted vicious comments about his appearance from prominent members of the club.
The Guardian editors dropped any pretense of having journalistic standards when it comes to Assange when it published an outlandish claim that Assange met repeatedly with Paul Manafort in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Glenn Greenwald has done tremendous work exposing that journalistic outrage. It has become a “scoop” (heavily tweaked and qualified after publication) that the Guardian doesn’t retract, but doesn’t mention either—even in a very recent editorial (4/11/19) about Assange’s case.
In that editorial, the Guardian, disregarding the UN experts who said Assange had been arbitrarily detained for years, still calls for Assange to be “held to account” for “skipping bail” (though not extradited to the US). Journalism like that, at the “liberal” end of the spectrum, explains why Assange and Manning are in jail, while George W. Bush and Tony Blair walk free.
Featured image: Julian Assange being arrested by British police at the London Ecuadoran embassy. (Image: Ruptly)
The 1st Amendment covers journalists when they receive, publish, or expose news. That is correct.
What is NOT correct in your article (and the quote from Goodale) is that the 1st Amendment gives blanket coverage for any action associated with gathering news. Assange took an active part in the attempt to break into the U.S. Government and Military networks. That is absolutely a crime.
But Michael Foley—the military lies all the time. The lies favored are those which protect it and are encouraged and celebrated Meanwhile ,the Truth Tellers are condemned to Hell. While ironically, all the men in government who evaded war, now religiously practice it.
It is in fact *not* a crime for any news organization to publish classified materials, as the Supreme Court Pentagon Papers established.
Did the Pentagon Papers case actually establish that? Or was that case actually decided in a highly fractured, conclusory way that mostly hinged on the fact that Alaskan Senator Mike Gravel had by then read most of the material into the congressional record (rendering the “classified” status moot)? It seems you are mythologizing that U.S. Supreme Court decision, which stopped well short of what you claim it established. If not for Gravel’s actions, the legal decision probably would have turned out differently… There is a need to look clearly at the history leading up to Assange’s detention, and recognize that “press freedoms” have *never* been upheld in a very robust manner in the USA, but rather only when used in the service of the most powerful classes. Assange’s case might be particularly severe, but that’s just a slight question of degree in an otherwise unbroken and consistent history of the persecution of media dissenters. The real question to as is, “What is to be done?” There is certainly much to be done to establish press freedoms — much more than simply defending a mythologized ideal of some illusory past victory for press freedoms.
Michael Foley – So you’re saying that if the government is doing something wrong and someone expose this trying to defend people or himself, this would be “absolutely a crime”. Elementary logic says: Who began first? Are you brainwashed or just ignorant?
First, no one said the First Amendment gives ‘blanket coverage’ to any activity or anything like that, not Joe Emersberger, not James Goodale, that’s your invention.
You proceed anyway on the basis that the allegations made are already true. But what is the basis? Any indictment and attempt to extradite would naturally have to accuse Assange of illegally doing some illegal thing. The question is whether it is true or an appropriate charge.
Goodale is saying it is dangerous: the US government has a record. It will attempt to link leaks and sources to all investigating/reporting/publishers. And it will want to apply the same standard to all news-gathering: either make reporting on leaks and information it does not want revealed, by definition, illegal or, if not, make all such reporting, news-gathering subject to legal action—the subjects of, facing life in a dark prison.
Meaning, Government distracts from its own crimes by prosecuting others for them.
If we care about First Amendment activity, free speech, this is a disaster. If however one is super-naïve, thinks all governments and officials to be wonderful, then carry on smiling.
Assange assuredly isn’t “one of us”, or “in the club”
Which is why he’s being beaten with it.
“He believes large government institutions use secrecy to suppress the truth and he distrusts the mainstream media for playing along.” Stop the press, that’s not news; that’s fact. One of these days there’s going to be a run on pitch-forks.
Thank you for pointing out the fact that Julian Assange has already been punished for his “crime” of revealing the truth. All the government has on him is “an attempt to hack a password”? It is really obvious what this is all about. I am sorry to see people on social media angry at Assange because he released Clinton’s emails. No concern about the thousands of victims of the US wars of aggression, revealed by Wikileaks, or this story about the soldier who was haunted by his actions and how the military responded. Thank god for Julian Assange and Wikileaks. Nothing has turned out to be inaccurate that he has exposed. Unlike so many other sources, including how all the mainstream media got it worng about WMD in Iraq.
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How has Assange been “detained”? He chose to hide away in that embassy to avoid a charge of sexual assault and rape from Sweden. Ironically that case was always pretty weak and had he just returned to Sweden he would probably been declared innocent pretty quickly, or even if convicted he would have spent less time in jail than he now locked himself up.
Yes, I cannot help but think that Assange maximized his lack of freedom. But, that is with the benefit of hindsight. He likely thought it would turn out differently.
Meanwhile the empire and its minions are still drone bombing “collateral damage” everyday. The political parties might change, but the drone bombing continues.
That being said, if the empire’s minions don’t buy the drones from the empire, they’ll buy them from the supposedly anti-imperialist Chinese or Russians. War is a business that feeds on bigotry and ideology to create profits. The only color it cares about is dollar green.
Now that the US Supreme Court has certified that “torture” is allowed in as part of the death penalty, expect Assange to be summarily convicted and given the death penalty.
I am ashamed of my government and those in the deep state and establishment who further these repugnant attacks on transparency.
Watching the video on collateral murder in Iraq and hearing about lies of WMD in Bagdad make me sick and sad and I pray one day those who walk free today are accountable to God.