As Long as Assange is Jailed, We Have No Freedom of the Press
After four years of incarceration without trial, it is time to drop the charges and pardon Julian Assange and WikiLeaks
In 1971, the New York Times printed a shocking front page expose of the Vietnam War, called the Pentagon Papers. These papers were actually a series of reports commissioned by then-Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara to find out the truth of the ongoing war in Vietnam. The reports were a bombshell as they detailed the myriad ways the Johnson administration in particular, but every administration from Truman through Johnson generally, had “systematically lied to not only the public but to Congress” about almost every aspect of the war, including the conclusion early on that the war could likely not be won. Here is just one damning statement in the Pentagon Papers, from the same New York Times source above:
“That these four succeeding administrations built up the American political, military and psychological stakes in Indochina, often more deeply than they realized at the time, with large‐scale military equipment to the French in 1950; with acts of sabotage and terror warfare against North Vietnam beginning in 1954; with moves that encouraged and abetted the overthrow of President Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam in 1963; with plans, pledges and threats of further action that sprang to life in the Tonkin Gulf clashes in August, 1964; with the careful preparation of public opinion for the years of open warfare that were to follow; and with the calculation in 1965, as the planes and troops were openly committed to sustained combat, that neither accommodation inside South Vietnam nor early negotiations with North Vietnam would achieve the desired result.”
In 1973, Daniel Ellsberg was arrested and charged under the Espionage Act of 1917. Ellsberg had worked on the Pentagon Papers in his role as a consultant at the RAND Corporation, and was the New York Times source for their series of reports on the papers. He leaked the material to them, but was acquitted of all charges four months later. And in the Supreme Court case New York Times Co. v. United States, the right of the press to publish materials deemed confidential by the government was confirmed. Here’s how Justice Black’s described it in the ruling:
“I believe that every moment's continuance of the injunctions against these newspapers [to continue publishing the Pentagon Papers] amounts to a flagrant, indefensible, and continuing violation of the First Amendment.”
Ellsberg eventually won numerous awards for his work on the Pentagon Papers and subsequent efforts, including the inaugural Ridenhour Prize in 2004 for fostering the spirit of courage and truth.
More recently, WikiLeaks entered the zeitgeist in 2010 with the case of Chelsea Manning. Manning (and perhaps others) provided hundreds of thousands of documents to WikiLeaks that exposed classified information about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, including reports, diplomatic cables and videos documenting civilian and friendly fire casualties, torture programs and corruption and deceit by many leaders around the world. Despite having rejected Manning when she first approached them, the Washington Post, the New York Times and Der Spiegel used the WikiLeak materials as a source for stories for years.
Julian Assange founded WikiLeaks in 2006 to expose censored or otherwise confidential material involving war, spying and corruption. According to its website, the nonprofit media company, its publishers and its journalists have won the following prizes for journalism:
The Economist New Media Award (2008), The Amnesty New Media Award (2009), TIME Magazine Person of the Year, People's Choice (highest global vote) (2010), The Sam Adams Award for Integrity (2010), The National Union of Journalists Journalist of the Year (Hrafnsson) (2011), The Sydney Peace Foundation Gold Medal (2011), The Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism (2011), The Blanquerna Award for Best Communicator (2011), The Walkley Award for Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism (2011), The Voltaire Award for Free Speech (2011), The International Piero Passetti Journalism Prize of the National Union of Italian Journalists (2011), The Jose Couso Press Freedom Award (2011), The Privacy International Hero of Privacy (2012), The Global Exchange Human Rights People's Choice Award (2013), The Yoko Ono Lennon Courage Award for the Arts (2013), The Brazillian Press Association Human Rights Award (2013), The Kazakstan Union of Journalists Top Prize (2014)
Despite the clear precedent of Daniel Ellsberg and the New York Times regarding the Pentagon Papers, Julian Assange was indicted in 2019, and is still under arrest and in prison awaiting trial, under the Espionage Act of 1917 - the same tortured legislation that is likely unconstitutional1 and was unsuccessfully used in the Ellsberg case. Worse still, the Obama Department of Justice had already concluded years before, “that it could not and should not prosecute Assange because indicting him would pose serious threats to press freedom. In sum, today’s indictment contains no new evidence or facts about Assange’s actions; all of it has been known for years,” reported by Glenn Greenwald and Micah Lee at the Intercept.
And, even worse, again from the Intercept report above:
“In other words, the indictment seeks to criminalize what journalists are not only permitted but ethically required to do: take steps to help their sources maintain their anonymity. As longtime Assange lawyer Barry Pollack put it: ‘The factual allegations … boil down to encouraging a source to provide him information and taking efforts to protect the identity of that source. Journalists around the world should be deeply troubled by these unprecedented criminal charges.’”
But the attempts to get Assange for journalism were reportedly restarted in the Trump administration by Mike Pompeo and Jeff Sessions, culminating in the 2019 unsealed indictments. Assange was already living at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London since 2012, under asylum for unrelated charges in Sweden. But in 2019, Ecuador suddenly revoked Assange’s asylum and he was escorted out of the embassy, being immediately arrested by British authorities on behalf of the US in what appeared to be a coordinated effort. Assange to this day sits in a prison - four years later - in London awaiting an extradition or dismissal. Any American who reads the details of these proceedings over the past four years will conclude that he has been denied due process and the right to a speedy trial. It is a travesty of government power trampling individual rights.
Journalists worldwide recognize that Assange is one of them, and the Supreme Court precedent above is clear. Our government nonetheless (in conjunction with its vassal, the UK government) holds him indefinitely without bail, trial or a way forward. This is a serious attack on the First, Fifth and Sixth Amendments, just another way your government ignores the Bill of Rights to suppress your right to know the truth.
If you agree this is wrong and would like to do something about it, please visit the Assange Defense Committee or the Freedom of the Press Foundation.
I was amazed to find out in this same New Yorker piece that the classification system (“Top Secret”) used to incarcerate Americans was not in place until 1951, and was created with an Executive Order by President Truman - without Congressional involvement. Is this the way we write laws that imprison citizens?