First Julian Assange, Then Us
Matt Dunham / AP
In a recent episode of On Contact, Chris Hedges spoke with historian and
Truthdig contributor Vijay Prashad about the arrest of Julian Assange and
its possible ramifications. Read a transcript of their conversation below or
watch the interview at the bottom of the post.
Chris Hedges: Welcome to On Contact. Today we discuss the arrest of
Julian Assange with the historian Vijay Prashad.
Vijay Prashad: You know if Chelsea Manning hadnt decided to download that
material, if Julian Assange and the WikiLeaks organization hadnt decided to
put that material out there, you and I who know these things to be true
because weve seen them, would never have been able to talk about these
things in such an open way. And yet thats not the conversation. The
conversation became about Assanges personality, about what hed done in
Sweden and so on.
CH: The arrest of Julian Assange eviscerates all pretense of the rule of
law and the rights of a free press. The illegalities embraced by the
Ecuadorian, British and U.S. governments, in the seizure of Assange, are
ominous. They presage a world where the internal workings, abuses,
corruption, lies and crimes, especially war crimes, carried out by the
corporate states and the global ruling elite, will be masked from the
public. They presage a world where those with the courage and integrity to
expose the misuse of power will be hunted down, tortured, subjected to sham
trials and given lifetime prison terms in solitary confinement. They presage
an Orwellian dystopia where news is replaced with propaganda, trivia and
entertainment. The arrest of Assange, I fear, marks the official beginning
of the corporate totalitarianism that will define our lives. Under what law
did Ecuadorian President Lenín Moreno capriciously terminate Julian
Assanges rights of asylum as a political refugee? Under what law did Moreno
authorize British police to enter the Ecuadorian Embassydiplomatically
sanctioned sovereign territoryto arrest a nationalized citizen of Ecuador?
Under what law did Prime Minister Theresa May order the British police to
grab Assange, who has never committed a crime? Under what law did Donald
Trump demand the extradition of Assange, who is not a U.S. citizen and whose
news organization is not based in the United States? Joining me to discuss
the arrest and pending extradition of Assange is the historian Vijay
Prashad. What have we just seen?
VP: You know its a very interesting situation were in. You and I have
been [in] and reported directly from very ugly situations, and over the
course of our careers weve tried to tell stories about atrocities, weve
tried to tell stories about what are tantamount to war crimeseditors dont
believe you. Editors dont want to publish those stories, the ownership of
newspapers and of course televisions dont want to run those stories,
because they say You dont have the smoking gun, You dont have the
evidence. And what both Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange and the entire
team at WikiLeaks did when they provided the raw materials of war crimes,
was they allowed us to tell the stories that we had seen with our own eyes.
And I think that rather than have the conversation about the war crimes,
rather than for the Reuters organization for instance, to concentrate on the
fact that an employee of Reuters was killed, you know, in cold blood by the
United States
CH: Twotwo of them
VP: Two of them, one of them on contract, yes exactly. Two of them were
killed by the United States military in cold blood. There was no reason. And
the people in those helicopters in the video that was released as
Collateral Murder were almost relishing the murder of ordinary people. If
Chelsea Manning hadnt decided to download that material, if Julian Assange
and the WikiLeaks organization hadnt decided to put that material out
there, you and Iwho know these things to be true because weve seen
themwould never have been able to talk about these things in such an open
way. And yet thats not the conversation. The conversation became about
Assanges personality, about what he had done in Sweden and so on. We know
very well, Chris, that the arrest, the violation of Ecuadorian sovereignty
on display in London, we know that that has nothing to do with what Julian
Assange is purported to have done in Sweden. This is entirely to put the
genie of American war crimes back inside the bottle.
CH: And yet the press hasand I read every article on Assange, including
the editorial and Michelle Goldbergs horrible columnhas just bought into
this narrative without seeing that this is an assault on the ability of a
press to shine a light into the inner workings of power and in particular,
empire. That they, they are going after Assange. Theyve found a kind of
legal trick. Theyll charge [Assange with] attempting to assist Manning to
change a password, which even they admit he wasnt able to do. But thats
not why theyre lynching him. Theyre lynching him because he embarrassed
them. He exposed their crimes. It was a bipartisan effort because later we
got the Podesta emails that showed the mendacity of the Clinton campaign on
many levels: her $650,000 to speak in front of Goldman Sachs, a sum so large
that it can only be considered a bribe; the millions of dollars that Saudi
Arabia and Qatarthe chief supporters of the Islamic Stategave to the
Clinton Foundation; the fact that the Clinton campaign worked to ensure
Trump was the nominee; the kinds of statements she would make to the
financial elites about how they were the best people to run the economy,
which contradicted everything she was saying in the campaign; how she got
the debate questions leaked to her in advance. And you [anyone] can argue, I
suppose, that the public doesnt have a right to know this or to know about
the crimes of empire, but I dont know how you can then call yourself a
journalist.
VP: Well, lets be frank. We know what has happened to the journalist
profession. I prefer to call many of my colleagues stenographers of the
state, people [who] take press releases from the government or they accept
what an official says. You just need to read the story, what is the sourcing
of the story? An official said, another official said, a third official
said, a fourth official said. Have you tried to verify the information? What
is your moral standard? The moral standard of what appears in corporate
media is largely the morality of the state and of the national security
systemthey take that as ipso facto the truth. Thats a problem for me. I
understand the profession, the tribe of journalists to be people who are
constantly asking questions, not accepting a press release as the finished
project. But what we see is so many times people rewrite the press release.
They rewrite the statement made by the president, some national security
official, and they put that out as the news. I want to say something very
important. Julian Assange was already in the Ecuadorian Embassy when the
Podesta emails were leaked.
CH: Right.
VP: What they are really going after him for was the leaks that came
through Chelsea Manning. Because what Chelsea Manningwho is in fact an
international hero and should not be right now in prisonwhat Chelsea
Manning showed us was, of course as I said, the Collateral Murder video,
but much more than that; she deeply embarrassed the United States government
for the way its diplomatic corps was operating during, for instance, the
Arab Spring where they were colluding with Mubarak in Egypt to try to
maintain his power, despite the fact that there were huge numbers of people
not only in Tahrir Square but across Egypt. It also showed youand this is
very importantfor a keen reader of the State Department cables, it showed
you how the ambassadors were no longer actually running policy. So, you saw
the ambassadors in Yemen, the ambassadors in Egypt, write letters back to
Washington, D.C., saying that the Defense Department officials are coming
here, national security officials [are coming here] and they are just
sidelining us. And whats interesting is the ambassador in Egypt is a woman
and she says in one of the cables essentially Im becoming like a
secretary; Im taking notes in these meetings. These are MY meetings.
Thats not only embarrassing; for an American citizen that should be very
chilling. Diplomacy, as we see from these cables, is no longer being run in
a political way by the State Department. Diplomacy is being run by the
Defense Department and even more dangerously, by the anonymous national
security state. Thats something that the U.S. government doesnt want out
there in the public. Its OK for you and me to make those allegations, but
to have the evidence for that is, I think, very significant.
CH: Thats an important point. You have ambassadors who admit that they
dont know what the CIA station chief is up to or doing, who theyre
contacting and what theyre orchestrating. Theyre not even informed.
VP: Theyre not even informed, which is a question in a liberal democracy
about who is in charge of the military? Who is in charge of the shadows?
Right after 9/11, Vice President Dick Cheney famously said, Well now its
time to work in the shadows. Whos in charge of the shadows? Vice President
Cheney? In a liberal democracy you assume that the political branch, which
includes the State Department, is leading some of these matters and is the
one you hold accountable. After all, Chris, you cant hold the shadows
accountable. We dont know whats happening in the shadows. If youre going
to permit the shadows to operatepeople to operate in the shadowsthen the
only agency thats accountable to the citizenry is the State Department. I
dont mean to sound naive here. I dont mean to sound like Oh my god, how
silly of him, because what happens is, theres a kind of patina of cynicism
that enters the public. The public says, Of course its going to be like
that. That of course is the road to authoritarianism. You have to hold
your values very close to you, not just close to your chest but youve got
to hold those values out there in public because once you start taking a
cynical attitude to the institutions and ideology of your society, youre
going to end up giving license for authoritarianism.
CH: Weve just watched with the seizure of Assange, the violation of
several laws, of international law, the right to political asylum, the
violation of sovereignty under the Ecuadorian institution. You canton
Ecuadorian soil which is what the embassy is consideredyou cant send
foreign police in. The whole imprisonment of Assange, who has never
committed a crime or evencertainly within Britainbeen charged for a crime.
This whole bail thing was resolved. The Swedish charges were dropped. This
is a kind of microcosm of how these global elites and this imperial power
creates the kind of facade of law, but behind the scenes eviscerate the law.
Its how we in the United States have a right to privacy with no privacy.
Its how we have due process with no due process. Its how our rights are
supposedly protected and the executive authorizesunder Obamaassassinate
Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son. Both U.S. citizens. Its how you
have the mirage of free elections that are corporate funded, corporate
controlled and reported on by a corporate media. I look at whats happened
to Assange as a window into the breakdown of the rule of law.
VP: Lets be frank here. There was a case in Sweden. The statute of
limitations runs to August 2020. The Swedish government can run the charges
against him. But this arrest inside the Ecuadorian Embassy by, in a sense,
an invading British police force, has nothing to do with the statute of
limitations in Sweden. OK, Julian, there is a case against you in Sweden, go
and face the charges. Thats a perfectly acceptable thing to talk about. I
dont think one should be evasive about it. On the other hand, its not
about Sweden. This is about the United States. We should be clear about
that. Sweden is being used as an alibi to bring him to the United States and
face a Guantanamo situation in terms of legality. There is something very
off-putting happening not only in the British government, not only with the
United States, but with Ecuador. Right after Julian Assange is evicted,
essentially, by the Ecuadorian government, in Quito, Ecuador, a young
open-source advocate, privacy advocate, Swedish national by the name of Ola
Bini, was picked up by Ecuadorian authorities. They began to leak
information to the press saying that hes a friend of Julian Assange. They
began to say that hes working with the previous government to overthrow
this governmentall ridiculous statements! But coming at an interesting
moment, when the government of Lenín Moreno, inside Ecuador, is facing
enormous pressure because of leaked documents call the INA Papers which
show flagrant evidence of corruption.
CH: There are pictures of him eating lobster in his hotel room and his wife
talking about trips to Switzerland. Well come back to that. When we come
back, well continue our conversation about the arrest of Julian Assange
with the historian Vijay Prashad.
Break
CH: Welcome back to On Contact. We continue our conversation about the
arrest of Julian Assange with the historian Vijay Prashad. You were talking
about the Ecuadorian government before the break.
VP: Generally, in the media, outside places like Ecuador, when something
happens in the arrest of Julian Assange immediate focus goes to Donald
Trump. What is Trump interest? Or the focus goes to Theresa May. Whats her
interest? But there is an Ecuadorian story here which is very important. We
have a government in Ecuador that is desperate to get a loan from the
International Monetary Fund, which has approached the fund, which is trying
to mend relations with the United States. Im not casting aspersions on the
government of Ecuador. These are things that are in the public record. They
are seeking the loan. They want to improve relations with the United State
government. We know in the world of diplomacy, when you talk to ambassadors
and so on, that there are quid pro quos. Its very clear that the quid pro
quo was theyre going to say, off with Assange and then all things are
good with Ecuador. And inside Ecuador they started this very bizarre
campaign to say that the INA Papers, which were leaked recently, which
showed deep corruption in the Lenín Moreno government and him personally.
These are things people dont like to have in the public record, about how
they live and so on. Nonetheless, this is out there now. They want to
suggest that this is a sort of malignant plot by somebody. Theyve said, two
Russian hackers and a Swede who has seen Julian Assange 12 times and who
travels with former government officials, Ricardo Patiño, a close associate
of Rafael Correa and that they are
CH: We should say Rafael Correa, the former president who gave Julian
Assange political asylum.
VP: Right, and then worked closely to get him his citizenship
CH: And is now living in exile.
VP: And is now himself living in exile in Europe, exactly. So, they
concocted this quite delicious story. The media loves a delicious story. My
god, Chris, two Russian hackers! The moment youve got a headline Two
Russian Hackers its all done.
CH: Well, you know, they shut down the electric grid in Vermont
VP: This Russian hacker business is going to become something that
governments are going to use routinely. It doesnt matter what the veracity.
So, this is their story. Theyre trying to deflect attention from a very
damaging set of revelations by saying that Julian Assange, plus a Russian
hacker, plus a Swedish man who is a world-renowned software designer,
intellectual of the internet, theyre all been maligning us. Therefore, we
need to basically get rid of them and what theyre saying about us is not
true. Innocent people are essentially being put on a sacrificial block in
order to clean up the reputation of [these] people. I didnt make up those
stories. I didnt photoshop those pictures. Those are real pictures. Why
dont you address the real story? In the same way the United States
government has refused to address the story of war crimes. This is [also]
happening in Ecuador.
I want to say something very specific about the United States government and
war crimes. The International Criminal Court has been looking very seriously
at the question of U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan, Iraq and so on. The chief
prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Fatou Bensouda, normally
comes and addresses the U.N. Security Council. She gives a report on what
the ICC has been doing, the criminal court, whats in the docket, what are
they looking at and so on. But to enter the U.N. in New York she must land
in John F. Kennedy International Airport, which is sovereign U.S. territory.
Well last week they were informed that the visa that permits her to land in
the United States so that she can come to, essentially, U.N. territory, that
visa is not guaranteed. What is going on here? You dont actually want to
talk about the real issues, actual textual and visual evidence of war
criminal activity in one case, the United States and in the Ecuadorian case
you dont want to talk about actual evidence of corruption, personal
corruption plus institutional. You dont want to talk about that, so you
start demonizing people.
CH: Well, in a functioning judicial system, the people who committed the
war crimes that Chelsea Manning exposed, would be put on trial. But of
course, Chelsea Manning is in a jail cell because she is refusing to go
before the grand jury that is investigating Assange, without her lawyer, and
testify. Shes been under tremendous pressure, she spent seven years in a
military prison, to implicate Assange in the theft of the documents. She has
said repeatedly that its untrue and under pressure, especially under
solitary confinement, she tried to commit suicide twice in these dark sites.
If Assange is extradited, he wont be flying back on a British Airways
flight. Hell have a hood over himself and be shackled. He will enter the
underworld that is so well known to many Muslims around the globe.
I want to talk about the concerted effort to smear Assange. There was a
leaked document that was prepared by the Cyber Counterintelligence
Assessment Branch [of the U.S. Defense Department] on March 8, 2008. It
called on the U.S. to build a campaign to eradicate the feeling of trust of
WikiLeaks and their center of gravity and to destroy Assanges reputation.
The press became the echo chamber for this.
VP: Youve spent a lot of time at the New York Times. If you and I were
sitting there in that beautiful office in New York City, a gorgeous office,
and we were somehow in an editorial board meeting, I would imagine that you
and I would insist that todays editorialthat is the day after Julian
Assange has been picked up from the Ecuadorian Embassytodays editorial
must lead with that quotation. We must show, as a media house, that there
has been an attempta conspiracy evenan attempt to create distrust in an
organization that has revealed this importantwhich we also reported on!
CH: Right. And they destroyed [WikiLeaks] financially by blocking its Paypal
accounts and everything else. WikiLeaks and Assange, at a certain moment,
were heroes, even within the mainstream press. We must not forget The New
York Times and Washington Post, Der Spiegel, Le Mondethey all published
this material.
VP: Thats very important! They published this material. At the time they
understood the value of the material, even though they hedged and they this
and that, nonetheless they published the material. They have amnesia about
their own sense of trust of that organization. Thats should be something we
remind them of. You utilized the material when it was convenient to you.
When the United States government said smear their reputation, destroy them
you joined the bandwagon.
CH: Coming out of the New York Times culture, what Assange did was shame
them into telling the truth. This is what the alternative media
traditionally does to the commercial media. They realized that for WikiLeaks
to put this material out and for them to ignore it, would essentially
destroy their credibility, although theyve done a pretty good job of
destroying their own credibility as a newspaper organization. I want to
close by talking aboutand this is from Julian Assanges book,
Cypherpunkswhere he talks about what he calls The layers of indirection
and obfuscation about what is happening. He said: These layers give the
deniability to censorship and he says:
You can think about censorship as a pyramid. This pyramid only has its tip
sticking out of the sand and that is by intention. The tip is public libel
suits, murders of journalists, cameras being snatched by the military and so
on, publicly declared censorship. But that is the smallest component. Under
the tip, the next layer is all those people who dont want to be at the tip,
who engage in self-censorship, to not end up there.
CH: I covered the Middle East. That is almost every reporter who covers, in
particular, the Palestinians. Then:
The next layer is all the forms of economic inducement or patronage,
inducement that are given to people to write about one thing or another. The
next layer down is raw economy, what it is economic to write about even if
you dont include the economic factors from higher up on the pyramid. The
next layer is the prejudice of readers, who only have a certain amount of
education so therefore on one hand theyre easy to manipulate with false
information and on the other hand, you cant tell them something
sophisticated that is true. The last layer is distribution; for example some
people just dont have access to information in a particular language. So
that is the censorship pyramidwhat The Guardian is doing with its Cablegate
redactions is the second layer.
CH: Hes right. You have all these forces, many of which that are
subterranean, that essentially block [the truth]. I used to say that the
unofficial motto of The New York Times is do not significantly alienate
those on whom we depend on access and money. As a reporter you might be able
to alienate them once in a while, but if you consistently alienate them you
become a management problem, as I did.
VP: You become a management problem. You also are portrayed as unhinged.
This is a very important. Why are there so many conspiracy theories in the
20th and 21st century? Secrecy breeds that. The secrecy state, or the
culture of secrecy of governments, sends people into the sewers looking for
explanations. You want people to have a rational, reasonable
understandingtell us whats happening. When you actually look at whats
happening, it doesnt look very reasonable and rational. It looks very ugly.
CH: Thanks, Vijay. That was the historian Vijay Prashad.
We must now all resist. We must in every way possible put pressure on the
British government to halt the judicial lynching of Julian Assange. If
Assange is extradited and tried, it will create a legal precedent that will
terminate the ability of the press, which Trump repeatedly has called the
enemy of the people, to hold power accountable. The crimes of war and
finance, the persecution of dissidents, minorities and immigrants, the
pillaging by corporations of the nation and the ecosystem, and the ruthless
impoverishment of working men and women to swell the bank accounts of the
rich, and consolidate the global oligarchs total grip on power, will not
only expand, but will no longer be part of public debate. First Assange.
Then us.
The transcript was prepared by Naila Kauser.
Chris Hedges
Columnist
Chris Hedges is a Truthdig columnist, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, a
New York Times best-selling author, a professor in the college degree
program offered to New Jersey state prisoners by Rutgers
