Truthdig
Glenn Greenwald Warns That Press Freedom Is at Risk as the U.S. Seeks to
Arrest Julian Assange
http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/press_freedoms_us_seeks_arrest_wikileak
s_founder_julian_assange_20170421/
Posted on Apr 21, 2017
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorean Embassy in London in
2016. (Kirsty Wigglesworth / AP
(http://www.apimages.com/metadata/Index/Britain-Assange/fe259770a4bf4708ad3f
51b0e891369e/26/0) )
The Trump administration wants to arrest Julian Assange and is preparing
charges against the WikiLeaks founder, a situation that is raising concerns
among many, including prize-winning journalist and Intercept co-founder
Glenn Greenwald.
CNN reports
(http://www.cnn.com/2017/04/20/politics/julian-assange-wikileaks-us-charges/
) :
The Justice Department investigation of Assange and WikiLeaks dates to at
least 2010, when the site first gained wide attention for posting thousands
of files stolen by the former US Army intelligence analyst now known as
Chelsea Manning.
Prosecutors have struggled with whether the First Amendment precluded the
prosecution of Assange, but now believe they have found a way to move
forward.
During President Barack Obama's administration, Attorney General Eric Holder
and officials at the Justice Department determined it would be difficult to
bring charges against Assange because WikiLeaks wasn't alone in publishing
documents stolen by Manning. Several newspapers, including The New York
Times, did as well. The investigation continued, but any possible charges
were put on hold, according to US officials involved in the process then.
The US view of WikiLeaks and Assange began to change after investigators
found what they believe was proof that WikiLeaks played an active role in
helping Edward Snowden, a former NSA analyst, disclose a massive cache of
classified documents.
U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions confirmed Thursday that arresting
Assange is a priority
(https://www.theguardian.com/media/2017/apr/21/arresting-julian-assange-is-a
-priority-says-us-attorney-general-jeff-sessions) .
"We are going to step up our effort and already are stepping up our efforts
on all leaks," Sessions said. "This is a matter that's gone beyond anything
I'm aware of. We have professionals that have been in the security business
of the United States for many years that are shocked by the number of leaks
and some of them are quite serious. So yes, it is a priority. We've already
begun to step up our efforts and whenever a case can be made, we will seek
to put some people in jail."
On Friday, during an appearance on CNN, Sessions left open the possibility
of prosecuting mainstream media outlets
(https://thinkprogress.org/sessions-wikileaks-priority-assange-crackdown-pre
ss-freedoms-7f332489db2b) , as well as WikiLeaks. ThinkProgress reports:
Sessions was asked by anchor Kate Bolduan whether "folks should be concerned
that this would also open up news organizations like CNN and the New York
Times to prosecution."
Sessions wouldn't rule anything out.
"That's speculative, and I'm not able to comment on that," he replied.
Assange's lawyer, Barry Pollack, did not have knowledge of imminent
prosecution.
"We've had no communication with the Department of Justice, and they have
not indicated to me that they have brought any charges against Mr. Assange,"
Pollack said in a CNN interview. "They've been unwilling to have any
discussion at all, despite our repeated requests, that they let us know what
Mr. Assange's status is in any pending investigations. There's no reason why
WikiLeaks should be treated differently from any other publisher."
On Friday, Greenwald appeared on Democracy Now!
(https://www.democracynow.org/2017/4/21/glenn_greenwald_trumps_doj_prosecuti
ng_wikileaks) to discuss how the prosecution of WikiLeaks threatens speech
and press freedoms
(https://theintercept.com/2017/04/14/trumps-cia-director-pompeo-targeting-wi
kileaks-explicitly-threatens-speech-and-press-freedoms/) for everyone.
I think the key point here to understand is the way in which governments
typically try and abridge core freedoms, because what they know is that if
they target a group that is popular or a particular idea that people agree
with, there will be an uprising against the attempt to abridge freedom. So
what they always do, for example, when governments try and abridge freedom
of speech, is they pick somebody who they know is hated in society or who
expresses an idea that most people find repellent, and they try and abridge
freedom of speech in that case, so that most people will let their hatred
for the person being targeted override the principle involved, and they will
sanction or at least acquiesce to the attack on freedom because they hate
the person being attacked. But what happens is, the abridgment then gets
institutionalized and entrenched. And that way, when the government goes to
start to apply this abridgment to other people that you like more, it's too
late, because you've acquiesced in the first instance. And that's why groups
like the ACLU, when they want to defend civil liberties, are often-so often
defending the most marginalized and hated groups, like neo-Nazis or white
supremacists or the KKK, because that's where the attacks happen.
You can find the transcript on the Democracy Now website or listen to the
interview there. I heard it on the podcast.
