Journalists Push Biden to Free Julian Assange
https://socialistaction.org/2022/12/01/journalists-push-biden-to-free-julian-assange/
By Stephen Rohde
On November 28, the editors and publishers of five international media
outlets released a joint letter— under the title “Publishing is Not a
Crime”—calling on the U.S. government to end its prosecution of
Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. The date was significant. Twelve years
prior, on November 28, 2010,the same five newspapers—The New York Times,
The Guardian, Le Monde, El Pais and DER SPIEGEL—each published
revelations in cooperation with Wikileaks that made headlines around the
globe.
“Cable gate,” a set of 251,000 confidential cables from the U.S. State
Department disclosed corruption, diplomatic scandals and spy affairs on
an international scale. According to The New York Times, the documents
told “the unvarnished story of how the government makes its biggest
decisions, the decisions that cost the country most heavily in lives and
money.”
Even now in 2022, the joint letter states, journalists and historians
continue to publish new revelations drawn from the unique trove of
documents.
A month ago, in October, at the same time he was prosecuting Assange,
Attorney General Merrick Garland announced that the Justice Department
would formally ban the use of subpoenas, warrants, and court orders to
seize reporters’ communications records, or demand their notes or
testimony in an effort to uncover confidential sources in leak
investigations. He boldly stated that the new “regulations recognize the
crucial role that a free and independent press plays in our democracy.
Because freedom of the press requires that members of the news media
have the freedom to investigate and report the news, the new regulations
are intended to provide enhanced protection to members of the news media
from certain law enforcement tools and actions that might unreasonably
impair news gathering.”
It is the height of hypocrisy that at the very time Garland uttered
these lofty words, he was actively pursuing an unprecedented indictment
against Assange, who is facing 175 years in prison if extradited and
convicted under the Espionage Act of 1917.
The conduct for which Assange is accused of breaking the law is exactly
what the new DOJ regulation defines as protected “news gathering”;
namely “the process by which a member of the news media collects,
pursues or obtains information or records for purposes of producing
content intended for public dissemination,” including “classified
information” from confidential sources. The Justice Department is also
said to have removed “espionage” from a list of criminal activities
excluded from protected news gathering.
If the Biden administration means what it says, it should immediately
reverse one of the worst legal excesses of Donald Trump’s term. The
indictment of Assange is the first time in the 230-year history of the
First Amendment that a media organization is being prosecuted for
publishing or disseminating classified information disclosed by a
whistleblower. Since founding Wikileaks, Assange has been in the
business of gathering and publishing newsworthy information and
documents, activities clearly protected by the First Amendment.
Assange came to the U.S. government’s attention because he was
publishing information highly incriminating and embarrassing to the U.S.
government, including the controversial “Collateral Murder” video
showing a U.S. air crew in Apache helicopters in July 2007 slaughtering
a dozen people in Iraq. The dead included two Iraqis working for Reuters
news agency, contradicting U.S. claims that all the dead were insurgents.
Editors of major media organizations have decried the prosecution’s
chilling effect on the American press. Former Washington Post Executive
Editor Marty Baron said the indictment “undermines the very purpose of
the First Amendment.” USA Today Editor in Chief Nicole Carroll has
called it a “chilling attack on press freedoms and the public’s right to
know.”
According to Jameel Jaffer of the Knight First Amendment Institute at
Columbia University, the charges against Assange “rely almost entirely
on conduct that investigative journalists engage in every day. The
indictment should be understood as a frontal attack on press freedom.”
Many publications and investigative reporters, such as Seymour Hersh,
routinely seek information that government officials want to keep
secret, including classified national security matters. They cooperate
with their sources when they obtain that information, they publish that
information and they take steps to protect the confidentiality of their
sources.
On January 4, 2021, British criminal court judge Vanessa Baraister
denied the U.S. government’s request to extradite Assange. Given the
fact that he had been confined to Ecuadorian embassy for seven years and
held in the Balmarsh high-security prison since April 12, 2019, the
judge found that Assange’s mental condition “is such that it would be
oppressive to extradite him to the United States of America.” Instead of
simply accepting that decision and distancing itself from Trump’s
outrageous indictment, the Biden DOJ appealed that ruling and convinced
the British higher courts to reverse Judge Baraister.
Last June, the British government formally ordered Assange to be
extradited. His lawyers promptly appealed, now free to raise additional
issues including the fundamental question whether extradition should be
blocked because the entire indictment constitutes a “political offense.”
If Assange loses that appeal his last resort is to seek protection from
the European Court of Human Rights. Meanwhile, in poor health and
separated from his wife and two children, he languishes in prison.
If left unchallenged, the Trump administration’s lasting First Amendment
legacy will be to criminalize essential journalistic practices; that is,
to do precisely what the First Amendment was intended to prevent. By
continuing the prosecution against Assange, the Biden administration
will seriously damage American democracy and greatly undermine its
standing in the world.
In 2013, the Obama-Biden Justice Department correctly declined to indict
Assange in deference to the threat such a prosecution would pose to the
First Amendment. That was a prudent decision underscored by President
Obama’s commutation of the prison sentence of Assange’s alleged source,
Chelsea Manning, in the last days of his presidency. The Obama-Biden
Justice Department recognized that indicting Assange would put every
other journalist and publisher in legal jeopardy.
The joint letter from The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, El
Pais and DER SPIEGEL expressed “grave concerns about the continued
prosecution of Julian Assange for obtaining and publishing classified
materials.” The indictment “sets a dangerous precedent, and threatens to
undermine America’s First Amendment and the freedom of the press.
Holding governments accountable is part of the core mission of a free
press in a democracy. Obtaining and disclosing sensitive information
when necessary in the public interest is a core part of the daily work
of journalists. If that work is criminalized, our public discourse and
our democracies are made significantly weaker.”
The United States still has time to reverse course and put a stop to
this affront to the First Amendment. If the new administration is
sincere in expressing laudable sentiments about press freedom, it must
immediately drop the case against Julian Assange.
This article was originally published in Truthdig.
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--
Carl Sagan “Why do we put up with it? Do we like to be criticized? No,
no scientist enjoys it. Every scientist feels a proprietary affection
for his or her ideas and findings. Even so, you don’t reply to critics,
Wait a minute; this is a really good idea; I’m very fond of it; it’s
done you no harm; please leave it alone. Instead, the hard but just rule
is that if the ideas don’t work, you must throw them away.” ― Carl
Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark