LIVE UPDATES: ASSANGE HEARING DAY TENFairbanks Testifies Trump Ordered
Assange Arrest
September 21, 2020
Consortium News is virtually inside the courtroom at Old Bailey, viewing
the proceedings by video-link and we will file live updates on Day Ten of
Julian Assanges resumed extradition hearing.
Old Bailey (Wikimedia Commons)
Follow our Twitter feed for up to the minute updates.
Fairbanks Testifies Trump
Ordered Assange Arrest
11:48 am EDT: Journalist Cassandra Fairbank testified that President Donald
Trump had personally ordered Julian Assanges arrest from the Ecuadorian
embassy in London in April 2019.
Fairbanks said she learned in October 2018 directly from Arthur Schwartz, a
Trump backer and member of the presidents inner circle that, the U.S. would
have Assange taken from the embassy; that he would only be charged with the
Chelsea Manning leaks and not for Vault 7 or DNC email releases; that the
U.S. would again go after Manning to testify against Assange; that Richard
Grenell, then U.S. ambassador to the Germany and later director of national
intelligence, had worked out a deal with Ecuador to hand Assange over, that
the order to get Assange had come directly from Trump and that the U.S.
would not seek the death penalty to make extradition possible.
All of these things came true, Fairbanks testified. Armed with this
information she traveled to London from Washington and met with Assange at
the embassy where she revealed these details to him.
Upon return she says she was contacted by Schwarz who was furious because he
learned of her informing Assange, evidently through surveillance at the
embassy. When she tweeted about this Grenell contacted her employer at The
Gateway Pundit and tried to have her fired. A panicked Schwarz informed her
that there was an investigation into who leaked this information to her.
Her testimony was read by defense lawyer Edward Fitzgerald after the
government objected. But defense argued that hearsay rules do not apply to
political testimony, which bolstered the defense argument that Assanges
prosecution is political and therefore violates the U.S.-UK extradition
treaty.
US Concedes WikiLeaks Was Not First
to Publish Unredacted Diplomatic Cables;
But Says it Had Widest Reach
9:38 am EDT: Prosecution argued it only learned in the morning of the next
scheduled defense witness, journalist Andy Worthington, and did not have
sufficient to time to prepare cross examination. Extraordinary, as the
prosecution has repeatedly been told by defense witnesses that they are
being sent a bundle of prosecution documents sometimes only hours before
they were to testify, giving them no time to prepare for cross examination.
It appears Worthington will not appear as a witness and that journalist
Cassandra Fairbanks may be up next.
8:24 am EDT: The prosecution Monday morning was trying to establish that
even if WikiLeaks was not the first to publish the unredacted State
Department cables containing informants names (even though only Julian
Assange is the only one being prosecuted for it), it made WikiLeaks more
liable than others who published first because WikiLeaks has a larger reach
on the internet and included a search engine with the files, unlike those
who published the cables first.
It is a curious argument from the government in that until this point it
tried to establish that WikiLeaks was first, or the only one, to publish.
The indictment against Assange makes no mention of the chronology of
publishing, which is crucial because as the defense is trying to establish,
WikiLeaks would not have published the unredacted archive at all if others
had not done so first.
The turn in prosecution argument is similar to it dropping its contention
that Assange is not a journalist by making it clear that the U.S. is not
precluded from charging a member of the media for disclosing national
defense information.
7:20 am EDT: Defense witness Christian Grothoff, a professor of computer
science at Bern University, Switzerland has laid out the chronology of the
publication of the unredacted State Dept. cables that are at the heart of
this case.
He traces it back to the publication of the password in the Feb. 2011 book
by David Leigh and Luke Harding. Grothoff then explained that the German
publication Freitag wrote on Aug. 25, 2011 about the password being
available in the book, which led to the cables being published on Aug. 31 on
a torrent site, followed by their publication by Cryptome.org on Sept. 1.
WikiLeaks then published it on Sept. 2. Grothoff testified that WikiLeaks
was a responsible publisher that tried to protect the unredacted cables.
Defense attorney Mark Summers on direct asked Grothoff if the files were
still available on Cryptome.
Grothoff: Yes I accessed them last week.
Summers: Was Cryptome ever prosecuted for this?
Grothoff: The defense never provided me with information, no.
On cross examination, prosecutor Joel Smith attempted, as the prosecution
has with virtually every defense witness, to undermine Grothoffs
impartiality.
Smith: Can you think of anything that shows you are not impartial?
Grothoff: I dont know what you are thinking about. Obviously we know that
Mr, Assange did publish information about war crimes by governments, which
makes him a sympathetic character. But that does not make me impartial.
Smith then said that Grothoff had signed an open letter to President Donald
Trump in 2017 asking that he end the grand jury and drop all charges against
Assange because of the threat to press freedom it represented. Grothoff
said he didnt remember signing the letter.
Grothoff: I have a view that this prosecution is unfair but I only tried
to look if there was a case for the prosecution and I did not find it.
Smith: You are biased, you are partial.
Grothoff: No you are confusing actions WikiLeaks took to hide these cables.
So when you say WikiLeaks published these cable first, you are wrong and did
not do your homework. It is unfair to accuse Mr. Assange of publishing those
cables.
Smith: When you first signed that letter did you have knowledge of the
release of the unredacted cables?
Grothoff: Yes. Even at that time it seemed clear to me the primary
publisher was not WikiLeaks because they were known for being responsible.
So I had knowledge it lost control of the cables. On cross examination,
Mark Summers for the defense, said that among other signers of the letter to
Trump were former U.S. military and intelligence figures, judges and members
of the German Bundestag.
The prosecution brought up an open vote that WikiLeaks conducted on Twitter
and Facebook on Sept. 1, 2011, after the files had been published on
Kryptome. The vote was on whether or not WikiLeaks should also now release
the cables. Smith told the court that the global vote was 100 to 1 to
publish.
What was not brought up by the defense on re-direct examination is that the
main reason given during the debate before the vote was that governments
would be most likely to find the files on Cryptome, or decrypt the files
themselves from the password that Leigh had made available, and that
WikiLeaks wanted to use its wider reach to alert informants whose names had
been revealed to seek safety.
Grothoff had testified on direct examination that Assange had been extremely
reluctant to give Leigh the pass code to the entire unredacted archives, but
eventually gave in. On redirect-Summers read a passage from Leighs book in
which The Guardian journalist pressured Assange to give him the entire
cache. Assange had offered to give Leigh 50 percent of the archive. Leigh
and Harding wrote:
Leigh refused. All or nothing, he said. What happens if you end up in an
orange jump-suit en route to Guantánamo before you can release the full
files? In return he would give Assange a promise to keep the cables secure,
and not to publish them until the time came.
Grothoff said he saw mention of Guantanamo as part of the pressure that
WikiLeaks had been put under. At the time, on Sept. 1 2011, The Guardian
issued a statement:
Its nonsense to suggest the Guardians WikiLeaks book has compromised
security in any way.
Our book about WikiLeaks was published last February. It contained a
password, but no details of the location of the files, and we were told it
was a temporary password which would expire and be deleted in a matter of
hours.
It was a meaningless piece of information to anyone except the person(s)
who created the database.
No concerns were expressed when the book was published and if anyone at
WikiLeaks had thought this compromised security they have had seven months
to remove the files. That they didnt do so clearly shows the problem was
not caused by the Guardians book.
The prosecution appeared to be trying to muddy the waters by bringing up
133,000 diplomatic files that WikiLeaks published in August 2011, before the
released of the unredacted cables. These files came from the U.S. missions
in numerous countries including Iran, China, Russia, Israel, Yemen, Syria,
Australia, Bahrain and Zimbabwe. Grothoff testified that he analyzed all of
these files and found that none were classified.
The government alleges the names of some informants appeared in some of
these documents. German journalist John Goetz, who testified for the defense
last Wednesday, said that while some of these documents were marked
Strictly Protect, it did not men informants names were present.
5:01 am EDT: Court is in session. First defense witness is Christian
Grothoff, a professor of computer science at Bern University, Switzerland.
Network security and cryptography are his specialities. He was asked to
investigate of the unredacted chache of diplomatic cables in September
2011.
