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Truthdigger of the Week: Julian Assange, Publisher of the Clinton Campaign
Emails
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/truthdigger_of_the_week_julian_assange_2
0161022/
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Posted on Oct 22, 2016
By Alexander Reed Kelly
WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange reads from a U.N. report as he speaks
from Londons Ecuadorean Embassy in February. (Frank Augstein / AP)
Every week the Truthdig editorial staff selects a Truthdigger of the Week, a
group or person worthy of recognition for speaking truth to power, breaking
the story or blowing the whistle. It is not a lifetime achievement award.
Rather, were looking for newsmakers whose actions in a given week are worth
celebrating.
Should we condemn Julian Assange for his recent interventions in U.S.
politics?
The Australian hacker-turned-journalist became an international hero for
free speech and government transparency in 2010 when he published through
WikiLeaks, an organization he co-founded, a quartet of
award-winning(http://www.democracynow.org/2011/11/28/wikileaks_julian_assang
e_win_major_australian)
disclosures(http://www.salon.com/2010/12/24/wikileaks_23/) revealing the
U.S. military behaving far worse in its wars in Afghanistan and Iraq than it
had admitted and U.S. State Department officials speaking frankly about
their allies and intentions around the globe.
Under threat of exposure, the Obama administration, led by Hillary Clintons
State Department, leapt into action, opening a criminal investigation into
Assange and pursuing him through its international allies to the Ecuadorean
Embassy in London in 2012, where he remains to this day, functionally
imprisoned under asylum. This week, while he was still coordinating his work
with others, the Ecuadorean government suspended his internet
access(http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/301688-ecuador-cut-off-assang
es-internet-over-clinton-emails) .
Now, after publishing searchable databases of thousands of emails over the
summer hacked or leaked from the servers of Democratic presidential
candidate Hillary Clinton(https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/) , the
Democratic National
Committee(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Democratic_National_Committee_e
mail_leak) and Clinton campaign chairman John
Podesta(https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/?q=&mfrom=&mto=&title=¬itle=
&date_from=&date_to=&nofrom=¬o=&count=50&sort=6) (messages that include
transcripts of Clintons paid speeches to Goldman
Sachs(http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/read_full_transcripts_of_t
hree_of_hillary_20161019) and give further substance to allegations of
duplicity(http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/what_we_know_so_far_about_the
_clinton_campaigns_leaked_emails_20161015) , disdain for
activists(https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/04/bernie-sande
rs-supporters-young-voters-hillary-clinton) and compromising
self-interest(http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/clinton_foundation
_donors_made_up_more_than_half_of_clintons_non-government) that have
followed her and her circle for more than a decade), Assange is under fresh
attack from familiar adversaries representing the establishment and taking
hard criticism from erstwhile allies.
Citing rationales that U.S. intelligence agencies have not made available to
the public, Clinton and her aides assertand their media allies uncritically
reportthat Assange is working with the Russian
government(https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/oct/14/wiileaks-from-liber
al-beacon-to-a-prop-for-trump-what-has-happened) to help Donald Trump win
the presidency by strategically timing the release of the emailsthe
authenticity of which the Clinton camp has not
denied(http://variety.com/2016/biz/news/hillary-clinton-wikileaks-john-podes
ta-emails-1201882169/) to cause maximum damage to her presidential
campaign.
Relative newcomers to the critique of Assange are NSA whistleblower Edward
Snowden(https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/758759203037151232?ref_src=twsrc%
5Etfw) , journalist, author and activist Naomi
Klein(https://theintercept.com/2016/10/19/is-disclosure-of-podestas-emails-a
-step-too-far-a-conversation-with-naomi-klein/) and Harvard Law professor
and civil liberties advocate Lawrence
Lessig(http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/10/larry-lessig-has-a-very-
good-attitude.html) . They take issue with the failure of Assange and his
colleagues to strip the leaked documents of information that is not
essential to the business of informed democracy and which unnecessarily
spotlights the personal lives of the people involved. In a conversation with
The Intercept co-founder Glenn
Greenwald(https://theintercept.com/2016/10/19/is-disclosure-of-podestas-emai
ls-a-step-too-far-a-conversation-with-naomi-klein/) (who maintains that
public interest requires that powerful people, especially officials, forfeit
a measure of their privacy), Klein eloquently expressed her concern about
the subjectivity of who gets defined as sufficiently powerful to lose their
privacy, adding that she is absolutely sure there are plenty of people in
the world who believe that you and I are sufficiently powerful to lose our
privacy.
Im not comfortable with anybody wielding that much power, Klein said.
Im not comfortable when its states, but Im also not comfortable when
its individuals or institutions. As a high-profile role model to
journalists and activists for his role in bringing Snowdens NSA leaks to
the public, Greenwald has a special responsibility to protect the ethics
that underpin his efforts in public service. And that means criticizing
Assange (whom Greenwald, a trained lawyer, ably
defended(http://www.democracynow.org/2010/12/3/is_wikileaks_julian_assange_a
_hero) in the press during WikiLeaks initial burst of activity in 2010)
when Assange fails to meet his own ethical standards, or those he once
claimed and practiced.
In 2010, Greenwald explained, WikiLeaks, contrary to the way they were
being depicted by the U.S. intelligence community and their friends, was not
some reckless rogue agent running around sociopathically dumping information
on the internet without concern about who might be endangered. And in fact,
if you look at how the biggest WikiLeaks releases were handled early onthe
Iraq and Afghanistan war logs, as well as the State Department cablesnot
only did they redact huge numbers of documents on the grounds that doing so
was necessary to protect the welfare of innocent people, they actually
requested that the State Department meet with them to help them figure out
what kind of information should be withheld on the grounds that it could
endanger innocent people.
But, [s]omewhere along the way, WikiLeaks and Julian decided, and theyve
said this explicitly, that they changed their mind on that questionthey no
longer believe in redactions or withholding documents of any kind.
Similarly, after WikiLeaks released a batch of DNC emails in July, Edward
Snowden
tweeted(https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/758759203037151232?ref_src=twsrc%
5Etfw) :
Following Assanges writings in
2010(https://cryptome.org/0002/ja-conspiracies.pdf) , when he stated that he
seeks to tip the balance of power away from powerful institutions and actors
by depriving them of the ability to operate behind closed doors without fear
of being exposed and terminally and legally reckoned with by the public,
Assange, in his work this summer, clearly targeted Clinton, whom he regards
as an enemy of the public for championing U.S. hegemony and a personal
antagonist for pursuing his prosecution. There is clearly a vendetta
element going on, Klein told Greenwald, which is understandable, because
Hillary Clinton is massively responsible for his lack of freedom. But Klein
is very disturbed by [Assanges] seeming willingness to burn it down and
by the ego of seeing this election through ones personal lens when the
stakes are so incredibly high.
Heres a question few are asking: Would Assange, who set out to perform the
honorable service of exposing government corruption, behave as he does today
if he, a single individual with limited resources, had not been relentlessly
pursued into the corner of a single room for 5½ years by people atop the
most powerful state in civilized history? And can he, under burden of stress
and loss of staff, associations and resources, be expected to fulfill the
ethical obligations he once honored and still perform the service of making
essential, willfully concealed information public? History is full of people
who undertook to do good and were reshaped for the worse by the opposition
they confronted. Ive heard more than a few of Clintons progressive
supporters casually justify her record of capitulation in the face of
corporate and Republican forces in this way. Do honesty and decency not
require that we regard people, including Clinton and Assange, complexly?
The difference between the two, of course, is that Clinton wields tremendous
wealth and state power, whereas at terrific cost to himself, Assange
succeeds in performing the essential service of revealing what leaders do in
secret in our name. Because of Assange, we know that Clinton said
politicians like her need both a public and private position when handling
controversial matters, a comment that is as close to an admission of lying
as we have heard from an official in recent years, and which should cast
into doubt everything she has said or will say to voters.
Clintons supporters seem to expect that shell wield this trickiness in
their interests. We hope theyre right. In the meantime, Julian Assange is
our Truthdigger of the Week.
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