Modern Journalism
Julian Assange, the very definition of a modern internet journalist, is out of jail. He flew to the North Mariana Islands. Why there, a single spec of dry land in the vast Pacific north of Guam called Saipan, infamous from World War II? Saipan has the one thing that Assange needed . It has a US Court. (The US has judicial jurisdiction left over from their World War II occupation). He made a deal with the US Department of Justice. Assange pled guilty to charges of aiding an American soldier (Chelsea Manning) to reveal classified documents and received a five year sentence. And since he’s already served five years in jail in Great Britain, awaiting extradition to the US, he is now “free” in his native Australia.
Julian Assange, may be responsible for the death of men and women who helped the United States as informants, revealed in his “journalism”. He published the Russian hacked Democratic Committee computer information in 2016. So, if nothing else, Assange has some responsibility for the Presidency of Donald Trump. Assange definitely put US secrets out in public. Not just a few, but millions of pages of documents.
Assange is a “hero” to those who are against the United States, to Republicans who wanted to embarrass the Democrats, and to Russians who used his material to advance their cause worldwide. He’s a “maverick”, a man convinced that nothing should be kept secret. Sunlight cleanses all (or bleaches everything white). In our conspiratorial world, his view appeals to many.
Rip it Off
And in his five years in British prison, plus seven years in self-imposed imprisonment in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, he has been a foreign policy thorn in the side of President Obama, Trump and Biden. This plea deal “rips off the bandage”, furthering US relations with Assange’s native Australia, and lets the British breathe easier (Assange was popular in the UK).
Here’s my “dream”. He lands in Saipan, and is “adjudicated” by the Court. He then gets on a private plane, free to fly home to Australia. Somewhere over the Pacific, maybe near Howland Island (where Amelia Earhart disappeared in 1937) his plane just…disappears…along with Assange. But dreams are just wishes: Assange is a free man walking in Canberra, Australia today.
I believe in the freedom of the press, and the power of journalism. And I remember the “Pentagon Papers”, stolen from the Department of Defense and given to the Washington Post to prove that the Pentagon and the President knowingly lied to the American people about Vietnam. But those papers didn’t get anyone killed. They embarrassed the government, and furthered public opinion against the war. Chelsea Manning is no Daniel Ellsberg, and Julian Assange and Wikileaks ain’t Ben Bradlee and the Washington Post, either.
Anti-Hero
He’s Australia’s problem now. No doubt, he’ll try to revive Wikileaks, where purloined secrets go to be revealed. The difference now, twelve years later, is that in our current climate of “alternative facts” no one knows whether the secrets are real, or just some “dream” created to gain clicks and internet sales revenue.
Assange vows to make every secret public, no matter how he got them. He takes no responsibility for the consequences; if he gets it, the whole world sees it. And even worse, he not only published information, but he worked with Chelsea Manning to break the passwords to steal it. When he crossed over to active espionage, he lost all hope of having “Freedom of the Press” protect him. He’s just a spy, a saboteur. Seven years exile in the embassy, and five years in jail, really isn’t enough.
