Keeping Secrets<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Julian Assange was indicted in Federal Court yesterday. These new charges are called \u201csuperseding\u201d indictments; they are replacing the original indictments that were secretly filed a few years ago. We learned about those original indictments because of a mistake by an Assistant United States Attorney in the Federal Eastern District of Virginia, who copied \u201cboiler plate\u201d paragraphs from the sealed Assange document to an unrelated indictment, and included too much.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Julian Assange is the creator of\u00a0Wikileaks<\/em>, an international website that prides itself on publishing secrets.\u00a0\u00a0Its first secret was released in December 2006, a Somali order to assassinate government officials.\u00a0\u00a0Even in this first \u201csecret\u201d the United States was implicated, with\u00a0Wikileaks<\/em> commenting that the order might be misinformation put out by US intelligence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wikileaks<\/em> took on other powers, including Swiss banks, Kenyan politicians, the Chinese suppression of Tibet, and Scientology.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0But Assange often came back to US intelligence, including \u201cprocedures\u201d used at the Guantanamo prison and internal Defense Department documents.\u00a0\u00a0But the first big \u201chit\u201d against the US came in April of 2010.\u00a0It revealed unedited video of US helicopter airstrikes in Baghdad, where civilians were \u201ccollateral damage.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0One of those attacks killed two Reuters news agency staff and wounded several children.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n That information was given to Assange and\u00a0Wikileaks<\/em> by a US soldier named Chelsea Manning.\u00a0\u00a0She leaked over 750,000 US diplomatic cables, videos, and other classified documents to Assange, most of them published on\u00a0Wikileaks<\/em>.\u00a0\u00a0Manning ultimately was charged with espionage, confessed in Federal Court, and sentenced to thirty-five years in prison.\u00a0\u00a0Her sentence was commuted by President Obama after serving seven years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Assange went onto to publish the information stolen by National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden, and, of course, the stolen Democratic National Committee emails during the 2016 election. He was charged with sexual assault and rape in Sweden, and claimed asylum in the Ecuadoran embassy in London, where he stayed for seven years. Last month the government of Ecuador kicked him out, and he was taken into custody by the British police.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The original sealed Federal indictment accused Assange of directly aiding Manning in stealing classified materials. The US government had evidence of Assange helping Manning figure out the passwords to break into the system. This indictment seemed like a clean case of aiding and abetting someone stealing classified materials.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yesterday\u2019s superseding indictment changed the entire legal nature of the charges.\u00a0\u00a0It charged Assange with eighteen counts of espionage against the United States by\u00a0publishing<\/strong> classified materials.\u00a0\u00a0This alters the \u201ccriminal act(s)\u201d from aiding in the theft of classified documents, to the actual publishing of those same documents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I don\u2019t like Julian Assange. He was a \u201ctool\u201d of Russian Intelligence in their attack on the US elections, and most particularly on Hillary Clinton. And while I understand the \u201cwhistleblower\u201d aspect of Manning and Snowden, there also was tremendous damage done to US interests by their releases. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Wikileaks<\/em> is a platform for the release of secret and often embarrassing information.\u00a0\u00a0In the rapidly evolving world of information, it is hard to differentiate between \u201cjournalism\u201d and something else.\u00a0\u00a0Wikileaks<\/em> claims to be a news source and a journalistic business, similar to a newspaper.\u00a0\u00a0Like it or not, the\u00a0Wikileaks<\/em> releases, from Manning to Snowden to the Podesta emails; all ended up on the front pages mainstream newspapers like the\u00a0New York Times,\u00a0<\/em>the\u00a0Washington Post,\u00a0<\/em>and even the\u00a0Columbus Dispatch.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n The new indictments attempt to make it espionage to publish information that is classified. The fact that it is filed against Julian Assange makes it little different than filing against the AG Sulzberger of the Times, <\/em>Fred Ryan of the Post <\/em>or Bradley Harmon of the Dispatch.<\/em> It also seems to be a government attempt to overturn the long established Supreme Court ruling in the 1971 Pentagon Papers case, where it was held that the Times <\/em>and the Post <\/em>could not be restrained from publishing leaked Pentagon documents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For more conspiratorial readers, the new indictments may have an even more sinister intent. Filing espionage charges against Assange for publishing will put the United Kingdom courts in their own \u201cfreedom of the press\u201d bind. It might well be that the UK will not extradite Assange to the US for such charges, thus keeping him out of the US Court systems. It also will keep Assange from answering questions about the source of the Democratic National Committee emails, and whether Assange coordinated their release with official or unofficial members of the 2016 Trump campaign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Regardless of the impact on the \u201cRussia investigation,\u201d the new indictments put the US on a slippery slope of First Amendment freedoms.\u00a0\u00a0It is easy to argue that the Snowden releases were damaging to US interests, but it is more difficult to say that other \u201cwhistleblower\u201d information should be stifled.\u00a0\u00a0If Assange was found guilty on these charges, that would be the most likely outcome. The government could keep their mistakes secret, mistakes the public needs to know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"