Much of the news this past Wednesday and Thursday was dominated by the arrest of Julian Assange in England.
As very brief background, Assange was the founder and leader of the group WikiLeaks (2006) which acted as a publishing “agent” for computer hackers, thieves, whistleblowers, and traitors who wished to have documents and/or secrets they’d stolen made public. WikiLeaks allowed their clients to remain anonymous if they wished and did not report them to authorities if they had broken the law. After being arrested in England in 2010 on charges of sexual assault (later dropped), Assange was released on bail. Fearing extradition to the US for his role in the 2010 espionage case of Private Bradley (now Chelsea) Manning, he sought refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy in England in 2012. He remained there for the next for 7 years until he was forced out this past Wednesday by the Ecuadorian government. He was immediately arrested by the British police for violating his bail back in 2012 and is now expected to be extradited to the United States.
WikiLeaks, and by association Julian Assange, has variously been praised and vilified by all sides of the ideological spectrum. Legally, WikiLeaks occupies a shadowy region between law, the “pure” goal of transparency, and a genuine need to keep some things secret. An argument can be made that WikiLeaks has committed no crimes since it does not participate in the act of stealing/procuring the information they publish. In this sense they are no different than any of the well-known modern media outlets.¹ However, unlike other media outlets, what WikiLeaks publishes is always injurious to someone who didn’t want a purloined secret revealed. Naturally, a strong feeling of violation and subsequent desire for justice/retribution usually follows. When the injured party is a government, there can be a political “necessity” to correct the injustice else that government is perceived as weak. But are Julian Assange and his organization really the root cause of the injury? Here are two examples of why we think not.
The Manning case – In 2010, then Private Bradley Manning was arrested for passing over 300,000 military documents, including many that were classified, to WikiLeaks. By publishing what Manning provided, Assange and WikiLeaks did something immoral and hurtful, but not illegal. Assange/WikiLeaks did not steal the information they published. Private Manning made the decision to do that all by himself. Manning was solely responsible for illegally removing the information and thereby violating US Espionage law. Had Assange and WikiLeaks not existed at the time, Manning would’ve have simply found a different unsavory “publisher” for his stolen treasure, much like Edward Snowden did 3 years later. There are plenty of them out there.
The Podesta case – In 2016 WikiLeaks published emails that had been scammed from Democrat National Committee Chairman John Podesta. Those emails embarrassingly revealed the committee’s intent to disrupt the campaign of Bernie Sanders to help the campaign of Hillary Clinton. Here, there were at least 4 separate entities involved, each of which was deemed “responsible” for the violation. Cyber scammers were blamed for unfairly “tricking” Podesta into providing them his username and password so they could access his email. Podesta himself was blamed for not following standard operational security procedures and stupidly responding to a well-known phishing attack. Then there is the Democrat National Committee itself, whose secretive aggressive actions against Bernie Sanders created the malodorous information in the first place. At the end of this chain of events was WikiLeaks, who was blamed for having published the emails taken by the scammers. In our view, 99% of the illicit activity in this case occurred long before WikiLeaks ever got hold of these emails.
With an intense desire to punish Assange, but lacking any legitimate legal ground to do so, the US government is using the Manning case to claim that Assange “conspired” with Manning’s treasonous act. This is a stretch. There is a mile-wide chasm between the level of treachery in Manning’s actions and anything that Assange did. Manning alone made the conscious decision to break the law and steal classified information, not Assange.
In the effort to make a public show of punishing leakers, Assange represents a readily available scapegoat. The eagerness to prosecute him is heightened by the fact that justice has not been fully brought against the two most damaging traitors in modern times. While Edward Snowden did not use WikiLeaks to publish his stolen materials, he was supported by Assange with asylum advice. Also, Wikileaks has assisted Snowden by posting his written statements on its website. Snowden is still at large in Russia and has not yet seen the inside of a US courtroom. Chelsea Manning was convicted and sent to jail for acts of espionage but was then inexplicably released by President Obama via commutation of her sentence after only a short incarceration. This truncated penalty did not come remotely close to fitting the crime. Successfully prosecuting Assange might make politicians and media pundits appear strong and feel avenged but will do nothing to address the true injustice committed by Manning and Snowden. Assange is not the root of the leak problem and never has been. The government personnel who give away classified information, most recently for a false psychology of righteousness, are the root of the problem.
In our view Julian Assange is neither hero nor villain. He and his organization are a mere symptom of the irresponsible, callous, and unpatriotic behavior of others. Politicians and members of the media who are attempting to transpose the villainy of true miscreants onto Assange and WikiLeaks are being artfully deceitful. This is particularly disappointing to us since some of these writers and politicians who have jumped onto the Assange-is-the-problem “bandwagon” are people we usually trust, but very much disagree with on this topic. In the grand scheme of things, Assange is the virtual equivalent of road kill. There are far weightier news events unfolding right now that deserve our attention.
¹We don’t ever we see the Assange equivalents at major media outlets like the New York Times, Breitbart, Washington Post, FOX, MSNBC or CNN being arrested or accused of conspiracy when they reveal classified information from anonymous sources. The reason is there is nothing illegal about it. It may be irresponsible, embarrassing, and even hateful, but if legal action is taken in the US against Assange for publishing classified information given to him by anonymous sources, a number of other US media companies better watch out because they are guilty of the same exact thing.
8 Responses
While I agree with you on your assessment of Assange my conspiritorial mind takes me further. Was Assange guilty of conspiring with Manning if he paid Manning to commit treason. A step furthur takes me to Obama who commuted Manning’s sentence because he knew of Hillary’s treason and wanted to soften the offence.
Good points. I’ve never seen anything credible stating that WikiLeaks paid Manning for the information. Even if Assange did offer to pay him, I still don’t buy the conspiracy claim. Before Manning and Assange had ever met, Manning had already stolen 1000’s of documents from the US Government without any help or money from anyone. Even if Assange had later offered to pay Manning to go get more documents (which there isn’t any evidence of), there’s no paper trail indicating any payments were made to Manning. And it doesn’t comport with Manning’s goal stated in her own words – “I have a responsibility to the Public”. In the past, most of those who committed espionage did it for money, not so for Manning and Snowden.
It is possible Obama intended to soften the offense for Hillary by commuting Manning’s sentence. But Hillary’s was a crime of “Gross Negligence” in handling classified material (18 US Code 793 section F), while Manning’s was outright Espionage – no negligence involved. If Obama intended “softening” it would only be for the court of public opinion.
I agree with your assessment completely. I would only say that every day, classified information is disclosed by idiots in our government that are considered to be special Americans instantly because they are either elected and appointed to a committee or given trusted roles because their shoulder and elbow can make an L shape. “Private” Manning and “Contractor” Snowden. These low level folks are given access to information that could have adverse consequences on the United States of America? Whose fault is it when you give a child a loaded gun and say just be careful with that.
Johnny – you’ve pointed out probably the greatest counter intelligence challenge the government faces today. How does one assess the likelihood that a candidate for a security clearance (mostly millennials and younger these days) will suddenly become so consumed with a “false psychology of righteousness” that they decide to act out? They feel “protected” in revealing secrets without harm because of the belief that this same false psychology is dominate in the public sphere.
The Government is so large (another of my pet peeves), there is no choice but to trust a large number of individuals with national security information in order to make the wheels turn. Rest assured that as technology marches forward, more and more of this information is becoming better protected with fewer humans in the loop. However, the profile of the “typical” traitor has morphed away from an individual seeking riches and wishing to remain anonymous. The system now must screen for those who don’t want any money and wish to be known for “courageous acts of transparency”. It’s a tougher counter intelligence nut to crack.
All the previous posters are apologists for the Deep State and its ongoing, perpetual persecution of liberty and democracy, of the inalienable rights of each and every human being, and their attendant rights to all the information available through which to render judgements about how decisions, made in their “names” and “interests,” are made and rendered by the U. S. government, its overlord corporate executives, its military, and others beholden to preservation of this contorted, contrived paradigm of capitalism and profit for the few at the expense of the many. In short, this website appears to be nothing more than a crying wall for fascism.
I couldn’t agree with you more about the Deep State and its assault on liberty and democracy. In fact, you are a great straight man since our next article covers this exact topic. Deep Staters’ were on full display in the impeachment hearings this past week and provided a superb example of how insidious the problem has become. When the people of this country vote, they should have every expectation that the policies and ideology of those they elect will be carried out faithfully and vigorously without being thwarted by unelected officials implementing their own agenda.
the political establishment in the US is one of the most criminalized and mafioso organization in the world
hopefully the day will come when this horrible system is gone for good and people in the US will form a true system of governance.
democrat or republican, they are two different faces of the same Satan.
just post it please
I would agree that our current political establishment needs to go. The people presently in power have only selfish ends in mind and are certainly not looking out for the best interests of the citizens of this country. That being said, our system of governance as it is laid out in the Constitution is a different thing entirely. Even with poor quality politicians populating the “establishment” from time to time, our system of governance has survived for 235 years, longer than any other modern government in the world. There is nothing wrong with our Constitution, we just need better quality politicians who will actually govern by it rather than constantly trying to get around it.