It perhaps has not been much noticed much over the holidays, but in November, the editors and publishers of five of the world’s best-known news organizations released an open letter calling for U.S. government officials to drop all charges against Julian Assange — founder of the government watchdog site WikiLeaks — “for publishing secrets.”
“The U.S. government should end its prosecution of Julian Assange,” declared the editors of the New York Times, the Guardian, Der Spiegel, Le Monde and El Pais in their joint statement.
The letter strongly implies that Assange is being persecuted for releasing the very facts the people need to know if they are going to hold their governments accountable and run a functioning democracy.
“Twelve years ago, on November 28th 2010, our five international media outlets … published a series of revelations in cooperation with WikiLeaks” that immediately “made the headlines around the globe,” stated the letter.
“‘Cable gate’, a set of 251,000 confidential cables from the US State Department disclosed corruption, diplomatic scandals and spy affairs on an international scale,” the news editors and publishers continued.
Those documents revealed “the unvarnished story of how the [US] government makes its biggest decisions, the decisions that cost the country most heavily in lives and money,” declared the newspeople.
“Even now in 2022, journalists and historians continue to publish new revelations, using the unique trove of documents,” they pointed out.
This is an essential point, since the U.S. government’s case is based on the odd argument that Assange published documents with no real care for their journalistic value, and was simply trying to ‘aid the enemies of the U.S. government’. As these leading news sources retort, the ‘Cable gate’ revelations were of the highest news value.
Another problem with the U.S. government’s attack on Assange: Since these five news organizations had — by their own admission in that letter — published those “revelations in cooperation with WikiLeaks,” it only makes since to prosecute the editors and publishers of the New York Times, the Guardian, Der Spiegel, Le Monde and El Pais for exactly the same crime.
To punish one editor and publisher for the exposure of these documents and not the others is not just a double standard: It’s a personal attack failing to masquerade as justice.
For only Julian Assange, “the publication of ‘Cable gate’ and several other related leaks had the most severe consequences,” declared the open letter.
“On April 11th, 2019, Assange was arrested in London on a US arrest warrant,” continues the letter, “and has now been held for three and a half years in a high security British prison usually used for terrorists.”
Assange currently “faces extradition to the US and a sentence of up to 175 years in an American maximum security prison,” stated the news editors and publishers.
The law that Assange is accused of violating is the the Espionage Act of 1917 — perhaps one of the most questionable and contentious laws in U.S. history.
It was passed by the U.S. government when passion over the country’s entrance into World War I was at a fever pitch. This law was extended in 1918 to outlaw numerous forms of free thought, including “any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of the United States … or the flag of the United States, or the uniform of the Army or Navy.”
Those extensions of the law, informally referred to as the Sedition Act, were so controversial they were repealed in 1921. But numerous provisions of this highly questionable law are still part of the U.S. criminal code.
Other individuals who have been charged with violating the Espionage Act of 1917 include newspaper editor and socialist U.S. congressman Victor Berger, five-time Socialist Party of America presidential candidate and top labor leader Eugene V. Debs, anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, ‘Cable gate’ whistleblower Chelsea Manning and National Security Agency contractor and whistleblower Edward Snowden.
The Spark notes that, in practice, the Espionage Act appears to be used quite often to persecute individuals who profess political beliefs that are different from those who routinely hold power in this country. In fact, a skeptic might offer that a chief reason for the existence of the law has always been to serve as a tool for political oppression, rather than as a simple tool used only to ‘protect the security of the United States’.
Regardless, charging Assange under the Espionage Act, “threatens to undermine America’s First Amendment and the freedom of the press,” declared the editors and publishers in their joint letter.
“The Obama-Biden Administration, in office during the WikiLeaks publication in 2010, refrained from indicting Assange,” pointed out the open letter, “explaining that they would have had to indict journalists from major news outlets too.”
“Under Donald Trump however, the position changed,” wrote the news editors and publishers.
But “holding governments accountable is part of the core mission of a free press in a democracy,” pointed out the newspeople.
“Obtaining and disclosing sensitive information when necessary in the public interest is a core part of the daily work of journalists,” the open letter stated.
“If that work is criminalised, our public discourse and our democracies are made significantly weaker,” the news editors and publishers wrote.
Another core component of a functioning democracy is the ability of individuals to join together and make their voices heard. Amnesty International currently has a petition calling for the U.S. government to end its persecution of Julian Assange. Interested readers may want to check that out.
