Original to:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/26/prosecuting-julian-assange-for-espionage-poses-danger-freedom-of-press
US efforts to jail Assange for espionage are a grave threat to a free
media
Alan Rusbridger, The Guardian, Sun 26 May 2019
I found the WikiLeaks co-founder a troubling figure when I worked with
him, but America’s case would criminalise journalistic inquiry
Do you remember the Collateral Murder video – the one that showed US air
crew in Apache helicopters killing people as though playing computer
games, laughing at the dead after slaughtering a dozen people, including
two Iraqis working for the Reuters news agency? Do you remember how the
US military had lied about what happened in that incident in July 2007 –
first claiming that all the dead were insurgents, and then that the
helicopters were responding to an active firefight? Neither claim was
true. Do you recall that Reuters had spent three years unsuccessfully
trying to obtain the video?
Was it in the public interest that the world should have eventually seen
the raw footage of what happened? You bet. Was it acutely embarrassing
for the US military and government? Of course. Was the act of revelation
espionage or journalism? You know the answer.
We have two people to thank for us knowing the truth about how those
Reuters employees died, along with 10 others who ended up in the
crosshairs of the laughing pilots that day: Chelsea Manning, who leaked
it, and Julian Assange, who published it. But the price of their actions
has been considerable. Manning spent seven years in jail for her part in
releasing that video, along with a huge amount of other classified
material she was able to access as an intelligence analyst in the US
army. Assange has been indicted on 17 new counts of violating the
Espionage Act, with the prospect that he could spend the rest of his
life in prison.
As editor of the Guardian, I worked with Assange when we jointly (along
with newspapers in the US and Europe) published other material Manning
had leaked. Vanity Fair called the resultant stories “one of the
greatest journalistic scoops of the last 30 years… they have changed the
way people think about how the world is run”. The stories were, indeed,
significant – but the relationship with Assange was fraught. We fell
out, as most people eventually do with Assange. I found him mercurial,
untrustworthy and dislikable: he wasn’t keen on me, either. All the
collaborating editors disapproved of him releasing unredacted material
from the Manning trove in September 2011. Nevertheless, I find the Trump
administration’s use of the Espionage Act against him profoundly
disturbing.
Imagine the precedent if the Trump administration gets away with this
The Espionage Act was a panic measure enacted by Congress to clamp down
on dissent or “sedition” when the US entered the First World War in
1917. In the subsequent 102 years it has never been used to prosecute a
media organisation for publishing or disseminating unlawfully disclosed
classified information. Nobody prosecuted under the act is permitted to
offer a public interest defence.
Whatever Assange got up to in 2010-11, it was not espionage. Nor is he a
US citizen. The criminal acts this Australian maverick allegedly
committed all happened outside the US. As Joel Simon, director of the
Committee to Protect Journalists, has observed: “Under this rubric,
anyone anywhere in the world who publishes information that the US
government deems to be classified could be prosecuted for espionage.”
Imagine the precedent if the Trump administration gets away with this.
Israel and India have extensive nuclear weapons programmes – each
protected by ferocious domestic official secrets acts. Think of the
outcry if the Netanyahu or Modi governments attempted to extradite a
British or US journalist to face life in jail for writing true things
about their nuclear arsenals.
The new indictment against Assange falls into three parts – each of them
attempting to criminalise things journalists regularly do as they
receive and publish true information given to them by sources or
whistleblowers. Assange is accused of trying to persuade a source to
disclose yet more secret information. Most reporters would do the same.
Then he is charged with behaviour that, on the face of it, looks like a
reporter seeking to help a source protect her identity. If that’s indeed
what Assange was doing, good for him. Finally, he is accused of
repeatedly publishing material that “could harm the national security of
the US”.
Whenever you read about journalists harming national security, massive
alarm bells should start ringing. Think no further than Richard Nixon
trying to prosecute the Pentagon Papers whistleblower, Daniel Ellsberg,
for harming national security in 1971. Ellsberg, an intelligence
analyst, found that the Vietnam war had been prosecuted on the basis of
a web of lies and thought the public deserved to know. To Nixon,
Ellsberg’s commitment to the truth was treason. He reached for the
Espionage Act.
Today Ellsberg is celebrated as a principled whistleblower – but he came
close to being jailed for his courage. That the New York Times was free
to publish the leaked papers was down to judges. Murray Gurfein, a
federal judge, refused an injunction, saying: “The security of the
nation is not at the ramparts alone. Security also lies in the value of
our free institutions. A cantankerous press, an obstinate press, an
ubiquitous press must be suffered by those in authority in order to
preserve the even greater values of freedom of expression and the right
of the people to know.” Gurfein’s ringing judgment was subsequently
endorsed by the supreme court.
We need judges to defend free speech, because governments rarely do.
When Theresa May was home secretary in 2015, the Law Commission was
asked to review the British laws around official secrecy. In 2017, it
recommended reforms that could see journalists prosecuted for simply
holding secret material, never mind publishing it. The Commission also
sought to deny reporters the ability to advance a public interest
defence and suggested jail sentences of up to 14 years. Oh, and it
suggested that the “public interest” when it came to national security
should be defined by the government of the day. Leave it to Richard
Nixon or Donald Trump.
Much may depend on the UK supreme court, which – subject to the home
secretary’s deliberations – could well end up deciding this extradition
request. Assange is a problematic figure in many ways. But the attempt
to lock him up under the Espionage Act is a deeply troubling move that
should serve as a wake-up call to all journalists. You may not like
Assange, but you’re next.
(Alan Rusbridger, a former editor of the Guardian, is now principal of
Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford)
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