In Defense of Julian Assange

By BARRY FRIEDMAN

There’s a moment in “Ithaka,” the documentary about the struggle of Julian Assange’s family to end his incarceration in a London prison and to prevent his extradition to the United States, when an analyst comments, “I don’t even remember how I feel about him.”

The narrative surrounding Assange is now in its 13th year.

In 2010, Chelsea Manning (then Bradley Manning, an Army intelligence specialist) contacted WikiLeaks, a repository for information from credible, albeit anonymous, sources that Assange founded. Manning said she had a cache of classified military documents, including proof that the US military killed civilians and proof of a “black unit” that carried out illegal assassinations. Assange published the cables, as did the New York Times, The Guardian and Der Spiegel.

The sh*t then hit the fan (and by some accounts was smeared over the walls).

Around that time, Sweden issued an arrest warrant for Assange — and called for his extradition — charging him with unlawful coercion and multiple cases of sexual molestation. He turned himself in to UK police — he was in England at the time — but then jumped bail when they threatened to hand him over to Swedish authorities. He sought and received asylum in the Ecuadorean embassy in London, where he stayed for seven years and where, apparently and parenthetically, he was a terrible house guest. According to Ecuador’s president, he smeared feces on the wall, skateboarded through the embassy, and was a “spoiled brat” who didn’t clean up after his cat. What also annoyed people from Ecuador, a nation closely aligned with Spain, was Assange’s advocacy and support for Catalonian independence. After his internet was cut off, Assange sued the embassy, his host — how’s that for chutzpah? — for “isolating and muzzling” him and ordering him to avoid making online political comments.

In 2019, having had enough, the Ecuadoreans threw him out, and Assange was last seen bearded and befuddled being hauled into a van and taken by UK police to Belmarsh, a Category-A prison, a place reserved for murderers and terrorists. Thing was, Assange wasn’t convicted of a crime. He wasn’t even charged with one. Even the Swedish case had been dropped.

That same year, the Trump Justice Department got him indicted on 18 counts for obtaining and disclosing classified documents, under the Espionage Act of 1917, which targets individuals who “willfully cause or attempt to cause insubordination, disloyalty, mutiny, [or] refusal of duty” in the military, and wanted him extradited.

The last time the Espionage Act was used was in 1971, when the Nixon administration charged Daniel Ellsberg with conspiracy and misappropriation of government property. Ellsberg, an analyst with the Rand Corporation, leaked a secret history of the Vietnam War — known as the Pentagon Papers — to the New York Times.

(The charges against Ellsberg were eventually dismissed, as was the prohibition against the Times for publishing the papers, but only because of prosecutorial misconduct, including breaking into Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office, illegal wiretapping, and destruction of relevant documents.)

In Assange’s case, British District Judge Vanessa Baraitser denied the extradition request, but not on the merits — only that she considered him a suicide risk. The US appealed and gave assurances that, if extradited, Assange’s personal safety would be guaranteed, and that if convicted, he could serve his sentence in his native Australia.

British judge Priti Patel approved the request last June.

Assange’s legal team is now appealing that decision to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) because the UK Supreme Court turned him down, stating that his application “didn’t raise an arguable point of law.”

A key question in all this is whether Assange is a journalist who should be protected by the First Amendment.

(WikiLeaks has won more than 25 awards in publishing, including the Martha Gellhorn Prize, the UK Media Award, the Economist Award, and the Amnesty International New Media Award, and partnered with international publications — all before 2011.)

Bill Keller, the New York Times executive editor at the time, said Assange was a “source … not a partner,” who was “thin-skinned and arrogant” (is there a journalist who isn’t?), but has since called on the Justice Department to drop its charges against him. The Guardian editorialized, “Anyone who cares about journalism and democracy ought to worry,” while adding how “difficult” Assange is. Donald Trump — and you knew he’d make an appearance — said at the time, “I love WikiLeaks!” for releasing emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta. Trump now says, “I know nothing about WikiLeaks. It’s not my thing.” Some Democrats who originally supported Assange for releasing documents because they embarrassed the Bush administration have since turned on Assange for releasing the Podesta emails, convinced it helped cause Clinton’s defeat in 2016.

Assange is a political and legal third rail.

Two key points in the case will be:

1) Did Assange actually help Manning steal the documents? and

2) Were U.S. intelligence personnel put at risk because of the leaks?

To the first, the Obama administration concluded he hadn’t, and to the second, there is presently no connection.

Assange maintains that safeguards were put in place to protect identities. Those safeguards failed, and when they did — he maintains it was not his doing — Assange notified the State Department.

Chelsea Manning was sent to military prison for 35 years (she served seven before Barack Obama commuted her sentence), meaning if Assange is convicted, the publisher will spend more time in jail — a lot more — than the leaker.

And about the evidence that the US military targeted and killed civilians? No soldier and no commanding officer has been charged, much less convicted.

Assange may be sanctimonious, manipulative, insufferable, and self-aggrandizing — and maybe because of that, he is being singled out for exposing illicit governmental actions. If he is convicted, how many news organizations will risk pursuing and publishing such misdeeds, regardless of how credible, regardless of how ghastly?

And when that happens, feces won’t be the only thing smeared on the wall — clumps of press freedoms will be stuck there, too.

Barry Friedman is an essayist, political columnist, petroleum geology reporter — quit laughing — and comedian living in Tulsa, Okla. His latest book, “Jack Sh*t: Volume One: Voluptuous Bagels and other Concerns of Jack Friedman” has just been released. In addition, he is the author of “Road Comic,” “Funny You Should Mention It,” “Four Days and a Year Later,” “The Joke Was On Me,” and a novel, “Jacob Fishman’s Marriages.” See and friedmanoftheplains.com.

From The Progressive Populist, April 15, 2023

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