The Julian Assange case is incredibly multifaceted, extending over many years.The root of course is the need for transparency regarding the actions of the powerful. The World War I–era Espionage Act is a major impediment to an open and just society.
Starting even earlier than the last decade’s events is necessary, however. It’s an interesting irony that one of the grievances that informed Australians have against the CIA and the US national security state has to do with electoral interference. It doesn’t start with rigging elections in the US manner, though disinformation and campaign finance malfeasance do figure in this case.
The late, great John Pilger outlines in a short essay the mechanism of this undermining of democracy in Australia, as deployed by the CIA and British MI6 in 1975. It involves the legacy of the Commonwealth, where the Governor-General was entitled to prorogue the parliament. “Prorogue” is an almost medieval term for dissolving the parliament. This caused then–Prime Minister Gough Whitlam to have to run again; resources were marshaled to defeat him successfully.
Whitlam is remembered mostly for domestic advances of his Labor Party goals: universal health care, education, and sanitary systems (akin to 1920s Milwaukee’s sewer socialism). But his saying goodbye to Australian involvement in Vietnam and removing the CIA listening station at Pine Gap was too much for the US elite to countenance.
This is the backdrop to Assange’s trenchant opposition to secrecy and various national security states (NSS) around the world. (For US citizens it should be remembered that WikiLeaks published material that irritated various Russian oligarchs on various sides of that NSS’s complicated polity.)
Though Assange has been repatriated and rejoined his wife and two children, clearly justice was not served. The case went forward with time served and a guilty plea, which doesn’t bode well for the future of the Espionage Act and its chilling effect on media. Furthermore, there was another solution that could have been implemented, to which I will return in the conclusion.
Hacking, Leaking, and Phishing are Ubiquitous
A lot has been alleged about the “hacking” of Democratic National Committee (DNC) files in 2015 and 2016. But analysis by a now-dissenting NSA officer suggests that it was not a hack, but a leak. William Binney concludes that you can tell from the metadata that the transfer rate had to be from a local device (a thumb drive or such). While not conclusive in itself, when combined with personal testimony it is a credible assertion. WikiLeaks is notorious for offering anonymity to its whistleblowers. In this case, it seems that former UK Ambassador Craig Murray was the cutout for the transfer of these files. The accepted story of course is that it was Russian intelligence. Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), of which Binney is a member, has been critical and produced dossiers that undercut this commonplace story in the media.
The CEO of CrowdStrike admitted under oath that there was no concrete evidence that data from the DNC was “exfiltrated.” There is little in the press about this, which could partially be due to the fact that the transcript of that hearing was not released until two years after it took place. Even the mildest exculpation of the Russians is beyond the limits of allowable debate in US media. Independent journalist Aaron Maté explores this story on a variety of sites, including a good summary in the right-wing-supported RealClearInvestigations. It is a condemnation of US media that this detail of the story has gone down the Orwellian memory hole.
More on the NSA Dissenter Binney and a Private Intelligence Corporation in UI Research Park
Binney revealed the complete surveillance of US citizens that was subsequently documented by the Edward Snowden leaks.
There is also the C-U tangent regarding the NSA. Binney was central to an internally developed threat assessment system called Thin Threads. It was reputably much more targeted than the privately developed Trailblazer program that was created by the private intelligence corporation SAIC (Science Applications International Corporation). The Trailblazer project was replete with cost overruns and eventually scrapped. Despite this debacle, SAIC got the next contract to try to do exactly the same work. Thomas Drake, a colleague of Binney, earned the enmity of the corporation and the government by blowing the whistle on this scandal. A resource on this is Tim Shorrock’s 2008 book Spies for Hire. SAIC ended its brick-and-mortar presence at the UIUC Research Park in 2011. It could be cost cutting in advance of a half-billion dollar fine by New York City for overbilling for the City Lights system.
A Better Solution
President Obama’s Attorney General (AG) Eric Holder didn’t pursue the case against Assange. Questions regarding its effect on press freedom were apparently a primary consideration. This is surprising in that the Obama administration prosecuted more journalists using the 1917 Espionage Act than any other president. It was under President Trump’s AG Bill Barr, with enthusiastic support from Mike Pompeo at State, that the espionage charges were filed. Merrick Garland’s failure to revisit the case when he was appointed AG by President Biden is curious. The branding of the administration as weak on national security likely had a strong influence on the decision. Perhaps Garland feared such a move might be reversed by the Pentagon, as was his plea deal with the Gitmo 9/11 detainees?
Pentagon Papers whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg was a supporter of freedom for Assange and furthermore a critic of the Espionage Act, seeing that the crackdown on WikiLeaks was symptomatic of broader excesses of the warfare state. Indeed, toward the end of his life he leaked documents that should have provoked charges against him, with the hopes of both exposing long-term strategy against China and challenging the Act.
His earlier case points to a better stance for the Justice Department. Judicial proceedings against him were thrown out due to malfeasance by the Nixon White House. One specific Nixon crime was the break-in at Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office to get some dirt on him.
Ellsberg pointed out that the excesses of the Trump administration went far beyond anything the plumbers did on behalf of Tricky Dick. Credible allegations of an assassination attempt on Assange by the CIA were revealed; routine surveillance of his doctors and lawyers while he was in refuge in the London Ecuadorian embassy also was conducted. It’s all the fashion to call out the Trump regime for having been lawless (which is true), so it would have been entirely appropriate for Garland to summarily drop the charges.
The above path not taken would have been better than the plea deal that freed Assange. The latter does nothing to resolve the threat to journalism and democracy represented by the current legal situation. The draconian Espionage Act needs a remedy or repeal. The necessity defense is a prerequisite; whistleblowers need protection. Prospects are not good as so little discussion of the issue takes place in the currently dominant media. The publishing partners of WikiLeaks on the Iraq revelations take a good stance through their lawyers, with succinct press freedom arguments, but do not mount a campaign sufficient to overturn the malignant status quo. A strong independent media is an important part of what could remedy this.
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