<nettime> Alan Rusbridger: US efforts to jail Assange for espionage are a grave threat to a free media (Guardian)

[Patrice Riemens <patrice@xs4all.nl>]

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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