WikiLeaks Controversy Shows Importance of Protecting Free Speech in an Electronic Age

Julian Assange is a terrorist who should be arrested as an “enemy combatant” of the United States.  Well, that’s what former US House Speaker Newt Gingrich is claiming should be done to the co-founder of WikiLeaks, which publishes information from government and corporate whistle-blowers and shares the information with leading world newspapers.

Predictably, many other high profile right-wingers agree with him.  Sarah Palin compares Assange to a member of al-Qaida and claims he should be tried for treason; that Assange is an Australian, and not a US, citizen might pose her some problems on that front.  Senator Joe Lieberman boasts the leaked diplomatic cables are “the most serious violation of the Espionage Act in our history” and may implicate the New York Times, which published some of the information.  Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell calls Assange a “hi-tech terrorist.”  Representative Peter King urged Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to see if WikiLeaks could be classified as a terrorist organization.  Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee claims “anything less than execution is too kind a penalty.”

Democrats have jumped into the fray, as well.  Senator Dianne Feinstein says Assange should be charged under the US Espionage Act – passed in 1917 – while Senator John Kerry has taken it a step further by urging that espionage laws should be modified so Assange can be prosecuted in the US.  The Obama administration has waged a criminal inquiry into WikiLeaks, with a secret grand jury convened in Virginia this past week.  And high-level pressure from the US government led to Amazon, Mastercard, Visa, Paypal and others to refuse service to WikiLeaks.

While elite interests in the United States unite against WikiLeaks, in Australia foreign minister Kevin Rudd is rightly defending Assange’s legal rights to due process and has insisted that Assange is not legally culpable for breaches of US security.

“The Americans are responsible for that,” Rudd said.  “I think there are real questions to be asked about the adequacy of their security systems and the level of access that people have had to that material over a long period of time. . .Maybe 2 million or so people having access to this stuff is a bit of a problem.”

And Assange has not only been defended by high-level politicians in Australia, but by members of the US intelligence community.  Ex-intelligence officials from the CIA, FBI and other organizations, including former colonel and chief of staff to Colin Powell, Larry Wilkerson, have released a statement supporting Assange and WikiLeak’s efforts.  In October, a former FBI agent and a special agent to the Federal Aviation Administration’s security division published an op-ed suggesting that the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, may have been prevented had intelligence officials and staff with knowledge and suspicions of an impending attack had been able to publicize their concerns that were expressed to and then suppressed by superiors.

The leaked cables have caused some embarrassment for world leaders in Italy, Kazakhstan, the UK, Afghanistan, even the Vatican.  It has shown the corruption and imperiousness of Shell and Pfizer in their Nigerian dealings, and that Saudi leaders are the world’s largest funders of Islamic extremist groups and have urged the US to bomb Iran.

While the cables have revealed information both gossipy and revelatory, the US crackdown on Assange, and WikiLeaks, and its parallels with government repression of information in China, has been arguably the most fascinating aspect of the diplomatic cables controversy.

Speaking in Washington DC, in January, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton gave a pious speech on internet freedom, claiming that “information has never been so free. . . even in authoritarian countries, information networks are helping people discover new facts and making governments more accountable.”

Clinton said that Barack Obama, in a visit to China in November 2009, “defended the right of people to freely access information, and said that the more freely information flows the stronger societies become.  He spoke about how access to information helps citizens to hold their governments accountable, generates new ideas, and encourages creativity.”

It appears now that Clinton may have been supportive of government accountability and free access to information in China, not the United States.  Perhaps the most telling of the leaked cables reveals that Clinton instructed overseas diplomats to spy on foreign officials by collecting fingerprints, facial images, DNA, iris scans, credit card numbers, passwords, frequent-flyer accounts, even spying on UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.

Understandably, this has publicly embarrassed Clinton and she has lashed out, saying the leaked cables are “an attack on America’s foreign policy interests” and endangers the lives of “innocent people.”

What little there has been of regionally produced media coverage of the WikiLeaks controversy generally confirms the elite opinions held by Clinton and her colleagues.

TheMarquette Mining Journal, lashing out in its usual fashion says, “It has been clear for months that Australian Julian Assange – the founder of the WikiLeaks website – is guilty of crimes against the United States.”  Never mind a charge typically has to be filed before someone can be found guilty in this country.  And there likely won’t be a charge in the US unless politicians take the crass step of changing US law in order to specifically indict Assange.

Roughly 70% of Iron Mountain Daily News readers believe Assange should be imprisoned.  For what, it isn’t made clear.

Letters to the Green Bay Press Gazette have taken a jingoistic tone:

“If you love this country, you will want Julian Assange extradited to the U.S. for harsh punishment, his websites shut down, suspect Pfc. Bradley Manning prosecuted as a spy and their supporters investigated,” writes Lee Murray.

George Erickson, writing in the Mesabi Daily News, takes the more refreshing view that leaks of government information is healthy for American democracy:

Leaks brought us the Pentagon Papers. They informed us of Watergate. A few decades ago, Iran-Contragate oozed forth, and the oakum squads, led by Oliver North, hastened to plug the gaps with shredded documents. . .

Assange and Bradley Manning, by publishing thousands of classified document while committing no crime, have performed a public service, but, predictably, no one is grateful. Instead, the playground bullies, like Nixon’s lackeys who hunted Ellsberg, have mounted an assault against Assange, proposing the passage of ex post facto laws, which are illegal, and even assassination.

Why do the same officials who have advised us to watch for and report suspicious activity react so badly when the light is turned on them? Because when you’re caught with your lips loose, your pants down and your ethics in disarray, that’s what bullies do: Intimidate, denigrate, isolate or even kill the messenger.

In the 1970s Daniel Ellsberg was charged with espionage after copying and distributing confidential, secret government information in what became known as the Pentagon Papers.  At the time, First Amendment rights to free speech were upheld and legal charges against him were eventually dismissed.  Ellsberg, who was facing 115 years in prison for educating the American public about illegal activity by the US government during the Vietnam War, was vindicated.

Ellsberg is concerned the US may use the WikiLeaks controversy to amend the Espionage Act, making it illegal for anyone to distribute or publish secret government information, much like the Official Secrets Act does in the UK:

“I think, actually, what this is about, to a large extent, is trying to, once again, to instate the Espionage Act as if it were an Official Secrets Act, use it to cut down, close off unauthorized disclosures to the American public from inside the government, and also to accompany that with a legislative move to supplement it with an act that is explicitly an Official Secrets Act, one that clearly Congress intends to criminalize any release of classified information.”

Today, some national and regional news media seem outraged that journalists can have access to secret government files that shed light on government misdeeds.  Gone from many of these outlets seems a decades-long respect for whistle-blowing laws, free speech and American-style democracy that has been replaced with a defense for China-style government control of public information and media.  Although Thomas Jefferson may not have actually said it, information is the currency of a true democracy and should be protected if we hope to maintain any semblance of a democratic society that respects free speech, open government and legal due process.

This post was written by

Gabriel Caplett – who has written 106 posts on Headwaters - Community Journalism for the Great Lakes.

Gabriel Caplett is a writer and market farmer from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

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