{"id":31965,"date":"2024-02-24T12:43:11","date_gmt":"2024-02-24T20:43:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=31965"},"modified":"2024-02-24T12:43:12","modified_gmt":"2024-02-24T20:43:12","slug":"the-us-justice-department-must-drop-spy-charges-against-julian-assange","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2024\/02\/24\/the-us-justice-department-must-drop-spy-charges-against-julian-assange\/","title":{"rendered":"The US Justice Department Must Drop Spy Charges Against Julian Assange"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Margaret Sullivan\/Guardian UK<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><div class=\"container\" style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; padding: 0px 15px; max-width: 860px; margin: 0px auto; color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-family: Georgia, &quot;Times New Roman&quot;, Times, Baskerville, serif; letter-spacing: 0.8px; white-space-collapse: collapse; background-color: rgb(0, 0, 0);\"><header class=\"heading\" style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; letter-spacing: 0px; color: rgb(241, 241, 242); padding: 18px 54px; margin: 0px;\"><h1 data-title=\"\" style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; font-size: 26pt; margin: 0px 0px 1px; font-family: itc_-_itcavantgardestd-xlt, Arial, &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-weight: bold;\">The US Justice Department Must Drop Spy Charges Against Julian Assange<\/h1><span class=\"author\" style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; display: flex; flex-flow: wrap; font-size: 14pt; font-family: itc_-_itcavantgardestd-bkobl, Arial, &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, sans-serif;\"><span data-author=\"\" style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; display: block;\">Margaret Sullivan<\/span><span class=\"author-divider\" style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; margin-left: 8px; display: block;\">\/<\/span><span data-publication=\"\" style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; margin-left: 8px; display: block;\">Guardian UK<\/span><\/span><\/header><img decoding=\"async\" data-image=\"\" style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; border-width: 0px; border-style: initial; vertical-align: top; display: block; width: 830px; margin: 0px;\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rsn.org\/images\/001\/055684-assange-022324.jpg\" alt=\"The US Justice Department Must Drop Spy Charges Against Julian Assange\"><span class=\"image-caption\" style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; display: block; color: rgb(241, 241, 242); padding: 10px 50px 20px; font-family: begum-medium, Arial, &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 13pt; margin: 0px 0px 20px; letter-spacing: 0.5px;\"><span data-credits=\"\" style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px;\">Imagine what a future Trump administration, armed with an Assange conviction, could do to the traditional press.\u2019 (photo: Hannibal Hanschke\/EPA)<\/span><\/span><ul class=\"social-networks\" style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; margin: 0px; padding: 0px 0px 30px; list-style-type: none; display: flex; flex-wrap: wrap; -webkit-box-pack: justify; 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max-height: 1e+06px; background: rgb(216, 216, 216); color: rgb(51, 51, 51); font-family: Georgia, &quot;Times New Roman&quot;, Times, Baskerville, serif; letter-spacing: 0.8px; white-space-collapse: collapse;\"><div class=\"container\" style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; padding: 0px 15px; max-width: 860px; margin: 0px auto;\"><span class=\"post-date\" data-date=\"\" data-value=\"23\/Feb\/2024\" style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; letter-spacing: 1px; display: block; font-size: 20pt; padding-bottom: 19px; text-align: center; text-transform: lowercase; font-family: editorcondensed-regular, Arial, &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, sans-serif; padding-top: 30px;\">23 february 24<\/span><div data-content=\"\" style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; font-size: 17pt; font-family: editorcondensed-regular, Arial, &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, sans-serif; line-height: 1.25; max-width: initial; margin: 0px auto; hyphens: none; padding: 10px;\"><blockquote style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px;\"><strong style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px;\"><em style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px;\">As the UK considers extraditing the WikiLeaks founder, American press freedom hangs in the balance<\/em><\/strong><\/blockquote><p style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem;\"><dropcap style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; text-transform: uppercase; font-size: 80pt; line-height: 70px; padding-top: 12px; padding-right: 0px; padding-left: 3px; font-family: begum-regular, Arial, &quot;Helvetica Neue&quot;, Helvetica, sans-serif; float: left; margin-right: 6px;\">D<\/dropcap>oes Merrick Garland, the Biden-appointed attorney general, really want his legacy to include a heavy blow to long-established press rights in the United States?<\/p><p style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem;\">If not, Garland must drop the 17 charges under the Espionage Act against Julian Assange. This should have happened years ago but now is a key moment. The high court in London is considering this week whether to extradite Assange to the US to face those charges.<\/p><p style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem;\">What the UK court does is important to Assange himself, who is in poor health after years of imprisonment and asylum-seeking. A decision to extradite, according to his wife, would be tantamount to a death sentence.<\/p><p style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem;\">But the real answer to this troubling debacle lies across the Atlantic in Washington.<\/p><p style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem;\">First, let\u2019s deal with the argument so often heard about Assange \u2013 that he\u2019s not really a journalist, rather a data-dumping publisher, at best, and therefore what happens to him won\u2019t harm American press rights.<\/p><p style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem;\">\u201cThe question of whether Assange is a journalist is a red herring,\u201d Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, told me in an interview this week.<\/p><p style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem;\">The charges alone, Jaffer said, seek to criminalize the process of journalism \u2013 getting government secrets from informed sources and, eventually, revealing them to the public. In this era, when far too much information is classified in the United States, we rely on reporters to pry it out and let citizens know what their government is doing in secret.<\/p><p style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem;\">With the protection of the first amendment, American journalists have been doing just that for decades.<\/p><p style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem;\">Consider the Pentagon Papers, which revealed the lies and misdeeds of the Vietnam war. Or the Washington Post\u2019s and the Guardian\u2019s reporting that exposed the National Security Agency\u2019s global surveillance programs. Or, earlier, the New York Times\u2019s reporting about how the US government was secretly monitoring the calls and emails of citizens without court-approved warrants.<\/p><p style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem;\">This kind of reporting would be threatened \u2013 already\u00a0<i style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px;\">is\u00a0<\/i>threatened \u2013 because of the charges against Assange.<\/p><p style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem;\">You don\u2019t have to like him or the way his WikiLeaks published reams of classified information to recognize what Jaffer calls the \u201cprofound damage\u201d these charges create.<\/p><p style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem;\">Imagine what a future Trump administration, armed with an Assange conviction, could do to the traditional press. Reporting would be treated as a crime, which is why newsroom lawyers have followed Assange\u2019s prospects so closely and with so much concern.<\/p><p style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem;\">Years ago, President Obama considered bringing charges under the Espionage Act against Assange for his receiving and publishing huge amounts of classified data about US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, largely obtained from the US army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning.<\/p><p style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem;\">One infamous revelation: video of a 2007 Apache helicopter attack by American forces in Iraq that killed 11 civilians, including two Reuters journalists.<\/p><p style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem;\">Although Obama and his justice department \u2013 no great friends of the press \u2013 strongly objected to what Manning and Assange had done, they grasped something crucial.<\/p><p style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem;\">Charging him under the Espionage Act (an old law never intended for this purpose) would seek to criminalize the normal functions of journalism. That would especially be true for national security reporting, which relies so heavily on confidential sourcing: getting information from informed sources, verifying it, vetting it and publishing it to inform the public.<\/p><p style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem;\">The Obama-era justice department decided against moving forward because of the \u201cNew York Times problem\u201d. In other words, prosecuting Assange would punish and inhibit the traditional press. Great national security reporters like Charlie Savage at the Times or Ellen Nakashima at the Washington Post would bear the brunt.<\/p><p style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem;\">Donald Trump\u2019s justice department, unsurprisingly, saw this as an opportunity. If it had the potential to hurt the legacy news media, full speed ahead.<\/p><p style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem;\">The \u201clove\u201d that Trump expressed for WikiLeaks, because it published revelations that hurt his rival, Hillary Clinton, during the 2016 presidential campaign, didn\u2019t protect the Australian-born publisher. Assange was indicted in 2019; all but one of the 18 charges against him came under the Espionage Act.<\/p><p style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem;\">\u201cThis is unlike anything we\u2019ve seen before and it crosses a bright red line for journalists,\u201d James Risen, the longtime investigative reporter for the New York Times and later with the Intercept, told me at that time.<\/p><p style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem;\">Far beyond the effect on individual reporters and their news organizations, it\u2019s the public that suffers when journalists are punished or censor themselves in fear.<\/p><p style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem;\">Joe Biden\u2019s justice department could have dropped these charges years ago but so far has let them stand.<\/p><p style=\"box-sizing: inherit; max-height: 1e+06px; margin: 0px 0px 1.25rem;\">It\u2019s high time now to right that wrong.<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Margaret Sullivan\/Guardian UK The US Justice Department Must Drop Spy Charges Against Julian Assange Margaret Sullivan\/Guardian UK Imagine what a future Trump administration, armed with an Assange conviction, could do to the traditional press.\u2019 (photo: Hannibal Hanschke\/EPA) go to original\u00a0\/\u00a0print version\u00a0\/\u00a0subscribe\u00a0\/\u00a0donate 23 february 24 As the UK considers extraditing the&#8230; <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2024\/02\/24\/the-us-justice-department-must-drop-spy-charges-against-julian-assange\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[961],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31965"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31965"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31965\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31966,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31965\/revisions\/31966"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}