Five major Western news organizations have finally spoken out for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and are calling on the US government to drop the charges against him.
In a letter to the US government, the editors and publishers of The New York Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, DER SPIEGEL, and El País said that “publishing is not a crime” and that it was time for the US “to end its prosecution of Julian Assange for publishing secrets.”
The five news outlets benefited greatly from documents released by WikiLeaks and worked with the organization to publish State Department cables in a release known as “Cable Gate.” The letter explains that for receiving those leaks and the Iraq and Afghanistan war logs from whistleblower Chelsea Manning, Assange has faced “the most severe consequences.”
The letter reads: “On 12 April 2019, Assange was arrested in London on a US arrest warrant, and has now been held for three and a half years in a high-security British prison usually used for terrorists and members of organized crime groups.”
While being held in Belmarsh Prison on no charges, Assange has been subject to psychological torture, a UN special rapporteur has determined. If extradited to the US, he could face up to 175 years in a maximum security prison.
The US Department of Justice indicted Assange under the Espionage Act even though he used standard journalistic practices to receive the information he published. The letter explains that the Obama administration refrained from seeking Assange’s indictment due to the precedent it could set and that the Trump administration decided to pursue charges.
“Under Donald Trump however, the position changed. The DOJ relied on an old law, the Espionage Act of 1917 (designed to prosecute potential spies during World War 1), which has never been used to prosecute a publisher or broadcaster,” the news organizations said.
The Trump administration’s decision to indict Assange was likely related to WikiLeaks’ publication of documents that detailed the CIA’s hacking tools, known as Vault 7. While there was nothing illegal about the release, and Assange is being charged for unrelated leaks, Vault 7 enraged the CIA and then-Director Mike Pompeo.
Last year, in a bombshell report, Yahoo News revealed that the CIA under Pompeo plotted to kidnap and discussed assassinating Assange over the release of Vault 7. The report has been cited by Assange’s legal team to argue against the UK’s former Home Secretary’s decision to extradite him to the US, which is currently being appealed.
I agree! Let him go.
You know, when someone is being tortured you don’t get any credit for waiting years and years to speak up about it. So I guess Biden may be looking at some form of pardon, though I wouldn’t bet on it, so the state media organs are trying to give him cover. The NYT, WP, NBC and all the others can KMA.
Roght, it’s patently not as access of moral courage.
Exactly what I was thinking. It’s more like moral virtue signaling.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/most-people-consider-themselves-to-be-morally-superior/
“publishing is not a crime” Depends on what one publishes. Publish nude picture of a child and you are going to jail. Publish stolen detailed design documents of a product being made by the XYZ company and you are going to jail. Publish stolen documents of the design of the nuclear reactor for a US sub. again off to jail. If a trial determines that this guy published stolen US government documents which harms US interests, than off to jail he should go.
And this guy is lucky, because in many countries he would simply be shot without a trial.
You could not possibly be more wrong. Indeed, you should be deeply embarrassed by how utterly wrong you are. But you are not embarrassed, are you?
Wrong about what? Which one of my sentences are incorrect?
None of those acts are illegal in the US.
Hear hear!.. But somebody should go to jail. I propose the DCIA should be charged with dereliction of duty… The stupid fat bastard can’t keep a secret.
The pilots and the gunner in the copter needed to be Courts Martial. Any entity covering the crime up should be tried for accessory after the fact.
Yes it is, see Economic Espionage Act of 1996 for trade secrets. And yes people have gone to jail for stealing trade secrets. For military secrets there is the The Espionage Act of 1917. One cannot publish a trade secrete or military secret without stealing the information first by copying it.
1) The documents weren’t “stolen.” They were copied.
2) The document were evidence of crimes.
3) Assange wasn’t in the US when he received the documents, or when he published the documents, or at any point in between. He was entirely outside US jurisdiction even if it WAS a crime to reveal the US regime’s crimes.
Those points are correct, but they are beside the main points.
Publishing stolen material is not a crime.
Whether the material is or is not evidence of crime has nothing to do with the legality of publication.
Whether or not a publisher is in the US during any act related to publication doesn’t matter, because those acts aren’t criminal.
Assange is not charged with crimes based upon his publication of the documents, because the feds know that’s not illegal. He’s charged with computer “intrusion” offenses and espionage, on the theory that he was actively involved in Manning’s illegal dowloadiNg and transmission of the documents and other similar acts. In reality, he appears to have done pretty much what investigative journalists routinely do with sources, but the feds think they can convince a jury, so we shall see.
I have no doubt they can convince a jury. They will hand pick a jury from Virginia. Their favorite neighborhood.
“Publishing stolen material is not a crime.” It is. To publish it, you need to copy it and that makes it a crime.
Multiple posters have told you that you are just plain wrong, Kenneth, big time wrong. And yet you keep doubling down on defiant ignorance. You should stop this and go do some legal and historical research.
Well Red I can read the law. Public law 104-294 Section 1831 .
Economic espionage
‘‘(a) IN GENERAL.—Whoever, intending or knowing that the
offense will benefit any foreign government, foreign instrumentality,
or foreign agent, knowingly—
‘‘(1) steals, or without authorization appropriates, takes,
carries away, or conceals, or by fraud, artifice, or deception
obtains a trade secret;
‘‘(2) without authorization copies, duplicates, sketches,
draws, photographs, downloads, uploads, alters, destroys, photocopies, replicates, transmits, delivers, sends, mails, communicates, or conveys a trade secret;
‘‘(3) receives, buys, or possesses a trade secret, knowing
the same to have been stolen or appropriated, obtained, or
converted without authorization;
How does one publish without copying, uploading or downloading a document? So it looks clear cut to me. Now it is your turn to do research in case law showing that this does not apply. And by the way, I knew of the law before I tock time to find the exact reference, because I had a course in intellectual property.
Tom, 1. Copying of a document is the same as stealing it. It is the information that counts, not the format. (Now, I know that you know that.)
2. The content of the documents does not justified stealing it.
3. Outside of US jurisdiction?? There are many terrorists that sit in ADX Florence who committed crimes against America that were outside of US jurisdiction. But if he is not protected by the US legal system, than he simply is an enemy of the US and it up to the military to take him out. My own opinion is that he should face the US legal system.
“Copying of a document is the same as stealing it. It is the information that counts, not the format. (Now, I know that you know that.)”
No, I don’t. In fact, I know precisely the opposite. “Intellectual property” is an anti-rights/anti-property anti-concept.
Tom I suggest you read Economic Espionage Act of 1996. It clearly defines that copying data is same as stealing it.
Q: How many legs does a dog have if you call its tail a leg?
A: Four. Calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it a leg.
Publishing information outside America is no more a “crime against America” than violating the Peoria speed limit in Venice is a “crime against Peoria.”
Not the same. Speeding in Venice does not constitute a danger to someone in Peoria.
😂
Thomas I just love your analogies!
And I haven’t forgotten “John Brown”….
2. The content of the documents does not justified stealing it.
The content is evidence of a crime. If it isn’t exposed that makes you a silent accomplice to that crime.
Unfortunately that is a defense specifically denied to the accused at Nat. Sec. Court under the US Legal System you have so much faith in.
So what you are saying is governments should be UNACCOUNTABLE ?. isn`t that a DICTATORSHIP ?.
Im saying the Government should be held accountable.. Dumass!
He exposed us military war crimes , the US government should be in prison or shot , and even if he was tried in the US the war crimes would not get a mention , the Brits allowed the US to turn the charges on their head so they could come up with BS charges unrelated to what he exposed .
You are OK with concealing the video of Americans in a copter gun ship killing Arab civilians and laughing about it? And other war crimes?
No I am not ok with concealing a crime. What the court needs to decide if this guy broke the US law and if his migrating circumstances would warranted a reduced sentence if he indeed broke the law.
It’s good to see Thomas taking on the obvious CIA talking pointers. Thomas has been consistent on Assange.
That`s the problem far two many countries are willing to acquiesce to American demands .
It is a little more complicated than that. The documents were stolen by Chelsea Manning. But under the First Amendment, journalists are permitted to publish documents pertaining to matters of public interest obtained from confidential sources even if the sources stole the documents. Assange did the same thing as the NY Times when it published the Pentagon Papers.
With respect to Manning, her theft of confidential documents was justified because the documents were evidence of criminal behavior by state agents,. Anglo-Saxon common law recognizes that a crime is justified if the perpetrator committed the crime to prevent a greater imminent harm and it there was no legal alternative to prevent the harm. Many lawyers believe that the common law justification defense applies to federal criminal cases where whistle blowers .expose improper conduct. Manning’s disclosures exposed war crimes. I believe that her theft of confidential documents was justified because she acted in the public interest.
Manning and Assange should both be exonerated. We are in their debt.
You arguments are interesting and may even be right. That is why the US, unlike some others countries, have a very good court system to sort this all out.
The US court system has no jurisdiction in the matter of Assange. None of his actions took place in the US. If I’m a local judge in Peoria, I don’t get to convict and sentence someone for driving recklessly in Peshawar.
I don’t agree, I think they do. Your Peoria statement missed that fact that driving reckless in Peshawar does not harm anyone in Peoria. But we will have to agree to disagree on this. I would prefer that this guy a gets a day in court and US legal system sorts it all out.
He’s already had the only “day in court” that should have mattered. The US/UK extradition treaty clearly forbids the UK to extradite political prisoners to the US. But the court ignored that.
But the court ignored that. How do you know that the court ignored that as opposed to the court did not consider him a political prisoner?
“How do you know that the court ignored that as opposed to the court did not consider him a political prisoner?”
“Not considering him a political prisoner” is sort of like “not considering water wet.”
“And this guy is lucky, because in many countries he would simply be shot without a trial.”
Yes, lucky. That’s when you are locked up in conditions that make you so miserable that you wish you would be shot. And do you just automatically take contrarian positions no matter what the f*ck they are?
Classical. If one does not like the message attack the messenger. If you can not refute what I am saying and you dislike it so much, just ignore me.
I quoted you and made a comment about that quote. I can’t refute what you said but I can call you out on your depravity in even suggesting Assange should consider himself fortunate. Especially after the misery he has already endured.
No actually you quoted me and than made a comment about me, not the quote. So if that made you feel better good for you. But it does not change the fact that he lucky that he wanted by countries, Sweden first and now the US that have a decent rule of law. As oppose to say Iran.
Sweden’s regime completely abandoned rule of law where Assange was concerned, including but not limited to its issuance of an illegal/fraudulent Interpol “red notice” when Assange was not charged with a crime (“we’d like to talk to him” does not meet the qualifications), its refusal to “talk to him” for years when offered the opportunity to do so (insisting that it would only do so IN Sweden), etc.
I made a comment about your quote and I added a comment about you. Anyone who is flippant about how Assange is lucky not to be executed deserves derision.
They are doing it because NATO’s “Drang nach Osten” is failing and all the world is seeing that US regime is not only repressive and pro-Nazi, but also weak. So, they need to do something to improve a bit their image.
Yes, Biden who has brought in five million illegal aliens into the US in just two years and says he wants Whites to become a minority is “pro-Nazi”.
I oppose Kiev’s attacks on Donbass. But the Russian line that Kiev is “nazi” is laughable propaganda. Used by those few leftists in the West who oppose the Biden-funded Kiev – while 99.9% of leftists support Kiev against Russia. Are those social democrats and communists “pro-Nazi”?
Stick to reality. There are some nationalists who praise Stepan Bandera in Ukraine, notably in the Azov Battalion and the Kraken and the like. These are a small minority. The PRESIDENT of Ukraine condemns those who praise Bandera. So does the Israeli-Ukrainian oligarch who funded his campaign. But they work with them – including them as a small minority in the military. The ONLY nationalist seat in parliament is held by the more mainstream Svoboda Party. That means it’s a “pro-Nazi” government? Financed by Biden, supported by Kamala Harris, Antony Blinken, George Soros, Nancy Pelosi, Macron, Olaf Sholz? Ridiculous.
You may call the Azov Battalion a small minority, but they hold sway over Z. There were plenty of Banderites scurrying around the streets of Kiev in the evenings of the coup of 2014, praising Bandera, cornering separatists in a building and incinerating those inside. The Italian police arrested a group in Italy who were there to perpetrate terrorist measures.
Almost everyone I know on the left opposes the US involvement in Ukraine. But those I know personally are working class people with no power or voice. You are conflating reality with the 99 percent of status quo “leftists” who have clout.
Yes, Biden who has brought in five million illegal aliens into the US in just two years
did you count the illegal aliens? or did fox news count them.
google = Of the 1.66 million migrants encountered in FY 2021, about two-thirds of all encounters by the Border Patrol between ports of entry resulted in migrants being immediately expelled.
also google = For the 12 months ending Sept. 30, 2022, CBP stopped migrants more than 2,766,582 times, compared to 1.72 million times for fiscal 2021,
Even if there was such a thing as an “illegal alien” (the US Constitution says no), Biden has “brought” precisely zero of them into the US. They’re coming whether he wants them to or not, and he’s had more of them abducted/deported in the same period of time than either Obama or Trump did.
Why would it possibly matter what the skin color of the population is?
By pro-Nazi I mean their support of Kiev neo-Nazi regime. In US, as far as I know, neither Russians, nor any other minority is persecuted because of the ethnic identity. I wrote already about that: American politics in Europe and the cultivation and support of neo-Nazism is similar to American politics in Latin America, where US were always supporting the fascists against the socialists. The reason is: the fascist regimes are more profitable for American big business than the socialist ones. The socialist independent countries like China, Vietnam and Cuba don’t fit for unipolar world dominated by US. Also, Libyan Islamist socialism was dangerous for US oligarchy and that was the reason why they destroyed Libya. So, supporting Nazism and fascism is quite traditional for US foreign politics.
There is no sense to argue about whether Kiev regime is Nazi or not. Those who say Kiev regime is not Nazi, either don’t know enough about the nature of Kiev regime or they say it because they are themselves sympathizing Ukrainian neo-Nazism. All the world sees it as it is and that is the main reason of anti-US feelings in the so called Third World.
The Julian Assange case has hardly been mentioned in the mainstream western media, so it is encouraging to see that five most famous news papers are now clamouring for the release from prison of this brave editor/journalist.
Not noted above is the fact that the charges against Assange are actually for acquisition of the materials provided by Manning, notably the “Collateral Murder” video. That’s way up there on the Disgusting and Despicable Behavior scale.
Criminal governments dislike having their standard practices exposed. Go figure.
It’s amazing how successive US administrations have danced around the war crimes that were committed after 9/11, starting with the invasion of Afghanistan in the first place. That Assange presumed to point a finger at these crimes and has been locked up ever since underscores the futility of our illustrious alternative media, including antiwar.com, to lift the lid on the lies and atrocities that the USA has committed in the past two decades. In a different century he would have been burned at the stake for heresy so I guess he’s getting off easy.
The biggest war crime by us was the dropping of the nuclear weapons on the civilians of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Truman thought it was OK to incinerate our POWs there as well. Tibbetts, the pilot of the Enola Gay was made a hero for the mission. He even said he would do it again.
I never was a fan of burning cities to the ground in WW2 regardless of the weapons being used.
True enough, but Assange is being persecuted for exposing the war crimes of this century, the ones that were conveniently swept under the rug with the official narrative of 9/11. It’s become an article of faith that Moslems were somehow the perps of 9/11 when the real perps are laughing at us for our naivety.
i bet that the real 9/11 perps are laughing even harder at the ineffectualness of those of us who see through the deception than they are at the naive ones
The most tragic thing, V?…
It was all a show for Stalin.
Does that meet the definition of “virtue signaling?” Brought to you by the same outlets that have been as loyal to the war propaganda as they could have been. They are some of the most despicable people on Earth. But they learned from the best. All it takes is to timely bring up student loan forgiveness only to dismiss it on technicalities after the midterm elections. One of our colleagues here coined it as “floating balloons.”
Better late than never , i would say guilty consciences played a part in this .
Yeah majority of these rags are propaganda pushers for the Anglo-American empire so excuse me if I don’t believe they have any kind of genuine concern for imprisoned journalists. In fact, I believe it’s a cheap promotion trick to keep themselves relevant and a pitiful attempt at reputation maintenance. These cowards don’t care about anyone beside themselves.
You SAID it all!
PS May I ask you your name in English in order that I may address you by it ?
My user name? It’s Ivan
Pleased to make your acquaintance, Ivan 🙂
just go like this = Иван
All have previous editorial support for dropping charges against Assange. The issue is where are the rest of the news media?
The answer your question, perhaps the rest of the news media agree with the US government.
This is a stain on the Trump Administration. Trump was fine with the leaks of Democratic Party emails. If anyone should know how vindictive and reckless the intelligence community can be, it should be Trump.
So, we have on one side pro-MIC Trump and on the other side the vindictive and reckless intelligence community. Difficult choice indeed.
By the way, both MIC and the intelligence community are making money from US budget and they both are not interested in the peaceful evolution of the world.
Major newspapers supporting journalistic freedom? Some mistake, surely!