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In reply to the discussion: Julian Assange bids to sue Julia Gillard for defamation over WikiLeaks comments [View all]JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)an exercise of the First Amendment as the New York Times' very recent article about deficient security in our embassies and consulates. The NYT article is far more damaging and dangerous to our security than anything Assange or Wikileaks published. You have to struggle to get through the information Wikileaks published (the more so if you are not familiar with American culture), and it is mostly from what I could tell, historical. But the NYT article practically bared the flesh of our apparently inadequate (and inevitably inadequate) foreign service security. No one and especially not I would question that the NYT is protected by the 1st Amendment in all they publish.
If the US promised that Wikileaks and Assange would not be punished, if they for example brought litigation and lost the case, then Assange might be able to go to Sweden to respond to the charges there against him.
I have no idea what Assange is thinking. I have no relationship with him or Wikileaks -- not even in the remotest, but I am very concerned about the First Amendment. The protections of the Fourth Amendment have been rendered practically useless, the more so in recent years. I do not want to see the First Amendment protections eaten away in the same manner.
I don't know who leaked the information about our foreign service security deficiencies to the NYT -- probably Republicans in Congress -- but it was irresponsible and maybe treason.