Glenn Greenwald: Attempts to prosecute WikiLeaks endanger press freedoms

[chimpymustgo]

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Amazingly, the Obama administration is surpassing its predecessor when it comes to assaults on whistle-blowing and a free press. As Politico's Josh Gerstein reported, "President Barack Obama’s Justice Department has taken a hard line against leakers. . . .'They’re going after this at every opportunity and with unmatched vigor,' said Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists." The New York Times similarly documented: "the Obama administration is proving more aggressive than the Bush administration in seeking to punish unauthorized leaks." The Obama DOJ has launched nothing less than a full-on war against whistleblowers; its magnanimous "Look Forward, Not Backward" decree used to shield high-level Bush criminals from investigations is manifestly tossed to the side when it comes to those who reveal such criminality. And they even revitalized an abandoned Bush-era subpoena issued to The New York Times' James Risen, demanding that he disclose his source for an article in which he revealed an embarrassingly botched attempt to infiltrate and sabotage Iran's nuclear program.

But if current reports are correct -- that the Obama DOJ has now convened a Grand Jury to indict WikiLeaks and Julian Assange -- this will constitute a far greater assault on press freedom than anything George W. Bush managed, or even attempted. Put simply, there is no intellectually coherent way to distinguish what WikiLeaks has done with these diplomatic cables with what newspapers around the world did in this case and what they do constantly: namely, receive and then publish classified information without authorization. And as much justifiable outrage as the Bush DOJ's prosecution of the AIPAC officials provoked, at least the actions there resembled "espionage" far more than anything Assange has done, as those AIPAC officials actually passed U.S. secrets to a foreign government, not published them as WikiLeaks has done.

To criminalize what WikiLeaks is doing is, by definition, to criminalize the defining attribute of investigative journalism. That, to be sure, is a feature, not a bug, of the Obama administration's efforts. Just two days ago, The New York Times' James Risen wrote a story disclosing substantial classified information about the CIA, the DEA and Afghanistan, revealing that a high-level Afghan drug trafficker being prosecuted by the U.S. was long on the payroll of the U.S.; should he be tried for espionage? I wrote in detail back in August about the dangers posed and distortions required to prosecute WikiLeaks under the Espionage Act.

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What's most striking about all of this, as usual, is how the worst and most tyrannical government actions in Washington are equally supported on a fully bipartisan basis. It is, of course, a Democratic President -- elected on a promise of creating the "most transparent administration in history" -- that is leading these attacks on whistle-blowing and press freedoms. And it's leading Democratic Senators like Dianne Feinstein demanding Assange's prosecution under the Espionage Act. And it's Democratic operatives like Bob Beckel -- Walter Mondale's 1984 campaign manager -- calling for Assange to be "illegally" murdered, stating on Fox News: "A dead man can't leak stuff. This guy's a traitor, he's treasonous, and he has broken every law of the United States. And I'm not for the death penalty, so...there's only one way to do it: illegally shoot the son of a bitch" (note the illiterate-though-standard claim that Assange, an Australian citizen, has committed "treason" against the U.S.).

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http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/12/14/wikileaks

[cbayer]

1. chimpymustgo,

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cbayer
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[chimpymustgo]

2. Rules QUITE selectively enforced. But OP now edited. Too important to get locked.

[cbayer]

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