Conspiracy Charges Against Assange and Manning? (multiple
posts)

1. A sad day for the US if the Espionage Act is used against 
   WikiLeaks (Stephen M. Kohn in the Guardian)

2. U.S. Conspiracy Charges Prepared Against Assange, Manning
   (Tom Hayden - The Peace and Justice Resource Center)
   
3. Global Support for WikiLeaks is "Rebellion" Against U.S. 
   Militarism, Secrecy (John Pilger - Democracy Now!)

==========

A sad day for the US if the Espionage Act is used against
WikiLeaks

Resurrecting the 1917 law would be a mistake: it has a
history of being used to suppress dissent

by Stephen M. Kohn

Guardian (UK)

December 15, 2010

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/libertycentral/2010/dec/15/wikileaks-us-espionage-act

Numerous US officials are calling for a resurrection of the
US Espionage Act as a tool for prosecuting WikiLeaks. The
dusting-off of the old law is all but certain. But the
outcome of the constitutional dust-up that is sure to follow
will result in triumph or tragedy for the US bill of rights.

In 1917, in the midst of a war hysteria, the United States
passed the Espionage Act. The law has nothing to do with
prosecuting spies. From its inception, it had everything to
do with suppressing dissent. The Great War was unpopular
with many Americans, very like today's engagements in Iraq
and Afghanistan.

Make no mistake about it. The Espionage Act targeted
political dissidents. Senator Kenneth McKellar of Tennessee
offered a simple defence of the law when it was introduced
to Congress: "If we cannot reason with men to be loyal, it
is high time we forced them to be loyal." Others, such as
Congressman William Green of Iowa, were more blunt. His
statement resembled modern calls supporting the execution of
the suspected WikiLeaks "whistleblower" Bradley Manning:
"For the extermination of these pernicious vermin no
measures can be too severe."

The Espionage Act wreaked havoc on the American political
left, destroying the young American Socialist party and one
of its most progressive unions, the Industrial Workers of
the World. Many others, including intellectuals,
journalists, film producers and pacifist religious figures
were also prosecuted. Prison terms were long, and some
political prisoners died in federal jails. The abuses under
the law were legendary, and mark a sad day in US history.

Why is the threat to prosecute WikiLeaks under the Espionage
Act so potentially destructive? The law is not restricted to
properly prohibiting the release of classified information.
The law is not restricted to protecting legitimate
government secrets. The law broadly prohibits any
publication by anyone (newspapers included) of information
related to national security, which may cause an "injury to
the United States".

Who determines whether national security is actually at
stake? Who determines what constitutes an "injury to the
United States"? In 1917 the courts bent over backwards to
permit the justice department to indict and prosecute
thousands of dissidents. Loyalty to America meant nothing.
The first amendment's protections for freedom of speech were
mocked. Opposition to US war policies dictated who was
jailed.

There are responsible mechanisms policing truly abusive
leaks. The Espionage Act is not such a tool.

The attorney general should stop trying to resurrect the
Espionage Act, and instead dust off his copy of the US
constitution. If he has any question as to the meaning of
the first amendment, he should read James Madison's 1789
speech, in which he introduced the bill of rights in the
first Congress of the United States: "Freedom of the press,
as one of the great bulwarks of liberty, shall be
inviolable."

[Stephen M Kohn is an attorney and a leading advocate for
corporate and government whistleblowers. A respected scholar
as well as a litigator, he has testified in Congress on
behalf of whistleblowers and worked with the Senate
Judiciary staff to draft corporate whistleblower protections
under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.]

==========

U.S. Conspiracy Charges Prepared Against Assange, Manning

by Tom Hayden
The Peace and Justice Resource Center

December 15, 2010

http://tomhayden.com/home/us-conspiracy-charges-prepared-against-assange-manning.html

Inside sources say the U.S. Justice Department is preparing
charges of conspiracy to violate espionage and computer
protection laws against Julian Assange, in order to avoid
bringing charges against mainstream media outlets such as
the New York Times.

The indictment is being prepared by a secret federal grand
jury organized by the Justice Department in Alexandria,
Virginia, and is expected to name imprisoned American
soldier Bradley Manning as a co-conspirator. Other American
professors and technicians will likely be charged with
accessory roles.

The government has intercepted email communications between
Assange and Manning over a period of time.

Those who say there is no basis for the prosecution are
"dead wrong," says one source close to the proceedings. "The
government is going to avoid all the freedom of the press
issues," the source added.

The 1917 Espionage Act includes a provision on conspiracy.
In addition, a 1985 law dealing with computer protection
will be employed to gain the indictment.

The speed of the U.S. grand jury process underscores the
legal and political importance of any extradition hearing in
the UK or Sweden, where Assange is facing possible charges
of non-consensual sex. An extradition hearing now is
scheduled for January 11 in London

[Tom Hayden is a leading voice for ending the wars in
Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan, for erasing sweatshops,
saving the environment, and reforming politics through a
more participatory democracy. He currently writes for The
Nation and organizes, travels and speaks constantly against
the current wars as founder and Director of the Peace and
Justice Resource Center in Culver City. He also recently
drafted and lobbied successfully for Los Angeles and San
Francisco ordinances to end all taxpayer subsidies for
sweatshops. Hayden served 18 years in the California
legislature, chairing key committees on the environment,
higher education and labor, has recently taught at 
Scripps College and Pitzer College in Claremont, California,
Occidental College, and Harvard University's Institute of
Politics.]

==========

John Pilger: Global Support for WikiLeaks is "Rebellion"
Against U.S. Militarism, Secrecy

Democracy Now!

December 15, 2010

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/12/15/john_pilger_journalists_must_support_julian

The award-winning investigative journalist and documentary
filmmaker John Pilger is one of many high-profile public
supporters of Julian Assange and his organization WikiLeaks.
Pilger has attended Assange's court proceedings in London
and has offered to contribute funds for his more than
$300,000 bail. Pilger's latest film, The War You Don't See,
includes interviews with Assange. Pilger says that WikiLeaks
is revolutionizing journalism and galvanizing public opinion
to stand up to global elites. [includes rush transcript]

LISTEN - WATCH

Real Video Stream
http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/2010/dec/video/dnB20101215a.rm&proto=rtsp&start=00:25:12

Real Audio Stream
http://play.rbn.com/?url=demnow/demnow/demand/2010/dec/audio/dn20101215.ra&proto=rtsp&start=00:25:12

AMY GOODMAN: We're continuing with John Pilger, the famed
Australian filmmaker who has lived in Britain for decades.
John, your film, The War You Don't See, premiered last night
on ITV in Britain and in theaters throughout Britain. The
film features your interview with Julian Assange. This is an
excerpt.

    JOHN PILGER: In the information that you have revealed
    on WikiLeaks about these so-called endless wars, what
    has come out of them?

    JULIAN ASSANGE: Looking at the enormous quantity and
    diversity of these military or intelligence apparatus
    insider documents, what I see is a vast, sprawling
    estate, what we would traditionally call the military-
    intelligence complex or military-industrial complex, and
    that this sprawling industrial estate is growing,
    becoming more and more secretive, becoming more and more
    uncontrolled. This is not a sophisticated conspiracy
    controlled at the top. This is a vast movement of self-
    interest by thousands and thousands of players, all
    working together and against each other.

AMY GOODMAN: That is an excerpt of the new film that
premiered last night in Britain, The War You Don't See. John
Pilger, you know Julian Assange. Talk more about what he's
saying and about the media's coverage of what WikiLeaks has
done, from the release of the Iraq war logs to those in
Afghanistan to now this largest trove of U.S. diplomatic
cables ever released in history, John.

JOHN PILGER: Well, what Julian Assange and WikiLeaks is
doing is what journalists should have been doing. I mean, I
think you mention the reaction to him. Some of the
hostility, especially in the United States, from some of
those very highly paid journalists at the top has been quite
instructive, because I think that they are shamed by
WikiLeaks. They are shamed by the founder of WikiLeaks, who
is prepared to say that the public has a right to know the
secrets of governments that impinge on our democratic
rights. WikiLeaks is doing something very Jeffersonian. It
was Jefferson who said that information is the currency of
democracy. And here you have a lot of these famous
journalists in America are rather looking down their noses,
at best, and saying some quite defamatory things about
Assange and WikiLeaks, when in fact they should have been
exploiting their First Amendment privilege and letting
people know just how government has lied to us, lied to us
in the run-up to the Iraq war and lied to us in so many
other circumstances. And I think that's really been the
value of all this. People have been given a glimpse of how
big power operates. And they're-it's coming from a
facilitator, it's coming from these very brave
whistleblowers. And in my film, Julian Assange goes out of
his way to celebrate the people within the system who he
describes as the equivalent of conscientious objectors
during the First World War, these extraordinarily courageous
people who were prepared to speak out against that
slaughter. All the Bradley Mannings and others are
absolutely heroic figures. There's no question about that.

In my film, I also went to Washington, and I interviewed the
Assistant Secretary of Defense, Bryan Whitman, the man who's
been in charge of media operations, as they call it, through
a number of administrations. And I asked him to give a
guarantee that Julian Assange would not be hunted down, as
the media was describing it. And he said he wasn't in a
position to give that guarantee. So, I think we're in a
situation here, Amy, where people have to speak out. This is
a very fundamental issue, and the people we need to speak
out most of all are those with the privilege of the media,
with the privilege of journalism, because this is about free
information. This is about letting us know truths that we
have to know about if we are to live in any form of
democracy.

AMY GOODMAN: The nationwide warning that has gone out has
been remarkable, John. Democracy Now! obtained the text of a
memo that was sent to employees at USAID, thousands of
employees, about reading the recently leaked WikiLeaks
documents. The memo reads in part, quote, "Any classified
information that may have been unlawfully disclosed and
released on the Wikileaks web site was not 'declassified' by
an appropriate authority and therefore requires continued
classification and protection as such from government
personnel... Accessing the Wikileaks web site from any
computer may be viewed as a violation of the SF-312
agreement... Any discussions concerning the legitimacy of
any documents or whether or not they are classified must be
conducted within controlled access areas (overseas) or
within restricted areas (USAID/Washington)... The documents
should not be viewed, downloaded, or stored on your USAID
unclassified network computer or home computer; they should
not be printed or retransmitted in any fashion."

It's gone out to agencies all over the government. State
Department employees have been warned, again, not only on
their computers where they're blocked at work, but at home.
People who have written cables are not allowed to put in
their names to see if those cables come up. Graduate
schools, like SIPA at Columbia University, an email was sent
out from the administration saying the State Department had
contacted them and that if they care about their futures in
government, they should not post anything to Facebook or
talk about these documents.

And then you have Allen West, one of the new Republican
Congress members-elect, who called for targeted news outlets
that publish the cables. In a radio interview,
Congressmember West-well, Congressmember-elect West, called
for censoring any news outlets that run stories based on the
cables' release. This is what he said.

    ALLEN WEST: Here is an individual that is not an
    American citizen, first and foremost, for whatever
    reason, you know, gotten his hands on classified
    American material and has put it out there in the public
    domain. And I think that we also should be censoring the
    American news agencies which enabled him to be able to
    do this and then also supported him and applauded him
    for the efforts. So, that's kind of aiding and abetting
    of a serious crime.

AMY GOODMAN: And speaking of crimes, another Congress
member, longtime Congressmember Peter King from here in New
York, has called for the classifying of WikiLeaks as a
foreign terrorist organization. I did my column this week
talking about "'Assangination': From Character Assassination
to the Real Thing" and the calls of Democratic consultants
like Bob Beckel on Fox Business News for Julian Assange to
be killed. He said he doesn't agree with the death penalty,
so he should be "illegally" killed, maybe taken out by U.S.
special forces. John Pilger?

JOHN PILGER: Look, Amy, I thought you were reading out there
several passages from 1984. I don't think Orwell could have
put it even better than that. Surely, we mustn't think these
things. I'm thinking it at the moment. So if I was over
there, I must be guilty of something, and therefore I should
be illegally taken out.

Look, there's always been-as you know better than I, there's
always been a tension among the elites in the United States
between those who pay some sort of homage, lip service, to
all those Georgian gentleman who passed down those tablets
of good intentions all that long time ago and a bunch of
lunatics. But they're powerful lunatics. They're-perhaps
"lunatics" is not quite right. They're simply totalitarian
people. And up they come in anything like this. I see-I read
this morning that the U.S. Air Force has banned anybody
connecting with it from reading The Guardian. So, everyone
is banned from doing things and banned from thinking and so
on.

They won't get away with it. That's the good news. They are
hyperventilating, and they're hysterical, and so be it, but
they won't get away with it. There are now two genuine
powers in the world. We know about U.S. power. But that
great sleeper, world public opinion, world decency, if you
like, if I'm not being too romantic about it, is waking up.
And the scenes outside the court yesterday went well beyond,
I think, just the WikiLeaks issue. It is something else.
WikiLeaks has triggered something. And I don't think it will
be the proverbial genie being stuffed back in the bottle,
either. So, you know, world opinion is-when it stirs, when
it moves, when it starts to come together collectively to do
things that are important to us all, it's a very formidable
opponent to those totalitarian people who you've just
quoted. So I'm rather more optimistic.

The immediate thing is to free Julian Assange. And I'm
hoping that will happen tomorrow at the High Court. I should
just add, you know, Mark Stephens was very eloquently
describing the case. But, you know, the absurdity of this
case is that a senior prosecutor in Sweden threw this thing
out. And I've seen her papers. And she was left-she leaves
us in no doubt there was absolutely no evidence to support
any of these misdemeanors or crimes, or whatever they're
meant to be, at all. It was only the intervention of this
right-wing politician in Sweden that reactivated this whole
charade. So, in a way, it is perhaps symbolic of the kind of
charades, rather lethal charades, that we've seen on a much
wider scale in relation to the invasions of Iraq and
Afghanistan and other issues that have involved the deaths
of literally hundreds of thousands of people around the
world. So, what we're seeing is a rebellion. Where it will
go, I'm not quite sure. But it's certainly started, I can
tell you.

AMY GOODMAN: John Pilger, I'd like to ask you to stay with
us as we talk about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as we
talk about the power of the U.S. government. This week we
reported on the sudden death of Richard Holbrooke, who has
played such a key role through four Democratic
administrations, from Vietnam to Yugoslavia, from Timor to
Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq. And we'd like to talk about
his legacy and about U.S. foreign policy. You have done a
number of documentaries related to the areas where he
worked, and we're also going to be joined by Jeremy Scahill.

I also want to say, when you talk about a wave of reaction
against what has happened to Julian Assange, I mentioned
Columbia's graduate school called SIPA that warned students
not to post things to Facebook or deal with these issues
raised by WikiLeaks, but there has been a reversal. Clearly,
the administration at Columbia has been seriously
embarrassed, and the dean there has now issued a new
statement saying that he encourages the discussion of
issues, wherever those issues may take one. John Pilger,
stay with us. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The
War and Peace Report. Back in a minute.

==========

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