Assange has been the target of repeated official
attempts to discredit him or, at the very least, to
muddy the waters in a case that should be all about
freedom of speech
By Patrick CockburnFebruary 22, 2020 "Information
Clearing House" - I was in
Kabul in 2010 when
Julian Assange and
WikiLeaks first released a vast archive of
classified US government documents, revealing what
Washington really knew about what was happening in
the world. I was particularly interested in one of
these disclosures, which came in the shape of a
video that the Pentagon had refused to release
despite a Freedom of Information Act request.
When WikiLeaks did release the video, it was
obvious why the US generals had wanted to keep it
secret. Three years earlier, I had been in Baghdad
when a US helicopter machine-gunned and fired
rockets at a group of civilians on the ground who
its pilots claimed were armed insurgents, killing or
wounding many of them.
Journalists in Iraq were disbelieving about the
US military’s claims because the dead included two
reporters from the Reuters news agency. Nor was it
likely that insurgents would have been walking in
the open with their weapons when a US Apache
helicopter was overhead.
We could not prove anything until WikiLeaks made
public the film from the Apache. Viewing it still
has the power to shock: the pilots are cock-a-hoop
as they hunt their prey, including people in a
vehicle who stop to help the wounded, saying, “Oh
yeah, look at those dead bastards,” and, “Ha, ha, I
hit them.” Anybody interested in why the US failed
in Iraq should have a look.
The WikiLeaks revelations in 2010 and in 2016 are
the present-day equivalent of the release by Daniel
Ellsberg in 1971 of the
Pentagon Papers, unmasking the true history of
the US engagement in the Vietnam War. They are, in
fact, of even greater significance because they are
more wide-ranging and provide an entry point into
the world as the US government really sees it.
The disclosures were probably the greatest
journalistic scoop in history, and newspapers such
as The New York Times recognised this by
the vast space they gave to the revelations.
Corroboration of their importance has been grimly
confirmed by the rage of the US security
establishment and its overseas allies, and the
furious determination with which they have pursued
Assange, the co-founder of WikiLeaks.
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Daniel Ellsberg is rightly treated as
a hero who revealed the truth about
Vietnam, but Assange, whose actions were
very similar to Ellsberg’s, is held in
Belmarsh high-security prison. He faces
a hearing in London this week to decide
whether he will be extradited from the
UK to the US on spying charges. If
extradited, he stands a good chance of
being sentenced to 175 years in the US
prison system under the Espionage Act of
1917.
Ever since Assange orchestrated the release of
documents through WikiLeaks, he has been the target
of repeated official attempts to discredit him or,
at the very least, to muddy the waters in a case
that should be all about freedom of speech.
The initial bid to demonise Assange came
immediately after the first release of documents,
claiming that it would cost the lives of people who
were named. The US government still argues that
lives were put at risk by WikiLeaks, although it has
never produced evidence for this.
On the contrary, the US counter-intelligence
official who was in charge of the Pentagon’s
investigation into the impact of the WikiLeaks disclosures
admitted in evidence in 2013 that there was not a
single instance of an individual being killed by
enemy forces as a result of what WikiLeaks had done.
Brigadier General Robert Carr, head of the
Pentagon’s Information Review Task Force, told the
sentencing hearing for
Chelsea Manning that his initial claim that an
individual named by WikiLeaks had been killed by the
Taliban in Afghanistan was incorrect. “The name of
the individual was not in the disclosures,” he
admitted.
On the day the WikiLeaks revelations were made
public, I had a pre-arranged meeting in Kabul with a
US official who asked what the coding on the top of
the leaked papers was. When I read this out, he was
dismissive about the extent to which the deep
secrets of the US state were being revealed.
I learned later the reason for his relaxed
attitude. The database Manning had accessed was
called SIPRNet (Secret Internet Protocol Router),
which is a US military internet system. After
9/11, it was used to make sure that confidential
information available to one part of the US
government was available to others. The number of
people with the right security clearance who could
theoretically access SIPRNet was about 3 million,
although the number with the correct password, while
still substantial, would have been much fewer.
The US government is not so naive as to put real
secrets on a system whose purpose was to be open to
so many people, including a low-ranking sergeant
such as Chelsea Manning. Sensitive materials from
defence attaches and the like were sent through
alternative, more secure channels. Had the US
security services really been using a system as
insecure as SIPRNet to send the names of those whose
lives would be in danger if their identity
were disclosed, they soon would have run short of
recruits.
The false accusation that lives had been lost, or
could have been lost, because of WikiLeaks damaged
Assange. More damaging by far are the allegations
that he has faced of the rape and sexual molestation
of two women in Sweden in 2010. He denies the
allegations, but they have condemned him to
permanent status as a pariah in the eyes of many.
The Swedish prosecutor discontinued the rape
investigation last year because of time elapsed, but
this makes no difference for those who feel that
anything Assange has said or done is permanently
tainted and that the WikiLeaks disclosures are only
a tangential issue. Likewise, much of the media
views Assange’s character and alleged behaviour as
the only story worth covering. Although information
about SIPRNet and General Carr’s evidence was
published long ago, few journalists seem to be aware
of this.
But it is not because of anything that may have
happened in Sweden that Assange is threatened with
extradition to the US to face prosecution under the
Espionage Act. The charges all relate to the release
of government secrets, the sort of thing that all
journalists should aspire to do, and many have done
in Britain and the US without being subject to
official sanctions.
Compare the British government’s eagerness to
detain Assange with its lack of interest in pursuing
whoever leaked the secret cables of the British
ambassador to the US, Kim Darroch, to the Mail
on Sunday last year. His negative comments
about Donald Trump provoked an angry reaction from
the president that forced Darroch to resign.
Assange has made disclosures about the activities
of the US government that are more significant than
the revelations in the Pentagon Papers. That is why
he has been pursued to this day, and his punishment
is so much more severe than anything inflicted on
Daniel Ellsberg.
This article was published by "The
Independent"
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