‘Persecuting Assange Is a Real Blow to Reporting and Human Rights Advocacy’ – FAIR

Janine Jackson interviewed Defending Rights & Dissents Chip Gibbons about Julian Assanges extradition hearing for the October 9, 2020, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.

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Janine Jackson: If it were not for a tiny handful of journalistsShadowProofs Kevin Gosztola preeminent among themAmericans might be utterly unaware that a London magistrate, for the last month, has been considering nothing less than whether journalists have a right to publish information the US government doesnt want them to. Not whether outlets can leak classified information, but whether they can publish that information on, as in the case of Wikileaks, US war crimes and torture and assorted malfeasance to do with, for instance, the war on Afghanistan, which just entered its 19th year, with zero US corporate media interest.

Assanges case, the unprecedented use of the Espionage Act to go after a journalist, has dire implications for all reporters. But this countrys elite press corps have evidently decided they can simply whistle past it, perhaps hoping that if and when the state comes after them, theyll make a more sympathetic victim.

Joining us now to discuss the case is Chip Gibbons. Hes policy director at Defending Rights & Dissent. He joins us now by phone from Washington, DC. Welcome back to countersign, Chip Gibbons.

Chip Gibbons: Always a pleasure to be on CounterSpin.

JJ: I wondered, first, given the absence of US news media attention, if you could tell us just whats happening? I mean, its a hearing for Julian Assanges extradition, but in the very informative webinar that Defending Rights & Dissent did last night with Kevin Gosztola of ShadowProof, whos pretty much single-handedly reporting on this, he called it a trial. So it feels like things are shifting around, just in terms of what this means, and so, if its not too crazy a question: Whats going on?

CG: Sure. So the US has indicted Julian Assange with 17 counts under the Espionage Act, as well as a count under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

Assange is not a US person; hes an Australian national. He was inside the Ecuadorian embassy for a number of years, as Ecuador had granted him asylum, and the UK had refused to basically recognize that and let him leave the country, so he was de facto imprisoned inside the embassy. And after the indictment the US issued, the new government of Ecuadorwhich is much less sympathetic to Assange than the previous Correa governmentlet the US come in the embassy and seize him.

And the US is seeking Assanges extradition to the US from the UK. I guess its, probably, technically a hearing, but Kevins point was that its more like what we would think of as a trial, in that theres different witnesses, theres expert testimony, theres different legal arguments at stake.

The defense, the witness portion of it, has closed; it ended last week. And theres going to be closing arguments submitted in writing, and then the judge will render a decision, and that decision will be appealable by either side. So regardless of the outcome, we can expect appeals. So it does very closely mirror what we would think of more like a trial than a hearing in the US court context.

Its important to really understand whats at stake with Assanges extradition. He is the first person ever indicted by the US government under the Espionage Act for publishing truthful information.

The US government has considered indicting journalists before: They considered indicting Seymour Hersh, a very famous investigative reporter. They considered indicting James Bamford, because he had the audacity to try to write a book on the National Security Agency. But theyve never done that.

And Obamas administration looked at the idea of indicting Assange and said, No, this would violate the First Amendment, and it would open the door to all kinds of other bad things. But the Trump administration clearly doesnt have those qualms.

And its worth pointing out that Assanges indictment follows an unprecedented period, initiated by the Obama administration, of indicting whistleblowers or journalists sources under the Espionage Act. So weve seen Chelsea Manning indicted, weve seen Edward Snowden indicted under the Espionage Act, but to indict the journalists, though, is a real new step, and not for the best.

JJ: And thats what I wanted to just to underscore, or ask you to: We do have rules around journalists being provided materials that might be hacked, or that might be illegally obtained, or that might be leaked. Journalists have a rightI mean, through this murkinessjournalists have a right to publish information, even if that information is illegally obtained. Is that not true?

Chip Gibbons: Julian Assange is accused of publishing information about war crimes, about human rights abuses and about abuses of power, that have been tremendously important, not just for the publics right to know, but also have made a real difference in advocacy around those issues.

CG: Thats what the Supreme Court has said in the past; that is the precedent, and I believe that is what prevented the Obama administration from moving against Assange. It is very interesting to see how this plays out in a US court in the current environment. If whoeverTrump or Biden, whoever is president, when this finally comes to the USactually pursues this, and they actually are allowing the persecution of journalists, thats going to be a really dark, dark assault on free expression rights.

And its worth rememberingand Julian Assange is clearly very reviled in the corporate media and the political establishment right nowbut the information he leaked came from Chelsea Manning, it dealt with US war crimes; and he worked with the New York Times, the Guardian, Der Spiegel, Le Monde, Al Jazeera, to publish this information. So if he can go to jail for publishing this, why cant the New York Times? And is that a door anyone wants to open? There is a big press freedom angle here.

I also want to talk about the facts, though: What did Julian Assange publish, and why did it matter? One of the witnesses that took the stand in his defense was Clive Stafford Smith, whos one of the founders of Reprieve UK; hes represented men detained at Guantnamo Bay and victims of US drone strikes, and he discussed how the information published by WikiLeaks, given by whistleblower Chelsea Manning, has aided their work, including getting a court ruling in Pakistan, saying that US drone strikes were illegal and constituted a war crime. And other people who have done advocacy or journalism around Guantnamo testified about how Wikileaks published the Guantnamo Bay files, which showed how the US government was holding people it didnt suspect of any crimes.

Julian Assange is accused of publishing information about war crimes, about human rights abuses and about abuses of power, that have been tremendously important, not just for the publics right to know, but also have made a real difference in advocacy around those issues. People were able to go and get justice for victims of rendition, or able to go and get court rulings in other countries about US drone strikes, because of this information being in the public domain. So attacking Assange, persecuting Assange, disappearing him into a supermax prison, this is a real blow to reporting and human rights advocacy.

And Assange isnt even a US national, hes an Australian citizen; he didnt publish this information in this country. So, basically, the US is saying that if you exist anywhere in the world, and youre a journalist, and you do what I would call journalismexposing the crimes of the powerful; I know, a lot of journalists in this country dont do thatbut they can come and charge you with espionage, put you in solitary confinement, put you in a supermax prison?

We miss how high the stakes are in this country on this issue, but its not lost on the rest of the world. Look at who are Julian Assanges supporters: He has on his defense team Baltasar Garzn, whos the very famous Spanish ex-judge who indicted Pinochet; his main attorney, Jennifer Robinson, is a famed human rights attorney who, in addition to representing Assange, has used information released by WikiLeaks in her other human rights cases.

His international supporters include:

So if you look around the world, high-profile left-wing politicians, including current and former heads of state and internationally renowned human rights activists, support Assange, and thats because they understand this is about exposing war crimes, this is about exposing human rights abuses. And I wish more people in the US would realize thats whats going on here.

JJ: Right. And, finally, the journalists who are holding their nose right now on covering it arent offering to give back the awards that they won based on reporting relying on WikiLeaks revelations. And James Risen had an op-ed in the New York Times a while back, in which he was talking about Glenn Greenwald, but also about Julian Assange, and he said that he thought that governmentshe was talking about Bolsonaro in Brazil, as well as Donald Trumpthat theyre trying out these anti-press measures and, he said, they seem to have decided to experiment with such draconian anti-press tactics by trying them out first on aggressive and disagreeable figures.

And what struck me about that is that I feel like thats where the public comes in, frankly, because its really for us to decide, are we going to say, Well, I dont like Julian Assange, so Im not going to care about this case? Its up to us to say we can separate principle from person if we need to, that we can see whats at stake and that we wont allow, in other words, media, which, in this case, theres an explicit tactic of demonizing a person, so that you can be encouraged to think Well, this has nothing to do with me, and Assange, if something bad happens to him, that doesnt have anything to do with me. And unfortunately, media are helping us make that disassociation from the person and the principle here.

CG: Yeah, the US media has done a really fantastic job of demonizing Julian Assange, which is not to say, there can never be any legitimate criticisms or differences of opinion with him. I know a lot of people, including many of his longtime supporters, were very displeased with some of the stuff he did or said during the 2016 election. But at the end of the day, that doesnt give the US government the right to disappear and torture someone for the crime of exposing its own actual crimes.

Whether or not you agree with everything hes ever said or doneand theres no one on this planet who I agree with everything theyve ever said and done, not even myself, for that matter, right?he took real risk to bring truth. I believe he said something like, If wars can be started based on lies, then peace can be brought based on truth. Thats the motto hes operating under, and we need people like Julian Assange, and WikiLeaks, to pursue the truth, to shine light on these abuses of power.

JJ: Weve been speaking with Chip Gibbons, policy director at Defending Rights & Dissent. Theyre online at RightsAndDissent.org. Chip Gibbons, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.

CG: Thank you for having me again.

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'Persecuting Assange Is a Real Blow to Reporting and Human Rights Advocacy' - FAIR