I have been seeing things on CNN about a possible indictment of Julian Assange for distributing classified material on WikiLeaks. How is his case different from the New York Times (or whoever it was) printing the Pentagon Papers?
Thanks,
Rob
The distinction I see is that the PP went to inform American about the slanted view they were getting on the war, which might degrade support for it. The Wikileaks stuff interferes with our ability to conduct our wartime operations. Also, the Wikileaks info could put not only our soldiers and emissaries at risk, but some brave souls in places like Afghanistan who are trying to help us.
Very different in my book.
Under what jurisdiction would they try Assange? How would they get him here for trial (assuming they could even find him), when more than one country would offer him asylum and refuse US extradiction? What statute would they charge him under (espionage is clearly bullshit, since he did not steal the information, but only received it as a journalist)? Most importantly, how are they going to get around the First Amendment?
The bottom line is that he did nothing illegal.
They’re thinking about classifying Wikileaks as a terrorist organization, or something like that. He is working against our interest in favor of promoting what he thinks is a better world order. In the process, he is putting our soldiers, diplomats, etc., and those who share our vision in danger. I say that Obama should put a target on his head, the same we he did that imam, though I forget his name.
The Pentagon Papers were classified as “Top Secret” which is the highest security designation and defined (according to Wikipedia) as information that, “if publicly disclosed would cause “exceptionally grave damage” to national security.” None of the Wikileaks documents are Top Secret level - they only go up to Secret, so it’s actually even - legally - less sensitive information.
I think Diogenes is right. Bradley Manning is absolutely doomed, but Assange seems to be in the same position as the New York Times was.
The distinction you make is correct. But so are the ones I made.
What I was trying to say is that I don’t know if your distinction is relevant legally. That’s not to say that it definitely isn’t - I’m not a lawyer at all.
All I meant to say is that the most obvious legal comparison between the two cases, their classification level, would seem to indicate that the Pentagon Papers were more sensitive, so you’d expect the restrictions on publishing them to be heavier. Since the restriction on publishing the Pentagon papers turned out to be zero, you’d expect then that Wikileaks would also be pretty much guilt-free, legally speaking (but not necessarily ethically or whatever).
Note that Nixon did get an injunction against the NY Times (and later the Washington Post, too) to stop them from printing excerpts from the papers. The Supreme Court eventually overturned these injunctions, but only after a couple of weeks, thus eroding the newsworthiness of the articles.
And Ellsberg, the source of the Pentagon Papers, was also arrested and charged with theft of secret documents (the government wanted to charge him with treason, but couldn’t get a grand jury to indict on that). The charges were eventually thrown out, but not until 2 years and a lot of legal expenses later. One of his associates was jailed for a week or so for refusing to answer questions before a grand jury.
So while the people responsible for releasing the Pentagon Papers are now regarded as heroes, they did suffer for this. And still, 40 years later, these papers remain classified.
On what basis?
No law against that. He’s not American.
I see a lot of people making this claim, but I don’t see any evidence backing it up. If that’s going to be our criteria for treason, though, then why isn’t Dick Cheney waiting to face a firing squad?
This would be illegal, and would be a nighmare for international relations.
Because he’s helping terrorists organization by revealing information to them that can endanger our troops and allies. Some guy who figures out a way to spy on American troops in the filed and repeatedly shares that information with the very people who are trying to kill them isn’t breaking a law either. But he has declared himself to be the enemy and should not be surprised when a bullet enters his brain.
See above.
Because Cheney was an elected official. Someone was put in office to make decisions like that. If you’re talking about PLame, the person who revealed her identity is Richard Armitage. And the investigator decided that the revealing of the information was inadvertent. But this is a hijack, so let’s leave it to the dozens of threads that already discussed this.
I don’t think so. My guess is he finds a bullet in his head from a country other than the U.S.
I;m not a lawyer either, but legally, I think you’re correct. As a practical matter I think the nature of the information matters.
Then that means the Wall Street Jornal and the New York Times are terrorist organizations too.
We have a First Amendment that guarantees a free press in the US. There are no restrictions on what a news organization can print. It might be illegal to give certain information to the press, but the Supreme Court has ruled that the government can’t prosecute the press for printing it.
Not a relevant criterion.
I won’t bother reanimating this discussion, but my eyes are rolling out of my head.
My guess is that he finds asylum in some place like Ecuador. It’s possible he might go down on that rape charge (a charge which I find highly dubious and convenient, given the circumstances, but it’s possible he did it). but having him murdered would accomplish nothing and just turn him into a martyr.
At the end of the day, he didn’t release anything that damaging or important. It’s mostly just embarrassing gossip.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates denies the leak is going to have significant consequences for us:
I’ve posted this pretty much verbatim in two other threads, and while it’s been minimized by the Leaks-Are-Disasters contingency (as if the Secretary of Defense didn’t know what he was talking about in this context) it’s never been coherently argued against.
hahahahahaahaha!
This is GQ. Would you care to expand?
Questions, not answers.
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Is this about the latest wikileak? I thought it was about diplomatic cables, whereas the previous one was about the US Middle East war.
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Is there any overriding theme to the latest wikileak other than “diplomatic cables”? Or is it just a bunch of random shit?
Where does Julian Assange live these days anyway? Any proceedings against him personally would rely on being able to find him and then securing extradition. It seems like a trivial matter for him to live somewhere that would not co-operate with US extradition.
Isn’t the First Amendment kind of irrelevant here? The data wasn’t published in the US and, as far as I know, he doesn’t live in the US so I don’t see how he could be brought up on charges relating to publishing information in the US or be protected by the first amendment.
Scratch that, just saw an article saying he is in the UK and Scotland Yard know where he is but aren’t arresting him yet due to ‘technical reasons’, whatever that means.
Not really. I just think that some of the things you type are rather humorous.
My apologies to the SDMB community for taking up the bandwidth. I make it a point not to do that in GQ, and I usually don’t like when others gum up the GQ threads with posts that don’t add value. My post clearly didn’t add value. :o
My point with this thread is that it’s obvious that whoever leaked classified information committed a crime. But if you are a newspaper publisher or the owner of a blog or whatever, how are you committing a crime by publishing the documents if you do not hold a security clearance? Whether or not you feel Assange is a scumbag is not relevant.
Thanks,
Rob