That won’t bring back the years he spent in prison, but WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange may finally get some justice after years of persecution for embarrassing U.S. officials. Under pressure from the government of the journalist’s home country of Australia, President Joe Biden said he was “considering” dropping the case against Assange. It’s been a long time coming, but such a move would be welcomed not only by the prisoner, but by all people everywhere who scrutinize the government’s conduct.
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A late change in policy?
“We are considering it,” President Biden said at the White House last week in response to a question about whether he would honor Australia’s request for Assange’s release.
“This is an encouraging statement from President Biden,” Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese responded. “I said we raised, on behalf of Mr Assange, Australia’s national interests, that enough is enough, that this needs to be brought to a conclusion.”
Albanese has long raised the issue of Assange’s incarceration, commenting in February: “Our vision is very clear. It’s the same vision I had in opposition, it’s the same vision I have as Prime Minister, which is enough. C ‘There is nothing to be gained from Mr Assange’s continued incarceration and he should be allowed to return home.’
The prime minister spoke days after his country’s parliament voted 86-42 in favor of calling on the US and UK to bring “the matter to a conclusion so that Mr Assange can return home to his family in Australia”.
Of course, “we are considering it” isn’t exactly an admission of error in the legal case against the WikiLeaks founder, let alone a grant of the man’s freedom. But this is a significant change for a government that has persecuted Assange in three administrations and that only months ago, in the person of State Department spokesman Matthew Miller, insisted that WikiLeaks’ acquisition and publication of embarrassing information for US officials “it was not a legitimate journalistic activity”.
Espionage or journalism?
Assange faces charges under the Espionage Act, which dates back to 1917. His alleged “crime” was publishing classified US government documents on WikiLeaks, including the “Collateral Murder” video of a US airstrike killing civilians in Baghdad . The publications were based on leaks by U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning. The US government, which found the revelations extremely inconvenient, called the leaks “one of the largest compromises of classified information in US history” in a 2020 superseding indictment against Assange.
Manning served seven years in prison, then was briefly jailed again in 2020 for refusing to testify against Assange. The founder of WikiLeaks was then, as now, in British custody awaiting extradition to the United States after seven years of refuge/exile in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. After a change of government, Ecuador handed it over to the United Kingdom, which has held it since 2019.
It is a high price to pay for making officials uncomfortable through journalism, which Assange has done, even as government stooges insist that unauthorized disclosure of secrets must necessarily be an act of espionage.
“The U.S. Department of Justice alleges that Assange broke the law by receiving classified documents from a source, speaking to that source, possessing the documents, and publishing some of them. In other words, things that journalists at news organizations around the world do every day the country,” emphasizes the Foundation for Freedom of the Press.
“Journalists and their unions recognized from the beginning that Julian Assange was targeted for carrying out tasks that are the daily work of many journalists: searching for a whistleblower and reporting crime,” according to Maja Sever, president of the European Federation of journalists.
Elite media types versus journalism
The US government may say that Assange’s actions do not constitute journalism, but real journalists disagree. Well, most do. Indeed, the persecution of Assange has gained coverage from some big-name media and institutions. They resented the fact that he had received a high-profile scoop that eluded them, his status outside elite press circles, his frankly difficult personality, and his sometimes rough conduct, as if assholes were unknown in an ego-driven industry.
“Mr Assange is no hero of press freedom,” he sniffed The Washington Postin 2019. “Yes, WikiLeaks acquired and published secret government documents, many of them newsworthy,” the committee admitted, but it did so “contrary to the norms of journalism.”
“The administration got off to a good start by accusing Mr. Assange of an indisputable crime,” The New York Times the editorial team agreed. However, he hedged his bets and allowed that “the trial of Mr. Assange could become an attack on the First Amendment and whistleblowers.”
This was absolutely bizarre, coming from two newspapers key to the 1971 publication of the leaked government documents known as the Pentagon Papers, which revealed secret analyzes of American involvement in Indochina. But it made sense given the growing separation of the elite media from the U.S. public and the status of many big names as temporary resting places for intelligence and law enforcement officials taking short breaks from government careers. Entangled with the state, too many high-profile media names have become symbols of authoritarianism.
But normal people in journalism recognize Assange as one of their own. Freedom advocates see dangers in prosecuting those who reveal government misconduct. And Australians want one of their own to come home.
The triumph of Realpolitik
At a time when freedom barely finds formal recognition in government circles, this last point could be the deciding factor. As tensions between the West and China rise, the United States needs allies in the Pacific.
“The US has allied itself with Britain and Australia to form a new anti-China group,” The Atlanticnoted Tom McTague in 2021. That the AUKUS alliance will include nuclear-powered attack submarines for Australia, we learned last year, as well as trilateral naval cooperation between the partners.
Ultimately, realpolitik could succeed where civil libertarian concerns and simple decency have failed. If Julian Assange finally regains his freedom, it may be due to the United States’ desire to move past revelations about past foreign policy failures so it can make way for new diplomatic and military initiatives.
Undoubtedly, this will leave the need for Assange of the future to cover up the results.