Just as in the Pentagon Papers revelations, neither the Obama nor the Trump administration has questioned the truthfulness of the WikiLeaks publication even though they revealed murderous wrongdoing, duplicity at the highest levels of government and the names of American intelligence sources (which some mainstream publications declined to make known).
Assange fears that he cannot get a fair trial in the United States. The government says he can and will. When the government suddenly became interested in fair trials remains a mystery. Yet, arguments about fairness miss the point of this lawless prosecution. A journalist is a gatherer and disseminator of facts and opinions. The government's argument that because he communicated with Manning and helped Manning get the data into WikiLeaks' hands, Assange somehow crossed the line from protected behavior to criminal activity shows a pitiful antipathy to personal freedom.
Democracy dies in darkness. The press is the eyes and ears of an informed public. And those eyes and ears need a nose, so to speak. They need breathing room. It is the height of naivete to think that Ellsberg just dropped off the Pentagon Papers at the Times and the Post, without some coordination with those publications coordination that the courts assume exist and implicitly protect.
Might all of this be part of the Trump administration's efforts to chill the free speech of its press critics to deny them breathing room? After all, it has referred to them as "sick," "dishonest," "crazed," "unpatriotic," "unhinged" and "totally corrupt purveyors of fake news."
Yet the whole purpose of the First Amendment is to assure open, wide, robust debate about the government, free from government interference and threats. How can that debate take place in darkness and ignorance?
If "no law" doesn't really mean no law, we are deluding ourselves, and freedom is not reality. It is merely a wished for fantasy.
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