Assange's ongoing trial
By Gwynne Dyer
The cost of being a whistle-blower is going up. When Daniel Ellberg stole and published the “Pentagon Papers” in 1971, revealing the monstrous lies that the U.S. government was telling the American public about the Vietnam War, he was arrested and tried, but the court set him free.
When Edward Snowden released a vast trove of documents in 2013 about the global electronic surveillance activities of U.S. intelligence agencies, he was already abroad, knowing that civil liberties had taken a turn for the worse in the U.S. since 1971. Snowden is still abroad seven years later, living in Moscow, because hardly anywhere else would be safe.
And Julian Assange, whose court hearing on a U.S. extradition request began recently at Woolwich crown court in east London, is facing 175 years in jail if Britain delivers him into American hands. The American authorities are angry about his WikiLeaks dump of confidential material in 2010, detailing US misbehavior in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Everybody knew ― or at least suspected ― that terrible things were happening there, but without firm documentation, there was really nothing that could be done. What Assange did was deliver the evidence.
Perhaps the most striking piece of proof was a video and audio clip from an Apache helicopter gunship, showing the gunship attacking civilians in Baghdad in 2007. In the clip, the crew spray their targets with machine-gun fire, commenting, “It's their fault for bringing their kids into battle,” and “Oh yeah, look at those dead bastards.” The gunship is even shown targeting people in a vehicle that has stopped to help the wounded.
As for the claims of the US authorities that Assange has “blood on his hands” ― that his 2010 data dump endangered the lives of some of those who were mentioned in the documents ― there is arguably not a shred of evidence that this is so. If harm had come to a member of the military over the past nine years as a result of Assange's actions, would we not have heard the U.S. government trumpeting it to the skies?
Whistle-blowers are among our last remaining checks on the contemptuous ease with which those who control information seek to manipulate everybody else. While we don't always respond to the whistle-blowers' revelations as quickly and as strongly as they perhaps hope, they are nevertheless indispensable in keeping lies and misinformation in check. Whistle-blowers should be praised, not punished.
So, what are the chances that Julian Assange will escape both extradition to the United States and a lifetime in prison? His lawyers will doubtless argue that no-one was harmed as a result of his revelations (except, perhaps, in their reputations for telling the truth) and that nobody profited from them. A British court might look unfavorably on an extradition request that is brought out of sheer vindictiveness.
The reports that Donald Trump contacted Assange through an intermediary, former Congressman Dana Rohrabacher, might also help. Trump was allegedly offering to pardon Assange if the Australian would confirm that it was not the Russians who gave him the Hilary Clinton campaign emails he released during the 2016 election campaign.
This has all been denied by both Rohrabacher and the Trump White House, but in carefully phrased ways that leave room for suspicion. Trump's recent claim that he does not know Rohrabacher and has never spoken to him directly is especially suspect, since it was Trump who invited the WikiLeaks founder to the White House for a one-on-one meeting in April 2017. British courts will not extradite if the request is politically motivated.
But Assange's best chance probably lies elsewhere. During the seven years he lived in Ecuador's embassy in London as a political asylum-seeker, the Spanish security company UC Global installed cameras in every corner of Assange's space in the embassy and live-streamed every contact and conversation he had, including with his lawyers, directly to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.
I don't know how a British court will respond to receiving such information, but I think I know how an American court would respond. This is how Ellsberg got off in 1971; the government tapped his phone conversations (and sent burglars to break into his psychiatrist's office to steal his files), and the judge dismissed the case, citing the government's behavior as outrageous and an obstruction to a fair trial.
There are bound to be many appeals both in the U.K. and, maybe later, in the U.S., and Assange will not draw a free breath for a long time or if ever. But in the meantime, here's one happy ending:
Whistle-blower Edward Snowden was not able to tell his girlfriend his plans before he left the U.S. and released his documents, knowing that it would have made her his accomplice. She was angry at first, but she forgave him, married him in 2017, and still lives with him in Russia.
Gwynne Dyer (gwynne763121476@aol.com) has worked as a freelance journalist, columnist, broadcaster and lecturer on international affairs for more than 20 years. He is the author of "Growing Pains: The Future of Democracy (and Work)."